The computer game “The Last of Us” was initially released in 2013 and was a very critically acclaimed and beloved game when it came out.
In the past, live-action shows adapted from video games have not had a very good track record on transferring over very well or just being good tv shows/movies. That is, until “The Last of Us.”
Season one of “The Last of Us” has recently reached its conclusion, and this show completely broke my heart.
The show follows our main character Joel (Pedro Pascal) during the outbreak of a pandemic that essentially turns people into zombies. These are not just normal zombies, though. Called the “infected”, these monsters are able to run very fast, and there are multiple different types, including some that cannot see but have incredible hearing.
The show does not mainly focus on the infected, however. Twenty years after the pandemic began, Joel is living in a “quarantine zone” in the city. While trying to leave the quarantine zone in search of his brother, Joel is tasked with taking this 14-year-old girl, Ellie (Bella Ramsey), across the country. It is revealed that Ellie is immune to becoming infected, so Joel must bring Ellie to a group that is trying to develop a vaccine for the infection.
The story then follows Joel and Ellie as they make their way across the country, encountering different groups of people along the way.
As someone who had not played the video games beforehand, I wasn’t sure what to expect going into watching this series.
I absolutely loved how this story explored how different people learned how to survive throughout this pandemic. In many of the episodes, new groups were introduced and we were able to get a small insight on how everyone is living in this world. There were people living underground, a couple who fenced off a part of a town to live in, small, remote societies, among several others. The introduction of new characters and scenery in almost every episode really helped to further along the story and give the viewer more and more of a deeper look at this society.
I loved how in this horrific, post-apocalyptic world, we were still able to see moments of love and goodness, however brief they might have been. These moments of humanity caused things that happened in the show to be all the more impactful and emotional, which I thought was very well done.
The character development of Joel and Ellie was also amazing to watch. The relationship between these two was so touching and lovely to watch develop, as well as how their relationships change with all of the different people they come across.
This series definitely emotionally destroyed me. Episode after episode was heartbreaking and the emotion of every situation was conveyed so well.
My only gripe with this series was with the finale. I feel like usually with drama tv series, the final episode of the season is the longest in the series. In this case, however, the final episode was the shortest of the season. Though this was a good episode, I felt as if it was fairly rushed and the ending flew by very fast. I think the ending definitely would have benefitted from being drawn out a bit more.
All in all, I absolutely adored this show, and I cannot wait for season two. This story is so much more than just another zombie apocalypse scenario, and I cannot recommend it enough.