‘The Last of Us’ Just Leveled Up
Episode 2 of Season 2 is a triumphant TV spectacle
Heading into its second season, The Last of Us faced a daunting challenge. Not only did the HBO series have to meet the heightened expectations that come with any TV show tasked with building on a successful first season, but it also needed to adapt the heartbreaking moment that defines the video game it’s based on: Joel’s death.
In one of the most iconic, polarizing events in video game history, Joel is brutally murdered within the first hour or so of The Last of Us Part II. When and how this scene would be re-created in live action were the questions on the mind of every gamer turned viewer before last week’s season premiere, along with whether the TV show would be able to reproduce the moment in all its tragic glory. On Sunday night, The Last of Us did just that and more, delivering what could become a classic episode of television.
“Through the Valley,” written by Craig Mazin and directed by Mark Mylod, is a remarkable achievement. Between the shocking nature of the action and the massive scale of the production, it’s the kind of episode that most series would reserve for the penultimate or final installment of a season. Mazin and co-showrunner Neil Druckmann took an inevitable, pivotal event and changed the circumstances surrounding it, re-creating it in a way that honors the source material while allowing the adaptation to stand on its own.
In last week’s episode, The Last of Us reintroduced the setting of Jackson and provided an in-depth look at how the town functions as the rare community that’s still flourishing at the end of the world. All of that setup established Jackson as a character in its own right and raised the stakes for Joel and Ellie, as they’ve finally put down roots in a home worth fighting for. “Through the Valley” places all of that in jeopardy when an infected horde rises from a snowy slumber in the mountains and heads directly toward Jackson.
The infected assault on Jackson is an invention of the HBO series, and it works wonderfully as a companion to Joel’s death at the hands of Abby and her ex-Firefly crew. Episode 1 concluded with the tease of a mycelium network of Cordyceps in the pipes running through the town, and they send an alert through the woodwide web in Episode 2, bringing an army of mushroom monsters to Jackson’s gates. As a result, there’s a rising tension throughout much of the episode, as what was a looming threat becomes an immediate danger.
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The conflict between Jackson’s defenders and the infected horde is gripping in itself; an extraordinary blend of practical effects, visual effects, and stunt work comes together to create a thrilling set piece that’s even bigger and better than the last time the infected appeared in such force, in the fifth installment of Season 1. Even if Jackson’s leadership showed some complacency about Ellie’s discovery of a smarter, stalking breed of infected and potential signs of a nearby horde, the community’s preparedness and organizational efforts are on full display when the town is tested by a sudden, overwhelming invasion. Wielding a flamethrower, Tommy survives an epic one-on-one confrontation with a bloater, while Maria manages to shoot her way to safety and unleash a pack of dogs to help secure Jackson’s safety. Still, the town suffers great losses that will completely shift its mindset from one of expansion to one of rebuilding—and healing.
As heart-pounding as all of the action in Jackson is, the main event of the episode is still Abby finding Joel and exacting her revenge for what he did to her father and the rest of the Fireflies. Starting with Abby’s nightmare at the beginning of “Through the Valley,” in which she re-lives the day when Joel shot her father at Saint Mary’s Hospital, there’s a sense of foreboding that hangs over the episode. And once Abby splits off from her group to track a two-person patrol—Joel and Dina—and inadvertently wakes the infected horde in the process, the episode proceeds at a wild pace that lets up only after Joel has taken his last breath.
After Abby returns to the lodge with the two strangers, there’s a great moment when all the other former Fireflies, who had been planning to try to talk Abby into leaving, realize what their fearless, vengeful leader has managed to achieve: She’s found the exact person they’ve been hunting—a dangerous resident of a small city that would be nearly impossible to infiltrate and navigate unnoticed—and brought him right to them. As Joel tries to make contact with Jackson via radio, Abby introduces all of her friends, and Mel (Ariela Barer) kindly tends to Dina’s frostbite. But all of the pleasantries are dropped with the utterance of Joel’s name. Beginning with Manny (Danny Ramirez), who doesn’t hesitate to grab Dina and hold her at gunpoint, they all fall in line to prepare Joel for his execution and cede the floor to Abby.
Joel’s death is just as brutal as it is in the video game. Abby delivers a lengthy speech to her captive as she explains who they are and why they’ve tracked him down from Seattle, relishing every moment as her words turn to violence and she makes good on her promise to kill him “slowly.”
“You’re tough,” Abby says, shortly after shooting him in the leg. “I guess you probably have to be, killing all those people. Do you know how many you killed that day? Did you count as you went, or … I guess maybe it just didn’t matter? Eighteen soldiers. And one doctor. You remember that one. An unarmed doctor you shot in the head. Yeah. That was my dad.”
Kaitlyn Dever is phenomenal throughout this sequence, grounding Abby’s actions in a tremendous sense of grief as she’s overcome with a palpable rage that horrifies even some of her friends. A new character kills a beloved protagonist whom viewers have sympathized with ever since he held his dying daughter in his arms on the day of the Cordyceps outbreak; it seems like the sort of twist that could alienate fans. Yet this scene works so well because the audience—and even, perhaps, Joel—understands that Abby may have a point.
“It doesn’t matter if you have a code like me or you’re a lawless piece of shit like you,” she continues. “There are just some things … everyone agrees are just fucking wrong.”
Joel says little to nothing to Abby throughout her monologue, speaking up only to tell her to “just shut the fuck up and do it already.” It’s all the more devastating that he’s already near death and unable to speak by the time Ellie arrives and is forced to watch him meet his fate firsthand. Only when Owen (Spencer Lord) calls for Abby to “end it” as Ellie pleads for Joel to get up does Abby finally put him out of his misery: She delivers the last blow with the end of a broken golf club that has been split into pieces by repeated impacts against Joel’s body. Bella Ramsey’s heart-wrenching performance brings the scene—and the episode at large—home as Ellie crawls over to Joel’s corpse and clutches him one last time.
“Through the Valley” concludes with Jesse bringing Ellie, Dina, and Joel’s body back to Jackson, which is dealing with the fallout from the infected siege, and the Salt Lake crew returning to Seattle, its mission accomplished. Over this footage, a familiar voice sings the song that serves as the title for this week’s episode: Ashley Johnson covers the same 2012 Shawn James tune that she did in the teaser that first announced The Last of Us Part II in late 2016. Johnson, who portrayed Ellie in the video games, also played Ellie’s mom, Anna, in the Season 1 finale, adding a new layer of meaning to the song choice that provides a bridge between the TV series and the universe of the games.
“In the end, there is little Ellie gasping for breath with the man who is her father, and we hear the voice of the woman who is her mother,” Mazin explained to Variety. “And it’s beautiful. Sometimes the parallel universes touch. I don’t know how else to describe it. We don’t do a lot of meta stuff, but sometimes it touches. And if there’s a moment where you are free for the universes to touch, it’s this one, because this is a shared experience now with everyone. We’re sort of saying, everyone who played the game and now everyone who hasn’t, we have lived through this.”
Abby has obtained what she believes to be justice for her father. But as The Last of Us showed us last season through characters like Kathleen, who was willing to risk the safety of her entire group in Kansas City to avenge her brother, revenge always comes at a cost. By killing Joel, Abby has inadvertently repeated what Joel did to her, robbing Ellie of the most important person she has left in a life where she’s lost everyone she’s ever been close to. And in doing so, Abby has brought about what Druckmann calls the “inciting incident” that will shape the rest of the series.
