The following contains spoilers for The Last of Us Season 2, Episode 1, «Future Days,» which premiered Sunday, April 13 on HBO.
Five years after the events of The Last of Us Season 1, Ellie Williams has grown comfortable with the art of fighting infected. Not only does she have the experience of encountering multiple types of infected while traveling with Joel Miller cross-country, but she has the hidden talent of being immune to the Cordyceps fungus. But nothing could prepare her for the creepy new stage of infected that she encounters in Season 2, Episode 1, «Future Days.»
In the Season 2 premiere of The Last of Us, Ellie finds herself trapped in an abandoned store after defying her patrol leader, Kat (who happens to be her ex-girlfriend), to kill infected with her new love interest, Dina. Things get romantically and literally messy very quickly. Although Ellie initially thinks she’s alone in the store, an infected creature crawling on four legs is seen watching and hiding from her. When her back is turned, it takes the opportunity to grab her and even bites her on the stomach before it’s killed. Courtesy of its shadowing behavior, this type of infected is known as the stalker.
Why Are the Stalkers So Hard to Defeat?
Stalkers Exhibit an Intelligence Closer to Humans
At first, the stalker looks similar to a runner, except with more tendrils growing out of its head. But the stalker acts more intelligently, as she tells the council of Jackson in a later scene. It waits, stalks and plans just as humans do, until it’s time to ambush. It also becomes more hostile when triggered by a human attack. The excessive tendrils on its body could be the reason for its abnormally high awareness, being that tendrils spread spores to its victims and essentially «connect» to other infected.
This was the first time anyone in Jackson had ever encountered a stalker, so The Last of Us can’t give too much information on the exact science of their biology. But considering they’re rare to come across, this isn’t a normal stage of the virus that every infected being goes through. This probably wasn’t a one-time event, but it’s still unique. As The Last of Us has proven before, a unique enemy is never an easy one.
Since the stalker tracks its prey’s every move, it has the advantage of hiding and eliminating noises without being noticed. The stalker is also ferociously strong, so much so that it tackles Ellie to the ground and easily manages to bite her without a challenge. Essentially, Ellie was fighting on a human-to-human level of intelligence, but with the added difficulty of fighting an infected being with incredible resilience and energy. Because, unlike humans, infected don’t tire out.
How the Stalkers Compare to Other Types of Infected in the Show
Stalkers Aren't the Most Dangerous, But They're Pretty Close
The stalker is actually confronted a lot earlier in the games than in the show. In the first game, Joel comes across stalkers in the Pittsburgh hotel basement, and Ellie fights them in the DLC Left Behind. They become a much bigger nuisance in The Last of Us Part II, as they appear more frequently in Seattle in dark areas that make it hard for humans to find them. There’s even a variant of the stalker in Abby’s section of the game when she fights the Rat King, and a more durable and stealthy stalker that throws acid pods that pulls itself off the giant enemy.
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Stages of Infected in HBO’s The Last of Us |
Characteristics |
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Runner |
Also known as «stage one,» runners resemble humans but exhibit animalistic behavior, violent muscle spasms, lack coordination and heightened speed. |
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Stalker |
Stalkers intelligently track humans, hiding and lurking until an attack. Their high aggression, strength, and speed also make them hard to kill. |
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Clicker |
Clickers are blind infected beings that are protected by fungal growth in their brain that also allows them to use echolocation to hear and «see.» They’re characterized by their clicking sound and, when alerted, sprint toward their prey to maul them to death. |
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Bloater |
The most advanced and rarest stage of infected, the bloater is an incredibly large variant that can withstand bullets. Although they’re slow in nature, they make up in strength by easily ripping their victims apart. |
Compared to other stages of infected purely in The Last of Us series, the stalker is a significant threat that should put the survivors on high alert. For the most part, the only infected beings that the community of Jackson has to deal with are runners and clickers. What makes the stalkers stand out from both of those stages of infected is that humans can’t stealthily kill them. Stalkers are basically a mix of runners and clickers’ most aggressive qualities — heightened speed, strength and durability — on top of observing behavior.
Though the stalker still isn’t as strenuous to beat as a bloater. The latter infected may be uncoordinated and slow, making them predictable, but their size surpasses the stalker’s indomitable qualities any day. But that shouldn’t allow the citizens of Jackson to undermine the stalker. Ellie has appeared to gain a reputation of being an unreliable narrator, except in the eyes of Tommy and Maria. If one stalker can do that much damage, imagine what a whole group of them can do.
New episodes of The Last of Us premiere every Sunday at 9 PM ET on HBO.
