The following contains spoilers for The Last of Us Season 2, Episode 1, «Future Days,» which premiered Sunday, April 13 on HBO.
The Last of Us Season 2 premiere begins the same way the first season ended. Ellie forces Joel to swear that everything he said about the Fireflies is true. He lies, saying there were already immune people at the lab and a cure wasn’t possible, and she accepts it. Back in Salt Lake City, the remnants of Joel’s lie are buried in newly dug graves decorated with crosses and Firefly pendants. The remaining Fireflies, five young adults, including Kaitlyn Dever’s Abby Anderson, vow to get revenge.
Abby hasn’t made good on her promise in five years, but the ending of the Season 2 premiere suggests that’s about to change. The community of Jackson, Wyoming is a flourishing safe haven for people to run to from infected or fallen settlements. Inside the walls is a fairly ordinary town where people can see a therapist, build homes for refugees or light sparklers on New Year’s. It’s progress from everything The Last of Us Season 1 built, showing how there can be a sense of normalcy in a world plagued by parasitic mushrooms and evil humans, but it also breaks the bond that was built between Joel and Ellie. Season 2, Episode 1, «Future Days,» isn’t so much a prologue to catch people up on the new lives of its characters as it is a warning for the dangers that were unintentionally invited.
The Last of Us Plays the Experimental Game
The Season 2 Premiere Makes Substantial Modifications From the Video Game
Directed and written by co-creator Craig Mazin, The Last of Us Season 2 premiere is full of love within and outside the show’s context. Mazin himself is a self-proclaimed fan of the video game franchise, which obviously should be a pre-requisite to lead an adaptation of this magnitude. Adoration for a particular source material doesn’t mean copying and pasting the story and its world verbatim, as in The Last of Us‘ instance.
The Season 2 premiere picks apart the original material of The Last of Us Part II, the sequel game, to create something temptingly fresh. The decision to begin the season with so many changes endangers the faithfulness of its viewers, but it’s a smart move to test the waters. Players of the game will immediately clock that the timeline is more chronological, Abby’s backstory is clear from the get-go, Joel and Dina have a defined relationship, and Joel has softened himself by seeing a therapist.
Show-only viewers won’t notice a difference and will interpret these storytelling choices as a natural way of adding context to a new character’s motivation — and an established character’s desperation — to fill the hole both Sarah and Ellie left in his heart.
Some questions are raised as to the validity of some of these changes in how they make sense in conjunction with characters’ histories. Mazin and co-showrunner Neil Druckman thoughtfully refuse to write Joel’s willingness to go to therapy as any sort of growth. He’s doing so as a last resort to win Ellie’s affection again, a testament to Joel’s selfishness as a lonely old man who can’t accept his own faults.
What’s fuzzy is Gail (Catherine O’Hara’s pungent therapist) accepting these sessions with him after he killed her husband, Eugene. She claims to still be angry with Joel, despite him having a good reason, and she’s not exactly the most professional of therapists. O’Hara plays Gail with an acidic tongue who could easily say «no» if she wanted to. So, why keep Joel around? Is the need for therapists so low in Jackson? Surely not in the apocalypse, where the community frequently gets an influx of new traumatized refugees.
The Expansion of Jackson Presents a Lived-In World
The Jackson Community Exceeds Television's Expectations of Direction and Set Design
It’s no wonder people are coming to Jackson to escape life on the outside. The breadth of the community is the most impressive feat of the Season 2 premiere. Mazin is exceptional as a writer on his own. Chernobyl and The Last of Us confirm as much. But his work as a director is vastly underappreciated.
Mazin takes precious time with cinematographer Ksenia Sereda to scope out the town and take notice of its small details. Mazin and Sereda want nothing overlooked in this superbly planned community, from Ellie’s teenage lair that is plastered with posters and blaring with Nirvana’s «Love Buzz,» to an office decorated with maps and patrol boards.
The production design and set decoration team deserve their flowers and more this episode, not just for the careful appreciation of minute things but for achieving Jackson’s grander presence.
The town’s old Western appeal mixed with modern reminders like streetlights leaves a radiant impression. It looks effortlessly lived in with background characters dressed in the heaviest winter clothing doing manual labor or chatting about their day. There’s not a lick of sense that Jackson is just a bunch of empty buildings constructed for the sake of a television show. The town appears permanent to orchestrate the goals of its people and council.
Jackson is built to last for the long term, to rebuild a life that was once believed to be gone. In comparison, The Walking Dead misaligned its claims of the Commonwealth being a grandiose city resembling society by rarely visiting it beyond the same few buildings. Although it will likely never film on every street and corner, the wider shots of Jackson’s mapped community write a love letter to the people who likely spent months creating it.
The Balanced Premiere Brings Out The Last of Us' Strong Suits
A Mix of Relationship Drama and Action Proves The Last of Us Can Do It All
The Last of Us does step outside of Jackson to brave the cold in the Season 2 premiere. Ellie is one of the few jumping for the opportunity to patrol the area for incoming infected or strangers. Mazin does something interesting on the patrol by making Ellie infuriating but funny. She’s not an upstanding person, but she’s also not a terrible one, either.
Ellie and Dina’s disobedience of the rules for some clicker action attributes to their immaturity as teenagers transitioning into adulthood but also to how they’ve been accustomed to this world.
The addition of Young Mazino as the rule-stickler Jesse pleasantly rounds out his friends’ juvenile attitudes. Particularly with Ellie, this foreshadows a future struggle to find allies when she’s spent the past five years developing her reputation as carelessly selfish. Ironically, so has Joel.
Much of the Season 2 premiere nudges how much Ellie is like Joel, despite their rocky relationship. As much weird tension as there is between the two, there’s still an unbreakable foundation of love built in the first season.
The Last of Us can add as much action as it and the viewers want, but this is and always will be a character-building show. It’s just that now, Season 2 has found the right balance by adding in doses of combat in moderation. The bone-chilling stress of the stalker scene is just enough to satisfy the action fix.
The Last of Us knows it’s a good show, but it’s also unafraid not to please the masses. Some people are just not going to like the changes made to the Season 2 premiere alone, which will make it tough to watch the next six episodes and Season 3. But what Mazin and Druckmann have accomplished in Season 2’s first episode is adequately posing that this is the calm before the storm.
The episode isn’t without its charm, which is driven by Bella Ramsey, Pedro Pascal and Gabriel Luna’s performances as a loving but dysfunctional family. Yet, it’s also a clever distraction from the real threat ahead. Opening and ending the episode with Abby channels the same dread that’s felt when infected are around the corner. The problem is that both are lurking in the mountains of Wyoming near Jackson. The Last of Us forces people to ask themselves which is worse: a group of violent infected or a burdened woman who’s held onto five years of baggage?
New episodes of The Last of Us premiere every Sunday at 9 PM ET on HBO.
- The odd relationship between Joel and Gail raise concerns about Gail's characterization.
