House of R - 'The Last of Us' Season 2, Episode 2 Deep Dive

Episode Date: April 22, 2025

Jo and Mal are back to talk about the incredible yet devastating second episode of 'The Last of Us' Season 2. They dive deep into the Battle of Jackson, a major character death, and what it all means going forward! (00:00) Intro (06:52) Opening Snapshot (35:18) Deep Dive (35:57) Abby’s Dream (48:47) The Salt Lake Crew (58:18) Party (Emotional) Hangover (01:09:31) General Tommy Takes Over (01:14:22) 7-Eleven and Weed! (01:20:32) Here Comes the Horde (01:40:40) Battle of Jackson (01:52:12) Fore! (02:31:22) Spores Galore (02:33:21) Spoilers: A Fungus Among Us Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson Producers: Steve Ahlman and Carlos Chiriboga Video Supervision: John Richter Social: Jomi Adeniran Addition Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring. Save at Whole Foods Market. Hello, welcome back to House of Ar. I'm Jonah Robinson joining me today. She's not crying yet. It's just allergies. It's Mallory Rubin. Oh, Joanna, I want you to fulfill your obligation to the community

of Jackson, Whole Wyoming. Is that the community that I am a part of or my part of the Mushroom Network? Let's tune in to find out. Here we are today with you on a Monday morning. Post-Easter, post a big episode of television, talk to you about season two, episode two of The Last of Us. Guess what? There will be a big spoiler warning at the end,

but I'm just going to go ahead and drop one here. If you haven't watched this episode of television, please go do that before you listen to this podcast. That would be my encouragement. I'm not usually such a stickler for that, but this week I am. Oh, yeah. So go do that, please. Okay.

Before we get into everything we have to talk to, and it's a doozy, it's a doozy of an episode. It's a big one. We're going to do a quick programming reminders just to let you know that this week, not only are we covering this episode of The Last of Us, huge, but also, A-Dor's back, baby. Thrilling. It's A-Dor time. Yeah. Episodes 1 through 3 because life is too short to take things.

one episode at a time. All right. So we will be doing a three, a triple episode deep dive of Andor later this week. That's great stuff. The Midnight Boys, Poo, Poo, are also covering Last of Us and Andor. They also have the long-awaited Midnight Munchies episode this week. We've got a buttonmash Last of Us dive coming over on the ringer verse. We've got Robin Joanna. That's my name and the third person over on the Prestige TV feed doing some Last of Us check in. So there is a lot going on in the content space. Thunderbolts is around the corner. Miley Rubin. Yeah. How can folks keep track of all of that? It's a bloater-sized stretch of pods here. Delish. It's time to be us. Yeah. Chard and crispy. Both Mallory and I had a, that looks tasty reaction to the charred bloater. I know. I felt like such a sicko,

but then I knew you'd be right there with me and you were. It was like, they were like sizzling. Yeah. In a way that it's not just, it's not a charred. It's like a we put some grease in the and with these mushrooms moment. Amazing. Absolutely delicious. Here's how you can follow along for more insights into your favorite television programs

and also culinary discussions such as the one you just heard. Yeah. Follow the pod. Follow House of R. Follow all your other favorite Ringer pods on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. You can watch full video episodes of House of R and the Midnight Boys

on Spotify and the Ringervverse YouTube channel. You can also follow the Ring Reverse on the social media platform if you're choosing. And of course, you can send us your emails. And boy, did you today. Thank you, bad babies. Send us your emails for The Last of Us, for Andor, for Thunderbolts, for anything, for everything, mushroom recipes for Joe to try. Hobbits and Dragons at gmail.com. Spoiler warning.

You already mentioned it, but here we go again. Everything up through Season 2, Episode 2 of The Last of Us. If this is the first time you're joining us this season where you're doing it a little differently than we did last season in that we are including a little spoiler section at the end of each episode where we talk about some of the adaptive changes that have repercussions going forward. We'll be talking about adaptive changes to the video game throughout, but in terms of the ones that include information yet to come in the show and in the game, that will be tucked away in a spoiler section at the end. We will give you so much warning. Malory and I may have gone overboard

last week giving a spoiler warning. Some notes about the sirens. I did specifically request the sirens so I feel culpable for, I guess, actually terrifying a number of our listeners. But it felt like out of an abundance of caution, we need to make sure nobody can miss the warning. Now you know, now you know why we did that. We did get anyone from someone, we could take any move from someone saying, like, I always listened to your spoiler section, but something about last week made me not. I was like, good, yeah, good. Okay. That was the plan. Okay. So, So that is what is going on today. We are doing our best to get through the source material.

I took the cheater route and have watched a cinematic playthrough of the show. I just want to talk about the comparable hours invested. So I have finished my watch through. I have finished my watch through. Mallory, who is committing like, I don't know, quintuple the amount of time that I have is not quite done, right, with her play. through. I wanted to be done. I had declared on the first episode that I would be done by this week. I won't make the mistake now. Similarly declaring that I will definitely be through my play by episode three, but that is my goal. I am quite a bit further than I was when we potter about episode one, but I am not finished yet because the game is, as we stated previously, quite long. And, you know, my husband is not actually on Mike with us potting today, but I will share some of his commentary quickly, which he offered up multiple times, the veil of the hands covering his face because he said I was making him nauseous. He was getting motion sick from the way I was handling the camera movement and the joystick.

And he's been very supportive in general, but it was having an impact on him. And, you know, the game is supposed to take 30 to 40 hours as we understand it. And he believes that I am tracking for something closer to 50 to 60 hours based on my base, which might tell you something about my skill as a gamer, but I'm, here's how I'm spinning it. It's just an even more immersive experience. More time in the world. And I'm having a blast. I'm quite bad at it, but I'm having a blast. And your commitment to really putting in the reps crushing that tape, is that, did I use that correctly? Okay, so that is where we are. So when we get to the spoiler section. There are a few things that Mal has not gotten to yet that I will sort of like breeze through.

Did I spoil a Mallory in the own, in the spoiler section of her own podcast in the notes today? It's my fault. It's not yours. Nope. Happy Easter. Okay. The episode today through the valley, a.k.a. Spoiler alert. Did you leave? Are you going? No, stay. But did you watch the episode? You don't know. The one where Joel dies. Written by Craig Mason and directed by Mark Milad. Something that I don't think we commented on in our episode one coverage is that Craig Mason has like solo writing credit on most of the episodes of season, which is something to think about. Mark Milad is a Game of Thrones director. That's how I first met him, but also much more significantly a succession director. Also gearing up to be a Harry Potter director. So he is an in-house

HBO guy. A couple things I want to say. Through the Valley, we will get to sort of the song that that is referencing as it plays later in the episode. Also, a Bible verse here for you on this post Easter Sunday Monday. But that Bible verse, yay, though, I walk through the valley, the shadow of death, I should feel evil for thou art with me. The for thou art with me part was like really, really echoing for me as I was thinking about it because it's just sort of like

this last of it. Like when we watch the opening credits and we get, you know, there's all the spores and gores and all this or something like that. And then we get to Joel and Ellie, thou art with me. It is us. And now it's not.

It's just Ellie, right? I should say. And we've lived through this before in the era of like the red wedding and stuff like that on Game of Thrones. Nobody has been chill about. this in terms of like keeping a lid on their spoiler giddiness and and i understand like yeah it's hard to be but the number of golf club memes i have seen around like leading up to this like people were

really really really really excited in a sort of i don't know a way that i haven't seen in a while for for people who didn't know this was coming to see this and um i'm curious how many people got into it clean i know mallory you got into the section of the game clean which i I am so surprised by. Any thoughts you have about the title of the episode or sort of all the buzz leading up to it and how maybe how that moment landed for you anyway? Yeah, we talked about this very briefly in our spoiler section at the end of last week's episode, but to move it out here on Maine now, unlike the citizens of Jackson Hole,

we are allowed to go on to Maine now. Stay off Main Street. I, you know, my suspicions had mounted based on certain context clues, but had somehow made it to playing the game without actually having Joel's death spoiled for me. And it was just like a shattering experience book to play it. And now then to just a few weeks later watch it. You know, in terms of what you're saying about kind of like spoiler culture and the different like slices and slivers of a fandom and the moment then when something allowed. different groups of people who are consuming something to share something, that knowledge together. It is really interesting to come at this from like a different perspective to how we experienced the Red Wedding, for example, where we were the ones like looking at people on the side of the couch, waiting, watching, you know, hoping not to spoil anything for them, but just like the anticipation of everybody arriving at that level of knowledge and understanding and that emotional

state that would then be shared moving forward. It's always a fascinating. Yeah, exactly. Welcome to my pain. I can't carry it, but I can carry you. I got, you know, reverse red wedding here because Adam knew this was coming. And so when I was playing it in the game for the first time, he filmed me experiencing it. I sent you and Steve a little, the brief video.

We'll see what mood I'm in later. Maybe I'll send it to Carlos to put in the pot. It's like 12 seconds. And I'm just like curled under play. and get like in a state of absolute anguish and despair. I don't understand. You know, it's just there are a lot of differences between overall what happens in this episode and the game with the battle incorporation, which pairings are out on patrol together. We're going to talk about all of that.

Obviously, with the Abby, Joel, Ellie sequence, we're going to go through all of the things that it brought up for us as we go through the episode. But just like, generally speaking, to hit that so early in the game. game to hit this so early in, it wasn't the first episode, but it is still the second episode of the second season. It's like this incomparable wallup. I mean, the list is really short for me of comps of like that state that it put me in. You know, it is like it's Red Wedding. It's Baylor. It's the lightning struck tower. Like it's just a shocking thing. And I think in this particular case, the fact that time has passed for the characters, but we, but for us, it's like, we're back. We're in the world. Oh my God. I get to boot up the Last of Us part two. I get to watch the last of a season

to I get to be with these people that I've missed and then to feel that ripped away, what it does for you as a player and a viewer, to put you in that state that Ellie's in of like unvarnished pain and misery. I have so many things I want to say and so many things I want to talk to you about today. But like it's just, it's a state of actual genuine anguish that I think is really brave. and really brilliant and is not just there to stun us or wow us or shock us. It is there because of the thematic resonance and emotional impact of loss and grief in this world and the things that people do when they experience loss and they are subsumed by grief. So what a place to be.

I think, thank you so much for that. Mallory, I love you and I love the way that you share your experiences of the world. I know. I know. I love you. I can't believe it. We've only just started. I'm sorry.

We're not in person. and my tendrils year to wrap around you. But, like, I think that... Listening to the official podcast, something we love to do, especially on this show, the official HBO podcast hosted by Troy Baker, the actor who portrayed Joel in the game. And with Craig Mason and Neil Druckman's POV every week,

there's also a number of interviews that they gave to some outlets. Shout out Nick Romano over at ER, James Hibbert over T.HR with some great coverage. but like the the conversations that they had on that podcast about the when and the why and the wear of this moment when Neil first thought about doing it for the game telling Troy the actor who plays Joel what's going to happen to his character in the game. At an after-after party. That was a nugget. That's amazing. You know, and not knowing that even that they were going to do this game in the first place, but if they were going to do a sequel to the game,

game, wanting to have something to say about it, not just like, okay, let's just be back with Joel and Ellie and do the same, same, same, but different. And so ripping Joel out of the center of the game is one thing. But to your point, and I believe this one, Craig Mason says it, and I believe it when Neil Druckman says it, not to shock you, not to devastate you, but because they're more fascinated than anything else in the aftermath. Like this is a moment, you know, and Craig has been giving interviews all over the place where he's like, if you're mad, I get it. Like, I was mad when Ned Stark died.

Like, I really get it. You know, so like if you're mad, if you're threatening to quit the show, like, whatever it is, that's fine. But the story that they're invested in telling is the story of us, which is our grief at losing Joel. And so they're interested in exploring that through the lens of not just Ellie, but in this adaptive choice, Dina who's in the room, Jesse who arrives too late, Tommy, who's back at home and doesn't even know this has happened yet. Like all of the people who lose Joel, this is their story going forward to a certain degree. And then we've got these newcomers to the story as well who are experiencing their own version of grief. This thing that Craig Mason said on the official podcast, grief is one.

what is left when something that is entwined with you is ripped away. I love that. I mean, I just always love the way that they describe the show. But the way that Craig chooses to use the word entwined and then you can't help but think about like tendrils wrapped around someone's heart, right? And so the way in which Joel and Ellie in many ways, just in order to survive, wrapped around each other. But as Neil and Craig

talked about a lot in season one, what is the darker side of cleaving to someone so closely? You know what I mean? What is the darker side to entwining yourself mushroom-like into someone? So we watched this a lot

in season one with Joel in the aftermath of losing Sarah. But, and we're watching it in this episode with Abby. grief having lost her father. And now we're going to see what happens with Ellie after losing Joel. What happens when that part of you is ripped away?

Is there coming back for that or is there not? For Joel, it seemed to be to a certain degree. He finds Ellie and that brings him back, but does it because of what he does at the end of season one is, was he forever? Was Joel forever different? Yes. after Sarah dies in season one, episode one. She's always there.

So anything you want to say about that? You know, I love that amazing insight in your description of the way that evokes this very infected, tenderly language. We talk a lot about like peas, right? Protection, pain. I've been thinking just in kind of a, again, we'll go through all of the micro

and particular elements of this. But like, in this macro sense, sense, something that was really on my mind watching this episode was problems and purpose. Like, I was thinking a lot about episode one of this season and this idea, do you have just the most basic problems in the world? Do you not? But other people think you do? Do they actually not really think you do?

Right. Do you know that you have a problem that is more specific than maybe anybody else could ever understand. At the end of the day, whatever the answer to that question is, I was thinking a lot of Bill and Frank, like some of our favorite lines from that episode, episode three of season one, when we got that beautiful little moment. I'm just going to be like, I think, a crying mess, this entire pot. I'm sorry, I'm like very emotional already. I like you older. Older means you're still here. Remember that moment like that? We just, how it made us feel and we loved it. And like, when you have those problems with a person in your life, it's hard.

But like problems means you're there, right? It means you're together. Like, it means you're living life together. And that is the absence of that problem now because somebody is gone is such a like hard thing to have to confront. But it's so relatable. Just like it's relatable to like lose. You don't lose somebody on any sort of schedule, right? Like they're just gone.

And maybe you're in a good place with them and maybe you aren't. Maybe you got to say goodbye and maybe you didn't. But like even in the apocalypse, when you're surrounded constantly by death and you're confronted constantly by grief, when that happens to you with the person you care about the most, it will feel like the only thing in the world that has ever happened to anybody. And when multiple characters who feel that way are in opposition to each other and setting each other in the cycle, it's just such a potent thing to explore in a story. story. And like the other Bill and Frank thing that I was thinking about a lot was,

um, I'm old. I'm satisfied and you were my purpose. And the like, just cruelty of like not getting to the I'm old and I'm satisfied part with somebody when they were your purpose too. You know? And like thinking of before Joel and Ellie had their breakthrough in episode four of season one and he was like, keep going for family. And like that's what they became for each other. Yeah. Like you can. kept going for family. They kept going for each other no matter how hard it got. And it was a bond born of violence and need, but it also was a bond of love and rekindled hope. And like that duality, you know, that you're citing, like the pain and the horror mixed with this genuine gift of like

rediscovery that they gave each other is just like a, it just makes this relationship, I think, really genuinely special to people. And like, I just feel really glad to, like I said last week, be back in the world talking about it with you because I just love them and I love the show. And I'm just really sad that Joel's gone. I think thank you again for sharing that. Please cry the whole episode. I will support you. Please stay hydrated though. Plenty of water here. I love that you were thinking about Bill and Franklin. I was thinking a lot about Kathleen and Henry. I was thinking a lot about that stretch of season one and how what a clever job all of those stories did because they made

the first game without knowing they were making the second game but they made the first season knowing that they were making a second season so they made the first season establishing a lot of these themes that are going to be resonant in the second season so with Kathleen and Henry a story that was expanded from a story inside of the game and this idea of you know, well, is Kathleen wrong? Kathleen is hurting and Kathleen is seeking vengeance for a loss that she's experience. Was Henry wrong? No, Henry is trying to protect the most important person to him. And so inside of that

in that sequence, it was like a little easier for us to understand the right and wrong because kids die too. They die all the time was like a top thing for Kathleen to say, but casting someone like Melanie Linsky, who similar, I would say, to someone like Caitlin Dever in this episode is so good at showing us the soft underbelly of calcifying rage, you know, that there's, at the center of that is a hurt, is a tenderness, that you're trying to sort of paste over with these more, these harder, tougher feelings and approaches and posturing almost. And so I think it was so clever the way that they expanded certain things in the first season

to set us up for thinking about those themes from the jump in a show like this. It makes me think of like the cordyceps, the fungal armor. That's how it's like it sounds. The like shelves. Okay. So this is also a. battle episode. So we knew as people who knew what was coming

for Joel that this well, we assumed. You assume as soon as Ellie starts like running, sorry, you assume as soon as Abby starts like running down the snow. You're like, well, this is the beginning of the episode. So we're pretty sure we know where this is going. Maybe they can

stretch it to episode three, but like it's happening. The Battle of Jackson is a show invention and something that Neil talked about in interviews and on the official podcast is that he always kind of wanted to do something like this, but they were so firmly rooted in POV

that you kind of hear stories about Raiders attacking Jackson, but they didn't do a full scale like we're in Jackson because the show is like wanting to stick with the core characters. So we get lost on a personal level

for Ellie. And then we get lost on a community level. This idea of community. So we recorded our episode last week without being able to hear the official podcast, but listening to them on the official podcast talk about how important community. Community is like kind of the biggest word for them this season.

And so I really watched this episode through that lens in many ways. So the community of Jackson, what is your community? Is it a Jackson community? Or does it in when push comes to shove become a Maria and Tommy and their kid community? You know, what is the community? What is Ellie O. Jackson? What is she just owe Joel? When you have a character like Jesse, who is so community-minded.

All of that's interesting. The fireflies themselves are, of course, a community. Or the Salt Lake City crew or the wolves, whoever you prefer to call them. And then the courteseps are a community, of course. They love a group hang. This is a big swing. And there's a couple. They haven't talked about it in this sense.

are a couple TV storytelling or emotional beat storytelling reasons to do this. It gives you a release of a kind if the tension of Joel and Abby and then Ellie is too unbearable. There is an action movie happening in Jackson and Tommy is like using a flamethrower to char a bloater. So there's that. It's the consequences of Joel's decision. Let's assume. that the cure was surefire out of Ellie, which it wasn't, but let's assume that Joel could have stopped all of this by sacrificing Ellie and chose not to. That's sort of the math that we have to, the moral math that we have to do. So a horde, a double horde really attacking Jackson is a large-scale consequence of Joel's singular decision. at the end of season one.

I will say for me, like I didn't dislike it. It felt a little thronesy in a way that I'm not sure, like, I feel like I wanted to just focus on Joel personally, but I understand from a storytelling point of view why they wanted to sort of balance the equation.

Mallorbin, what was your take on the battle stuff? Yeah, on the throne's front, like sprinkle a little hard home into your red wedding. I mean, it's hard not to admire the ambition. That is really bold. Yes.

You know, in terms of like the distinct, so we'll just say off the, from the jump here, in the game, Joel and Tommy are on patrol together. Ellie and Dina are on patrol together. So here, obviously, we have Joel and Dina and then Ellie and Jesse. So those pairings are different. So something like Tom, not only is there not a battle, Tommy's not back in Jackson. Right. He's with Joel.

So a lot of distinctions in that respect, in addition to just like the thing that is happening back home. Yeah. We can get in later to what we think those changes signify for the character specifically, but broadly. I mean, I loved this episode. I loved it. I think that in terms of like the question of did the battle need to be here, certainly the answer is no. I mean, in the game this stretch, like, you know, the Blizzard is a factor. And I actually, again, love that in a very last of usy, like, well, maybe the weather changed your life today.

Like something that could happen pre-outbreak happens later. You never know what the thing is going to be. Love that. There is something about Blizzard aside, Joel's death just happening on, like, what you could basically just describe as any other day. that makes it feel even more unfair and even crueler and certainly like just it is the central focus. Like there's not all this other death happening all around it. I think also, you know, kind of undeniable that we don't need a, need a battle or anything to heighten the impact of Joel's death. Like Joel's death is going to hit you like a wedge to the fucking head no matter what particular golf clubs you happen to have around.

I think it is like rare and interesting though that like I'm struggling to think of too many examples where you have a battle like a set piece of this scale in a television episode and it is not the most monumental notable consequential impactful thing that happens and so that's like that's interesting right it's like actually no this quiet thing between these people that will still that us will still be like the biggest wall up of all I I don't think that we needed it, but ultimately where I landed is like I don't mind having it there. I think for me, like, Joel's death doesn't, I totally, I think if people feel like this is a distraction or like takes some of the time and focus from Joel, that will, I think, be, that makes sense to me.

Totally. I don't necessarily think that it's suffered from the inclusion. And like, I think a death as big as Joel's and what happens here feels, this is kind of a weird thing to say. I don't know if I can say this one way that makes sense. Let me try. Like, it feels independent. of the context of anything in the episode. I know that's like an odd thing to say because the context ultimately is the history that we bring and the characters bring to that moment. I do think that the tie between the battle and what's happening in the lodge of like the White Lotus tsunami dream comp, but literalized here of like Joel's decision,

sparking Abby's vengeance quest, sparking the avalanche of the unearthed snow-infected. way those things are then connected, fits thematically with something the show is interested in exploring of like choice and consequence and these like tethers and tendrils between people. What's your sense of like, I mean, we're recording, you know, Monday morning, but do you have a sense of, is there kind of a consensus around this aspect of the majority of why is the battle here or oh my God, this was like, this was dope or TBD? Yeah, the majority of what I saw from people even like game players is like, that was hell of sick, bro. watching Tommy, like Char blotter was, was, you know, and a lot of people were talking about, like,

the specific way that the flame throw a pack and you can let me know if you agree, you know, like almost being out of fuel, just having a little bit left. And that being the thing that takes the blotter down, felt like a lot like gameplay to people. So, like, I think people really liked it. Players and non-players alike. I think there are other changes that are sort of, you know, causing questions for people, but I don't know my sense, Monday morning, is that it's not the battle. I think you make a great point.

And I think also I'm struggling to make this connection. And I, because I didn't hear Craig and Neil make it, I am unwilling to put my foot on it. But I think that like, this idea of like, who is Jack? Like, if we want to make like Jackson a person, like, who is Jackson in this comp? year. Like, is Jackson, Ellie? Has Ellie been like sort of irrevocably breached in a way that like, you know, forever changed? Is a sense of security? Is Joel such a pillar of this community now that ripping Joel out rips something out of Jackson? You know, like what, um, everyone is rattled in a way. Something has happened to not just Ellie, but to everyone. Right. That changes forever their

of how the universe works. What is safety? What is my safe harbor? My safe harbor is Joel. Even despite our frictions recently, if my safe harbor is Joel and Joel is gone, if our safe harbor is the wall and a bunch of dead things flung themselves against it

and also we dropped flaming barrels of accelerant right next to the wooden walls of Jackson. What does that do for your sense of what did, day life is. Yeah, and I liked to, in the inner cutting between the Joel Abbey sequence and the battle of Jackson, like the way that that works in both directions, because you also then have Joel looking back and this like mounting anguish and the layers of that I did like. Dina is in this room. Oh my God, I'm defined by my insecurity, my doubt and my fear of failure. We'll talk about that a lot today as we go. Then, of course, when Ellie is in the room, same thing.

and then he has that like in mass looking back. I see that they're in trouble. They need me. This is my whole thing. Yeah. To be the guy who comes in and protects people. This is what I do. I saved them.

I'm a saving guy. To not be able to do it in every respect, personal and mass is like just, who, boy, heavy. I actually think my favorite part of the battle episode was the way in which it would throw Joel off of his game and off of his guard. So as he walks into the situation with the fire. with the wolves that he's got one eye out the window on Jackson and he's just sort of like, we got to go, you know, we got to go and doesn't see the noose closing in around him. Okay. Let's pause from this misery for just like a quick little two hit on the mailbag to say,

I mentioned this in our Daredevil pod, but just in case you're listening to this and not our Daredevil pod. It's entirely possible. Yeah, very possible. I did ask last week for people to, in the game, it was a moose instead of a bear outside of the grocery store in the first episode. And so is there a good moose pun that can match the barbecue effort from Dina? And a ton of you wrote in with a great amuse boosh jokes. Sensational.

And really great stuff from you guys. Really genuinely. Bad babies that comes through every time. 10-10-0-notes. A bunch of you wrote in with that. So, like, you're all quite clever. Okay. And then Mallory, we got many emails from people.

Star Wars celebration in Japan over the weekend. And we got a lot of Star Wars info. This is obviously we're going to talk way more about Star Wars on the Endor Pod later this week. But I just felt like amidst all of the misery, the people deserve to know your feelings about the reveal that we will be getting loft kittens in Asoka season two. a thrill and a joy. I mean, as you know, I'm a Merleian, a Lothcat enthusiast in general. So the idea of little kittens, Faloni said, according to Star Wars.com, because, you know, we were not at Star Wars celebration in Japan, sadly. But the interwebs tell us that Faloni said their legs aren't strong enough to walk.

So they have to roll around. Wonderful stuff. I mean, imagine. Imagine the merch. It's like trouble with troubles. to make it love kittens. All right. So that's just, we'll talk about maybe,

we'll talk about that more on Anodore perhaps, but we'll be back with, we'll be back in full-blown Star Wars mode later this week. I'm very excited for that. Same. Let's go to our episode breakdown. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey?

Zepbound terseptide may be able to help. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity. Or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5,

10, 12.5 or 15 milligram injection. Zepound contains terseptide and should not be used with other terseptide containing products or any GLP1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pens or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems.

Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia if you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zepbound with a sulfonal urea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea. diarrhea and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-99 or visit zepbounds.lily.com. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey?

Zepbound terseptide may be able to help. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity. Or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related. medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15 milligram injection. Zepound contains terseptide and should not be used with other terseptide containing products or any GLP1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pens or reuse

needles. Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia if you're nursing pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zepound with a sulfonal urea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include non-rength. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems.

Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-997-9 or visit zepbounce.lily.com. This episode is brought to by Paramount Plus. Beth and Rip are back in a new series, Dutton Ranch. Kelly Riley and Cole has a return, and this time they're taking on Texas. As Beth and Rip build a future together, peace will have to wait as they face corruption, in danger and a ruthless rival ranch willing to protect its secrets at all costs. Legacy is a beautiful thing, but only if it survives.

Dunn Ranch starring Colehouser, Kelly Riley, Annette Benning and Ed Harris now streaming on Paramount Plus. No cold open. Which is not holding unusual. I had to go back and check like the beginnings of every episode

because I was like, do they usually have it? No. I don't know why this felt like a weird moment to me, but I was just like, I think because I was like so certain this is the episode. And I was like, oh, we're just, oh, it's, we're off to the races, here we go. Yeah. So we won't be able to pull away for anything.

No. Including the opening credits once we start. Um, okay. But we do start with, we start with Abby's dream. And as we mentioned last week, being this far inside of Abby's head is a fairly sizable departure from the game. And some gamers are not enjoying it. I don't mind it because it means more time with Kayla Dever. and I am personally all for it.

And I really loved this. So we've got Abby's hand on the gun, the Firefly medallion, and then the Abby, the present day Abby is observing five years ago Abby. 19-year-old Abby. So like 24-year-old Abby is looking at her. And there's just something very subtle about the way that they made Caitlin Dever look younger. Totally. Inside of the scene as she's sort of interacting with herself.

And our present-day Abby's, says he's dead. And then 19-year-old Abby says, I don't know you. And I loved that. That was actually like a top five moment of this episode to me, this idea that like 19-year-old Abby's like, I don't even recognize who this is, who you are, who you've become. And then Abby, Abby, present day, Abby says, don't go in there, stop. And I'm telling you go back. His brains are on the floor. We know this is her dad. we could maybe have figured it out from context of what we had seen so far, but we know this by the end of the episode.

This is her dad. We hear faint, screaming, and Dream Abby now is crying, remembering this loss of innocence moment for her younger self. And I'm thinking also of like Ellie on the other side of that door hearing, screaming, like Abby screaming and grunting as she's pummeling Joel towards the end of this episode, that like doorway, that like liminal. space threshold crossing moment for a more innocent, even though Ellie's not that innocent, a character.

Something that Caitlin Dever told in her two weekly, as he says about Abby, she's so badly wants her old life back. She so badly wants a situation to not be what it is. And what Neil Druckman said on the official podcast is he says, this is grief for Abby combined with injustice. And we'll talk much more about that notion of injustice later. Quote, something that is driving her mad has infected her, has infected her dreams.

Craig Neal love to talk about a human emotion as infection. That is their favorite thing. How did you feel about this dream sequence? How do you feel about all of these? How do you feel about being this far inside of Abby's POV in the show versus the game? First of all, just in these small details, we talked about this a lot last week with those early clues of where we were who we were with. And I think the show just continues to excel with these like orienting variables, just something like present Abby standing there in the Grey Henley that she will then wake up in.

Like these, I think the show in a way that I really admire and appreciate really trusts its viewers to pay attention, be where they need to be, get where they need to go, but also like finds a way to root us consistently and effortlessly, even though obviously, you know, a ton of effort goes into it. It feels effortless to us. So I really admire the craft of that. I have the same reaction that you did to the I don't know you. Like, the idea of Abby warning her younger self not to go into the room where she will see this thing that will change her life forever, like that will be the defining aspect of,

of every breath she takes and decision that she makes and days she has moving forward. Like, it is not just a thing that sets her on a path, a pursuit of vengeance. It is everything. Like, that's it. There's no, there's no, there's a, this is the before and after, right, for Abby completely. And the way that we can tell that she laments that, that she wishes. It's not that she, it doesn't strike me that there's a part of Abby that, waivers when it comes to killing Joel. It's not about that. Like when she is in front of him,

that is definitive. As she says, like, you know, I'd warn you not to go to Seattle, but like, that's not going to be a problem, my guy. Not going to be a problem. No. But this isn't what she wanted her life to be calm. And I think that, you know, the tears in her eyes, it's not just the words of the warning, but the emotional state that we see her in. And all of that connects to that larger, you know, that larger observation that you're making of like this question of what, what is being moved up and why and how do people feel about it? Like I, I think this is an interesting thing for us because I tend to be, I definitely used to be always. And I think I still often am, but I try to be a little bit more measured about it now as I age. And hopefully,

though, probably not mature. Definitely age. Like, you know, I literally have a like a shirt that says that wasn't in the books. Yeah, the book was better. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, That's so often my, even in adaptations that I love, I just like when I'm attached to the source material, it takes me a while to like embrace a different version of it, even if I love it. And so I have like nothing but understanding and empathy in my heart for people who are feeling that way about it. It's not my experience with it though. Because like, and I think for a couple reasons. So I say this not to try to convince anybody to feel differently. I think everybody bringing their, like, people feeling, ultimately people feeling strongly about something if they're able to then engage in discussion and debate about that, like respectfully and thoughtfully with each other.

Like, people should feel the way that they feel about the characters they love and the worlds they love. And when you're deeply attached to something, it can be hard to see it presented a different way. I'm so, even though I had experienced this early stretch of the game before watching it, and so technically was familiar with the game before the show, It's like we're talking about weeks for me, not years, like people who played this in 2020. So, you know, I'll acknowledge that difference. I also will, like, ultimately, I think reserve judgment until I both finish the game and the show, because as you often rightly remind us, like, a lot of this is ultimately just about execution, right? And so I will, like, wait and see.

I think where I am right now is, and again, I say this not in any way to diminish people who really hold this strongly in their hearts right now because of attachment to the game, but just to express where I am with it, I see how, like, the mystery of Abby's motivation and history in the game is not only is that an intriguing thematic onion to peel over the course of gameplay. It is, of course, just a propulsive engine as you are making your way through the world and you are trying to find and learn and understand. But you also are Abby in the game. And so you were rooted at times in Abby's point of view in a way that, like, in some ways, I think makes it even more interesting that you don't necessarily know all of her motivations,

but also still just roots you in her sense of circumstance in a way that, like, you kind of can't do in the show unless you know a little bit more about her. Ultimately, I think that there are mysteries in different forms. And, like, hiding. a character motivation in the show, I think, would be much harder to execute. And, like, I think that the tradeoff we make in a change in structure and tactically, like, how we're presented with what we are when, potentially gives us a more enriching parallel into, like, how these characters make decisions that are similar or different from each other and maybe make the same mistakes as each other or potentially are able to

make different decisions from each other. And I think always opt for understanding why a person is doing what they're doing over not. So like, but I say that again, acknowledging that I don't have like years of this is the way the story always went in my head. So it was really funny. On the prestige feed talking to Rob about this last week because listening to Rob talk about it, I was just like, oh, I recognize this. I'm not feeling it, but I recognize this. And it was like so interesting to be on the other side of that. and I am very empathetic to that as a reaction.

But I do think your point that Craig and Neil have said on the official podcast, like sort of the official reason why they've made these changes is that notion that you're talking about where like if you're playing a video game and you're playing as a character is playable and your choices are their choices, you have an affinity to them that cannot quite be matched by watching a show. there's just a natural affinity you have as you're trying to escape snow zombies and they're trying to escape snow zombies, like all that sort of stuff like that. And so absent that, there has to be another access point to this character. So they're letting us inside Abby a bit earlier than happens in the game. And I think, but I think a reason that they probably won't ever say is the reason. And I think this is actually like a very reasonable reason to do this. is Laura Bailey, the actress who played Abby in the game,

received like an inconceivable amount of vile hatred for the fact that there is a storytelling decision that her character killed another character. And so I think, and as part of the gameplay, the revelation of why happens later, and that unwittingly set that actress up for this nasty exposure to abuse that nobody deserves. Yeah.

If any of these moves are made to be somewhat more protective of Caitlin Dever, now that they know how some people, some unhinged individuals might react on the internet, I would not begrudge them doing that. Yeah. You know, I don't think they're going to state that as a reason why they changed some storytelling approaches here. but I think that's a really reasonable thing to do. Yeah, I agree with that completely.

I think that's a great point, an important point, and I'm glad you mentioned it. I think that relatedly, like, not in terms of the real world aspect, but just in terms of the character aspect of it, like knowing this thing about Abby early, we are going to talk a lot today. Mason and Druckman have talked a lot on the official pod on the inside, the episode and the interviews about the parallels between Abby and Ellie.

Right. What this clarity, I'm in my Saw Guerrera, clarity of purpose, allows us to do and to see is like that there are also many parallels between Abby and Joel. 100%. Right? Joel did the thing that he did because his us protecting his family, the family, the problem. person he loves and cares about most in the world was the most important thing to him. And we love Joel. I am despondent that Joel is gone, but we can hold that truth in our heads while also saying that Joel did a terrible thing. And he did it because the person that he

loved justified that to him. And Abby is doing the same thing. Even though someone else doing that made her feel this way, she is now saying that losing one person, a family lost, like the person you love most of the world, that grief is more important than anybody else's life than the ripple of their loss on other people. And that's like a, having that parallel to parse early in the story, I think is really rich. So, you know, and then like, I guess the last thing is just structurally, right? They're adapting the game over two seasons. This is my other point. Yeah. Save this for three and a half or four years. Yeah. Yeah, without getting to specifics, I think that like the way that they are breaking up the story in over the course of two seasons of television makes it kind of prohibitive to hold back the things that the way that they do in the game. So that's, you know, trying to keep things vague. But I think that that absolutely has to be a factor. All right. So let's talk about the Salt Lake City crew. They're camping on the lodge. They're sleeping fully dressed. They are ready to go at a moment's notice, right? And this is their sort of like, later Joel's like military. Like this is their.

military training as part of it. Could you sleep in Henley? Like this? Henley, sure. I sleep in Henley's fairly angry. But like all of the, you know, all the gear. Could you find rest? She ever guns strapped to her thigh inside of that sleeping bag? I guess for the apocalypse, you do what you must.

Yeah. I don't get used to it. I don't know. This is part of the reason I'm not making it more than a day. It's also freezing in there. That's the thing that would stop me for him. But you know, it's really warm like a micro-fleece pajama pant and a plush pair of socks. I just

I just started it out there. Dude, the way that my stomach clenched when we watched them all like waking and just we see the golf clubs against the wall in the background.

Here we go. Okay. So Owen is looking at Jackson and it is frigid in the lodge and Manny is freaked out about how Big Jackson is and Abby is trying to warm Owen up.

Vibes, informed by gameplay, but vibes between Abby and Owen here. Much is in the flashback last episode with the hand grasping. Yes. They have of all the bonds that Abby has inside of this group. But there is this notion that Owen as the tallest masculine member of this group is like AD, the leader, but that Abby is actually the leader, that she is the engine. There are like concessions he's making towards her, but there are like plays she makes towards him where she's like, but then we're going to go back, right?

Like, then we have to do this, right? And when she leaves to go out of patrol to give him a moment, like he's the guy who comes up to the plan, right? That's his role. And when she leaves, everyone turns to him and he's like, don't worry, my plan is we convince her not to do this, you know? So like Owen leader with the lowercase L and the Navi leader with like a capital L sort of. Another LECOMP, right?

Yeah, yeah. You know, let me tell you how patrol is going to work today and let me implore you to please just like behave. Other people look up to you. She's like, you're going to call the shots once you're out of the road and you see a trail of blood. We had a convenient for a battle episode rundown on the logistics of Jackson, which may help later as we track the action of the battle. Four main gates. No other ends are out. Mounted patrols.

guys are trained towers linking each exit they've got some vets down there for sure they've also got dags you like dags all right so they've got dogs okay so vets is an incredibly interesting word and i think you know we're about to watch a battle uh and watch a bunch of people become veterans in the battle of jackson hole right like that is just about to happen we a conversation uh conversation with jesse and ellie later about eugene as a vietnam war vet what is it like to survive survive war and then go out the way that Eugene did still a mystery to us, how exactly, how exactly that happened. You know, and so this idea of like, what are you a veteran of?

And we talked about this a lot when we talked about generational, and we talked about this last week, generational approaches to the apocalypse, right? What have you lived through? Are you Maria and Tommy's kiddo who hasn't had to live through any of this? Right. Are you the Salt Lake City crew who had to live through. what happened at the hospital? Are you Joel and Tommy?

Are you Eugene who went through a whole like other war before even the mushroom apocalypse came around? I just thought that word of vets was pretty interesting and loaded, you know? Yeah. And I thought also it was like with Tommy specific. I love that broadly. Like I think with Tommy specifically, you know, how can we not be thinking about his actual combat history?

Yeah, as we watch him. you know, go from like soldier to general and lead, but also like fight on the front lines. And yeah, I thought that, I agree. That word choice felt very deliberate. And like the shape and form that experience takes what turns you into a veteran in this world. And how do you carry that trauma with you? And like, what's similar about it, even though the particulars are different, like the impact that that has on you and the way that that defines your life? Yeah.

I find Owen's voice to be like so soothing. Like it almost like feels like he should be like reading me a bedtime story that it's like disarming and like kind of in a way that I'm really enjoying in these scenes because he'll speak and I'm like, oh, this is like a lullaby. But then I'm like, oh no, like I'm so on edge and this is terrible. And so I really like, I mean, obviously we get some very intense versions of this later. But I like how even here we're primed for the fact that. not everybody in this group is in the same page.

Nope. Right. And like when they're talking about, well, Abby's got her, you know. Oh, it was some very like Peter Quill star lord. Like, you know, I have, uh, uh, I have part of a plan. I'm like waiting for Drax to pop up and be like, what percentage of a plan do you have? Um, yeah. But, you know, when Abby starts to talk about making them and no one's like, make them.

And Mel just says, like, outright, we said we weren't going to hurt people. And then obviously we'll see Mel's response, you know, later and Owen's response later when this is actually unfolding. But like that question of, okay, we followed you for five years. We told you we would that we'd be here with you. We'd help you. And we are. Like, we did that. We're here.

But we don't agree. And like that's, it's just such an important thing for us to understand about this group, but also then about Abby. Like this extreme state that she is in even inside of this group of people who are all a part of this endeavor. What I like is that there are levels. inside of this, right? Like, Mel being the most squeamish. Manny being sort of the closest to Abby in terms of his, like, violent

vindictiveness and stuff like that. Mani's loving it. Yeah, Mani's like, who else can I kick in the ribs? Please, let me. We get a reminder that they're looking for Joel again in the game. We don't know exactly that they're looking for Joel, but they say he, and it's like, how many he's

are, like, who do we think they're looking for if it's not Joel? Could it have been Earl? Earl the dipshit who shot himself in the leg Top episode for Earl he'll take himself out thank you very much no hunting party needed

when Abby's outside the extreme cold which I think is driven home even more than it is in the game of how frigid it is inside and out right even inside of this lodge where there is this giant fireplace it is freezing

I love this moment outside when Abby is talking to herself and that is very gameplay, right? Of like this interior monologue that you as playing Abby in this moment are hearing. Did you make anything about Owen being a coffee guy the way that Joel is? I was glad that nobody in this lodge

said that it smelled like burnt shit. You know, because obviously coffee is delicious and wonderful. I like their little like coffee soup, baked bean, whatever, warming up set up there. Found a very, very charming. Can't say I want to go camping with the Salt Lake crew. I've got some notes on the things that they've allowed to happen and the things that they've done.

But I do love a snack. I love a warm beverage. And I love a plan, even when it goes wrong. I think that this idea of like missed connections and missed, you know, what could have been different is very present in this episode. You know, certainly like Owen's saying here, well, this plan is to convince her to home, well, what if they had? What if Abby hadn't spotted two horses with two little specks on their backs in the distance?

And, you know, what if, we'll talk about this later, but, like, Mazin and Druckman talking about, like, well, what if, like, Abby hadn't felt the need to just, like, bathed in his blood? Yeah, like, you do it and you go. I guess, like, Dina still sees the WLF patch and- When here's the very long list of names and intro. When Quigg said that, I was like, that's true of the game. I don't think that's true of the show.

But I think that's true of the game that if Abby had just shot Joel and left, then there's no real ability to track them necessarily. Ellie gets there too late. But yeah, Dina's there is a witness. I guess everyone's name. Sure does. Here's my sad thought. And like I know it's hours between when.

Abby goes out and when she comes back, right? That didn't happen in the real time in the show or whatever. But like, do you think the lot of still kind of smelled of coffee? And Joel's like, coffee right before he dies? Well, I mean, could you view that as like a small gift? If so, you know, I guess this is yet another source of torment. What is the afterlife smell like? I got to smoke coffee once more.

Maybe. Okay. Let's go down to what I'm calling the party emotional hangover, like a sequence of the episode. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We get knocking on Ellie's door. The camera lingers on the guitar.

Sure does. Strung on a stand in her room. Last time we saw it, Joel was playing it on the porch of the house. So something has happened to get the guitar inside of her room. We don't know what. Right. We don't know, but we can tell something has unfolded.

and not just as the guitar back, which indicates some interaction that we have not seen. It's not in a heap on the floor? It's not an heap on the floor. Yes. It's not in a heap on the floor. And, you know, the fact that it is in this position of like reverence again, it is cared for, it is central, it is presented. I think this when paired with what Ellie says to Jesse, you know, we have this like mystery of what has happened. but like we have indicators as well that something has, certainly. Okay, so this is where, barring a conversation between Tommy and Joel, this is where the gameplay starts chronologically. It starts with Jesse knocking on Ellie's door, right?

And this traversing through Jackson and this conversation about what happened the night before. We get this fulfill your obligation to the community of Jackson Hole for an 8.m. patrol moment. This is what, I think it was, I wrote these notes down last week, so I forgot to attribute it. But I bet it was Craig said, talking about Jackson is the only functional community at all in the world. Best of what we are back. Peace, harmony, the arts.

Sandwiches from Seth. You know, all kinds of stuff. Steak sandwiches. Steak, great. Where are we getting that steak? Sounds amazing. Okay. We get this like back and forth with Jesse and Ellie.

And Jesse and Ellie's relationship, I think, is worth thinking about as they're doing a lot of work to show that to us in the first episode and in this episode. Yeah. And we get some early hoard talk. We don't know how many there are underneath the snow. Could be 30 more, a thousand more. Yeah. And Ellie's like, boom. And we're like, oh, it's a lot, actually.

Yeah. It's a lot. It's quite a few. It's quite a few. I love Jesse. Yeah. Young Mazzino is absolutely questioning it. He is so good.

It's just, the humor, like, you really need, you always need levity, but like you really need it in a story like this. And it could be so bleak. And to just have these, obviously this is like before everything that's about to happen, but even so to just like, first of all, it gives us some, not much. It's hard to find any comfort, but like an iola of comfort. But, like, Ellie has Dina. Ellie has Jesse. Yeah. We saw that, like, charm between Ellie and Tommy last week.

Like, Maria, there is, you know, we know that Ellie's biggest fear is being alone. And how can that not be top of our mind when Ellie watches Abby murder Joel in front of her? But to just see a little bit more of, like, the relationships that she has forged over the last five years feels like a little bit of a life raft for us. in our sea of despair. And also just Jesse is funny. Like I thought that not only the, you know, all of the like the ribbing about the Dina-up, you did that though. Yeah.

Fuck up you did that. That's great. But even just like when he's taught, they're talking about the patrol time and he's like, actually no, it's like it's not eight yet at 7.30, but like I like to be on time, you know. And Ellie's like, we know always late. And like I just thought that this was a great little like rhythm of the friendship snapshot. shot. Ellie says she wants to do patrol with Joel.

After this line from Jesse's certainty masquerading his knowledge very Ellie of you. I think that's a line that's worth. That's a read that's worth thinking about as we go forward in the season. Yeah, absolutely. Ellie says she and Joel, she wants to do patrol with Joel and that they're better now. And how truthful is she being in this moment? How much is you just saying this to get Jesse off her back? The part that feels undeniably true.

Yeah. The thesis statement of the show. My shit with Joel is complicated. I'm still me and he's still Joel. And nothing's ever going to change that ever. Which is so contradictory to the misery that we went through in the first episode of the season watching that us feel so fractured. But Ellie's saying like there is a there is a center. There is a spine to this that is unbreakable.

So no matter what growing pains are happening or revelations about, you know, lies at the end of season one that are happening, et cetera, there is an immovable object in my heart. And it is Joel. So like that feels true. I did want to just like flag this thing that Craig said last week. the official pot that I love though and he says, I love characters that lie, basic human actions, we don't give enough credit, we do it all the time.

Ellie is like a strong Lyra Bellacqua little liar kind of character, but this feels emotionally so true. Whether or not she and Joel are actually like fine that

there is an unshakable like themness, usness, you know? Yeah, I I thought this was fascinating and, like, again, this coupled with the glimpse of the guitar in the room. What has transpired and what has unfolded and how fully does Ellie, like, believe what she is saying here? How much of it is about convincing herself? Like, I agree with you regardless. There is a undeniable aspect to, like, the beating heart of this idea that, obviously,

like on the precipice of what is about to happen is both like a little bit of a balm, you know, to have heard her say this and to know that she is like reflecting on it and thinking it and in this place of assessing their relationship and their journey together versus like, I don't need your help, you know, one episode ago. What's wrong with you? Yeah. Yeah. That feels like incredibly important, but also like heightened.

the despair in some way? Like, oh, my God. What if they had been able to just go out on patrol together and spend this day together a little daddy daughter day, you know, as Ellie says, like, this idea of just like the things you long for and the things that you miss. And, you know, the idea of, like, Joel just wanting to let Ellie, like, sleep. So he went out on patrol with somebody else. Just these little half sentences and little moments and the look on Ellie's face which realizes that he's gone. all of the different what-ifs that, like, build and compound. And, like, again, it feels so heightened in a story like this, but those are the kinds of things that make a dystopian genre mushroom zombie tale so deeply relatable because, like,

what person doesn't have any number of what-ifs in their life. Like, if I could have just done this thing with this person one more time or if I could have said this thing to them. Like, that's just, like, the human experience. You also never know when the last time you're going to, like, see someone is, right? and obviously she sees Joel at the end of this episode, but she's never going to see his unbattered face again. Joel is out with Dina, and you already talked about that as a change.

Maybe we'll save some of the repercussions of that as much as we can talk about in a spoiler freeway, and then in the spoiler section to talk about that. Jesse mentions that everyone's on high alert and we're about to go in and see sort of General Tommy take the stage, but like everyone's on high alert because of the Stocker report last week. And I kind of feel like, you know, we were asking some questions last week, that that is a show edition. The, like, Ellie comes to the council and talks them about her encounter with a smart zombie. And so they're on high alert in a way they would, they would not have been otherwise when the battle hits. So this helps explain why General Tommy

is giving a very conveniently timed security briefing to everyone mere hours before the battle itself. Yeah, I think that this, like, the discussion of, and there are snow lurking, lying in weight, infected in the game as well, but like the discussion of it here, you know, Jesse saying like they're using their own deadling insulation, the stalker who we met last week, let me tell you something, I'm having a hard time killing stalkers in the game. They're so scary. I am having a hard time killing stalkers in the game. Like fuck a bloater. I don't give a shit about a bloater. Yeah, I feel like I've got my bloter tactics down. Yeah, stalker.

The use of the radar is very key. And the stalkers completely fuck that up. But like, yeah, there is, of course, like, there is this little bit of a, okay, we're talking about a lot of this at the beginning of the episode where it really comes into play. And so it feels even more important. that we got a glimpse of not just this new type of infected in the show world. And then that conversation with Ellie and the council, let me just ask you, like,

if everybody had not waited until morning to start with their briefings, could we have gotten some metal reinforcements against the wooden logs? I don't know. I'm just throwing it out there. Something for everybody to think about. Just spitballing. Just spitballing. I did think the trucks braced up against the gate was.

pretty great and so much better than any time I've ever seen a gate battered in a, I mean, they didn't have trucks at Helms Deep, but like, you know, surely there's some mechanic we could have done that was better than what they had. Didn't do a lot to help with all of the other logs that just immediately sat in half when the border charged through. But it wasn't, but at least the gate was the same goes. But yeah, like, you know, priming us in addition to priming us for the battle, I guess just priming us more broadly for this idea of like the evolution, the evolution of the infected in terms of like actually how they are manifesting, how they are behaving.

This obviously feels like an important thing in the second season of the show. Okay. So we get the rundown, you know, see flares, you hear the bells. Don't freak out like DeNaris did. Take, you know, get to your places. Kids down in the cellar. What could go wrong? Everything's fine.

Stay off Main Street. That's the last place you want to be. Of course, that's where Tommy will find himself at a few hours. And eat shit, Earl. You shout yourself in the leg. Earl. Everyone's laughing at Earl.

You're the town punchline, Earl. Bruttle. Brutal, Joe. Earl. Oh, man. Yeah. I continue to find it like rewarding and cool to see Tommy. in Jackson, just like broadly.

You know, to think back to season one, and obviously part of like Joel's journey and Joel's journey with Tommy is starting to see his brother in a different way and think about his brother's life outside of their shared experience in a different way. But to think about the way that Joel talked about Tommy to Ellie in episode four,

Tommy's what we used to call a joiner. Dreams have become a hero. He called him delusional. like continuing to make the same mistake over and over again with all, and this was before he even got to Jackson and saw him there. And I think it's like important that we see that for Tommy, this is right, you know? I mean, yeah, even before that, like, meeting him season one episode one, he's the fuck up mooture brother who like lands in jail. You know what I mean? Like, that's who he is. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So I really, I liked it. And like the kind of easy humor and grace and like you

you can just feel the depth of like respect and affection that the people have for him and that he has for this place. Like to balance that idea again of like the us and then the larger community, like, it's going to, the scope will shrink for Tommy inside of this episode as it often and really always does for our characters. But to establish that this is a place he cares about and it is important to him to do what he can to protect it. It was cool to see. in a scene straight out of the game, Maria makes Seth apologize to Ellie. I do think the game scene is funnier. Mostly because of the phrase bigot sandwich. Great stuff.

It's a funnier exchange, but it's a more sincere seeming apology from Seth inside of the show than it is in the game in this moment. And also shows Maria's authority inside of the community, which is also important. And like as much as Tommy is a leader in this community, Maria is also a leader in this community. It can make even people like Seth, you know, apologize, et cetera. And make Ellie come and listen to it, however begrudgingly. So, yeah. And I liked how Ellie, you know, calls Seth out. Like, okay, oh, yeah, you know, it happens to everyone.

People get drunk and they say awful shit that they've never thought before. Like, it's not just that he said it. It's that he thinks it, believes it. And Ellie, we talk a lot about Ellie or Joel, is these. characters who react like on impulse, right, and instinct and often in a very big way. And then for Ellie to be like a day removed from this and still say like, no, this thing you did is fucked up and wrong and like that's cool. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, she's right. Yeah. Of course. And seeing the way that Ellie interacts with all of the people in the community and calls them on their shit. Yeah. It's great. A single apology does not undo that absolute.

bullshit, but it feels like Ellie's a kind of person who doesn't even want to have a conversation towards like an actual place of healing, right? I mean, she's just sort of like, you did this, you're dead to me. Okay. So, yeah, as we've mentioned, and our listener, Megan wrote in, uh, our listener Megan wrote in an email, the title, the headline of which, the subject line of which was simply, wood walls plus fire, and the body of which was simply, seems like simply a bad idea. And I have to agree.

I did like their little like fold out metal ramp contractions. That's sort of like... Like a playground slide. Yeah, they sort of like shoved the barrel a bit away. But like nonetheless, then you're setting the zombies on fire and the fire zombies are then coming towards the wall. So it just like simply seems like not the greatest setup I've ever seen in my life with Love and respect to Gerald Tommy.

Yes, agreed. Ultimately, that would's not hold him for long. Do we need trebushes maybe to sort of like launch the fire much further? Don't we always? Yeah. Are there blueprints for building trebushes in the post-zombie apocalypse? Who's to say, I don't know? Tommy isn't getting a reception.

Tells Amy in the radio room to call patrol, including Jesse and Ellie back, but it's too late. They have to shelter in place, which takes us to... The weed palace. 7-Eleven and weed, two great tastes that go great together. I agree. It made me want like a microwave burrito. 7-Eleven. Home of people who enjoy weed.

Okay. Pretty funny because the setting for Eugene's weed palace in the stretch of the game is a library. Yes. It's like, what if we meant this is 7-11? What if it's a 7-11? Great stuff. So first they find the place for their horses and they feed them. And Jesse seems like he might be a scoge, more responsible horse owner.

We'll come back to shimmer a bit later on. Eugene and Jesse used to go on patrol and they kept the grow house secret from Maria. And I don't know that I love that implication that Maria is a stick in the mud. Like I feel like Maria would be, say, you need a grow house? You think so? Great. It's the mushroom apocalypse. Do you think so? Yeah, you don't think so?

No. Okay. No. I think Maria seems cooler than anti-growhouse, you know? Maybe I'm putting too much stock still in like the season one, episode six first interactions. But I think Maria, who is a crucial character, is often positioned in scenes to like be lecturing the other character about a thing they've done wrong based on our time with her in the show so far. So I understand at least. why this would maybe be the concern.

But they have not yet showed Maria Eugene's homemade gas mask bomb. And so what could that open up? I mean, among us, could resist. Of all the little game nods in the episode, I think that's my favorite. That was a great one. So, yeah, Eugene, we find out, was a member of the fireplace. Yep. He quit in 2010 because he said he was tired of,

killing people also as we mentioned a Vietnam War vet. This is what Jesse says about Joel. Joel having to put Eugene down raw deal, a shame. The guy makes it through a war only to end up going out like that. What are you going to do? Could it be saved? And Ellie's like, uh. Yeah.

So what does Ellie know about how everything went down with Eugene, right? Right. And also, can we extrapolate that? going out like that, what are you going to do? Couldn't be helps, couldn't be saved sort of thing, into what happened with the fireflies writ large? Is Ellie thinking, is this an okay attitude to have about what happened between Joel and the fireflies at the end of season one?

Couldn't be helped, you know, sort of thing. And what are her feelings on that? Yeah, like, so the way that I kind of read this was like, you know, with the acknowledgement that we still don't know what led to the state that Ellie and Joel were in in episode one. Like, we're saying we don't know what maybe transpired overnight between these episodes, but like what got them into this place?

We talked about this a lot last week, how much of this is kind of the like creeping, increasingly impossible to ignore voice inside of Ellie's head that was like, I never believed you, and I really can't, and how much of it is something more concrete. Like, we don't know. That's an open question. And the, seeing the firefly pendant period, like, how can it not make Ellie think of the fireflies and this mission to get to them?

And just that purpose, like that everything in season one, like this sense, as we've talked about many times in season one and last pod, this sense that Ellie had, like, it can't all be for nothing, right? Like, if it could be for this. And so just Ellie continuing, like, kind of, you know, kind of, of no matter what the answers to those other questions are, to think about the fact that, like, they went to that hospital, they got there and they didn't walk out with a cure, right? And so, like, I think there's this element of any kind of trigger and reminder that ports her back to, like, what could have been. And we have obviously, like, this clarity about what Joel did there and what he knows. but just for Ellie, like,

I don't know, it felt like this just lament again, that like we are still in a world where, I mean, my assumption is, I don't know, because as we said last week, this is like just different with Eugene. He just dies of a stroke. And he's not in the game.

He's like someone they talk about and he has died of a stroke. Yeah, they were like, what luxury to die of natural causes. Yeah, exactly. So we don't know. My assumption, just based on how people are talking about this

last episode and this episode is that like, Eugene got infected and Joel put him down and maybe did so before Eugene could like say goodbye to Gail, maybe did so by like once again saying like I need to protect you. I need to like harm another person to protect you. But no matter what it's washing up for Ellie, this like absence of a thing that they, that their, the origin of their bond was defined by pursuing. Like no matter what, what conversations have unfolded between any characters in the game or the show at this point, there's no cure.

There's no cure. Ellie's immune and they told her there was going to be a cure and there's not. And that's the thing that she's still carrying with her. I think it's also really interesting to remind us that. So Eugene quits the fireflies because he's tired of the killing. And it's good to remind us that the fireflies weren't simply innocent scientists in a lab, like dinkering with beakers, you know, etc. That they were, depending on your point of view.

terrorist organization, if you want to put it that way. You know what I mean? They felt that they had a greater good that they were fighting for, but so does everyone, right? So at what point is that, you know, a justification for violence? That's a decision we all get to make for ourselves in the mushroom apocalypse. Okay, here comes the horde. Abby is freezing. As you mentioned, she sees some horses in the distance.

Here's the horse Winnie and decides, fuck it. And she's going to go down. And again, this is gameplay for people who are playing the game. Like this idea, I had a question about this until I listened to the official podcast of like, what is the thing that sets off this attack? Is it breaking open the pipes and sort of, for lack of better words, stimulating the quarter-sptendos in a way that would send an alert across the mushroom network? Yeah.

Or is it Abby falling her ass down a mountain and discovering essentially like a zombie graveyard of mushroom soup essentially, defrosting the frozen mushroom soup essentially. So is it Abby that did it or is that expansion and building inside of Jackson, which is what Craig and Neil were identifying as, hey man, if they weren't expanding Jackson, they wouldn't have had to crack those pipes open. And if they didn't crack those pipes open, then we don't get those tendrils being stimulated. I'm just going to keep using that word. And I think it's both, really. It's both.

But it's an action inside of the community and it's also action outside of the community that triggers this massive event. And that's interesting because then again, there's not only the parallels, but the actual entwinment of those impulses, those. pursuits and then the ripples, the ripples. Okay, so the horde gets a going. Yeah. Very, like, on the Thrones front, we've invoked many different Thrones comps today, but this was very, like, season fours, the children, the whites. Yeah.

Emerging from their blanket of snow. Correct. I did not spot Jojin-Reed in this episode of television, but he was on my mind. Absolutely. The little, like, skeleton stab. On that front. I thought the CGI looked mostly great, but not 100%. And then every time it's like just a guy and a Barry Gower prosthetic, amazing.

Those prosthetics are just some of the best things I've ever seen. And there's one shot that was in the trailer of like a mushroom guy coming up out of the snow and just like screeching, essentially, that looks like one of the coolest things I've ever seen. You know what that? That reminded me of the head emerging from the snow. but also just this in general, the kind of like activation of the snow pod and the, just like the rippling of the surface of the snow and the click her head starts to move and the hand moves and boo. People who are not watching on video are missing this, like, I'm playing air keyboard here.

Check us out, full video episodes on Spotify or the Ringerverse YouTube channel. But both that one close-up shot of the emerging head, but then more broadly, that kind of rippling surface, reminded me so strongly of the visuals in, even though it's a much smaller group of infected, the hoard in Kansas City, which like the burbling of the asphalt before they came through and then the kind of cresting of the infected over the edge. You love a bloater. I love to beat a bloater.

It feels good when I beat a bloater. But you've been, you've mentioned that complacency line. And so that's an, interesting comp, too, right, to think of Kansas City and, like, that warning that Kathleen got that something was, like, lurking, waiting. Now, it's not the same. Kathleen ignored so many warnings. Tommy is just about to learn about the tendrils in the pipe. You know what I mean? When the attack happens. Yes. So it is not the same. Like, it's, there's like a thing behind a door in Kansas City that is very clearly about to doom them all.

Yeah. That's a different degree of negligence. I'm not claiming that what's happening in Jackson is negligence, but I think because the showrunners, the creators, are pinging that note and hitting that note about like, well, you, in Kathleen's case, she's, like, blinded by her need to find Henry. That's a very different emotional state. In Jackson, it's like the opposite of,

can we allow ourselves to believe that we can just live a normal life? Can we just have a New Year's party? Yeah, have a New Year's party. Fix the houses. Fix the plumbing. Figure out which wire goes here. You're not supposed to lick it. New people in.

You know, so completely different motivations, completely different like head spaces and emotional states. But in a way, actually, that makes it more, the place that we find ourselves in then as viewers on the other end of it is like almost more deflating because it's like, well, wait, what is the path forward then? If you think you can rebuild and you try, this is what happens. If you don't even think that there's a way forward because you're so lost in this just quagmire of resentment, you're lost. Like, well, what is the path forward then?

I mean, that's a pretty heavy question to carry. The path forward for Abby, did you like that transition so smooth? Okay. Chris Ryan-esque. Under a chain link fence in one of the most. terrifying sequences I've ever seen in both gameplay and in the show. It's a really close match what we see here. We've got this infected guy who tries to basically push his hand through the links of the fence in order to get to her.

It's terrifying to watch. What does it like to play, Mallory? Also terrifying. First of all, you and Rob chatted about this a little bit in the episode one pod, but just this idea. of like the landscape and the role the landscape plays in the story. And that was like a great discussion. And then it was on my mind watching this because both the wide shots and then this like, you have a narrowing in, you're shrunk, you're compressed, you're under the fence.

But like that actually kind of makes it even more apparent than it just obviously would be that we're in broadly this like big, vast open space. You know, so you take the idea of openness that previously has felt to us like safety. Tommy and Maria talk about this with Joel and Ellie when they arrive in season one, right? the fact that they can just look out and it's a turkey shoot. Yeah, you can see everything. That's like allowed them to be safe. And then here are the fact that there's all of like this distance and these beds of snow that they don't know. There's so much space they can't account for. They don't know what's waiting for them in the same area that they used to think brought them safety, harrowing. And then you shrink it and you literally press it down on you. And won't surprise you

already went to hear that I did not make it out of this sequence alive the first time I, Yeah. How many times did it take you, though? I think actually I got through on the second try. This is like really early in the game, like super early in the game. So I was still like re-familiarizing myself with the mechanics. But everything... This feels like I will just say watching this. You know how like you watch any kind of like an action movie or a post-apocalyptic? And you're like, oh, this is simply the place where I would die. This is what you would die. Now, no, clearly I would have died day one of the mushroom.

I'm dying the minute, the infatocon. infection spreads because I love a carb. But like, but when Abby's army crawling under the chain, I'm like, I'm not making out of that alive. Absolutely not. So in gameplay, I could just see myself being like, what are we doing here? I'm not making through this. They would never find a bite mark on my body because there would be no flesh left to check for bite marks. I would be annihilated, devoured. Only, down to the cob. Exactly. A yellow jacket-esque just pile of bones. No flesh left. Just for Abby to wind up in this circumstance, though, it's like it tells us so much about her, right?

The fact that she has put herself in this position of mortal peril where she could die before she is able to achieve the thing that she is seeking because she is so driven by this need for blood. A lot of people don't go down the hill after the two horses in the first place. and she did. Right, she didn't go back for her friends. She didn't say, like, hey, I saw something. She just went forward. Stanis-esque. I am obsessed with how this plays out in the game

and how this moment is shot in the show where it's just sort of like, help is here. And we're pretty sure it's Joel, but we don't see that it's Joel right away. And we get the gunshot sound that knocks out Abbey's hearing. So we're firmly in the Abby P.O. view of disorientation. A guy is here, we don't know.

So it helps us to, like, not see his face at first because it's just sort of like, who is this person here to help me? Devastating irony of ironies. The sound buzzing out, again, once it firmly roots you in POV. Yeah. So that happens for her here, and it will happen for Ellie at the end of the episode to have that like mirroring, I think is really powerful. And I just love this big damn hero moment for Joel.

One of the last things he gets to do in his life. This is exactly to your point. This is what he loves to do to be the hero, to be the guy. He's got Dina with him, which is different. And so Dina's anxiety of like, what do we do? We have no way forward, no way back. Dina says his name, which is just a, and a lot of people have noted this. is a much more organic way his name is brought up here than it is in the video game.

But it's just this moment. Now, this is a difference. It's an adaptive difference. We know that Abby is here to kill Joel slowly. And so Dina says Joel, and we know exactly what that means to Abby. Her singular focus, I'm going to, I have to find Joel. Here he's handsome. but he's got to die, right?

So, like, I have to find Joel, kill him slowly. Yeah. So I love that, but also reconcile that. However briefly, whatever flash there is of like, but he just saved me. He just absolutely saved me. But to your point, and Craig and Neil talk about this, absolute moral clarity for her. She knows what she has to do. She's not questioning whether or not she's going to kill him.

There's still two truths that are existing side by side. this guy save my life. Yeah. And now I have to end his life. I mean, what life? You know, as she will say later. But yeah. I loved the way that this was put together.

And, you know, in a way, I thought it was better than, you know, it's interesting because, you know, Neil has said this in a number of different interviews. The fact that, like, Mark Myelot as a director of the episode, they were like, so the battle sequence. And Mark said this himself. Like, so the battle sequence. You got to be all in your head about executing a battle sequence, right? He was a Thrones director, but never a battle episode director, right? So it's like, how are you going to do that? Logistically, blah, blah.

And he was like, I'm not as concerned about that as I am about nailing this Joel death moment. And I do think that like the moments of direction that are most successful inside of this episode have nothing to do with the battle episode. And that's because that's where Mark Militz's priority was. And I think he absolutely crushed that. aspect of it. And I think this moment is so crucial and the way it is all framed and executed.

A lot of it mirroring the game, but also just with some crucial changes too. Yeah. I also love this. I think in both the game in the show, this stretch is just fantastic. The you know, the gun poking into the frame because you're

Abby at that stretch in the game, you're like trying to survive. So there's this wave of relief and then waves of dread start quickly following. That's just an impressive thing to be able to do so quickly. When Joel's hand reaches out, he offers his hand to Abby, he's screaming at her to get up, and we don't just see his hand, we see the watch. And like, Sarah's watch being framed in this moment, I mean, it's perfect for, I think, a number of different reasons. Obviously, as we've talked about many times, that's when time stopped for Joel until it started again with Ellie.

So what a perfect thing to show us when we are with this other character, Abby, who time has stopped for too, because of losing somebody close to her in her life. But also, like, the watch, the glimpse of the watch putting Sarah on our minds and, of course, then Ellie on our minds, it's such a perfect thing to do because Joel, on the one hand, what you said is obviously right, like Joel protects. Joel helping, that's Joel's thing. But also, like, I think inside of that, there's this little wrinkle. Oh, she doesn't like outsiders. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And so, like, we know, we've talked a lot about all of the different times that he invoked, like, to Ellie and season one, you know, other people in episode three, like, you're, oh, there aren't an infect on this road? Like, what are you looking for? Other people. Go, can I build a fire in episode four in the woods? Like, what am I going to tell you? People, right? We talked last episode about the conversation with, with Benji and the map,

all of it. So why help this person? Because of the impulse to protect, absolutely, but also, like, it feels like he's looking at a, he calls her kid. Yeah. Calls her kid. It feels like he's looking at somebody who reminds him of Ellie and Sarah and, like, that paternal instinct to need to try to help somebody who reminds him of the people that he couldn't bear to lose. The irony of that. I know. I think it's, like, almost unbearable. I think there's, like, almost unbearable. I think there's It's like a macro-micro aspect to it for Joel, and I think this has been true throughout, it's like theoretically other people, theoretically who's coming to the gates here, blah, blah, but when push comes to shove in most moments, you know, when you're confronted with the actual humanity of that person,

Joel makes different decisions. And then to get back to what you, to keep going with that, to go back to what you were saying a couple minutes ago about Abby's point of view then, and the humanity, but also the practical. It's like Abby's experiencing that in reverse where she's like, oh, my God, this guy saved me, like you're saying. When she's looking at the gun in his hand, though, it's just like, oh, right, I'm anchored again. She doesn't have her gun.

That's the gun that did the thing that I'm here because of. Like, that's what this is all about. And all of that, like, also just again, in terms of kind of the structure of the episode in the season, like, I believe this is, I guess I don't, I might be, including the like big HBO, you know, all of our wonderful programs in the minute count here. But like this is like 23 minutes into the episode. We're about to lose Joel.

And like we don't get him in the episode until 23 minutes in. And then the way that it hits us when he's here, it's just like an incredible exercise and restraint and discipline to calibrate this moment with such perfection and care. I really agree. I really good. I really agree. Really good. Oh, man. Something I want to note about the, you know, we're cutting back to Tommy in the radio room and trying to get a whole of everyone is that Amy in the radio room is in a wheelchair.

And we also saw someone else in a wheelchair in the security briefing when Tommy's saying, like, when you hear the bells do this, right? And there's something about that that speaks to what Jackson is in terms of a place where, we're not just like scrapping and surviving and tooth and claw. We have a place for everyone here. And again, once again, maybe one of the only places where that is still true in the country from what we know. And how that will all sort of at least take a massive blow by the end of this episode. Elie with the aforementioned incredible gas mask. Bong talks to Jesse about how he'll be the leader of Jackson one day.

And I think that's really interesting. We'll talk about that maybe a little bit more later. But they go running into panic when they realize that both Joel and Dina are in trouble. I think this is interesting. The mix and match of various characters, we'll talk in the spoiler section about what's missing from the grow house sequence and stuff like that. But I think this idea that for Jesse, Joel's in trouble, yes, Dina's in trouble, right? And they've had this relationship.

And for Ellie, it's like the two most important people in her life are in trouble and what that means. The complete lack of hesitation as they're mobilized. And then he says, okay, but he says 20 minutes, you got to get to the mind by then, whether you find them or not. And the way he talks or he's like, Ellie, Ellie, you got to. do this. The same way that Dina was like, hey, don't do any stupid in that grocery store until I get to you. Okay, Ellie, okay? How

everyone talks to Ellie of like, I know you won't. But maybe if I say it five times, you will. But probably you won't. I love the blend too of just like the general like Ellie's charting her own course

aspect of this. But also with the Joel specific aspect of this that Jesse is surely clocking. Like, okay, they haven't been getting along back in town, but like, Jesse knows that the fact that Joel is in, is not radioing in, that like, Ellie won't stop until she finds him. Ellie will allow herself to be killed in the blizzard, dead in Lecold before she gives up on trying to find him.

That's just who she is and who they are for each other. And I thought the, like, decisiveness with which Ellie and Jesse Mobile, was really interesting as a point of a contrast to Joel almost begging. Like, I'm thinking. Like, I don't know. I don't know I'm thinking when they're trying to figure out what to do. This is right, right, right, right, right. When Dean is like, what do we?

Yes, exactly. Right before Abby's like, oh, well, ooh, I've got a lodge. This is how I'm going to get you to the lodge. It's fine. And, you know, we have heard so much across season one and talked so much about, like, Joel's insecurity, you know, and that moment, those, the way that he voiced to Tommy in episode six, like, all I did. was stand there. I couldn't move. I couldn't think of anything to say. I just, I was so afraid.

Like, it's just, like, so heartbreaking to wonder if Joel was feeling that again in this moment, you know? Like, am I going to be able to get where I need to be quickly enough to help the people? And then again, when he sees Jackson on fire, it's just like all of Joel's worst fears and doubts and sources of shame surfacing in these final moments for him, it's like, I mean, for a character we love, it's just such a painful thing to to see him suffer through. I also think on the, on the, I love that. And also on the Tommy front of this interesting reversal of like,

Joel in season one, a lot of this is kicked off because he can't get Tommy on the radio. And so Tommy not being able to get Joel on the radio here. But Tommy cannot go out into the snow because he's a little busy back home. And this is where we're going to do all of the Battle of Jackson stuff at once. We're just going to knock it out. So here's my main critique of the Battle of Jackson, I will say. And yeah, I'm not upset. It's here.

This is a masterful episode. But you and I have spent a lot of time analyzing battle episodes. This is something that we've done a lot of in our career. And I will say what I'm missing here that we have in episodes, the best versions of the battle episodes of Game of Thrones, for example. Yeah. an inescapable comp. We've got a Thrones director here. Like, you know, it really seems like they're chasing some thronesiness inside of this episode.

But like even something like Hard Home, which a lot of people forget, is only one portion of that episode. Not a sizable portion of that episode is the Battle of Hard Home. But a lot of people forget that because they think it's an entire battle episode. It's not. But what they do inside of Hard Home, which is so successful and the most successful other episodes, Blackwater, et cetera, et cetera, of Thrones is give you little micro narratives to follow inside of the battle. So it's not just action, action, action. We're following human stories inside of that.

And that is true also inside of something like the Battle of the Helm Steep, which is the big successful blockbuster genre battle moment that a lot of these shows are chasing. what are these individual little groups and pairings of characters doing? Do I care what John is doing and washes the wall? Yes. But I also care what Pip and Gren are doing a lot. Do I care what's happening out in the water and Blackwater? Yes. But I also care what Cursi and Sonsa are up to.

Do I care about what, once again, John, he's always there in a battle, really? But like, do I care what John and Tormann are doing in Harnome? Yes. But I also care about Carsey, a character who I just took. met. Yeah. And what's going on with her and her kids and that little narrative. So these little micro-narrative moments.

Yeah. Inside of the battle of Jackson, we really only have Maria and Tommy. And that is the main, I mean, it's a short little bit of a battle. They're not trying to do a whole episode where it's just this. But, like, we really just have their connection. And we really actually also haven't spent that much time inside of the Maria and Tommy relationship over the course of the series. And so what Neil and Craig have talked about in terms of this choice that Tommy makes to defend the city at large until he realizes that, you know, my us has zoomed in on Maria and my kiddo who is theoretically down in the Crips of Winterfell. What a great place for the kids to be.

It's always fine. And so I'm going to ignore my own advice and ignore everyone around me and just lead this bloter down a back alley and do this exchange. That is interesting to me, but in terms of like a successful battle, big genre TV battle writ large, I felt like I was missing some of those other narratives. I wish I knew the name of literally other residents of Jackson because all the ones I know were out on patrol. Earl and Seth. What are you guys up to? You're all I have to cling to. What is Gail doing? What's Gail up to during the Battle of Jackson? I like to think that Gail is just like, fuck it. I out of mind. You know, another bottle of bourbon deep smoking and she's like, oh, you know, incorporated the sounds of the cat. I did not, I got to be honest. I did not think about cat once. I'm sorry.

Did cat get her tattoo gun out to sort of like try to defend Jackson? Like, what is she doing? So like that's, if I were to add something to this episode, that's what I would add. So, yeah. That's a great point. I think that is a really fair and valid note. I, I think that I also feel that way about like all of the Thrones, uh, uh, comps that you're citing or, or Helm Steep or whatever it is.

Like, it is the, the fear that we have in our hearts for the people who are huddling in a given space or engaged in a certain showdown, um, that we ultimately care the most about. I think that it is in last of us in general, but I think especially inside of this episode,

because what's happening with Joel and Abby is to me, like, okay, the backdrop of all of it is this vast, the biggest thing, the most macro thing. This doctor, the fireflies, they were trying to find a cure, right? They were trying to fend off the thing that Marlene invokes in the parking garage at the end of season one. Like, you know, they're going to be living in a doomed world that, like, you didn't save. And what happens, even though it is the biggest, vastest thing inside of the lodge with Abby Joel is that we end up looking and the show ends up looking through the scope of our rifle at the smallest possible thing in the crosshair, which is like one other person who made you

feel like a certain way. And so I think because that conflict is so rooted in individual history, loss, pain, it actually was interesting to me that Jackson was almost felt like deliberately the opposite of that. Like, it's really almost like the reminder of what the thing could be or is that was lost or that you're trying to rebuild. Like, we're right. Like, we don't know very much about the people there. And many of the people there who we do know were not inside of those walls. There are in states of peril, but elsewhere. Right. But the idea of Jackson, what Jackson represents into those characters and in the world, like the fact that that was in jeopardy, I think gave me the feeling that a lot of the individual character bonds I have

maybe do elsewhere. But I think it's a great note. That's interesting to me. And in the same way that like, what does it mean to hold the wall or what does it mean to see the White Walkers for the first time for someone like John? Like there are big sort of thematic moments. What does it mean for this thing to be breached? What does it mean for wildfire to be used? for the first time. Like, all of those things are interesting. But I think what makes something like that stick to my ribs are those more human moments. Totally.

Would you have been surprised if instead of ringing bells, someone had sounded a horn three times? I was waiting for it. And then Tommy goes Jackson Hole. All right. So I did like the Jackson Hole. It was great. It was great. I don't have anything to.

I think we have already covered the blitter interaction and everything that happens here. I will just say Maria goes to the dogs and TikTok gets Ramsey face eating a clock for the infected. Like, here we are. I was very worried for the dogs. I would have preferred that they stayed safely ensconced in their little kennel there. Worried for them. Though they, you know, I'm like, I don't need another summer. Like, I can't handle it.

I'm just like still carrying too much pain. But yeah, they had to. You know, that infected Horde moved with a quickness, like up the stairs and to the roofs. Yeah. Through the bread, through the baking bread in a real hurry. And, you know, the opening of the pipe and the pulling, the one pull of the tendrils, like, it was, I mean, I was about to say it was fun to think. Horrible, but, you know, it's always fun when Tess is on our minds. And I liked having an excuse to, like, think of that early lesson that Tess gave Ellie in, um,

Episode two of season one, like they're connected more than you know, which is, of course, one of the founding ideas of this podcast, both with each other, but also the way that we, weirdly, I think, probably to many people talk about the fungus loves too. So you got it, Joe. I mean, here, yeah, like Abby activates the, Abby activates the Horde, but they activated the, as amazing calls it, the wood wide web, right? A little touch of the tendril, and there you are. A little touch of the tend.

All right. I am going to read this email from Dan. I don't know that we need to like touch on every beat, but it was a phenomenal email. So thank you, Dan, for this. Dan says, we're going to need a 20-minute comparison on Winterfell versus Jackson and their defense versus the snow zombies, which was more prepared. Which defense system did you trust more? How was Bella Ramsey now had two separate homes affected by snow zombies? Which zombies did you fear more in their settings?

Would Melisandra have been just as ineffective? Whose battle crime made you feel more empowered? Why didn't anyone light the pipes on fire with the tendrils hoping it'd make it back to the source? Did ghost train these German shepherds? Are they crossbred with the unexstained dire wolf? And are bloaters the most overrated mid-tier bad guy boss? They're large and imposing and difficult in the game. But TV hasn't quite made them something to fear in my opinion.

Shirley HBO said, go talk to the Game of Thrones team for the long night and said, Step one, make it the early part of an afternoon day. and don't kill anyone important. The Jora Eurasia will not stand on House of R. Ever? Today or ever. Very funny email. Great email from Dan.

At no point did a giant enter a courtyard and pick up a beloved character. So that's a difference, at least. Bloader to the sea. Do you think that, I do think, if I were to port anything from the Battle of Winterfell to this, and to be clear, with love and respect to the whites, I find the mushroom zombies way scarier than I ever found. I find the white walkers scary, but in a more sort of like unrelenting, always advancing kind of way. but in terms of like a horde of the undead coming at me, these mushroom zombies. Yeah, they're terrifying. They're so bitey.

Because the whites are trying to kill you and then in killing you, they can make you one of theirs. It's the bite. They're trying to bite you. That's, okay, anyway. Having to fight, like all the different types of infected, like the different stages of the infection, all, you know, you have, different tactics are necessary to kill a different type of infected. So for all of them to just be right there, like on the roof with you or on the street with you, it's, I would just, but I think I would do what the flamethrower guys did, which is like,

run for your life? Shit, my pants, panic and run. I mean, I just like, Earl. Oh, God. Okay. I do say, I do think, though, Melisandra would have maybe been more helpful. Like, fuck a flamethrower pack. We've got the Lord of Light on our side.

Indeed. It's roasted mushrooms for everyone. Okay. Delish. We are now entering a sequence in the notes that I have labeled four. There's a fucked up thing you did in the dock. You're welcome. All right.

Let me just say that. You're welcome. Did you see The Midnight Boys brought golf clubs to their recording today? I mean, listen, we all process in our own ways. We work through it in our own ways. Oh, my God. Okay. So as we mentioned, Abby lures, Joel and Dina up to the lodge. We already mentioned like the sort of what was interesting about the added tension of Joel being like, we got to get back to Jackson. It's on fire. I could see it from here. All the sort of stuff like that. Joe Ever Paternal rushes Dina in front of the fire. Abby tells Owen to help Joel and Dina to, like to help both of them. Dina sees the wolves, very clearly sees the wolf patch.

Yeah. She clocked it. Avery introduces them all by name. And then she says, her name is Dina and he is Joel. This is a very good moment in the show. I think it is an even better moment in the game. Because I don't know what it is about. I mean, everyone's face here is really good. There's something about, and again, I've only watched the gameplay, not played the game.

But there's something about the way the energy is just completely shifts in the room. And maybe that's the sort of reveal that they're all definitely there for Joel, which again, we don't get confirmation until we hear the name Joel in the whole room just like tilts essentially mood-wise. But an incredibly iconic moment in the game, just really unsettling. Unbelievable. It was just like chills. Yeah. The spine tingling. And I'll just say very quickly before we go through all of the terrible things that had happened here.

This little extra element in the show version of. of Abby not only doing this thing to Joel, but also stopping him from going back. Yeah. I don't know. There's like, yeah, there's an extra layer of savagery and brutality there. Like, I didn't just kill you and torment you. I took away from you the ability to go try to save the people you love. It's just like another degree of horror.

Abby really needed another thing on her tally. So they put Dina to sleep. Yeah. DeNos who mentions not here in the game, but like, put her to sleep. Yes, an injection that knocks her out for an hour. I mean, she's got frostbite on the arm. She's going through it. But Tommy just gets like multiple butt of a gun bashes to the head to knock him out.

So I have to say, and I don't know if you know this about you, but I'm not a doctor. I'm not a scientist. I know. But I hate the look of that. that milky syringe. Oh. It was the milkiness of the substance. I was like, I would prefer...

Interesting. You like a clear solution. A clear solution rather than a milky solution. Fair. Fair. Hobbes and Dragos and Gmail.com, if you disagree about the substance of the syringe. Okay, so what I will say about Dina and Izzy's performance here is just like Dina is like a ferocious person.

She is not. And as we know, we've seen her on the hunt with Ellie. Like she's a fighter. And she's a ferocious person inside of this moment until they knock her out for exactly an hour. No more, no less. So that's what happens here. Okay, so Abby asks, what do we look like? And Jill first says military and then he says fireflies.

Used to be, haven't you heard, there are no more fireflies. They're all gone. just the Abby's demeanor here, the change in demeanor when she says Joel, as you noted, the change in everybody's demeanor in the room when she says Joel. But then every single word

that she utters from here and the shifting, like the oscillation between tears and grief and just like unceasing, uncontainable wrath. But also just like, but also just like,

sort of sneering, posturing cavalier sort of thing. Yeah, this like, nice scar you have on your temple there, six feet in your 60s, you actually are pretty handsome. Congrats on that. Really good. Kailen's slippery. So, so good. So something that Katelyn, Deaver and Neil and Craig have talked about in a lot of interviews, just an added layer to note inside of this episode is that Caitlin Dever, an incredible actress, no matter what, had just lost her mom a couple weeks before. they filmed the scene, and had just had her mom's funeral days before they filmed this. And, you know, Craig and Neil talked about how, you know, they were willing to shift schedule, do whatever they needed to do to try to, like, accommodate and help and make sure that she did not

have to do this incredibly emotionally taxing performance inside of a state like that. but Caitlin Deaver has described doing this whole thing as being in a daze. And so I think it's one of the best things I've ever seen on television. Caitlin, again, we've mentioned a million times, is one of our favorite. I guess I can no longer call her a young performer. I'm just following her so long. She's an adult. But like, she's is one of my favorite performers.

full stop and anything. And she just exceeded my expectations for her performance inside of this. I agree. And like that's kind of an amazing thing to see because our expectations were incredibly high, given the material, but also given our just deep and abiding admiration for this performer. So this, I just thought this was mesmerizing. And I mean, Pedro Pascal barely uttering a word equally mesmerizing. Like this was just electric.

look that's passing between them. You know, we love to talk about Station 11, and we love to talk about the to the monsters. We're the monsters. We're the monsters idea. And there are, like, it's hard to find two characters who better embody that idea to each other than Joel and Abby.

And, like, when, you know, obviously there's like a, you know, the little chuckle of congrats on that for the, you actually are pretty handsome moment. But I was just struck by, like, this moment for Abby of sharing this description, saying this thing out loud, like this picture that she has been carrying in her head, right? This thing that she has been seeing, this person she has been seeing in her mind's eye for five years.

And it's like the way that she said it, like she was passing under the checkered flag. Like, I won. This is my victory lap. And it was, it had such a, have we mentioned Game of Thrones yet? It had such a, there's no justice in the world, not unless we make it vibe to it for Abby and her pursuit. Like just. the fact that this season is so centered on this idea of justice what is justice how do we enact it is there such a thing as justice at what cost does this justice come um abby says one chance to tell the truth joel if you do let's face it we'll all know and i'll let her live and so something at craig said about one of the several reasons that they have dina in the room here uh is dina as leverage for keeping jol in line right so it's one thing to have tom me there unconscious on the floor.

But to have Dina, who we've already seen, Joel, have this, like, it's the closest thing to Ellie that he had in episode one calling her kiddo. You know, this is something that he cares enormously about another young daughter-like figure vulnerable on the floor. What do I have to do to protect her? So I will stay in line because you have this particular specific leverage over me. And I think that, like, Joel telling the truth here is so interesting. There is this line from Gail in the first episode.

You can't heal something unless you're brave enough to say it out loud. So, Joel having this moment in a way that we haven't seen yet where he tells the truth about something is amazing. We got this incredible email from Sean who says, for a brief moment it's barely a flash, but Pedro does something incredible with his face while Joel is listening to Abby. Joel connects with her because she knows the truth about Salt Lake. Despite being shot, he looks so...

And we'll talk about the shot in the second, but... Despite being shot, he looks so relieved, he doesn't have to lie anymore. For such an overwhelmingly action-packed episode, the quiet moments between Abby and Joel are the most, quote-unquote, rattling. Yeah, I thought that the...

Great email. I agree, too. Like, the moments where he is meeting her eye. The moments where his eyeline is cast down when he looks back up, like tracking that across this entire exchange to the point that you were just making about Dina and the function of Dina in that scene. Again, it's like, how can we not think of the I'm failing in my sleep idea that Joel shared with Tommy about Ellie, about Sarah, about like everyone who makes him feel this way. the moment of coming to account, like, this accountability of saying the thing, they talked,

Mazen and Druckman talked about this on the official pod. It's really striking watching it. Like, it was interesting to hear them talk about it. It's an admission, but it's not regret. No. And that's a fascinating thing to watch Joel Navigate. regret that he clearly is confronting the fact that he will not be with Ellie moving forward. Well, well, well, well.

What the cost of this is going to be. Yeah. And like that moral clarity for both of them. Yeah. Yeah. It's just it's I loved the part of the pod where they talked about the trolley problem and how like their characters don't engage in the thought experiment of the trolley problem. There is no trolley problem. It's like the choice is clear to them.

Yeah. And that's that's part of why these circumstances. then unfold. It's just like so fascinating. The moment where, so Joel says, I saved your life, Ellie says, what life? I saved your life similar to what he says to Gail. I saved her. Right. I saved your life. What life ground out by Abby. And then she abruptly shoots him the leg and it blows him back and onto his fatal horrifying. Yeah. And I, I love this moment because I think if you, before he met Ellie, if someone saved Joel's life and they were like, I saved your life, he would say what life? That was how Joel was not living but enduring after Sarah. There was this time in his life where he was not alive, even as he was still going on. And then Ellie brought him back to life. And so that is the space that.

Abby has been existing in this what-life space post her father the last five years. Yeah. Oh, man. I love that parallel. I, you mentioned earlier that Kathleen and Henry were really on your mind watching this episode, and this was one of the moments that they were on my mind. Thinking of what Henry said in that fifth episode, you know what happens when you do that to people the moment they get a chance they do it right.

back. And, like, to be clear, Joel is not Fedra. That is not how I feel about Joel. I love Joel and I am in a state of mourning and despair. I think that's what's different about us. People who have this connection to Joel and this history with Joel and the game and the show, whichever, and Abby, is like that we are capable. And obviously, part of the rich debate around the end of the first game and the end of the first show is that not everybody agrees. But even so, like, we are capable of holding an action. that Joel takes in a decision that he makes in judgment without holding Joel as a human being in a full state of, like, irredeemable contempt. But Abby is not, and she's not interested in trying.

And that, like, parallel to other characters, but then contrast with what we're bringing to a scene and what the characters inside of it are, that just, like, unceasing, unyielding, unvarnished sense of, like, I have one mission, one focus, and how that unites Abby and Joel. in the past in the story, and like this question of then, will it unite Abby and Ellie moving forward is a, it's a heavy thing, a heavy thing to parse. Here's where we're seeing even more of the breakdown in terms of the unity inside of the Salt Lake City crew in terms of Abby's determination to do it slowly. So to rewind back to episode one,

when Abby says at the beginning of episode one in that cold open, we first meet her, kill him slowly. a lot of game players objected to this because what they liked about this moment is that they felt like the contract between all the fire, the Salt Lake City crew was to show up and to kill Joel. And it's Abby in that moment who sort of draws it out. Not five years ago I said slowly and I meant slowly and I still mean slowly. It's Abby in that moment being like, I need to prolong this because it doesn't feel good yet. And hopefully the longer I do this, the worse I make it, the blow for blow sort of, how can I make this as bad for you as it was for me?

That slowly is a decision she makes in the moment, according to people, the feeling of the people who know the whole arc of her story and how that, what less than that drives home about sort of this, won't soothe you. This won't be a bomb no matter what you do. And so I, I, it's not a deal breaker at all for me, but I understand why people bumped a little on that change inside of the episode, you know? Yeah. It's interesting. I think I'm just like, so, I was just so sweat. I think that it's all really valid. I was so swept up in every moment of this. So good. Seeing Abby's eyes on Joel, like it, again, we're in Star Wars season again.

It felt to me like he was locked in like the tractor beam of her judgment. You know? Love it. You mentioned on our trailer pod and on our season two premiere pod, the discussion around like the differences in the physical stature of game Abby. Yeah. And show Abby. And I think in this sequence here, it is so. striking that Abby's physical size is like not the thing that matters.

It is the weight of her rage. That's it. Right? I love that. That's so good. We get this whole explicit monologue from Abby. This is another thing that game players are bumping on again, all this information. We've already gone around around on that.

But I love this thing that Craig said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. Again, a great like big cover story piece of Nicromer. Mono on this moment. But Craig said, the truth is what he did is what she's doing. What he, Joel did is what she's doing now. We kill for the people we love. Joel has an experience that neither Ellie nor Abby have. And we're going to explore this further in the season.

And that is the experience of loving a child, which is different than being a child and loving a parent. Craig, I love to hear you talk about your show. I know. It's like, I love this. Both Craig and Neil always are just like. coming through with these moments where I was like, but you didn't think about it that way. That really got me. That really got to me.

Absolutely. So I'm excited to see how they continue to sort of pull on that thread. Yeah. So I love all of this. But also this scene is rooting us in being a child. I mean, 19 is not like it. But you're young. You're a young person.

And the way that Kailen Deaver delivered this line when Abby said, but I looked at him. I saw him. I was 19. And how old is Ellie now when she's going to look at Joel and see him? Like, she says the nurses say you barely even looked at him when you pulled the trigger walk right past his body as you walked out the door. And something that they underlined in the official podcast is the way that they, in filming it, made sure the camera lingered on him.

Again, once again, making season one knowing that they were going to make. make season two. So knowing that, like, that's the moment where we leave Joel's POV, Joel walks out the door and we're with the doctor because this is the moment where as much as we are with Joel, this is a crossing of a Rubicon moment that we don't follow him on necessarily. Right. Some people do.

And some people don't. And that, to your point, is the disagreement that it's the heart at the center of the end the last game. Abby spots of the golf clubs. did. And those of us who know knew. And before she can start monologing again,

Joel says to just shut the fuck up and do it already. In the game, Joel says, why don't you just say whatever speech you've got rehearsed and get this over with? I like both versions, to be honest with you. Really great. And she says,

you stupid old man, you don't get to rush this, which is right out of the game. And stupid old man is a really interesting phrasing in terms of like really putting this in a generational context. This reminds me of when, so I was like Pedro Pascal has been aged up, you know, for this, for this role, for this moment.

And it reminds me of, I told you this at the time, but like a recap I was reading about the Mandalorian, which described Timothy Oliphant's comp, as like, this old man comes out. I was like, what are you talking about? Frankly, how dare you? And I'm like, what are you talking about? Caitlin Deaver says, you stupid old man.

And we're like, how dare you describe Joel as a stupid old man? But she was 19, is now 24, and he's in his 60s. And this is a generational, this happens, you know, same as it ever was, like generational cycles. But like, this is, you know, a Gen Z character. looking at a Gen Xer, being like, you know, essentially saying, okay, boomer to him, you know, but like puts this inside of these generational conflicts, which we talked about again and again again in terms of like who, who views the apocalypse in what way, what did you know about before versus what you know about now, you know?

I think the thing that, okay, boomers, that's killing me. I think the thing that hit me hardest about this was like, you know that really, particular and keen type of misery you experience when a person you don't like says something true about you? Like, this is, it's a terrible feeling. Desperately. No, I don't think of Joel this way, but the thing that matters is that we know he thinks this about himself, that he couldn't hear, like, that he wasn't fast enough, that he had

lost his edge. And, like, it's painful for the person. cross room who's about to take everything away to, like, give voice to that innermost fear. That's just, like, a really supreme and cutting kind of vulnerability and, like, really, really potent to watch. This is all bad. Everything we're about to talk about from here, I mean, I was already a wreck, but, like, this just, like, destroyed me.

It's about to get worse because here comes Ellie, right? And you have, like, that moment, Joe, like, one little tiny... She can save him. Can it still be okay? Yeah. And so I was talking to our producer Carlos, who hadn't played the game, went into Sunday night unspoiled to get his sort of POV. And I was asking him, I was like, at what point did you know for certain it was over? And he was like not until, you know, the shaft of that golf club, like, went in because, like, I thought at any moment we could have come back from this.

So Abby is screaming and punching. She has clearly been at it for a while. Man. Mel is crying. And the actress who played Mel just decided to do that. That was not a direction she was given. Owen is trying to get Abby's attention. And I already mentioned this moment where Ellie is outside the room and she hears Abby's screams and whales.

And it sounds like the infected to me. That's what it sounded like. Like a shriek. Yeah. Ellie comes in. she is sort of taken out immediately. Nora's holding her down and we get the Joel get up. And this is the moment.

And apparently a lot of people feel the same way. All of it is really tough to watch. Ellie crawling across the floor, she'll get to a ball, but this moment where she says, Joel get up, get fucking up. And his hand is switching. And he is trying to get up for her. destroyed me. Shredded me.

When he is pulp, he is trying to get up because she asked him to. Anytime you see, we love, again, we love to talk about the human characters

as infected, the twitching of his hand as a sort of like a nod to the infected symptom I thought was really, really good. And then

this notion that Joel tries to get up and can't. And to your point about Dina's on the floor. Abby has called him a stupid old man and he has to die knowing that he failed another daughter. For all he knows, he dies here and Ellie and Dina die right after him.

Like he, he dies. I'm putting scare quotes around it because I don't think of it this way, but he dies a failure. He dies failing at the one thing that he decided was his capital P purpose to come back to the theme that you have expertly threaded through this episode. I think there's like a, amid the horror and the anguish of what we're witnessing here, that first cry of Joel from Ellie's mouth, the get up, the get up, the get up. There's a little part of it that's like, at least Joel got to see how much she cared.

Yes. You know? Yes. But then the twitching of the finger and the little, like, what do we, I mean, is it half an inch the raising of the head? Barely. Yeah. To not be able to get to her. It's just like, it absolutely broke me.

I mean, seeing this in the game, I was like, I was actually having like a kind of like I don't understand. Like, how can this be happening more? And then watching it to the show, it was just like pure emotion and the performances all around. And the scene are just so good. And, you know, we've talked about what everybody's feeling and thinking what Joel is feeling and thinking what Abby is feeling. what Abby is feeling and thinking. And like for Ellie, you know, again, to go back to that idea of like, what did she write on the pad to Sam? Like, when he asked what she was afraid of, I'm scared of ending up alone. And like, when she and Joel had that, had that fight in the bedroom and Jackson

in season one, and he was like, you don't know what loss is. And she said, everybody I've cared for has either died or left me. Like, everybody fucking except for you. So don't tell me that I'm safer with someone else because the truth is I would just be more scared. And like whatever choice Joel made and whatever they went through, that was the defining truth that drove what she said to Jesse at the beginning of the episode. Like, Joel is that person in her life who helps her feel less afraid. And like, that's gone now. Also, Dina's on the floor immobilized and Ellie doesn't know whether or not Dina's alive in that moment. She's been knocked out with a milky syringe, but like, you know, who's to say?

She's not, you know, and so it's like, also I was thinking, I love that you always remember to cite that like her greatest fear is being alone. I've been thinking a lot about that don't fuck it up, don't fuck it up, don't fuck it up, don't fuck it up, a moment in her journal. and how Ellie is someone who's racked with anxiety in a number of ways, despite her sort of brash demeanor, you know, the thing that Jesse calls her out for. But like, she is someone riddled with uncertainty and insecurity and anxiety the way that Joel is. And also someone who trained so hard to be capable. Like we meet her in this season, in this.

scrimmage in the barn where she comes and she's so like cocksure, but she's been training to protect herself and protect the people she cares about from this very moment. And she gets taken down right away because she's simply outmatched by, you know, the Salt Lake City crew inside of this moment. And so it's a failure for her as well to protect the person that she loves. And again, I don't think of it that way, but that is how the characters think about it. Yeah, of course. Like, it's a dangerous thing when the characters of the story are driven by,

as is such a human thing, as we all are, like, our insecurities and our fears and our doubts, but also then our certainty, like our conviction that we are absolutely right. And that the thing we are going to do is absolutely right. And so, like, when we think about not only the parallels that have brought us to this point, but what the parallels might be moving forward, like, I'm going to kill you, I'm going to kill you, you're going to die, you're all going to fucking die. Yeah. The emotion that we see from Ellie here, but also that venom,

yes, we've seen that from Abby. It's much more muted in Joel, but all of those same emotions, the impulse for violence, the impulse to act to protect, are all in the brew together. Brew. The way that Craig described it in the official pot is, a catalytic change from fear to anger. They probably should have killed her, but they didn't believe it. I'm going to kill you.

You're all going to fucking die. There you go. Also, Craig was talking about this is how things end. We break all relationships, all the great loves of our lives. I just need Craig to talk to me about hope and happiness at some point. The connections we have with our parents, our children, they break. And how we deal with that is the most specific of human. suffering. This is in the interview. He gave THR. Great, great interview.

Okay. Ellie, we mentioned the sound cutting out as it does in the game. This puts us inside of Ellie's trauma inside of Ellie's head. And then Ellie crawls to Joel. This is not in the game. Ellie crawls to Joel like an infected, like a stalker almost. And I love what they said about the noises, the hurt little noises that the stalker girl made in the first episode, like how the human is still inside of her sort of trying to get out. These hurt noises from Elia, she drags herself over to Joel, holds his hand.

He dies, you pointed out the watch in frame when he steps in to rescue Abby, the watch is in, you know, his hand with the watch on it is right in by his head in this shot of him on the ground. The watch, the time stop, time is up for Joel. It's over. She pulls the club out and lays her head on top of his, and it's an overhead shot, and Dina's also there.

And it is very upsetting. Incredibly. This is what our listener, Skyler, said. I couldn't stop thinking about Ellie pulling herself over to Joel and in the end, and how it was a parallel to the way she did the same thing in season one in the basement when he was stabbed. She held his hand in both instances, and he got a thing for just a moment she thought he'd be okay, just like last time and he'd get up. And then the strings finally get cut when she realizes he's really gone, and she's just. just in total shock. Bella completely freaking sold that whole scene.

I could not stop crying the impact of Dina being there, etc. This was, you and I are both visibly, hopefully, auditorily upset. I did think it was interesting. I read this analysis from Gene Park,

who's a reporter for The Washington Post, and Gene I followed for years as an incredible sort of video game analysis. for The Washington Post across all things. He was highlighting the physical difference between these sets inside of the game versus not that the set here is, there's a lot of space and a lot of light.

And the where Joel dies and the game is a dingy, dark little room. And for him, that difference didn't work so well. How do you think about that? Does it enhance? Does it not really matter to you? What do you think? It's a great question and observation from Gene.

I really liked it because I think we talked about these visual tapestries a lot in season one, like one that just pops into mind. This might not be the best count, but like one that just pops into my mind right now is like that the moment in episode two when Ellie like wakes kind of in the fetal position and she's in the beam of light and Tess and Joel or like in the shadows in the darkness. I just like always have enjoyed when the show plays with light and shadow. and leans into the idea that those things are entwined in this world and that you're never,

no matter which, are you in the beam or are you in the shadow, you're never more than like the tip of a toe away from the other. And so pouring the light into such a dark sequence, I thought was appropriate. I think like the email that you just read from Skyler, that comp had not occurred to me. I love that. I think when Ellie grabs Joel's hand and when Ellie just kind of like drapes herself over him, just like unbearable to watch,

the thing that I was thinking of was Ellie being born and this other moment of like being entwined with this parent who is dying, who is gone. And this idea that for Ellie, like, loss has defined her life before she, even understood it, you know, before she even knew who these people were or what it would mean to feel that way about somebody, what it would mean to love them and then to lose them and then to miss them. That was the course that she was on. And it's just really, really, really

heartbreaking. It's really heartbreaking. But then the fact that she could find her way to some sense of like belonging and shared experience, it gives us hope. hope that maybe she can do that again, as bleak as things seem now. The two things I want to say, I want to come back to, of course, Ellie's mom, because we will hear from her in a second. But also, to sort of Gene's critique of the setup of the scene, I actually think it works even better for me. There's a devastating nature to devastating way that Joel dies in a diggy room. that's true there's also just something

so chilling about the contrast of being in this like Jackson, Wyoming luxury you know lodge that some incredibly rich person built from themselves in order to like be up on high surveying the valley below

right before they ate a scone and died yeah the the um crumpet I don't know my something with flour my eat the rich moment really came through Okay, like the, you know, the golf clubs being there makes even more sense inside of a context like that.

But just this idea of like the alien nature of being inside of this like, like almost, yeah, this relic of a bygone age, which is something we explore again and again inside of the game. There are just so many times that like Ellie's like, what is this hotel lobby? What do you do here in this hotel lobby? What is this ski lodge thing? Like, what is this? This was like the height of just sort of sheltered privilege. And this is where this bloody, brutal thing is enacted by this group of, you know, young people living inside of the future that they've had to create for themselves. Ellie also passed through the nursery.

Yes. Yes. Let's just dial it up another notch by walking fast. A crib. A crib. Let's just put a crib on it. Okay, so through the valley. Yeah.

This song by Sean James, covered by Ashley Johnson, who is the actress who portrayed Ellie in the game and also the actress who plays Ellie's mom in the show. So we are hearing this song that is a huge consequence to the game players. It was a song that played in the trailer. For the first trailer for Last of Us Part 2, this is like the first thing that players who are excited to play the game heard this song. And they hear, you could hear Ellie's voice emotional and distraught about something. And what does that mean?

We don't know what the last of us part two is yet. So what is this game that's coming that has Ellie so wrecked? What's happening? But then, you know, as the showrunners have pointed out, this is the voice of Ellie's mom. So as her dad dies, you're so right to invoke Ellie's birth year. As her dad, Angel dies, we hear from her. dead mother overlaid in this moment.

They didn't miss a beat in this stretch here. My God. Mashable has this analysis of this that I haven't been able to confirm, so I don't want to like hobbits and dragons at gmail.com if this is incorrect. But according to Mashable, the only way to hear through the Valley and the last was part two was to beat the game on permadeh mode. That's a setting that means if your character dies, you're not booted back to the start

level or your last save point to try again. You lose in permadeh setting. Death is not a setback. It's the end. Thus, this song playing over the sequence underscores the cold new reality. Joel is dead for good. Homs and Dragons at gmail.com. If Mashwell didn't get that quite right, I couldn't confirm it.

Okay. So we see the SL, the Salt Lake City crew is stomping away. Jesse rides up to the lodge too late. But I still felt bolstered by. Jesse's showing up in that moment. Same. We see the aftermath and Jackson, this upsetting tableau of a bitten man asking for help from his neighbor, essentially, like handing it's like saying, shoot me, I'm bit.

It's over for me. Brutal. Tommy is crying. He and Maria reunite. Tommy is crying. She kind of is the one like sort of supporting him back into shelter. I had a moment where I was like, does he, like, does he know via radio? somehow about Joel.

Listening to the official pod, that didn't really seem to be the implication. The implication is just like this is after the battle is embraced. It's a bummer to survive a battle. And that is what is happening there. And then we get the thing our listeners

seem to be most concerned about, which is Jesse and Ellie are on one horse, Dina on the other. Ellie is gaspicking looking over his shoulder. Joel is wrapped up and being dragged home. Oh, God. And we got several emails asking where is shimmer? Is shimmer okay?

Mal? It's not quite at the level of at the end of the long night, like, protect ghost. Literally live streaming, talk the thrones and just like looking into the camera and being like, can anyone tell me if ghost is visible in the scenes for next week before I have an aneurism on air because we had to get out to set before we could even watch this. but it's on my mind. And I feel that the bad babies, as always, are engaging in, this is our community.

You know, when we talk about community, it's like, we have the same things on our minds. As those emails started rolling in, the shimmer-based email as I was like, these are people. Oh, God.

Okay, I did not do any stray ground up. It seemed a little weird to do so for this episode. Let's just give it to the gas mask bong. Gas mask bong, it is. Okay. Spores galore. mushroom recipe Thunderdome. I had intentions of making this mushroom galette

that recipe that I did not get to because I blew all my energy on Friday on a triple mushroom lasagna that I made. That was amazing. You were on Instagram stories on Friday night flexing on everyone. You should apply to Top Chef. Like, this was unbelievable.

It was so good. It's from a... I asked the bad babies on social media for their mushroom lasagna recipes and I got this one. It's from a blog called Cooking for Keeps. It's a triple mushroom lasagna with ricotta, sage, and Fontina. And I added,

here's the tip, uh, lemon zest to the ricotta. Uh, and it made this sagey, mushroomy, cheesy, lemony, uh, situation that we ate while we, while we, uh,

decanted our meat. Did I tell you, uh, so this meat that we brewed a couple months ago, did I tell you what we, what we named it? I don't think so. Okay. This is my, this is making last, oh, and one of our listeners came up with the lasagna of us.

So making the lasagna of us, mushroom lasagna on Friday, while decanting our meat, we had, we had made this meat a couple months ago, and then we had split it into two bottles, and we flavored one with passion fruit syrup, and the other one is just plain Jane. Mead. So one is like effervescent and flavorful, and the other one is just like ordinary, but otherwise they are twins. So we called them Luke and Leah. The passion fruit one And Luke being just our basic honey boy

And they're delicious We did a great job with the mead Okay That's it That was just like a lovely That was just a high note to end Our non-spoiler section of this show And we're going to do a little spoiler section here

It's not going to take too long We've already been at it for a while And Mallory's been crying on and off for two hours So we're going to let her go soon But this is Your spoiler warning Anything you want to say, Mallory on the spoiler

You know, I think like episode one was the most intense Yeah to bounce if you don't want to hear you know that Joel's going to die Yeah But still, we will now talk about things that Have yet to happen in the show

That are going to happen Because they've happened in the game So if you don't want to hear that We will see you next week For our episode three Deep Dive And not only that, hopefully we'll see you Later this week for And

Andor. Andor. Yeah. It's the best. I'm so lucky. I just can't wait to talk about Andor. Bye for now. Stick around if you want some spoilers.

Okay, here we go. All right, here we go. Spoilers, a fungus among us. No mention of Owen and Mel's pregnancy. And we're missing sort of, I mean, if I dig deep, I can find it. But the whiff of the love triangle here of Abby's devastation at learning the Mel's pregnant by Owen. We get like Abby like You know making sure that Owen is like nice and warm at the beginning of the episode

Of course they've got a very special Yeah Wramping of the blanket around a dude you used to fuck who has impregnated another member of your Yeah Crew In the intro She doesn't know that Mel is pregnant I don't know Do you think there's like is there is there a chance that this is going to just not be in the show

Or it would be wild That would be very strange right so maybe they're just delaying it wild, it feels important to me that Mel is pregnant. I agree. I guess the thing that feels odd to me about not putting this, obviously there's still plenty to come and so it can still have this impact. But this question, like, the devastation that you mentioned, but also like split allegiance, right?

Like, that's the thing that feels so keen right away from Abby's perspective is like, oh, well, now like you're going to side with her, not me. And what it means, I mean, that's the worry. Because such a core part of the game, is Dina's pregnancy. And so this idea of, like, what does it mean to go back to Craig's, you know, quote about, what does it mean to be a child versus to be a parent? Like, what does it mean to have a family, a future, and this other new reorienting us?

Is the us, Dina and Ellie, or is the us, Dina and her kiddo is the us, the Salt Lake City crew, or is the us Owen and Mellon and their kiddo? like all of that is part of it. Also, I don't know, you're not quite, like, I already spoil a couple things for you, so I'm just not going to get into this, but there's some other reasons why I think it is very important that Mel is pregnant.

Okay. No sex in the girl house. Yeah. I just have to, I mean, there's no way that this scene isn't going to happen between Ellie and Dina. So my assumption is that this has just been delayed. Do you think it should draw it out to make it a little bit more of a like a will they won't they

sort of? So there was a moment in this episode when, you know, we're having the cute little like Jesse's giving Ellie shit and Ellie's like, no, like it didn't mean anything. She was just drunk. She was just high. Where to that point, I do wonder if, I do wonder if the show is like actually going to play for a little bit longer with like Ellie's doubt about whether. this thing between her and Dina is real, which would be interesting.

I think also, like, we talked last week, you cited that maze an idea that, like, kind of core text of how he views the story that, like, I'm paraphrasing, but the good moments in your life are always just interrupted by the bad. And so on the one hand in the game, it's like, it's that. You know, Ellie and Edina are together, and they take the step in their relationship, and it's beautiful. and obviously meaningful and then right on the heels of that,

like Joel dies, like that's awful? It's like, yeah, it's like, what happened with her first kiss? Yeah. This isn't necessarily her first time with Dina because there's the cat implication and stuff like that. But like it's her,

maybe her first time with someone like she cares as much as that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So that would, that obviously is very at home, that kind of sequencing in this world and the story. I wonder if they thought that was like, just like, let's, if we move it, it can be like a healing thing.

It can be like a salve that like Ellie can find a moment of joy and happiness with another person after going through this horrible thing. So like that's my hope is that the scene is still the problem. I mean, it's not in the weed house, but just, yeah, like, I mean, maybe they do go back to the weed house. I assume that would happen on the road to Seattle. But I don't know. We'll see. We definitely deserve this. Okay.

This is a conversation Rob and I were having because Keel and Deaver is a guest star. She is not in the main cast this season. So how much more Abby will we slash should we get? Because if we're going by like game rules, she's just gone. So like is Abby gone from the rest of the season? Are we going to get her in the finale? Like what do you think? Oh, man.

I don't know. I have no idea. I hope not. I don't want to have to wait till season three to see Abby again. I mean, it's such a short season, seven episodes that if it were the finale, then we'd have Abby in three of the seven episodes. And that balance actually feels kind of right to me. But so maybe if it's as a finale, if it's okay. But if Abby's not back in this season at all, that would be like weird.

Weird. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. this is something that I spoiled for you. I'm sorry. No, it's okay. It's my fault for not having to finish the game yet.

I should have checked in with you. I'm sorry. This is the point of the spoiler section to talk about the things that they're setting up in the show. So you're doing your, you're, you're, do your duty. Go on, do you do you do. All right. Oh, I meant to say this is a non-spoiler section. Yeah.

It is the five-year Sir Briannaversary on this day five years ago. Brand of Tartreth was a non-spoilersion. knighted. It's in my calendar recurring every year. So, yeah, happy Serbian anniversary to you. Happy anniversary to you. Thank you. Okay. Jesse.

There's this conversation between Jesse and Ellie is like, we all know you're the leader, the future of Jackson, blah, blah, blah. Spoiler for Mallory. Jesse will not make it out of this revenge mission. I'm not surprised by this at all. I think, like, I've just been programmed by a season. and now a game and a half to not get attached for long to the people who enter my life. So, you know, I think in that sense, if that's the fate that awaits Jesse, actually a little line like that between him and Ellie, like actually it's impactful.

It carries a lot of weight. It gives us a sense in addition to what we've glimpsed directly of the role that Jesse plays in this community and, you know, the respect that people have for him and the trust that they put in him. And also then it's really sad to think, like, what would his future have been? Yeah. Without getting swept up in this. All right. I was, like, just seeing them on the, it's fine. Seeing them on the horses at the end, obviously, like, mostly I'm just completely torn up by watching Ellie turn around and look at Joel's little, like, wrapped up body. Yeah.

Corpse sled. But just seeing Dina. Ellie and Jesse together like that when they're about to wind up on the road together and like the pregnancy and just they're kind of naughty but also full of affection and love for each other. Yeah, triangle. Triangle is so interesting. That pretty seems like the question of why have Dina there. Yeah. Hit me.

What do you got? Well, so I wrote I have a theory before I read all the interviews. So basically, why have Dina, instead of Tommy in there at the lodge? The Tommy thing I'll set aside because I'm actually not sure her of the ramifications of that. Dina, then going with Ellie to Seattle. So Dina going with Ellie, not as Ellie's plus one, but as someone who was there. Someone who also experienced that trauma, I think is a little bit more interesting, even more interesting. And then Bella Ramsey said this fascinating thing in the E.W. piece.

where she said they, Dina and Ellie, have become trauma bonded. Trauma bonded in a way, but there's also an element of resentment. I think there was some real jealousy. Dina got to be with him. Dina got to spend that last day with him. And there's a lot of guilt and regret on Ellie's part. That was a little thing that I was leased into what I took afterwards, especially. Okay.

So eventually, actually, I don't want to talk about this. We're going to talk more when you've been. finish the game. Okay. Now, I don't want to limit you. It's the spoiler section. Say what you need to say. I would say like, yeah, this can, this can be fuel for further fractures and fissures inside of Dina and Ellie's relationship. Okay. The Seattle and Isaac Tees. Let's go, baby. Let's go. She's like, I wouldn't go to Seattle if I were you, but that's not a problem for you, but it's going to be a problem. Yeah. For Dina and for Ellie and for Jesse and for Tommy, etc. The tease for episode three, chilling.

Just ending on that note, Abby. But so I don't know. I mean, you never can tell how much they're showing you. Will Ellie set out in the middle of the episode, maybe? But is that episode three, this like bridge? Morning, reflection, grief. And then the journey to Seattle begins in episode four. I'll be curious to see just like the pacing.

given that we only have seven episodes to work with. And then, you know... But also, what does it mean for the community? Right. She's leaving Jackson in a different state because this is a Jackson that is licking its wounds from a battle. Right. Versus a Jackson that lets them go off solo, you know?

Yeah. And, like, again, I'm just going off the, like, 20-second trailer for next week. But when Ellie is kneeling in front of Joel's tombstone, like there's no snow on the ground. It seems like time has passed. Is that because Ellie's healing? Right. She's like she's waking up from her grievous injury.

She's like unable to breathe barely on the horse. It seems like they're like in the glimpse of next week. Like draining fluid from her like collapsed lung or something. Very gnarly. Not great. But yeah. So and I'm just curious to see like I'm really curious to see what is the same or different with Tommy. Because I mean, we talked about a lot of the Tommy choices and changes.

And what will the implications of that be in our episode one pod? But like, so Tommy is not there, but he still lost Joel. Like, Joel died. This happened. Tommy has a son now, like, so much of the early stretch of seeking out Abby and looking for the wolves and, like, coming across the scars and everything is, like, Ellie basically, like, haunting Tommy's steps, you know, in pursuit of Tommy, like a little bit behind. him on his quest. Is that going to happen the same way in the show? I'm fascinated to see, or is that going to be different?

Because a lot of Tommy's stuff has been different. I'll be really curious. I assume he has to still go. Like, has to. But will something be different about how that unfolds? Curious to see. Here's the other thing I spoiled for Valerie, and I'm once again deeply sorry. You didn't.

This one I got on the Joe Rob Pod. Oh. Got hit with it there listening last week. So this was not an end-docks spoiler. But in the spoiler section. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Teresa asks, what was your experience watching the porch scene after seeing episode one of the show's interpretation of the post-party exchange?

When do you expect the porch scene to come into the show? And I guess we'll wait to see how they depict it. But are you concerned that to some viewers, if they do the show conversation scene later, that they will think it's Ellie's fix-it wish and on actual memory. So if you're listening to the spoiler section and you haven't, don't know this already, but like the scene where Ellie's, I mean, this is how the guitar gets into Ellie's room strong and reverently put on a stand is that Ellie and Joel have an important conversation before he dies. And it comes at the very end of the game. So I don't know if they'll save it for the very end of the show or if that's something they'll, a little meal that they'll serve us a little earlier on the flight. I don't know.

but I will just say without getting into too much detail for Mallory that it does date me. Okay, Mallory. I'm not there yet, obviously, so I can't comment on that specifically. I will just say a couple things here. One, I think, again, the episode, I think the episode makes it clear that something transpired. It's just a question of what that something is.

I also think that the way the creators are talking about it makes it pretty clear that something happened it's just a question of what they're framing it is this mystery like what has unfolded and I don't think they literally said on the official pod like I like Mason was like I don't think this is a spoiler to see because you all have seen trailers like Pedro's gonna be back

so we're definitely doing five facts yeah they're not like and obviously if you watch the trailers for the season And there are a number of shots of Joel, as we've talked about before, with like different hair that we haven't seen yet. So I think if people are avoiding trailers or any material entirely, they might be very surprised that we get flashbacks. But otherwise, it seems clear that these are gaps that the show intends to fill in for us, right? And you have gotten to some of the flashbacks in the gameplay. And I have gotten to some of them. So I've played the three years earlier and the two years earlier flashbacks.

So, and I mean, we'll talk about, I'll, you know, save my thoughts on the particulars there until we get to, I assume they'll be doing all of that in the show until we, until we get to those moments in the show. But I will just say, like, I was texting you over the weekend when I was playing some of these moments. Like, it's difficult to describe how intense it is. Yeah. You know, you have, like, lost this person and grieved and then, like, there you are ported back in time. And it's about filling in this space. understanding what has transpired between these people, but it's also just a chance to, like, live in that moment, like, for a second again. And it's really, really sad, but also, like,

really this precious thing. I just think structurally, it's, like, a brilliant thing that they did to, and it doesn't in any way diminish the impact of having lost Joel because he is gone, and that is the defining current circumstance that, like, Ellie is working through. But we still get to be with them and, like, spend time in their relationships. We get to go. to the museum, see the dinosaurs, go into the space pod. Like, it's just really, really, really, really intense and great. I'm like, yeah, I understand why people talk about this game the way they do, you know. It's just amazing.

And I think in a meta way, it'll be interesting to see how they part, the, the, the, partition the flashbacks out because, yeah, there is that sense of like, the Pedro Bella magic. Yeah. That we will of course be missing. So would the temptation be to do a flashback every episode? So you have at least a scene with Pedro Pascal in every episode of the season of the last of us or save it for later. So it packs more of a wallup.

Like how are they going to do that I think is interesting to me. Agreed. Okay. Last email. Yes. That I loved. Came from our listener Claire. who said, I recently started reading The Body Keeps the score in working to gain more knowledge about my own trauma.

And it's been enlightening in terms of The Last of Us 2 as a story that's about the ripple effects and cycles perpetuated by trauma as much as it is a story about forgiveness, though many people mistake it for being a story about revenge. You guys are crazy busy with your podcast, saturated lives, but I felt it could be interesting if you guys had to read bits of the book to better contextualize Ellie's journey. One particular thing that jumped out to me in The Body Keeps the Score, the author talks about a Vietnam vet who committed unspeakable and despicable acts of violence against children slash sexual assault in a village immediately after his squad was ambushed and a rice paddy and all his friends were killed in front of him in a matter of seconds. It made me understand better the despicable behavior we witness from Ellie in terms of being a symptom of her fully unchecked and unprocessed PTSD after witnessing Joel's death. The book also talks about how this physiological aspect of PTSD results in an almost addiction-like tendencies, and is why survivors of trauma will often recreate the trauma in a perpetuating cycle because of their altered brain chemistry. So Ellie isn't just brutally murdering people as an act of revenge, but because her brain is physically craving and compelling her to essentially reenact the traumatic violence of Joel's death over and over again.

I could go on, but we'll leave it there for now to Mallory advice, taking care of yourself mentally well playing the game. It really wears you down towards the end. So I thought that was fascinating. I was thinking a lot about the fact that in the first season, we talked about a lot about the Tim O'Brien book, the things they carried and this idea of like soldiers and the items that they have with them,

the trauma that they carry, but the physical items that they carry with them. And when we were talking about what's in Ellie's backpack, what's in Joel's backpack. So this idea ends and invoking Eugene's life is a Vietnam vet inside of this episode just made me think of, yeah, this, Vietnam is such a fascinating, that's a cold word for it, is such an indelible moment in terms of American, unjustified or justified American violence

and something that creatives, filmmakers, writers, psychologists have been grappling with ever since. And especially for people who are like, you know, around Neal and Craig's age and stuff like that, like that, that would be the kind of psychological impulse that they would be maybe interested in exploring. So I've not read this book. I have, you know, it's a, it's a classic. And if I can check out parts of it, I will. But thank you so much to Claire for writing it about it and putting it on my mind. I will be thinking about it, I think, going forward. So, yeah. Great emails from. the bad babies this week as always.

Coming through with mushroom recipes and shimmer concerns and the effects of PTSD on the brain. Listen, shimmer concerns. Like, we know shivers okay. Yeah. But not for long. Yeah. I mean, God, that really got me. Shimmer.

In the game. That's a rough moment. Painful. Okay. This has been definitely a deep dive from Joanna Robinson and Mallory Rubin. We knew it. We said at the beginning of the same. season, like when we were talking about, we're like, well, except probably, except for whatever

episode it ends up being when Joel dies. Like, this was always going to be a big one. We're going to hit these. We'll be back to two hours next week. Yeah, about two hours usually, but this is a biggie. All right. So thank you. We'll be back, obviously, with Andor with more The Last of Us.

Thank you to the whole crew on the pod here today. We've got you, John Richters, you're Stephen Allman's, you're Carlos, you're a dinner, rungipas. And, of course, you'll be dinner on social. Our Salt Lake City crew, thank you so much for being here with us. You're the best. Anything else I need to say before we go? Did I do it? I think we did it, Joe. You know, 10 seconds in, we already couldn't feel our asses. Three hours in? We definitely can't. That's our app. I love you.

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