“Be careful who you put your faith in,” Maria (Rutina Wesley), a co-leader of the survivors in Jackson, Wyoming, said to the teenage survivor Ellie (Bella Ramsey) in the first season of HBO’s devastating “The Last Of Us” post-apocalyptic survival series. “The only people who can betray us are the ones we trust.” This profoundly cynical caution warned about the precariousness of survival; in a dog-eat-dog world, we’re all one too-honest word away from treachery. But little did they know they might be talking about the one that loves them the most.
What is the value of love when unspeakable atrocities are committed in its name? The harrowing cost of survival in a cataclysm will always be high, but the price of lies and deceit to uphold that existence can be just as expensive. At the end of ‘TLOU’ season one, Joel (Pedro Pascal) committed the greatest act of love, the greatest sin against humanity and arguably the most selfish deed ever known to man.
When doctors in the rebel Firefly camp learned that Ellie was immune to the bite of the Cordyceps zombies, they came to a logical conclusion. A cure to this cataclysmic, world-ending virus could be found by operating on Ellie’s brain, but unfortunately, she would have to die, the ultimate sacrifice for civilization. But Joel, in deep parental love with his surrogate teenage daughter—the only thing he’s cared about in ages, after years as a merciless killer—could not stomach this price, instead, slaughtering all the Fireflys in the camp that stood in his way, including the only doctors who could save humankind.
Unconscious at the time of the massacre, when it was all over, Joel told Ellie that raiders attacked Firefly HQ, everyone was butchered, and they were the only ones who survived. Dubious, Ellie questioned this, asking him to swear it as truth, which he did: the first of many well-intended lies that destroy their relationship once the secret is revealed.
Set five years after the events of season one, ‘TLOU’ season two is just as cruel, heart-wrenching, another unflinching look at our collective brutality and humanity. The plot of season two is essentially a story of two-fold revenge.
Season two is primarily defined by the introduction of Abby Anderson (a superb Kaitlyn Dever in her most convincingly venomous role ever), the daughter of the innocent surgeon that Joel murdered in order to save Ellie (though with most Fireflys massacred, he could have easily let the doctors live) and a member of the Seattle-based WLF (Washington Liberation Front) a militant paramilitary organization.
Abby makes it her mission to avenge her father’s demise, and when a massive Cordyceps zombie attack hits the town of Jackson—reminiscent of one of the spectacular action set pieces in “Game Of Thrones”—Joel escorts her back to the WLF’s encampment in an abandoned ski lodge where horrid tortures occur.
Tragedy strikes, and this sets in motion a remarkable odyssey. Ellie, joined by her best friend/ tentative girlfriend Dina (Isabela Merced), heads to Seattle seeking revenge for the attack.
But as the journey embarks, the show employs many organic and natural flashbacks to fill in the relationship between Ellie and Joel in the last five years, and spoiler alert: it’s deeply estranged.
“The Last Of Us” season two is about the receipts of retribution, the sorrow of grief, the expense of duplicity and more. Still, there’s also a poignant thread about the perpetual heartbreak of parenthood manifest throughout the ways Joel and Ellie grow further apart the more he tries to protect and take care of her.
These flashbacks include more falsehoods and lies that Ellie cannot stomach, further alienating her from Joel. Some center around the cynical therapist Gail (Catherine O’Hara), harboring deep resentment against Joel for past transgressions even as she tries to help him untangle his messy relationship with Ellie. Of course, Joel’s dishonesties are made in the name of love or the greater good, or so he tells himself, but that doesn’t mean they do levy a huge toll regardless.
Lots of newcomers abound too: the competent Jackson community soldier Jesse (Young Mazino), the older politicians and barkeep Seth (Robert John Burke), who is a former cop, Danny Ramirez playing one of Abby’s killer foot soldiers, and Jeffrey Wright as Isaac Dixon, a ruthless WLF militia leader at the front of the war against the Seraphites, a deranged religious cult locked in a battle with the WLF over Seattle Seattle.
Along their journey, Ellie and Dina encounter traces of the Seraphites (aka the Scars), the butchering they commit in the name of their prophet and their culture and ways, which include a complex whistling system for stealth communication and a penchant for primitivism, which favors arrows and knives over guns.
Another disturbing wrinkle for the characters is the emergence of newly discovered and potentially evolved intelligence behind some of the Cordyceps zombies they’ve previously never seen, which makes these creatures deadlier than ever.
Resembling “Game Of Thrones” in scale, what’s heartening about ‘TLOU’ is how much of a human drama it is, first and foremost, and a cruel one at that. And yes, zombies are the hook of genre for geeks, nerds and fans of sci-fi and comic books, but the actual monsters of the show are the people themselves, friends and foes.
Many of the same elements of the series remain: the grueling, unsparing writing by writer/director/showrunner Craig Mazin, the wistfully heartrending music by Academy Award-winning composer Gustavo Santaolalla, the gripping direction (Mark Mylod and Kate Herron are two names who contribute to this season) and the fierce and gutting performances by the entire cast, but especially Pascal, Ramsay, and Dever.
If “The Last Of Us” season one asked how far you would go to protect those you love, season two grapples with the unbearable nature of love, the limits of love, and when the burden of love feels intolerably white hot. It might be a heartless (but brilliantly emotional) post-apocalyptic series about the inhumanity within us all, but the poignant series continues to be a trenchant exploration of holding on to those we love in a hopeless place. [-A]
“The Last of Us” Season 2 premieres on Sunday, April 13th, 2025, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and will be available to stream on Max.
