The Last of Us
This season of HBO’s The Last of Us is off to a banger start. This past Sundays was honestly one of the most entertaining episodes of television that I have seen in some time.
I will do my best to avoid giving a blow-by-blow recap of the episode. That being said my god did a lot take place.
The two main events of the episode were the giant battle between the citizens of Jackson Hole and the death of Joel. I will talk more about the latter event soon. For now, I would like to focus on the epic battle that took place.
The addition of this large-scale battle was nothing short of genius. I say addition because this was not in the shows source material. The battle was not only awesome to behold but did a great job of developing some of the ancillary characters such as Tomy and his wife Maria. In season one they were both just Joels family members and law and little more. It appears that the show wants to make these characters a more central part of the show and I am all here for it.
The part of the battle that stood out to me was the awesome usage of a bloater. In the games bloaters are incredibly frustrating as they are very difficult to kill. I vividly remember unloading round after round into them with very little success in dispatching them. The show did an awesome job of conveying this feeling onto Tony. He unloaded numerous rifle rounds and an entire flamethrower onto the bloater and still barely killed it. He looked comically exhausted when the bloater finally dropped dead a few feet away from him. This is a feeling that millions of gamers could relate to.
The imagery of the infected emerging from the snowstorm was simply spectacular. I also loved the way they threw themselves against the walls of Jackson Hole. Anther subtle detail that stood out to me was how some of the citizens who were assigned to man the flamethrowers simply ran in fear when the horde on infected approached. This is a truly realistic reaction to facing down a horde like this. I would like to think I would stand my ground in this situation. I would undoubtedly poop my pants. Maybe that would make the infected not want anything to do with me. We will never know.
Time to talk about the elephant in the room. Abby got her long-awaited revenge on Joel for killing her father. She brutally murdered him with an eight-iron right in front of Ellie.
This scene was incredibly heartbreaking. Abby is now number one on our shitlist for killing daddy. You’re going down Abby. Ellie and Dina are going to get you!
The fact that Abby still killed Joel after he saved her life is making it very difficult for me to like her at the moment. I understand wanting revenge for Joel killing her father and all. Two wrongs don’t make a right miss Abby. Not even in a zombie apocalypse. Don’t you have better things to do than marching across country to kill Pedro Pascal?
It is going to be very interesting to see how this tragic loss affects Ellie going forward. She does not seem like the type to just let it go. She and Abby might be recreating the Spiderman meme where they are both pointing at each other before this season is over.
They are essentially the same person. “I have to kill you for killing your dad because he killed your dad.”
Can’t they see that violence is just a vicious circle that solves nothing? If Ellie kills Abby, then someone will have to kill Ellie as an act of revenge. Probably that tall guy who looks constantly bored and frightened.
Please Ellie be the adult here and just let it go. Pedro Pascal just needed to leave to be in a bunch of Marvel movies as the stretchy guy in the Fantastic Four. It was nothing personal.
That is all for me tonight. Please like and subscribe so I can brag to my mother.


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