The Last of Us Kicks Off With a Faithfully-Adapted Fungal Apocalypse 

You needn’t look additional than your favourite social media platform to see The Final of Us – HBO’s new video game-based post-apocalyptic drama – is having a second. This truth is additional cemented by the present’s near-perfect Tomatometer rating.

However whereas the sequence has clearly struck a chord with streamers and critics, how does it examine to the acclaimed sport it’s tailored from? And, does its debut episode, dubbed “When You’re Misplaced within the Darkness,” counsel the present will supply a contemporary tackle the crowded, decaying corpse style? Let’s peel again the premiere’s rotting flesh and discover out.

Spoiler alert: The next incorporates particulars about The Final of Us season 1, episode 1, “When You’re Misplaced within the Darkness.” Cease right here if in case you have not watched the episode.

FUNGAL OUTBREAK FORESHADOWING

(Picture by Shane Harvey/HBO)

Developer Naughty Canine’s The Final of Us provided a barely totally different spin on the undead apocalypse, buying and selling your customary brain-craving monsters for mutated people consumed by the cordyceps virus. Whereas the sport opens in 2013, on the day of the outbreak, the sequence goes all the best way again to the ’60s to assist arrange this not-zombie an infection.

Throughout a chat present, scientists talk about pandemic threats and debate over the probability of a fungal outbreak. The viewers initially scoffs on the thought of a mushrooms rebellion, however one of many present’s friends affords a sobering state of affairs. Upon eerily explaining how some fungi “search to not kill, however to manage,” he goes on to explain how this has already been confirmed in bugs – particularly ants, which the aggressive fungus controls like a puppet. One other scientist counters, saying this is able to be unimaginable in people resulting from their elevated physique temperature.

However earlier than the speak present cuts to a business, and The Final of Us rolls its opening credit, the primary scientist replies with an ominous, if barely heavy-handed, “However what if the world was to get barely hotter.?” Dun, dun, duuuun…

AN EXPANDED PROLOGUE

(Picture by Shane Harvey/HBO)

Minimize to the episode’s second prologue, in 2003 (the variation alters the sport’s timeline, shifting its occasions 10 years earlier,) and it’s certainly hotter and the mushrooms are mobilizing. As within the sport, we’re instantly launched to Sarah (Nico Parker), a teen woman who lives in Texas along with her building employee dad Joel (Pedro Pascal).

Within the sport, gamers get to attach with Sarah, controlling her for a bit as the principle character earlier than all hell breaks unfastened. As a passive expertise, the present clearly can’t supply this similar interplay, so it spends rather more time with the likable woman earlier than issues go south. She prepares a birthday breakfast for her dad, goes to highschool, has Joel’s watch repaired on the town, and visits the neighbors.

(Picture by Shane Harvey/HBO)

These scenes hit most of the supply materials’s similar narrative beats – just like the mounted timepiece – however go a lot additional to ascertain the character. In doing so, the prologue’s stunning conclusion hits exhausting. Those that’ve performed the sport know what’s coming, as Joel, his brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna), and Sarah try to flee city as soon as issues get dicey. However newcomers will probably be completely gutted when Sarah, who’s up to now been arrange as a main character, is shot and killed by a panicked soldier with an itchy set off finger.

The prolonged, action-packed sequence main as much as Sarah dying in Joel’s arms tracks fairly intently with the sport. There are some inconsequential variations, like Joel’s whereabouts when issues initially go unhealthy and which neighbor turns into contaminated and assaults him and Sarah, but it surely’s in any other case an correct, typically shot-for-shot recreation of the sport’s occasions.

What’s totally different – and really efficient – are some earlier, not-so-subtle hints of what’s to come back. Seeing a scholar’s hand twitching whereas Sarah attends class, for instance, is fairly unsettling. However it’s a background, unfocused shot of her aged, wheelchair-bound neighbor violently convulsing that may take up everlasting residence in your nightmares.

Later, when the fungal outbreak begins firing on all cylinders, we additionally get extra proof the contaminated aren’t your typical, foot-shuffling foes. Sarah stumbles upon that aforementioned senior citizen neighbor, who now seems to be devouring the corpse of a member of the family. However as she lifts her head, it’s revealed she’s not a lot feasting on their flesh, however slightly infecting them with spidery tendrils protruding from her mouth. Trying extra extraterrestrial than undead, these grotesque growths should not within the sport.

QUALITY TIME IN THE QZ

(Picture by Liane Hentscher/HBO)

After we gather our jaws from the ground following Sarah’s heartbreaking demise, the sequence jumps forward 20 years (to 2023 versus the sport’s skip to 2033), and we’re launched to Boston’s quarantine zone, the place a way more bodily weathered Joel – now a hardened smuggler – has relocated.

As with the virus and Sarah, the episode takes extra time than the sport does to set the desk right here. We first meet a younger, contaminated boy, who’s stumbled into the QZ. He’s taken in by the Federal Catastrophe Response Company, or FEDRA, a closely militarized group that oversees what’s left of america. A feminine FEDRA soldier appears caring and type, providing the kid drugs, meals, and toys. “You’re secure,” she says, earlier than he’s injected with a “little needle.”

Quick-forward to an out of doors hearth pit, the place Joel tends to a pile of burning corpses, together with that of the sick boy. If that doesn’t set up FEDRA as one of many sequence’ principal antagonists, the following scene – the place they’re hanging civilians responsible of “unauthorized exit from a quarantine zone” – ought to do the trick. Joel, who’s simply earned some ration playing cards for his work on the cremation pit, meets with one of many FEDRA creeps. The pair do some illicit dealings, and we be taught Joel’s making an attempt to accumulate a car to depart the QZ.

We get additional context on this when he meets with a person who’s been making an attempt to contact Joel’s brother. Tommy’s apparently moved to Wyoming, however hasn’t been heard from in over three weeks. Joel plans to seek for him if he can safe that car and a battery to energy it.

A SMALL CHANGE BRINGS BIG EMOTIONS — AND BLOODY FISTS

(Picture by Liane Hentscher/HBO)

A lot of what unfolds for the rest of the episode sticks much more intently to the sport’s occasions. A number of the smaller particulars have been altered, however many of the key plot factors are intact. We meet scumbag Robert and Marlene (Merle Dandridge, who additionally voiced the character within the sport) – chief of the Fireflies, an anti-FEDRA insurgent group. In addition to Tess (Anna Torv), Joel’s love curiosity and smuggling accomplice.

We’re additionally launched to a “random woman locked in a room.,” who seems to be Ellie (Bella Ramsey). She’s being held by the Fireflies and, in a gathering with Marlene, we uncover Ellie’s been contaminated however isn’t inclined to the virus. All these characters quickly collide in a sequence of occasions that, once more, whereas straying a bit from the sport’s model of the story, in the end result in the identical conclusions.

Robert’s a fellow smuggler, who’s double-crossed Joel and Tess by promoting the battery they want for the automobile. When the pair hunt Robert down, they uncover he’s been killed in an obvious firefight with Marlene and her crew (Joel’s liable for Robert’s dying within the sport). Marlene’s additionally significantly wounded, complicating her plans to take Ellie West to assist discover a remedy for the virus.

An uneasy deal is struck: Joel and Tess will ferry Ellie to the state home in Boston, the place one other group of Fireflies will meet them and proceed Ellie’s journey. In return, Joel will get all of the provides he must proceed his seek for Tommy, who we be taught can be a Firefly. Unaware of Ellie’s situation, Joel reluctantly agrees to the phrases.

Joel takes Ellie again to his house, the place they await dusk earlier than setting out. We uncover he has a radio which makes use of era-specific music as coded messages – apparently, if an ’80s tune performs, bother is afoot. Earlier than the credit roll on the episode, the radio illuminates within the now-empty house. Because the scene slowly switches to a large shot of a bombed-out Boston, Depeche Mode’s “By no means Let Me Down Once more” spills from the radio’s tinny speaker.

(Picture by Liane Hentscher/HBO)

However earlier than that ominous conclusion, we’re handled to a a lot larger cliffhanger, one which departs from the sport a bit to pack a tougher emotional punch. Whereas escaping the QZ, Joel, Tess, and Ellie encounter a patrolling FEDRA officer. It’s the identical creep Joel met with earlier, however he’s even much less likable now, ordering the group to their knees at gunpoint. Within the sport, the three are intercepted by two FEDRA foes, neither of which had been beforehand launched.

Because the soldier exams the trio for the virus, Ellie pulls a knife and stabs him within the leg. Within the sport, this ends in a chaotic scuffle, with Joel and Tess in the end disarming and killing the 2 grunts. Within the present, nonetheless, it results in the soldier angrily reacting and pointing his rifle at Ellie. The important thing distinction right here, is Joel’s response, because the standoff surfaces his reminiscence – full with a fast flashback – of Sarah’s capturing. He tackles the person and brutally beats him to dying.

After all, this all results in Joel and Tess discovering Ellie’s virus take a look at outcomes – which the soldier had dropped – and studying she’s contaminated. As within the sport, Ellie pleads with them, insisting she’s proven no signs, even after three weeks. his bloody fists, and realizing extra FEDRA goons are on the best way, Joel has no time to react to this revelation. The three slip by way of a chain-link fence and into the unknown whereas the sirens of approaching FEDRA autos scream within the distance.

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