The Ringer-Verse - 'The Last of Us' Season 2, Episode 4: The Gamer Guide | Button Mash

Episode Date: May 8, 2025

Ben and Daniel pass the halfway point of the second season as they visit Seattle and take on Episode 4, "Day One." After sharing their brief reviews of the episode, they discuss several significant changes to core characters and scenes from 'The Last of Us Part II' before wrapping up with some speculation about the structure of the remainder of the season (and beyond). Intro (0:00)Episode 4 breakdown and reactions (2:30)Predictions for the rest of the season (40:00)Outro (54:43) Hosts: Ben Lindbergh and Daniel ChinProducer: Devon RenaldoAdditional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Nathan Hubbard, as we guide you from Augusta all the way to Northern Ireland, Royal Port Rush. Away we go. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tramphaya offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tramphia is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self-inject Tramphia, proper training is required.

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You don't need weather tech floor liners in the summer unless you hit the beach or go camping. Then you'd want a cargo liner or a road trip goes sideways, ketchup goes rogue, ice cream drips. Yeah, you'd be pretty happy about it. those weather tech seat protectors. So just to be clear as the mud, you're inevitably going to step into the summer. You don't need weather tech unless you plan on doing summer. Visit weathertech.com today. Hello and welcome into the ringerverse, your nexus feed for all things fandom. I am Ben Minberg, senior editor for the ringer and button mash host. And as Joel Miller once said, you go halfway across the country with someone.

I've gone halfway across the season with someone, more than halfway. And that someone is Ringer staff writer. Daniel, hello, hello. Can you believe it? We're past the halfway point. I know, this is breeze and by, you know? It might not be three episode dumps every week like Andor, but... Yeah, I know.

It's tough to keep up with all the content that's happening. Just one measly episode of a show per week. Easy. This is easy mode. I can keep up with this. But yeah, these seven episode seasons, they just sneak up on you. It's like a stalker on the streets of Seattle. Just don't even hear them.

Suddenly they're on top of you. And today we are talking about the last of us, season two, episode four, day one, written by Craig Mason, directed by Kate Heron. So our boilerplate, spoiler warning, we will be discussing everything on the HBO show through season two, episode four. We won't be discussing future episodes. In fact, we have not seen them. We want to be in the trenches with all of you.

We're not watching ahead here, but everything else, as I always say, is, so to speak, fair game. We will be talking potentially about the entirety of The Last of Us part two. And, of course, we always encourage people to contact us at ringerverse gaming at gmail.com. Maybe we can start off, as we usually do, before we get into the big changes and analysis here with our quick takes on the episode. So, as Ellie says, fuck Seattle. Her words, not mine. I quite like Seattle, the city. I also liked this episode.

What did you think? I liked it a lot. I think especially after last week, I think neither of us loved it as much of some of the other episodes that we've had. And I thought that this one was really solid. We'll obviously get into all the finer details. But I really liked some of the changes that they made from the game. Yes, I agree.

Very solid. Bounce back from relative low of last week. At least in my mind, not quite to the high of episode two. There has been some buzz about this being the best episode of the season. And I get that on a character level, but you can't compete with the spectacle of episode two. I don't know if that makes me basic or what, but like episode two, that was a legendary episode of television. And it's hard to beat the episode where Joel dies. You know, it's like, this is the biggest event.

Full-on battle, the likes of which we have not seen in this series as of yet. Yeah. That's tough to top. But this was a good episode. It adapts the day one sequence in Seattle, hence the name, with several sections that map pretty closely onto their video game counterparts. And some, as always, that stray significantly from the original. So we'll be spending a lot of time on the latter.

And sometimes I worry that we won't have enough to talk about on these pods since we're focusing so heavily on the show as an adaptation. But then we start chatting after the episode and kind of compare. We're comparing notes and we work on the outline and suddenly I realize, no, there's a ton to cover. Even if it's not episode two, there are a lot of pretty significant departures, even if in the broad strokes, it's kind of a faithful episode more or less, but there's definitely a lot of less in there when it comes to the faithfulness. And I really enjoy just diving deep into these changes and scrutinizing and analyzing.

So this has been fun for me. Yeah, no, definitely. And it's just the amount of care that's being put into this adaptation is so visible each episode. And like I feel like part of it is obviously Neil Druckman being involved in it, Halle Gross, having a part of this show too. But Craig Mason clearly just loves this game and he loves this world. So that really shines through in a nice way. Ultimate Last of a super fan who happens to be also making this show. But this is sort of an open-ended exploration stage of a mostly win-year game.

This was kind of a departure from the original Last of Us formula where it's all largely scripted and you're going along a prescribed route. And in this part of the game, it opens up a little bit. It's not like open world, go anywhere, do anything. But you can explore. You can poke around. You can see things in different sequences. And obviously, that's not quite how TV works. This is not interactive.

And so there was a lot of streamlining here. So in the game, of course, as we've talked about, Tommy precedes them to Seattle. And so they're following along in his wake at this point. And they're hunting for him as he is hunting the wolves and Abbey. And they're following all these clues and notes and corpses that Tommy has left in his wake. And so there's a lot of stuff that is just excised from this episode because it wouldn't really fit in the absence of Tommy. Like there's a whole hotel WLF base sequence.

There's an infected fight. not the one that is actually in this episode, which is also in the game, Ellie and Dina get captured and held hostage briefly, and then they find a note that directs them to the TV station. Whereas here, we make a couple stops. We get Weston's pharmacy. We get the valiant music shop, but then we go directly to the TV station. So we cut out some stuff that takes a lot of time gameplay-wise,

but wouldn't make so much sense probably for this adaptation. Yeah, there are just a lot of parts. I remember just playing this part of the game, too, where it's like, even just getting into Seattle, you have to, like, go get gas and, like, you're throwing, like, wires over fences and stuff. Yeah. And it's like, that puzzle solving is, like, fun as a player, but obviously it would track a little bit in a TV show. Some of these, like, changes are just, like, very natural. Yeah, like hooking up generators so that you can open doors or fences or something.

Probably wouldn't make the most riveting TV on Sunday night on HBO. Although I did enjoy that when we go to Weston's, pharmacy, we do get some of that rifling through drawers and cabinets, which is honestly, like, the majority of your time playing The Last of Us is just like searching in drawers and picking up painkillers and stuff. Like, that's a big part of the game. So I'm glad that that was represented here, even if that alone wouldn't be so entertaining. But got to pick up those pregnancy tests.

That's very important. Yeah, I feel like we know we've talked a lot about it across the season, too, but we've always been waiting for a lot of these little changes that they've made earlier on, like, whether it's like Tommy not going yet or like Mani combining into Jordan's character. We're also seeing the effects of that too. We're like, since Jordan doesn't exist in the TV show, we don't have that whole interrogation scene either. So it's like we don't have that part either. Yeah. And so the two stores that we get represented here very close to the game. And in fact, I was corresponding with Alexandria Neoneke, who's one of the people who's one of the people who,

who worked on character concept art for The Last of Us Part 2, the game. I was hoping she could come on the pod, but she was traveling this week, but we were trading some emails, and she wrote, It's Wild to see how close they match the game. I've even seen design work I did end up directly in the show, Weston's pharmacy branding in the most recent episode. So that's straight out of the game, and Alexandria worked on some of the initial concept art for Ellie and Dina

and how they first got together and their romance and everything. So that's sort of special, I'd imagine, to have been the first person to envision that and portray it on a page. And then several years later, after having seen it come to life in the game, you see it come to life in live action. So the stuff that's in here from the game is very familiar. And I guess the highlight of that would be the take on me scene, which is the highlight of this episode probably and a reason why it's gotten a lot of acclaim. And that is optional. That's an optional sequence in The Last of Us Part 2, but you don't want to miss it because it's great and it plays out more or less like it does in the game. Yeah.

I don't know about you, but when I'm playing these types of games, I feel like I'm a little bit like OCD about it. I need to like complete every single part of it. Even if I'm just playing as Abby, I'm like looking around for quarters the whole time. But this is like one of those moments where it's like I almost forgot that it was optional because it's like such a memorable. an iconic part of the game. Right. It shouldn't be optional. You have missed something important if you missed that scene.

And it was presented really well here, and Bell Ramsey did a great job, I think. Just a poignant delivery helps to actually play guitar for the verisimilitude on screen. You can often tell when an actor's faking it, and it was authentic here. And, you know, there's a little more guitar in the game. I guess there's the future days. scene with Ellie in the theater, which I guess we haven't seen Joel play in the show. So it wouldn't make sense to have it here. But that's, you know, she picks up the guitar and brings it with her. And so there's a little more. And of course, the interactivity of strumming with your, you know,

button presses just adds to the immersiveness in the scene. But no, that was special. It was special in the game. It was similarly special in the show. And from a mood perspective, the diametric opposite of that would be the introduction to Isaac. So one part of this is very faithful. Jeffrey Wright reprises his role, but the role quite different in a number of ways. So our introduction to Isaac in the game comes much later, maybe, I don't know, 10 hours or so in during the playable Abbey section when Abby visits Isaac. This seems to be about when it happens chronologically in the narrative. It's just not split up the way that the game is.

But we get a lot more backstory on Isaac here. It's different backstory. And the scene that we see of him in the present, the torture scene, is actually much more graphic and dark in the show than the game, which is a little bit different from, I don't know, I guess we talked about the Joel death scene being. slightly less squelchy and graphic in some ways, not that they were holding back or pulling punches or golf clubs that much, but some aspects of it were a little easier to watch on TV or less difficult to watch than they were in the game.

In this case, no, they went further with the torture. They really committed to the bit here. Yeah, and I think the way that they did this was just so clever in expanding that moment just because of like how much you've seen, And how much he's changed in those 11 years from the opening flashback where he's the one leaving behind Fedra. Because Fedra is the ones that have just completely lost sight of humanity and the people that they're supposed to be protecting and serving. And here he is now like 11 years later doing the same thing to them, the way that he's calling them scars as opposed to seraphites.

And just like burning the hell out of the sky after he's clearly already been beating him. So the fact that they really draw that out and really highlight that parallel, I thought. thought was really clever. Yeah. In the game, it's just more implied. We don't see the specific torture techniques so much. There's clearly been torture happening. We're just not privy to the details so much.

And in episode two of the series of this season, Abby referenced a code of ethics that her commander in Seattle, Isaac taught her saying that you shouldn't kill people who can't defend themselves. So they're not exactly abiding by their code in all cases here. You make some exceptions, it seems like. But the changes to Isaac's backstory. So game Isaac was a former Marine. Here he's a former Fedra Sergeant, and we see how he turns on his soldiers here and

just encloses them in a grenade slaughterhouse. So these changes, like, do they make him more or less sympathetic? I guess it's hard to say that he's sympathetic, given that we just saw him massacre some soldiers, and then also torture someone brutally before killing him. But the switch from former Marine to former Fedra and implications that could have, we could potentially talk about that a little later, but what do you make of the motivations for that

or how it could affect his portrayal? Yeah, I mean, I think it's just what they're doing is really interesting because Isaac is obviously such an important character in the video game too, but you don't really get to see as much about where he comes from. And like on the official podcast, Craig Mason and Neil Druckman spoke about this part. And Mason was just saying that this entire sequence was inspired by a moment that while you're walking around in this open world section of the DA1, where you find a Fedra truck where

clearly it seems like from the inside it was destroyed. And you can find like a note from Isaac where it seems like Isaac was actually coordinating with somebody that had been pretending to be Fedra. So they're kind of like pulling a little bit of elements from that. But as like Druckman refers to it, there's just all these instances of environmental storytelling in the game where you have implied storylines of things that are happening. It's obviously part of the fun of walking around this world. You're picking up all these notes. But I think it's just the really, really good choice by Mazin and the rest of them to just actually kind of pull some of these elements and actually make that a part of Isaac's backstory and create this actual origin story.

him. Yeah, I agree. It's an opportunity to flesh out that backstory. And yeah, you can pull some elements, but did he actually pull the pin and throw that grenades in the game? Hard to say. Here he does. But yeah, you're picking up those details through dialogue, through notes. You're not really getting dedicated flashback cutscenes about Isaac. And he's an intriguing character. He's an important character who wouldn't want more Jeffrey Wright. So that seems like a positive. I guess you could say that these two scenes as an introduction, it's a little neat, I suppose, to sort of very efficiently economically show his evolution. Like, here he is doing one thing and then flash forward and he's doing the opposite.

He's become what he hated, what he was trying to fight, right? So it's like you see his whole arc in two scenes, which is maybe a concession to the fact that we might not see so much of him in the near future. again, it's hard to say because he's a big part of the Abbey portion of the game and subplot. And so does that mean that we will not see so much of him until Abby makes a grand return to the show or will it be more intercut? Because it read a little bit to me like, okay, maybe we don't want to focus on him that much, but we want to just introduce who he is and who he's become, basically, in two scenes

and kind of get that out of the way. Yeah, the other element of I like to have about it a lot, though, was that it was kind of, I thought, a better introduction to the seraphites than we got like the last episode. Yeah. Because I felt like that scene when they're walking and it's like the father and the daughter, it just felt very out of place to me and a little bit stiff in the way that a lot of the other part of the episode flows a little bit more naturally. And this one, you get so many details about just the prophet, about the truce that's been broken between them. But also just like how clearly how much this guy believes in the seraphites and believes in the prophet and her teachings in like a very fanatical kind of way. And that tells you a lot more, I feel like, without having to say too too much. And as we'll see what happens later with like Levin Yara, like how much these types of the super fanatic types of seraphites can really like turn against themselves.

Yeah. Yeah, this seems like a chance to do a Bill and Frank style elaboration on a compelling character that we just don't know that much about. That's not exactly what we got here. It wasn't that in depth, but there is the potential, at least, to keep giving us more about Isaac. So one other important change here, very important to the animal lovers out there. It seems like shimmer remains among the living and perhaps may stay that way. I don't want to over promise. We haven't watched ahead. But in the game, Shimmer bites it in this portion of the game. And bloodily, you ride over essentially a wolf booby trap. And Shimmer just gets put out of her misery. But there certainly is some misery there briefly.

And that's, I mentioned that Ellie and Dina get captured and held hostage. That's kind of part and parcel with that. None of that here, fortunately. No horse death to this point, mercifully. And as far as we know, Shimmer is just chilling in the store. I mean, I hope that, like, Shimmer has provisions and that they're checking on her

and that she could get out if she needs to, but she's better off stuck in there than she is in the game. So how do you see that? You know, if the torture scene's going to be darker, then let's lighten up on poor shimmer. It doesn't even seem like they really remember that Shimmer's not with them, but...

I know. Right. Maybe we'll get to see. Did they leave food and water? Like, you know, I mean, I hope anyway. Yeah, but at least Shimmer is alive. You know, it's a very brutal, brutal death in The Last of Us. It's not, I remember Ghost Shushima has an even more brutal horse death that I feel like I still think about.

Yeah, that's tough. It doesn't rise to the level of that, but shimmer, you know, you see from, shimmer from a young age in this. Yeah. I'm all right still for now. Yeah, me too. You bond with your mount in a game. It's pretty important.

Exactly. And it's very sudden. It's just you're riding along, no, no suspicion that anything's going to go wrong. And then suddenly shimmer's dead. It's rough. So, yeah, I don't know if the implication is that they just set her free to do her own thing. Like they're in Seattle. We don't eat her now.

You'd think they'd want her to ride back, though, unless they intend to steal another horse or car or something. Anyway, we hope Shimmer's okay, as far as we know she is. So the Channel 13 TV studio section, pretty faithful to the game, down to the guts and the entrails, right? Yeah. I mean, I think what struck me the most about this whole section was just how amazing the production design, the set design of everything is. And I remember even when I was writing the recap this weekend,

I had to add in that little detail from the inside the episode, because I was like shocked that they were actually stunned people hanging up there. It's so wild to me. Yeah. That's really commitment to authenticity. Would we have known if it was a fake corpse hanging up there? Who knows? But it certainly passed the eye test and seemingly the smell test, according to Ellie and Dina's reaction here.

So yeah, they really dressed that up to look like it did in the game. The whole sequence is fairly faithful. And then we go to the subway tunnel sequence, which is similarly faithful, I guess, in terms of setting. Right. So the degree of threat here, or at least the quantity of infected, is different. So we get sort of the same set. And again, they very faithfully recreated it and lovingly, I guess you could say. But they changed it to be a bit more action-oriented.

This is more of a mob of infected compared to the game, which is more of a survival horror stealth section. You're sort of sneaking around. Here, the infected are just busting down the doors and the windows and they're in the cars and everything. It's kind of the opposite. We talked about how in the mall left behind Riley sequence last season, that was more of a mob in the game, a big pack of infected and just a single infected on the show. Here it's kind of the flip side where they dialed up the infected presence. And it was pretty intense, so I'm not complaining. Yeah, I mean, I just remember this part of the game being so visually striking, too, with just the red flares.

And I really liked that they incorporated that look to it as well. It is really interesting. The fact that there are, there are so many hordes that they're doing in this version of the show, just because of the way that with the mycelia, that they're able to deliver this message so quickly. And it makes me just wonder with like things like later on when they're going to be at the farm. It's like, how can you really live so isolated

when it's like if something little like this can just trigger a whole army of them? I know. Yeah, you'd think they'd be a bit more spread out potentially, but yeah, it makes for a very exciting scene. And it also sets up what happens next. then this is one of the more significant changes in this episode, which we will probably talk about at length.

So we haven't seen spores on the show yet. And we talked about why that was the case in season one. Maybe it's just harder to convey them on a show than it is in the game. And you have to have people with gas masks on all the time before the characters are well established. That's less of a concern now. And we'll talk about the next time on sneak preview. Spoilers. We're about to get spores, but we don't have them here.

In the game, Ellie is exposed to spores, and that's how her immunity is revealed to Dina. Here, so this is similarly at the end of the subway tunnel sequence, but Ellie gets bitten again. Poor Ellie. She's up to, is this three, three bites now she's gotten? So it's a little more definitive, and it's also. just makes it more of a selfless gesture on Ellie's part than an accident. I mean, she's not giving her life. Dina initially thinks she's sacrificing herself, but Ellie knows that she's immune. It's not going to kill her. But still, sticking your hands into infected jaw,

that's no fun. And so to do that, I thought was actually a better way to introduce the immunity. And then, of course, we get this whole tense standoff after that, which is also not really a thing in the game. Isabella Merced talked about the differences between the show and the game reveal and said, I think it's more of an intense sequence on TV. The game is a little bit more casual. She finds out in a completely different setting and it's too fast so she doesn't really get to fully process it. And I agree with that, having gone back and rewatch that reveal yet again, I prefer how they handled it on the show. Yeah, I'm totally with you.

I think this is one of my favorite, like, changes that they've made this season, at least, in terms of, like, changing a significant moment in the game. And it's, it just makes so much sense because it's just, it's such a good point of suspense and drama to draw it out a little bit more in this way where you have the standoff because in the game, it's, it's immediately obvious because Ellie is not coughing up the spores and it's not, like, becoming affected pretty quickly that like Dina just has the proof right there. Yeah.

But Dina doesn't have that in the TV show. And the fact that Ellie just so naturally puts her arm out there too, I thought it was just such a cool moment too because she has this great presence of mind, of knowing that she can just navigate this world differently because she is immune. Yeah. I really liked this change quite a bit. And then you get this whole standoff overnight. Ellie somehow sleeps in this situation.

I guess she's used to sleeping under pressure to. doesn't seem like it would be conducive to sleep. That again, doesn't seem like it would be conducive to sex. And that doesn't stop anything. So that's another major change here. And we get on the heels of the immunity reveal and Ellie satisfying Dina that she is, in fact, not going to turn and doesn't have to be shot in the head. Then we get the reciprocation where, okay, Ellie's come clean about her secret that she's

immune and now Dina volunteers that she is pregnant. And that is the foreplay. That's all it takes and they go at it. So we talked about the different circumstances for the first hookup other than the dance kiss in the game, which comes much earlier just when they're out on patrol and they get marooned during the blizzard and it's a very nice tender scene. A little bit different circumstances here. So the timing of it changes everything really about their relationship to this point and the will they or won't they. There's really no won't they in the game. They do. But the way that this went down, I don't know. I understand, I guess, intellectually speaking, the pressures, the relief. I've never been in exactly this situation. And I hope not to be

in terms of infected hordes and surviving. Plagues. Bell Ramsey said on the making of that when they read the script and saw that sex scene, it made so much sense. And I was thinking, really? I just don't know that this would put me in the mood. Just having did I do understand, though, it's like, I thought I lost you. And now I'm not. And we envision this whole future and you're okay and it's a miracle. And all right, let's let all the emotions out. But were you a bit taken aback when this was the way that it went down? Yeah, this was honestly the only moment I think I had like a criticism for the whole episode. Because it is just, it's just so abrupt. And it's just like, I feel like they both should have

so many questions for the other one, whether it's the humidity or the pregnancy. I will say, and we like, we didn't talk about this too much before when we were talking about the take on me scene, I do appreciate the fact that that take on me scene has a lot more meaning in this TV show version of it because that was really the courtship happening in this, in this version of it. And that serves a function that it doesn't quite serve in the game already because at that point, their relationship is already like set. True. They were, like, already like, you know, wherever you go, I go kind of thing.

And they were still kind of feeling each other out. So it's like, after having that moment, where. where Dina's really falling for her, some of that tension still left over. But still, it is like a really like a broth smell. I don't know. I'm torn. It's like one second ago you were considering shooting her

because you weren't sure if she was about to turn into a fungus monster and try to bite you. And to go from that to, well, I guess we can swap fluids of various kinds. I don't know. I mean, maybe like a little longer quarantine periods, just to be sure, but look, it's love. So I guess these are risks that you take. Speaking of risks, I got to say, even more than that, breaking my immersion or suspension

of disbelief, I feel like the way that Jesse's been portrayed on the show, the idea that he would ever have unprotected sex just boggles my mind. Like, he seems like the kind of guy who's using, like, multiple condoms just to be sure. Like, he's, he's all about the rules. He's all about the protocols. If he is not intending to get pregnant, I feel like he's going to take all possible precautions. He just doesn't seem like the guy to, in the heat of the moment, get carried away. I don't know.

We weren't there. We weren't privy to that particular encounter, which probably didn't go down the way this one went. I'm just saying, Jesse, he's a rule follower. He is cautious to a fault, if anything. I just, I don't know. I don't know if I see this happening with him. I think that's a very fair point.

And, like, when I first was watching it, I was wondering, like, well, maybe they didn't have access to condoms, but like they have a whole hospital. They are so well set in Jackson. There was no way that was the issue. Yeah, no. They have plenty of protection. So I guess it was just, you know, look, these things could happen, right? Condoms 99.0.99 something percent effective.

So, you know, maybe the condoms are old. It's been a while, right? Maybe it failed. That's okay. That's my head canon. No pun intended for how this happened with Jesse. He was fully protected, but the condom failed. That's how this happened.

I was glad that Dina used four pregnancy tests, just to be sure, because I was Googling, like, how long did pregnancy tests last? And the answer is not very long at all. So it makes sense that she'd have some redundancy here. I like that detail, yeah. Because immediately Alia is just like, well, they're pretty old. And she's like, all right, here's one, here's two. Right.

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As Beth and Rip build a future together, peace will have to wait as they face corruption, danger, and a ruthless rival ranch willing to protect its secrets at all costs. Legacy is a beautiful thing, but only if it survives. Dutton Ranch starring Colehous, Kelly Riley, Annette Benning, and Ed Harris now streaming on Paramount Plus. This episode is brought to by Boris Head. What if we told you the taste that deep fried turkey is now available at your local deli. Well, Boar's Head just did that. Bursting with flavor, perfectly seasoned

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to the pregnancy. Reveal, once things get hot and heavy the morning after, we get a nice little tender moment. We get the morning breath. Would you prefer morning breath or beef jerky breath? Beef jerky breath? Yeah, I really don't know. It's so questionable. I know. Ellie felt that way, too. And Dina was pretty confident about beef turkey breath being better. Again, prefer to avoid either. But I understand post-apocalypse. You have to do what you can here. But the pregnancy reveal is very different, not just the reveal. but the reaction, especially from Ellie. We get joyous Ellie here as opposed to angry Ellie in the game. And so everyone who's involved in this scene has talked about it a bit and offered some insight into these changes. If you watch, and I'd encourage anyone who's listening to this without having played the game,

go watch side by side show Ellie hearing this news from Dina. and it could not be more different because she's not pleased. She's saying, what are we supposed to do now? She says, are you fucking kidding me? Dina says she didn't want to tell because she didn't want to be a burden. And Ellie just says, well, you're a burden now, aren't you?

And just doesn't really take that back or apologize in any way. Also, I guess game Dina is just more sick and tired and vulnerable and kind of endangers Ellie in the subway. sequence, whereas here that's not really a concern. I mean, she has some morning sickness clearly, but it's not as if she had to divulge this because something was clearly up with her. But the reaction in the show, Ellie is very pleased. She totally takes this in stride.

She's happy to hear it. She's envisioning the future family. She says, we're all having a baby. Holy shit. I'm going to be a dad, which is just an adorable line. What do you make of this very significant change. I think it's going to be interesting to see moving forward, but in terms of a first reaction, I didn't really mind it that much, honestly, because of the way that the timeline has shifted so much, because in part, like, this is Ellie and Dina's, like,

first hours, like, being, like, a couple or, like, being, like, a romantic item. Yeah. But also just the fact that Dina only started realizing that she could be pregnant while being on this trip, really. Like, she threw up on seeing the Sarah Flights last episode, She threw up again at the TV station, and she confirmed it, I guess, before the TV station with a pregnancy test. But in the game, like, even when they're talking, like, Dina had had morning sickness for weeks at that point.

So, Ellie says to her in the game, like, for weeks, like, how, like, we could have turned back in all these things. So it's like at that point, it's like they've already been in a relationship. Like, Ellie's not worrying so much about, like, pissing off Dina and she's really just being truthful. about how she's feeling in that moment. So I think I understand the differences between both contexts. You know what I mean? Yeah. I have some reservations about it.

So the writer who really led the Ellie and Dina romance in the game also worked on this adaptation. And Mersed and Heron, the director, identify as queer. And Heron talked about this and told Entertainment Weekly, I'll quote here, Heron keeps returning to the idea of queer joy. She references a previous scene where Ellie plays. plays Aha's take on me for Dina in a record shop, a variation of a sequence that occurs in the game. Yes, there are action moments in my episode. This is a quote.

But at the same time, you don't get moments like you do in the music shop very often in a world like the last of us. It's about cycles of violence and Ellie's decision to go on that path. It's a heavy story. So for me, it was about letting the characters have those moments of relief. And Merced talking about the I'm going to be a dad line says it's really fucking cute. It's so sweet. And I agree with all of that. And so to be clear, I haven't been hanging out with Seth here.

I support this relationship. I borderline stand it. I'm actually more into these two as a couple than I was in the game. But I just wonder as heartwarming as this scene is. In isolation, I think it's a great scene. And I'm conscious of not wanting to portray this coupling in a negative light, et cetera. but how does it work, how will it work in the context of Ellie's overarching revenge mission here? Because as tough as it is to watch, I think it makes some sense for Ellie to react the way that she does in the game because she's consumed by rage.

And I'm not suggesting that when you're on a mission for vengeance, you are just smoldering in anger at all times and that there can't be happy moments interspersed there. but it doesn't seem like, you know, the Abbey that we've seen on the show this far is really feeling happy go lucky a lot of the time. And Ellie in the game, you know, she does horrible things. And you are sort of forced to do those horrible things as her in order to continue on. And assuming that she's also going to do those horrible things, or at least some of them on the show, and the portrayal here makes me wonder if that's the case, if some of those aspects will be dialed down as well. because her happiness here, given that we're supposed to buy into the idea that she is just a ball of anger and hatred right now. And so is there space in her to set that aside and look to the future and look beyond this mission that they're on and look beyond how this pregnancy could potentially affect that mission and say, I'm going to be a dad.

It's just a very different vision of that character. and it makes me wonder how things will change in the upcoming episodes. And if they don't, if she's going to be as dark and dangerous as ever, then will there be kind of a discordance here? Because when you're watching this episode, you could almost forget for a while that she's on this mission, like why they're in Seattle, what they came here to do. And maybe if you had full-on angry Ellie so close to the guitar scene,

maybe that would be jarring in a sense, but is it almost overload of good vibes in what is really an overwhelmingly bad vibes section of this series? Yeah, that's a fair point. I mean, I feel like the one real indication of this goal that they have in avenging Joel is like there at the end of the guitar scene a little bit

when they talk about Joel for a second. And Dean is just like, you know, he taught you well and he's like, and Ellie says that he did. But that anger, I feel like you're right. I think that it has to come through at some point. And I'm giving the benefit of that right now where I'm like, this is changes

because of the timeline of the relationship. But hopefully that does come at some point because it is so crucial to Ellie in the game and just the ultimate decision that she makes in choosing revenge and going after Abby over this life that they actually do have together, this future that they're talking about now with what eventually is the three of them,

including baby JJ, on the farm. together. Yeah. So if she's going to give up all of that, we have to see some of that at some point start to build up that rage inside of her fester up a little bit more. Right. Yeah, because it seems like Game Ellie just has tunnel vision. She can't really look beyond her current quest, which seemed to be the case with Abby, too.

And so can you hold these two ideas in your head, hey, I'm here to exact vengeance and brutally murder probably many people along the way to my primary target. And also, I'm going to be a dad and we're having a baby and it's going to be one happy family. You know, it's kind of like, I mean, Tommy, not that he didn't have some bloodlust on the show, but there's less of that because as much as he wants revenge for what Abbey & Coe did to his brother, he's also looking at, hey, I have a family and there's a future here and there's a whole community. And I don't want to endanger those things to slake my rage and bloodlust. And so that's kind of how I'm wondering how they'll portray that in the rest of the season.

Can you balance those two things? Can Ellie be optimistic and hopeful and envisioning a future where she's happy and there's a nice little thruple of some sort going on here or at least, you know, co-parenting situation with Jesse? And also, but first, we have to endanger all of that to take care of business with Abby. That's what I'll be watching. And like you, reserving judgments because we have not watched along. And I'm sure that all of these things were considerations for the creators of this episode. So we'll see how they handle it. But it certainly stood out to me more than really anything else in this episode.

Like, wow, okay, this is a significant change to the characterization. Yeah. And I think it honestly, it is really fair too. Because, I mean, like we were saying up top, we are more than halfway through the season already. I mean, there's only a few more episodes after this. So there are a lot of things that we need to see start happening. If it at least is going to go in the same direction that is at the game. If it goes another direction, so be it.

But they're kind of running on a little bit of low on time in terms of setting up some of these really, really important dynamics, at least that we know from the game. Yes. And I guess we're going to be running low on time too. So we should talk about the potential for some changes there. At the end of this TV episode, there is some similarity. And as usual, some difference.

So we hear the same battle going on. I think the implication here is that it's wolves versus seraphites, whereas in the game it seems like it could be Tommy raising a ruckus, causing some mayhem. But they hear Nora on the radio. They know Nora's around. In the game, they split up. And Ellie goes after Tommy, whom they've been looking for all along,

while Dina, who is just, you know, a little less able in the game at this stage than she seems to be on TV, hangs back and stays. at the theater. And so this sets up a lot of differences after this point, right? So if this one domino doesn't fall, then others aren't going to fall either, potentially, or there will have to be different dominoes in between. So I guess we can just start there when we do our little look ahead. What will happen next with Nora if Tommy and Jesse aren't around in the show?

And could it be that they will just suddenly? appear because that's what happens in the game, right? That Ellie is going after Tommy on her own and then she runs into Jesse, who is on his own as well, and then they get into some trouble and it doesn't end particularly well for our guy. But are you expecting that one or both of those figures from Jackson will make a surprise appearance here? Or are you thinking that it'll just be tag team, Ellie and Dina, just taking it to the wolves? I think Jesse will definitely be coming in because I think Jesse's presence is just too important for just Dina and Ellie's dynamic too. And just like the fact that Jesse dies there is so crucial later on in the game.

And also just because I think in one of the trailers, they showed the three of them running at some point. So we do know at some point. We do know at some point they're going to get together. But there is no indication of Tommy yet. So that's the one where we've talked about it a lot across the season. And I'm starting to think he's not going to show up in Seattle. I don't know. How are you feeling about that?

I guess I'm thinking that too, because they've laid all this groundwork to explain why he would stay. And, yeah, if he just suddenly showed up, they'd have to explain why that was. What happened to suddenly, is it just that he's rebuilt enough in however long it took Elian Dino to get from Salt Lake City to Seattle? Or is he plagued by guilt? And he just can't be comfortable staying at home, knowing that Elie and Dino are out there doing the avenging that he should be doing. That's possible, I guess.

But if he just shows up out of nowhere and it's just like, yeah, I decided that actually I should come after all. I don't know. That would seem somewhat like they didn't lay the groundwork for that or they, I guess, let us in a different direction. Yeah. I mean, they're usually so considerate in terms of planning ahead because they have the foresight of having, even just in the first season, having.

the part two already come out. This is something that they talked about a little bit on the podcast too, where in like in the first season, like they even seeded in Ellie's interest in space and astronauts. There was like a conversation she has with Joel at some point about Sally Ride. And then you have another moment in this episode too where Ellie's talking about Apollo 1. So it's like they are usually so conscious about even the smallest details where it's like something like this. I feel like they can't be completely overseeing it, right? With something like Tommy, it's just so big. So I don't know.

This could just be one of those things where they just like, in this context of what we're changing in the show, maybe it just doesn't make sense. Yeah. This was another no Joel or Abby episode. It feels like it's been a while since we've seen either of them. Does going without Abby longer make you rethink even more than we already did the way that she was introduced at all? Have you been mulling that over more? Are you surprised that she hasn't popped up here? I'm not that surprised yet,

but I think we're getting to the point where they need to include her a little bit. That's the same where I'm honestly feeling about Jesse too. Because like if Jesse, I'm assuming, is probably going to die at the end of the season in terms of that confrontation with them, I could see that being kind of like maybe towards the finale. I feel like they just need to have Jesse

in order to just set that up and make that really kind of hit emotionally. And similarly with Abby, too, it's like, we're going to go a lot of this season. We already have gone a few episodes without seeing her. So it's like if they can find natural places to do it where it's not switching from the WLF and them, I mean, that's obviously the big challenge. But if they can find it, I feel like that. That's going to make sense like next episode. Yeah.

And if not, maybe they're pushing past too much. The longer the Abbey drought lasts, the more I keep thinking, gosh, what if they just had waited? What if they hadn't given us out of that Abby back story? Because that really would have been a pretty baller approach to this season to just do it like the game, just have her come in as the avenging angel or devil, kill Joel brutally, and then peace out for the rest of the TV season and just have us be wondering. And we talked about this earlier and all the reasons why that would be tougher to do with a TV show than a game. But the less we see Abby as this season goes on, the more I think,

gosh, would that have worked, though? Because I was thinking, like, if this show were on Netflix and they had opted for a binge model, just a binge drop of this whole season. And to be clear, I'm glad they didn't because I like watching this and talking about it week to week. We probably would not be doing these podcasts if they had just dropped all seven at once. But if they were doing that, if you could just watch all seven as a marathon, instead of having to watch over the course of a couple months, do you think?

think that would have convinced them to stick closer to the structure of the game? Like, do you think it was more about the time that elapsed? And gosh, we can't expect people to come back week after week and wait all this time for the reveal of why Abby did that seemingly horrible thing. If you could just power through and watch that whole season in a day, if that were under your control, how quickly the reveal came. Do you think that would have done it, even though it would still be going from game to TV? Yeah, I think that's a fair point.

I think that's probably what it would be because, It is so different in this weekly structure. And I think just part of it too is just like at the beginning of this writing process not knowing if there was going to be, like having a hunch of there's going to be a season three, but not having that yet. So there's all these little considerations that I think I don't even fully grasp in terms of like what they have to do on that side of things for creating a show like this. But yeah, I mean, I think you're right. And then like I still love the way that they do in the game so much that I am getting like I'm thinking about it a lot more. definitely in terms of the way they've done this because that I think that's the toughest decision that they had and it's the one that is going to be talked about the most I think at the end of this

too. Yeah, it has been by us at least to this point. But it's true. Just imagining a scenario where it's just a mystery for the entire season and then season finale maybe you get the big reveal of why Abby did that and then it sets up the Abbey-centric season three. But look, we've hashed that out enough. It's just that we haven't seen it. Abby for a while. And so I'm thinking, gosh, you gave us so much Abby. And now it's Abby withdrawal. You have taken her away.

How much Isaac do you think we will get? I guess this is connected to the Abby question. And is there an opportunity for the show, as we touched on earlier, to flesh out the wolves and Sarah fights more or to make them more complex or nuanced in some way so that they're a little less like the cookie cutter, walking dead kind of different factions. fighting over turf and both extreme. As you said, in some ways they humanized Isaac here. In some ways, they made him more of a villain.

In some ways, they have humanized the seraphites. So do you think that's a prelude to getting more lore, more depth, more detail on these groups? I think so. And one of the things that, I mean, we've spoken a little bit of before, too, but like Craig Mason and Neil Druckman, And especially Craig Mason is always very coy about things that are like, I don't know, we'll see if this is going to happen at some point. This was definitely one of those things where he was like, there's some mysteries about this WOLF seraphite war that we might find out in season three. So it seems like they're really going to be homing on that a lot for season three.

And especially as their perspective really shifts to Abby. So I could see them doing doing a lot more, especially for season three. In terms of this season, I don't know. We seem pretty set on focusing on this Ellie and Dina dynamic. Yes, right. What did Mason say? Because he talked a bit about the timeline of the romance and the physical connection shifting on the show, right? Yeah, yeah, he did.

And I think a lot of that conversation was really coming from, they spoke for a good, like, eight minutes or so about that guitar scene, which makes sense because it is such a big. scene in the game. It's such a beloved moment from the game. But yeah, no, I mean, it's just like when it comes to big moments like that, like making sure to get those right. So the fans are satisfied, but also

making sure that it makes sense. That was something that he was really talking about. There was one quote when he was at least talking about the section that I liked where he was saying, when Neil and I talk about a lot is how in our action sequences, the action is there to reveal to either reveal information about a relationship or to change a relationship

that had to happen here too because it's not optional for the viewer. When you're taking something like these guitar moments from the game that is totally optional for the player, they're making things crucial to the plot as well. And he didn't go too much into depth, at least in terms of what more we're going to see on the Isaac side of things. But it seems like we're going to get a lot more of this whole conflict in general. Yeah.

So speaking of what we're going to see next, we saw a little bit of next episode. on the next time on, we got spores and they look suitably eerie and sort of disturbingly beautiful. And are we getting Rat King? Because there's like clear indications of Rat King potentially. We get a reference to rats having disappeared. We get this basement setting. We get the growths all over. I mean, we talked about this at the start of the pods that we did for this season.

and whether we would get Rat King. And I think because they had teased more infected this season, which they have certainly made good on thus far. But I think we kind of came down on probably not yet. But man, looks a little ratty. Yeah, no, that I really love, this was probably my favorite teaser yet so far of any of like the after the episode things,

just because that was just so unexpected to me. And it could be another one of those moments where like they know exactly where they're going. So maybe they like tease just, just the sound of this massive thing, because I think it's just going to be such a big moment in the TV show that they might want to wait because it's such a big Abby moment. Yeah.

Like, I can't imagine that they're going to give it to Ellie. Right. So it's like they having this moment where at least Ellie's down there and in the hospital where I guess in the game they talk about this is like kind of like ground zero. Yeah. If I'm not mistaken. So to show that environment, I think it's going to be really cool in this show and expand on it a little bit more.

But I don't know if we're actually going to see the rat thing yet. Yes, just it's quiet, too quiet. Where are all the rats? What are they doing? Are they forming some sort of monarch that we will encounter later on the series? Yeah, it's a little foreshadowing. Anyway, I'm even more hyped for that when we eventually get it than I was before. Yeah, and the spores, too.

Yeah, spores look great. in honor of Shimmer's parent survival thus far, I will repeat. Nice little L.E. Dena joke we get. I think Shimmer's getting sick. What? How can you tell? She sounds a little hoarse. Oh, boy. Yeah.

That's a classic. And we will also leave you with our programming teases and our sneak peeks for what's coming up on this feed, which has been packed as of late. this is not the first time that I have teased this, but the midnight boys, pew, pew, phew. Pugh, my bad. This one, this one, I was, I'm this in the dark over here, as you can see on your screen. Yes. My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my

this Saturday going to do their Midnight Munchies Apocalypse Food Pod followed by, of course, their instant The Last of Us reactions on Sunday night to episode five. And then on Wednesday, they will be back with their Andor season and series finale reactions. Of course, you can read my recaps

and various other pieces about Andor on the ringer.com. What a great website. And then the two of us will be back to talk about the Last of Us episode five on Thursday. and on House of Our same schedule as this week, Monday and Thursday, Last of Us and Endore Deep Dives. Again, we would encourage everyone to contact us at ringerverse gaming at gmail.com.

Thanks to Devin Rulnado for producing today's episode and to our junior Ramgapal, who is about to be back from vacation and we'll give him a hero's welcome. Tell him about all the multitude of podcasts we have recorded while he was away. Daniel, always a pleasure whether you're illuminated or sitting in darkness. You help illuminate the adaptation of The Last of Us for me and our listeners. Until next week, Ben. And in the words of Manny, this is so much better than getting drunk and watching anime. Debatable.

But thanks for listening to us instead of, or in addition to, doing that. We will talk to you next week.