Kyle and Andrew sneak into the second episode of The Last of Us

new episodes of The last of us they premiere on HBO every Sunday night, and Ars’s Kyle Orland (who has played the games) and Andrew Cunningham (who hasn’t) will be talking about them here every Monday morning. While these recaps don’t delve into every plot point of the premiere episode, there’s obviously heavy spoilers content inside so watch the episode first if you want to get in fresh.

Kyle: Yeah, one of the reasons is probably that this episode was directed by Neil Druckmann, who co-wrote and co-directed the games. So it’s no surprise that many moments in this episode play out as fairly straightforward recreations of the games’ first encounter with clickers. I almost expected a “smash the square button” message to appear on the screen at some points during the action scenes. For the most part, I wish the show was a little less faithful and a little more concise here. Fights with the infected end up being much less interesting for a passive observer, compared to someone controlling the protagonists.

Kyle: Well, from the beginning I was a bit surprised that we went back to pre-outbreak times for that Indonesian scene. To me, that felt like a huge amount of time wasted going over things we already knew. The whole point of the story is that it doesn’t matter precisely What the infection happened, humanity has to deal with the shitty consequences anyway. It went a long way to establish the fact that bombs are a good solution for many infected at once, which I think becomes relatively apparent even without that scene.

Kyle: Yeah, after playing for dozens of hours in the post-outbreak gaming world, I never found myself thinking “I wish we knew more about what caused all this.” But the showrunners seem to think differently. This is probably unfair because I’ve come to love Ellie through the games, but… do you still love Ellie?

Kyle:All things considered, I think they did a good job of setting up Tess’s noble/technically gratuitous sacrifice at that point, paving the way for the central Joel/Ellie relationship that was obviously always going to drive the show forward (even if you haven’t played the games).

Andrew: Yeah, as I said last week (and, I suspect, will I keep saying?), it’s all a tropey as hell but well done enough that you mostly don’t care. You knew by the time Ellie and Tess seemed to be bonding, that Tess wasn’t going to make it out of the episode (the fact that there are, uh, less than three people in all of the show’s promotional material is another clue). Even with no prior knowledge of the games, you can see the unlikely bond between Joel and Ellie from a mile away. All the rhythms of the two main monster fights were textbook. Will the monster pass without seeing them? Will Tess be able to use the scaly lighter? You know the answer to both.