WARNING: Spoilers Ahead!

This article is for people who have seen The Last of Us’s first two episodes. Please don’t read it if you haven’t already. And please don’t talk about the games, so we can enjoy the TV show…

“Cordyceps Can’t Survive in Humans.”

After what happened last week in Texas before the virus and in Boston 20 years later, we’re now in Indonesia in 2003 at the beginning of the outbreak. A mycologist from the University of Indonesia named Prof. Ibu Ratna (Christine Hakim) was picked up by the military while she was eating lunch and taken to a lab to help find out more about the body on the slab.

From the outside, the body looked pretty normal, except for a bullet hole in the head and a strange mark on the foot. As Ratna dug deeper, she found a weird kind of web under the skin and something that looked like a scorpion in its throat. Ratna thought that was enough. I agreed with her, to be honest, so she cut off her air supply and ran out of there.

After hearing from the general what was going on and realizing that cordyceps can now live in humans and that there is no vaccine for this kind of terror, she suggested bombing the city to stop the spread. It was a big step to say it out loud, but looking back, it was probably the right choice. And we know that the military took her advice because, in episode one, we heard about it on the radio in Joel’s kitchen.

After the credits, we were back in the present, and Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Tess (Anna Torv) were on their way to drop off Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and get their battery as a reward. The adults still didn’t know why Ellie was so important or why, three weeks after being bitten by a zombie, she hadn’t turned into one.

I can see why people who have lived through terrible things might be suspicious of almost everything, but how have they not put two and two together? Ellie replied, “There’s a Firefly facility out west where they’re working on a cure, and that’s where I’ll be going once Joel and Tess get me there safely.”

A Night At The Museum

Well, not quite a night. But it was dark. From the time our group of three entered the museum until Joel, Tess, and Ellie finally escaped, I was on my feet. Too much tension. I’ve seen the clicker fight scene three times now, and it doesn’t get any less annoying.

It’s interesting that some sounds, like footsteps or guns being reloaded, go unnoticed, but if you drop something, everyone will be looking at you. And Joel, if you’re standing a meter away from a clicker and have a clear shot, don’t shoot it in the stomach. Only headshots, please. You haven’t seen “Day/Dawn/Shaun of the Dead,” have you?

But it was interesting to see Joel turn into a protector. He’s still not sure about Ellie, as shown by the way he jerked away when she touched him and the fact that he still doesn’t believe she doesn’t have the virus. However, when it came down to the crunch and the clickers attacked, he stood in front of her to protect her.

Once Bitten…

Tess, you. Ellie knew Tess had been bitten after the museum fight because of how she reacted to the dead fireflies and why she didn’t want to go back to Boston. Since Joel’s last mission failed, his new goal is to get Ellie to Bill and Frank’s (referenced last week, the ones with excellent taste in musically coded messages).

And Tess, who had some gas, a lighter, and a new way of looking at life, gave them the boost they needed to get going. Something about that infected person’s tentacle-filled kiss made me throw up. Since the end of Die Hard 2, I haven’t been so happy to see a lighter light up.

Overall

After last week’s amazing start, this week’s episode is sure to be just as good. Pascal and Ramsey are great in their roles, and it’s fun to see how they get along with each other. Of course, he’s getting better and she’s getting closer to him, and now that it’s just the two of them, they’ll have to get along better. But as long as she keeps asking questions and he keeps doubting her immunity, Joel and Ellie are still a long way from being good friends.

Notes and Observations

• Listen for any mentions of flour… In this episode, we learned that the dead worker from Jakarta had been found in a flour factory, but it wasn’t clear who had bitten her. Maybe it was the flour that made her sick. Joel and Sarah were making pancakes in the first episode when they heard about the explosion in Indonesia. Let’s say that those pancakes were made with flour. Is it a big stretch to think that the flour came from Indonesia?
• Every time Ellie asks for a gun, she is told no. It makes me think of Melvin from the movie Tremors, who always asks the same question. When Ellie finally gets a gun, I hope it won’t be empty like the one Melvin was given.
• After last week’s loud ending music, it was a good choice to use a piece by Gustavo Santaolalla. The Argentine composer wrote the music for the video game The Last of Us and a lot of the music for this TV show. This song is called “Allowed to Be Happy.” It was first heard in “The Last of Us, Part II.”
• The design of the infected is great, from the ones who had just been bitten to the clickers we saw here. It would have been easy to make the clickers look like cartoons, but I thought they were scary.
• For those who aren’t sure but want to know, clickers are zombies in the third stage of cordyceps infection, after the normal infected zombie and the second-level stalker zombie.
• I don’t mind a little foreshadowing, but when Tess told Ellie that she was just trying to keep her alive, it was a little too clear that Ellie was going to die. Also, the explanation that the virus could talk through its web of connections came just minutes before we saw it in action. I don’t want a TV to be a memory test or a puzzle to solve, but I also don’t want to be spoon-fed. A small complaint, but still a complaint.

How did you feel? Do you believe what Joel and Ellie say? Do you think they’ll get to Bill and Frank’s? What do you think your chances would be against a clicker? Leave a comment below…