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

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

Ringer-Verse listeners let Ben and Daniel live, and they don't waste it! First, they give their reviews of Season 2, Episode 7, "Convergence," and then they break down the episode's departures from and additions to the game before assessing the season as a whole. Then they forecast when to expect Season 3 and what it could look like, and they conclude by answering audience emails. Intro (0:00)Reactions to Episode 7 (3:50)Season 3 Predictions (1:10:00)Audience Emails (1:28:13) Outro (1:40:50) Hosts: Ben Lindbergh and Daniel ChinProducer: Devon RenaldoAdditional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Oh, hey there. It's your girl, Bryn Whitfield. You might know me from a little show called The Real Housewives of New York City on Bravo. You are about to see a whole different side of me, on edited, by the way. On my new podcast, please see below. Spoiler alert, it's not about passive aggressive company emails. It's actually way juicier than that. Join me every week as we get down and dirty with my friends, celebrities, experts, even some of our exes, from dating, the highs and lows of reality TV, career, sex, you name it. And honey, we're not just going to spill the tea. I am here to smash the entire pot. Believe me, you're going to want to see and hear what's below. Please see below with me, Bryn Whitfield, is premiering soon.

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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 Lindberg, senior editor for the ringer buttonmash host and gamer guide guide. As Ellie says, I'm the one that you want, and so is my co-host for this series. Let me tell you about my community. Ellie's is Joel, and mine is Ringer staff writer Daniel Chin, who unlike Joel is alive and well and with me today. Hello, Daniel.

Hey, Ben. how about we skip the apologies and go straight to our discussion so we can get the fuck out of Seattle, not that we're in a hurry because we've enjoyed doing these pods together and hopefully people have enjoyed listening to them. But this is our last, last of us pod for this season, at least. And this time we will be covering the season two finale, convergence, written by Craig Mason, Neil Druckman and Hallie Gross, and directed by Nina Lopez Corrado. If you've been listening to us all season long, you know the spoiler warning.

You can probably recite it with me by heart, but for anyone who's just joining us, everything is fair game, so to speak. Not only everything through season two, episode seven of the HBO show, but everything that happens in the Last of Us part two in the last of us universe, including events that we have not yet seen on the series. So be warned, be aware. We obviously don't know what's coming in season three, but we will speculate about it, informed, even later on this episode. And we will read some emails from you all, which you can continue to send us at ringaverse gaming at gmail.com. So we will give you our quick takes on convergence.

And then we'll do our deeper dive on some of the changes in this episode. And then we'll give our verdict on the season as a whole before we spin things forward and look at what could be coming when this series eventually returns to our screens. So convergence, fairly faithful episode. in the broad strokes, at least. The same characters die, except for Alice and Shimmer. Shimmer survival confirmed. Few, no animals were harmed in the making of the Last of Us season two finale.

And it all ends where day three did for Ellie in the game, more or less where we speculated that it would. However, some significant changes en route to that almost identical destination. And yet again, seemingly pretty polarized reaction among gamers versus non-gamers. versus non-gamers and even among some show-only fans. So we will get into our reactions first. And I think I will give a take in a second, but I want to hear yours first.

What did you make of convergence? So I definitely liked some moments in it a lot. I thought that this was definitely one of the messier episodes of the season, unfortunately. And I think in a lot of ways, a lot of the criticisms and stuff that we've been worrying about in terms of the changes they've been making along the way, have kind of just come to a head and crashed out in this in this finale that much like Ellie. Yeah.

And I don't know. It was interesting to see. I mean, you're talking about the polarized reaction. I felt like in a way, this was kind of a convergence among fans, too, where a lot of people were just upset about the outcome here. Yeah. Yeah, I'm with you. I think in isolation, I thought the finale was fine.

If we were just evaluating a single episode, was it everything that you would want from the last episode of a series before it goes away for years. Maybe not, but I didn't have huge issues with the episode itself. There was some pacing stuff, which we'll get to. There were some additions and changes that I actually quite liked. But as you said, this just felt like the moment when all the ramifications came home to roost, all the things that we were worried about, the red flags along the way. What is this going to mean down the line? And this is the end of the line, at least for this episode, though not nearly the end of the line for this series, just for the season. And so everything that happens in this episode, I thought, was sort of a natural outgrowth

of what preceded it this season. When we chatted after the episode and you wrote your recap for the ringer.com, what a great website. I don't think we were really thrown for a loop or that there was a lot that we didn't anticipate happening here, just given what we knew about the game, given what had come before it this season. But it was kind of like just as Joel's murderer just sets the course for Ellie and then she starts down this dark road and everything that happens after that flows from that traumatic event, it's kind of like the course was set at the start of this season with some of the adaptation changes that they made. And that dictated how the rest of the season was going to go and why in some senses I think this was sort of an unsatisfying wrap of. But there was a lot that I liked about this episode, and we will get into all of that, too. So that's kind of where I am, a mixed bag, which I guess is where we've been on the season as a whole.

Yeah, I mean, in some ways, I felt like it wasn't as frustrating to me as somebody that was familiar with where it was going. I mean, we even talked about this last week. Like, we thought that this was going to be the way that it was going to end because it really is just the most logical way. So I think in some ways, it wasn't as frustrating for me, at least, as it was for some of the reaction. I was seeing online. Yeah. And as I've felt a lot about this season, I watch it once and then I watch it again as I'm prepping for this pod and thinking about it and reading reactions.

And not that I'm letting myself be influenced by other people's reactions. I hope I'm coming to my own conclusion here. But the more I think about some of these things, I find that I feel differently about them than I do in the moment watching that first time. And most people who are following the series are probably. be just watching that first time and that's the only time. And then they're moving on and they're not hosting a podcast about it where they break down every change in detail and think about all these things just to no end. So I think if I were watching it in a more surface level reaction way,

maybe I'd feel a little bit different about it. It's not as if it ever bores me or as if I'm ever just falling asleep watching the episode. I'm always pretty gripped by what is happening, impressed by a lot of the acting, the production design, as we've praised throughout the season. But then it's when I start thinking over the themes and what it all means and whether it was conveyed in the best way that it could have,

that the pitfalls really start looming in my mind and perhaps now more than ever at this point in the season now that we've seen it, though really we're just in the middle of seeing the grand plan here. So let's dive deeper into this. episode and we'll focus on certain scenes that were significant changes from the game or even additions to the game. And the first of those, and arguably the foremost, is the revelation that Ellie shares with Dina after she gets back to the theater. In the game, Ellie does not

tell Dina about what Joel did at the hospital in Salt Lake City. Here she does. And let's listen to a clip of that from the episode. You're shot him in the head. So that's why they came. Did you know who they were? But I knew what he did. We need to go home. So, this is a pretty significant change.

Did you like it? I actually didn't mind this change at all. I think it's something that especially makes sense for the purpose of the show because of how much time we have spent with Dina and just really trying to evolve their relationship. but also Dina's relationship with Joel. And being able to see Dina react to this news in real time after seeing these earlier interactions that we had between Dina and Joel in episode one,

where we really see how they've kind of had this father-daughter relationship as well. It really changes things in the way that Dina is seeing Joel and Dina is seeing Ellie and also just how that she's responding to the fact that they're out here while she's pregnant. And they've made this decision to go in Seattle. So I thought it was an effective change for me. Yep. This one worked for me also. I thought it made complete sense, given the way that Dina and Ellie's relationship has been depicted this season.

They've just, they've been close in ways that they weren't in the game or at least in different ways. And we've seen Dina share the pregnancy secret with Ellie. Maybe it's time for Ellie to reciprocate. Now, in the game especially, and to some degree in the show, Ellie has trouble owning up to things and letting her guard down and sharing her emotions with herself and also with others. So it's not inconsistent for someone to confide in Ellie and Ellie not to confide in them. But it did feel like, as you said, given the completely different relationship that Dina

has with Joel in the show, which is to say that she has one at all, right? This feels fitting, I think. And Dina's reaction felt fitting to me too that she's pretty thrown by this. She's not totally turning away from Ellie to use Joel's language, but she's thrown for a loop by this. And understandably so, it's kind of like Ellie felt a bit betrayed by Dina not divulging the pregnancy and Ellie not knowing the entire circumstances when they set out. Dina has just as much of a case here that Ellie did not tell her all she needed to. know. And Dina withheld the knowledge of the identity of Abby and the wolves from Ellie in the hospital when Ellie is recuperating. But she is still the first that she tells. And Dina is not the

first to know this about Joel. And Dina had a good reason to keep that from Ellie at the time. And here, I'd be pretty pissed if I were Dina too. And I would feel a little bit manipulated also. And I'd say in the game, in fact, when this epiphany happens, you also feel manipulated when you realize what Ellie knew about Joel and what Joel did. So, yeah, I really liked this. And it just deepens their relationship, which I think at times has been kind of discordant this season, just in the sense that the tone didn't totally match the revenge quest to me. That was more of the issue I had with the Ellie and Dina relationship this season. And if anything, I enjoyed their dynamic more than I did in the game. It's just that it felt like it was kind of out of a completely different story at times.

And just tonally, there was whiplash going from their scenes to then Ellie supposedly being on a revenge quest, but seeming to have a lot of other things on her mind and reacting completely differently to the pregnancy in a way that made it hard to think that she was all in on the revenge quest, the way that she was in the game. But all in all, I like this change. Yeah, and I think part of those things, too, it just comes down to pacing, like everything you're saying at the end. Like, I agree with you. Like, I do like certain aspects of the relationship more.

But I think it was just a little bit all over the place with how quickly we have to go from just Ellie trying to get through Joel's loss, like having this moment where she's finally starting to start this revenge tour revenge quest and have that. all within the span of just a few episodes, like three episodes, because of that flashback episode that was wedged in between everything. So it's just a lot happening at once without really letting their relationship grow and breathe in a natural way. Yeah. We'll return to that

structure of the season at the end here because that seven episode choice is kind of hanging over everything that we've discussed in these podcasts. So let's talk about our boy Jesse. And he does, of course, ultimately meet the end that we knew he would meet. but we do get to spend a little more time with him before the end in the show than we did in the game. We get some insights into his personality and his mindset here that are absent from the game for better or worse. He finds out about Dina's pregnancy a different way than he does in the game, where he kind of pieces it together just by seeing how sick she was. And we've talked about how in the game she's sort of sidelined more than she is in the show. another reason why I kind of like the change for Ellie to tell Dina what Joel did, because she's just on the front lines with Ellie and with Jesse in the show in a way that she isn't always in the game.

So she really has skin in the game in the show that she doesn't in the game, if you know what I mean. But Jesse, he intuits it here based on Dina not wanting to take a swig of some pain-killing alcohol when he does his little. in prompt to aerosurgery. And then he sort of tricks Ellie into confirming it. But one way or another, he knows he's going to be a dad just like Ellie, except that he's not. But we get this longer discussion about how he feels about the various factions in the show and what motivates him and what doesn't.

And we thought we could do a little side-by-side comparison clip here. Because in the game, we get a very short exchange between Ellie and Jesse that sort of mirrors what is said on the show. But the show goes much deeper and elaborates much more as is its wants throughout this season. Right. So here is a quick clip of the scene that they have before they split off as Jesse goes to look for Tommy the sniper. And Ellie goes to track down Abby. We can get to the marina through here. We're taking their boat.

You heard them right there talking about Tommy. We don't know that. Who else is it going to be? If it is him, he'll be gone by the time we get there. Abby is where he'll be headed. So if we just fall. What if he's in trouble? He can take care of himself.

Jesus Christ. The best way to help Tommy is to go after Abby. You do this. I'm not saving your ass again. I really hope you make it. Okay, that's the game version. Now let's listen to the longer, more elaborate show version.

Ellie. Oh my God. Ellie. It wasn't in the best interest of the community. Fuck the community! All you do is talk about the fucking community, you hypocrite. You think you're good and I'm bad? You let a kid die today, Jesse.

Because why he wasn't in your community? Let me tell you about my community. My community was beaten to death in front of me while I was forced to fucking watch. So don't look at me like you're better than me. Or like you do anything differently if you were in my shoes because you're not and you wouldn't. I really hope you make it. Okay, so it was your suggestion to highlight these two scenes next to each other.

So we've seen this tendency throughout the season of the game being a bit more understated when it comes to the dialogue at times. Did this additional insight, if there was additional insight, add anything for you to just, or was this another case of the show over explaining things? The reason why I thought it would work to show the side by side is because of how much they really prolong this conversation when I think in the way like they did it in the game, it's very clear that Ellie is being extremely selfish in this moment. She is choosing not just her community with Joel, but I mean, she's choosing what she wants to do in herself, which is everything that Jesse points out in the show.

Like you're being selfish. Like everything that you do is for. you and I'm looking out for the community. But you can see all of that done in such a more natural way in the video game where it's just like you see the disappointment in Jesse's face and you see this obsessiveness that is starting to snowball in Ellie. So that was just something that really stuck out to me, like especially just watching them side by side. Yeah. I enjoyed the additional time with Jesse here. We know that his his hours are numbered here. His days are numbered at zero because it's day three and he's not going to get to day four. But one quibble I had with this is

just the excessive foreshadowing of what was going to happen to Jesse. And yeah, you know, we know what fate is going to befall him. But if you're watching this not having played the game, you wouldn't know, except that you probably would because it's just, it's kind of telegraphed repeatedly. Just your your classic Simpsons McBain movie style, you know, two days away from retirement. and that I'm setting sail on my boat to live forever, we get separate scenes here where he says, I'm going to be a father, which means I can't die. And also, I am not dying out here.

And when you hear that, you know that, in fact, you are sadly, sir. He might die out here. Yeah. So they laid it on a little thick when it came to what was going to happen to Jesse. And I think that may have sapped some of the suspense, hard for me to say, as a game player here, but I'm going to imagine that some show-only viewers were tipped off to what was going to happen to Jesse by some of that dialogue. He did finally explain at length how he found the theater, which felt like it was added for us after we gave the show a hard time a couple weeks ago for just kind of cutting off Ellie's questions about how he found her.

Here we got kind of a long explanation of how he found her. I don't know if you find it more plausible, but at least he didn't dance around it anymore. Yeah, at that point, I was like, let it be, you know? We've already accepted that this has happened. I'm glad that they mentioned that shimmer and Alice all right, but like it felt like they were just trying to get all those loose ends out at once. Yeah, it did. I mean, we complained about leaving the loose end and now we're complaining about tying up the loose end. It can never satisfy the critics.

It just can't please us, I know. But yes, it did feel a little like, you know, the horse is out of the barn while being in the record store. So we accepted that we weren't going to get more. And now we got a little protesting too much, perhaps. But, yeah, the community discussion, I think it's interesting, right? Ellie is obviously lashing out and kind of rationalizing and self-justifying when she is taking Jesse to task here and arguing that he's just as bad and he's just as selfish. I think she knows and we're meant to know that she feels bad about what she did to know to know. to Nora, and she's sort of spiraling and crashing out, as you said, and lashing out also.

But she has a little bit of a point, even if we're not totally supposed to say, yeah, actually, Jesse, he is a bad guy. But it's a decent point that we have different priorities here in different communities, and everyone has some community that they're protecting and that is dear to them. And that's how we get this revenge quest in the first place with Abby and Ellie. Let's talk about some of the new material in this episode. We get some stuff that is there to kind of lay some groundwork for season three. And as is often the case when a story includes something entirely for setup and it's kind of clear that it's there for set up, it doesn't always work so smoothly. And sometimes you can just sort of see that they're building a bridge to a next season. and you might not know exactly why yet,

but we get this Jesse Ellie encounter with the seraphite kid at first, where Ellie wants to go all out and rescue the kid despite being outnumbered. We also get the scene with Isaac, who, remember, hasn't been introduced by this point in the game. So everything that we've seen of Isaac is a show addition or has been moved up. And he talks to Elise Park about what, the wolves are planning. We also then get the trip to Scar Island, which we will talk about in a second. So sticking with those first couple with the Jesse Ellie encounter with the seraphite kid and then

the foreshadowing of the wolves seraphite battle, did this add anything for you here? Did this feel in elegant in the sense that it's sort of setting up what is to come or in the Jesse Ellie encounter, just kind of reinforcing the community theme? In some ways, I like that it more subtly sets up, in my mind at least a little bit. I don't know, a little bit of like what we're going to see with Lev and just the situation that Lev is going to be in the next season and how much Abby goes out out of her way to help out Lev, like making a very different choice in saving this life and kind of sacrificing, not her friends in a sense, but sacrificing her safety to help out

Yara and Lev despite being on the other side of it. But in terms of really building on this idea of community, it just feels like, especially in an episode like this where everything is so time constrained. Like we only have under 50 minutes to get through a lot of different things. You just have to be very efficient with everything that you're doing. And I'm glad that we got to see a lot of like Jesse because of that. Like we only have so much time with Jesse. So in order to get a little bit more of his backstory and his background to make his, death more effective. I'm glad that we had that. But, I mean, especially when it comes to the Isaac

stuff, like, I think that scene with, with Elise Park was a little bit frustrating to me because so much of it is just telling us things that are happening off-stream that, at least if we haven't played the game, we don't know what's happening. So it's like, it's the opposite of the show, don't tell. Yeah, I feel like this has been a big flaw of this season in general, because it's like, If we are going to see Isaac and like this side of the WLF, I would like to see a little bit more of what's actually happening. So we can get a little bit more of emotional investment in the characters before this turn eventually happens. Yeah, I thought that the Sarafite Kid encounter, the first one, I appreciated because it just, it shows where Ellie's mind is at here.

It's not at a good place. And I think she wants to do something good. She wants to be the good guy. She wants to redeem herself in others' eyes, in her eyes, even, and saving a kid who's in danger might do that. And I think one of the differences in the characterization of Ellie in the game in the show, in the game she doesn't really hesitate to do what she needs to do, at least until the end. Whereas in the show, she does falter and she has more second thoughts. both depictions of her, she definitely feels remorse and feels like what have I become and have I gone too far after the Nora encounter, after Owen and Mel, etc. But she is very determined.

And so here she just wants to go in guns blazing despite the odds, despite being overmatched. And I think this does kind of work fairly well in tandem with the Scar Island scene in a second, which I don't love that scene. in this episode. But I like that we see Ellie acting as if we have to save this innocent kid. And then it turns out that in this later trip to the Saraphyte Island, the kid is condemning her to death, not the same kid, obviously, but a kid on the same side. And what that says about war and being indoctrinated from an early age and the tribalism of these themes of The Last of Us, just seeing the other as the other and being conditioned from birth basically to see them as evil. And so Ellie wants to go out on a limb to save this kid on the side of the seraphites here and then very quickly finds out that these people are as bloodthirsty as anyone else, that there's a war going on here that is not their war, as Jesse says.

And she doesn't really understand the dimensions here. the Isaac scene with Elise, I think there's a lot of mirroring that happens in this episode. So obviously there's the mirroring of Mel and Dina, the two pregnant people in this episode, and one who Ellie's trying to protect and one whom Ellie kills. And we see sort of something similar here, I guess, with the Isaac scene where he's stressing over Abby as his successor. And we've seen the same thing with Tommy and Jesse, Tommy being the success. the anointed next leader of the council for Jackson, which is going to have to fill that leadership void somewhere else, evidently. But you see some of the same concerns about

ensuring the future and the continuity and who am I going to leave this world to and who's going to pick up the mantle after I'm gone because lives are so tenuous here. And Isaac says he probably isn't going to survive this night. And Tommy's constantly on the verge of getting killed by someone or something. So I like seeing that. And as you said, I don't mind leaving the show audience in the dark, literally in this episode, but also just in terms of what's going on in this war, because that's what we're going to find out in season three.

Now, this very brief trip to Scar Island that Ellie makes when she sets off for the aquarium and the massive wave shows up and capsizes her. and she and the boat both wash up on the shore of the island. This is, I think, as you were saying, where just everything feels so fast-paced, just not in a great way. Like, you want things to feel fast-paced. It's a finale. You want it to be non-stop action. But for the last, I don't know, 20 minutes or so of this episode, it just feels like we're going from place to place and this character's there and this character's there and all these things are happening.

and we don't have time to really sit with those scenes or appreciate where we are and what's going on. And that was never more apparent to me than in this little detour. Yeah. I mean, it is interesting because, and I don't know if you were going to mention this in a second too, but this was actually something that they wanted to include in the game originally.

And it was a scene that definitely stuck out to me when watching the episode itself and recapping it because it was just like in terms of, the action, it just felt very unnecessary because Ellie just goes right back to where her journey was already going. And I get the sense that, like, the main point of the scene is to show how obsessive Ellie has become. Yes. And to show that Ellie almost died because of this war that she, that Jesse was telling her to stay out of. And here she is just getting right back in her boat. Like it's definitely a wild choice. Telling her to turn back. Nature is trying to stop her. The

seraphites are trying to stop her. And she just will not be. be stopped. Yeah, yeah. But it was just like a stunning moment because it was just like, all right, well, I guess we're just right back to where we were a few minutes ago in this, in this very, very fast episode already. I mean, honestly, I would have liked to see maybe a little bit of action there possibly. I think like that could have been a source of action. And ironically, I feel like that's something that would have worked really well in the game itself too. I would have actually liked to see that in the game. I feel like it would have been a cool moment, especially because it would create this, I mean, I guess it could in the TV show as well,

but create a parallel with when Ellie eventually is going to be briefly hung by the Rattlers in Santa Barbara. I feel like it would have created the like James Franco meme, like first time type of thing. Like having this experience where Ellie has just almost died by being hung by these different factions as she's just trying to kill Abby. But yeah, I don't know how much I liked it in this moment. Yeah. And Abby is going to have a seraphite encounter along these lines also. But yeah, knowing that this was cut. from the game. I mean, maybe this was why it was cut from the game, but Hallie Gross in the making of after the episode said, so originally in the game, something most people don't know is that we were going to do an entire sequence with Ellie landing on Scar Island. So it was really exciting to get an opportunity to flirt with that again. And I get why that's exciting and why that could be a good thing that some of the things that you leave on the cutting room floor for the game, you have an opportunity to squeeze into the show. But some of those things maybe were.

cut for a reason. So, and when Gross says an entire sequence, I'm guessing that whatever they had planned, and I know Druckman has alluded to this too, that it was probably going to be a little longer and more fleshed out than what happens in the game where it's just, it's not fleshed out at all. Ellie's about to get her flesh torn out, but that doesn't happen. And it just all happens so quickly in the middle of everything else that's going on in this episode.

And she washes up on the shore. and then the kids, you know, leads her into the forest and then she's captured and then the kid does the thumbs down and then she's strung up. But then the attack happens at just the right moment and then they leave her. And it felt a little plot armor-e, right? Yeah, yeah. You know, she's strung up. We've seen the seraphites execute and eviscerate someone before. It doesn't take that long for them to do this.

They've had plenty of practice. So the fact that the horn sound and they know that the village is being attacked doesn't really appreciate. doesn't really preclude them saying, well, we might as well take care of this one wolf, or they suspect that she's a wolf, that we have already to get gutted here, right? Why would you just leave her there? It just doesn't really make that much sense. And so it just felt a little artificial, really. Yeah, no, agreed.

I mean, yeah, especially because like that you would think that she's a wolf. So it's like, if you're getting attacked by wolves, why are you just going to let one run loose? Right. There needs to be a word, by the way, for just being just being. I'm scared by British actors who play American characters in the making of after the episode, which I guess it's a testament to Bella Ramsey. I'm very aware that Bella Ramsey is British. And yet going from Ellie to Bella in all of these after the episodes and the accent shows up again.

And I'm like, oh, right. And this is very jarring. Yeah, very familiar from many shows, HBO and otherwise. But that's acting for you. Accent work. Good stuff. So in the game, Ellie just loses the boat. A wave capsizes her and she just swims the rest of the wave.

So there's no little digression to the island here. But this does lay some groundwork. We understand kind of what's happening here vaguely, at least that this is a big all-out offensive by the wolves. And we see the explosion in the background. And we will learn more about that in season three. Now, when Ellie gets to the aquarium, in the game, she has a. gut-wrenching encounter, unlike the one that she almost had on Scar Island, with Alice, Abbey's loyal canine companion.

And that is entirely absent from this show. Ellie does not kill a dog. Do you want to read the Craig Mason quote about why they omitted the Alice encounter? Of course, yes. So Mason says, we had a situation where a number of horrible things were happening. Plus, because it's live action, the nature of violence becomes much more grass. It's more graphic because it's not like there's an animation between you and it. It's people and it's very disturbing.

We knew what was going to happen to Mel was disturbing and to Owen, and also what had just happened to Ellie was disturbing. It's just feeling now like we're tormenting the audience and almost getting pornographic, so you don't want to feel exploitative. You don't want to feel like you've crossed some line, so you make some choices. Yeah. As upset as some people were by this finale and show only viewers, I have to think that they have been more upset had Alice been killed here.

And this is not a change that I've seen many gamers complaining about. You know, it's hard. Even if you're like a diehard, they shouldn't change anything. They should, it was perfect the way it was. And how dare they tinker with a single thing? It's hard to come out and be pro dog death. Like, yeah, I want to see her eviscerate Alice. How could they?

Now, you could make that case just on the basis of like, that is a really meaningful and emotional moment in the game, especially when you switch perspectives and suddenly Alice is your best friend. And then you think back to, oh, man, I controlled the character who is going to kill this beautiful, lovely dog. Like, that's one of the moments that makes you really start feeling bad about what you did. And so they are taking that away. And to the extent that they have maybe made an effort to make Ellie,

more likable or at least less lethal, less violent, less bloodthirsty in the show. I guess you could say that as difficult as a dog death is, that there's value to including it because it's not supposed to be easy. It's supposed to be difficult and just heart-wrenching. But I don't feel too bad about not having the dog death. And I think that Mason makes a good point that they do make Mel's death even more disturbing and traumatic, as we will discuss in just a second. And so it would be pretty unrelenting darkness to just have that be back to back.

Right. To have the dog death and then Owen, Mel, and the baby in quick succession would be pretty brutal to watch in live action. Yeah, yeah. And I think Mason made a joke about how he had to kill dogs in Chernobyl. And you get one of those basically before you get known as the dog killer in Hollywood. And you only get to do that once, really, before you get branded with that reputation. So this would have been all over the Does the Dog Die website if they had gone ahead with the faithful adaptation there.

I do think I would argue with the idea that because it's live action, the violence is more graphic. I think that's true to an extent. But there's also something to be said for the interactivity of the violence in the game, even if it's just you pressing X to eviscerated. or whatever it is. Like, there's still, you are an active participant in that, even if you don't have a choice, if you want to continue playing the game. But you do, you have to do it in a way, at least with some of these things like the torture of Nora, that you are more of a passive recipient of that than a participant in the show.

So not sure I always agree with that. But maybe a dog death would have been like sparing shimmer and sparing Alice. I see what you're doing. HBO, I see what you're doing, Baysen. You can push us pretty far, but not that far. That is a line. You're going to lose the Mallory Rubens of the world with that one. No, I mean, it's an interesting point, too, because even when, I know we're about to talk

about Mel's death in a second, but even with Mel's death in the game, too, it's like, it's more brutal in some ways because of you have to be the one to, like, press square or X, whatever it is to, like, stab Mel in the neck as you're, like, struggling for the knife, too. So it's like it makes you more complicit in the act. So let's talk about that scene. In the game, Nora tells Ellie that Abby is at the aquarium. In the show, Ellie pieces that together from some cryptic clues that Nora let's spill about wheel and whale.

And she sees the aquarium. She knows where she's got to go. This scene was pretty brutal. According to an Esquire interview with the actor, the version that made it to air was actually the third version that they filmed. So they had some alternates here. and this was actually dialed down from some previous iterations that were, quote, more heightened and had a lot more action. I don't know if it was emotionally dialed down because they really dialed things up here, I think. Do you want to read the Mazen-Druckman exchange about the change to this scene?

Sure, yes. So Mazen says, I decided to make it dark. I called Meal and was like, I think I can make it dark. And then Druckman says, and I'm like, how could it be? darker. And then I read and I'm like, oh yeah, it's darker. But you know, sometimes we have to go there. And it was important for this moment to, then he goes on to say, if you're rooting for Ellie, make you feel dirty because that's what collateral damage does. And then Mazin says, and this moment also called for Bella to have and display such a profound level of regret and failure. And in this moment where you do feel

like, oh my God, how am I still on this journey with you? I think it's important for people to see that It's not like Ellie is going. I'm cool, whatever it happened. Let's keep going for Abby. This breaks her. Okay. So in the game, there's more of a tussle. And Owen goes for the gun, and he wrestles a little bit with Ellie, and she gets the upper hand, and she shoots him.

And then, as she is trying to fend off Owen, Mel comes for her with a knife and has the knife at Ellie's throat. And Ellie manages to overpower Mel and turn the tables. and plunge the knife into Mel's throat, at which point she then realizes that, yes, Mel is pregnant, but there is no exchange between Mel and Ellie about that, the way that we get in the show. And that's the last clip that we'll play today. So let's hear the end of Mel's life.

How deep? Deep is anything sake. Which way? Which way? Oh, transfer. Transfer. What? I don't know what that means. Is it a problem?

Okay. So this is a significant change, but it's a change that I appreciated for the most part and think this is actually an improvement, if anything. I know this has been divisive as well, and there are people who are up in arms about this one, about the fact that Mel's death is accidental here, whereas in the game she attacks and Ellie responds. but to me, that does not diminish the impact of this scene at all. How did you feel about it? Yeah, no, I'm exactly with you. I think this was one of my favorite scenes of this episode, but also just this season because it's just so emotional and it's so impactful.

And just the performances of both actors here is so phenomenal and heartbreaking. And just seeing Ellie who's just so, we've just seen how like pugnacious and brave Ellie is in so many instances. but in this one moment, she just falters. And it's sad to see it happen. I understand to a certain extent why people are upset because it kind of, in terms of the fact that Ellie is not being more, I guess, proactive in this.

And it shows her failure in a different way in that sense. But it's the way that it just eliminates this rivalry for just a moment and brings them both on the same level as humans. and they're both trying to save this life, but Ellie just being incapable to do it. And I think this is the way that we're going to see how this has a domino effect, both for Ellie moving forward as a person, just the relationship that she has with Dina possibly.

I think it'll be interesting to see as well. And just, again, like the performances of the actors here was just so heartbreaking that I thought that this really worked well for me. Yeah. If you're upset that Ellie has been less of a stone, code killer in the show than she was in the game, then I guess that reinforces this for you, the fact that she did not intend to kill Mel or that she didn't actually plunge a knife into her or shoot her on purpose, that it is accidental.

But I completely disagree with the notion that that lets Ellie off the hook in any way. It just the opposite, if anything. The fact that it was an accident that Ellie was, as Druckman says, collateral damage, that she's sort of an innocent bystander. here, she's still caught up in Ellie's revenge quest. I mean, it even more in my mind reinforces the idea that whatever Ellie sets out to do, it's much like Abby and her crew, they set out to just kill Joel and not have any other ramifications from that, right? It's supposed to be a targeted execution of one guy, and it's hard to contain revenge. It's hard to just say, okay, We just nipped it in the bud.

We killed our one target, and there are no other ripple effects from that. No, there are. And things come out of that that are unintended consequences. And the same thing is happening here with Ellie, where, sure, she doesn't intend to shoot Mel, but Mel is shot just the same because Ellie is there and because she has a gun and because she's threatening them and because she will stop at nothing to find and kill Abby. I mean, it's all part of the same quest, even if it was somewhat out. accidental. And then the fact that Mel is trying to talk her through surgery at the end there and is trying to save a life selflessly, as Ellie is arguably selfishly trying to take one or so Jesse would argue. I mean, that is just grueling and agonizing. And you can sort of see

why Ellie couldn't go through with it. And, you know, there are people who have a problem with the way that Ellie has been depicted this season just in terms of how. how competent she is or how flustered she gets. And I guess this is another example of her kind of losing it in this moment, but also very understandably, I think. Mel is a doctor. Ellie's not a doctor. She just doesn't know how to do an emergency C section in the 30 seconds before someone

that she accidentally shot bleeds out. And she's getting medical jargony instructions as Mel is fading out. And, you know, she's like really broken by all of this. And she realizes what she's done. And she's young. And yeah, she's been through an awful lot. And she's killed people. And she's had to do a ton of things to survive.

But she hasn't been in quite this situation. And I think it's still a lot to expect her to just, sure, I'll make that incision. No sweat. I'll just, you know, bring this baby out of the womb of the woman that I just accidentally killed. Like, you can see why she kind of. chokes in that moment and then feels even worse about the fact that she did. So the fact that she potentially had a chance to save this baby or at least was being entreated to by Mel, that just makes it harder, I think, for viewers and for Ellie herself. So I don't think that blunted

the impact of this scene one bit. In fact, I think it twists the knife, which is exactly what Ellie could not do. I do like something that Hallie Gross points it out on the podcast as well was just how this moment also mirrors what was happening with Dina and Jesse earlier in the episode, how Dina was also in this, she's not about to die, but she's in this similar moment of, well, I mean, she is getting close to dying because of the air on her leg. She's in this similar moment of distress with Jesse being tasked with getting the arrow out of her leg. And it just, I mean, this whole game and this season and the rest of the seasons likely is it's all about mirroring the experiences between Ellie and Abby and just the sides of their different revenge quest.

So I liked that it was a little bit more subtle seeing that here. Yes. In the game, Abby finds Ellie's map that she has with her in this confrontation and follows that back to the theater. So there's no question about how she found the theater, at least. In the show, though, there will be. So maybe we'll have to get a long-winded explanation at some point in season three about how Abby found them. But Ellie uses the map that was already at the aquarium. So we don't yet know how Abby tracks them.

But Abby is good at what she does. So it's not hard for her to follow that trail, perhaps. And that leads to the climax in the theater and to Jesse's demise, which goes down very much like it did in the game. So sad as we are to see it. sad as we are to see young Mazzino exit the show. How do you feel this death worked in live action? I think I like that they made it just as brutal and just as unceremonious. I mean, I know we were talking about it last week, like thinking that they might make it to like a bigger thing.

I wonder if that would have felt like a little bit melodramatic, especially after they kind of dispelled out that he's going to die more or less than the ways that we were talking about. Yeah. So I don't know. That worked. And especially just getting the chance to see a little bit more of him this episode. episode and just having this final moment between Ellie and Jesse in the theater of them of them talking just moments before it. It's still very heartbreaking. I think I would have liked to just see more of Jesse across the season to make this land a little bit even harder because, I don't know, again, it's tricky because we knew he was going to die the whole time.

But especially with how much we're seeing him in this final episode, it kind of felt like they were keying it up as well. So I just wonder if they could have just paced out a little bit more of the backstory. I'm also very curious if like, and this is maybe getting a little bit off topic, but like if Jesse's parents are alive in the TV show because it kind of doesn't seem like it. Because in the game, it's like they are still alive and they're in Jackson and it seems like that's where Dina eventually takes JJ in the end. But I just would have been curious to see what the story was behind, like Jesse and his family and how he got to Jackson that they alluded to a little bit in this episode as a way to kind of further

explore his parentage and just whatever sacrifices they had to make for him too. Well, we've got two more seasons. Maybe his body will be transported back to Seattle to that graveyard 10 miles outside of Jackson. We'll see his parents paying their respects. Who knows? But he'll just be dragged behind the horse the entire way back to Jackson. Oh, man. Poor Jesse.

Yeah, RIP. Yeah, I appreciate also that it was just. one shot. He never saw it coming. At least we can take some solace in that, even though we saw it coming very plainly. He never knew what hit him and didn't suffer. And it was a contrast to many of the long, drawn out death scenes this season, which happened some of the highlights of the season, but also sometimes people just die instantly. And I think that sends a message too just about how tenuous life is and you never know, right? And say you, say, I love you to your loved ones because you could get snuffed out of existence in a second. You go through a door and a bullet goes through

your cheek and that's that. And after we had the Nora torture scene and then we had the Eugene scene, which I guess is also, there's kind of a parallel between the Eugene scene and the Mel scene and people being saved and not saved. But just to see someone go down without any famous last words or anything, you know, no consternation about when they're going to turn. None of that. He just, he's done. The light goes out. And it's heartbreaking. And now that we know so much about his backstory, I kind of wish he had gone with that bad painter he had a fling with the traders. He could have had a different community that he cared about and protected. But oh, well. And then we get the standoff, which is very similar to the games, down to verbatim dialogue here. And then we get the

POV change and the flashback and then Q sound gardens burden in my hand, and that's that. Now, we do get a slightly different ending, I suppose, to the standoff here where we just get the cliffhanger to end all cliffhangers here. And we get the gunshot sound, which does ultimately happen when this showdown resumes, but doesn't happen in the first depiction, right, at the end of the L.E. narrative before we switch protagonist. So that felt a little bit artificial and kind of we know how TV works. You know, it's not as if we're going to sit here wondering for the next couple of years, is Ellie dead? Did she just die like Jesse did without saying anything else? I think as viewers,

we are well aware of how TV works. And so adding this gunshot, it just felt a little cheap to me. Again, like we know that there's going to be a gunshot that Tommy. is going to make a leap for Abby and that she's going to shoot him and then Leves going to come in and shoot Tommy also. And then there's going to be the pursuit. So all of these things are going to happen. There is going to be another gun discharged. But having it here with the cut to black and then the gunshot, it just felt a little like you're not fooling anyone. You know?

Yeah, no, I felt the same way. And I think, I don't know, part of me, especially when it comes to like the button at the end of adding Seattle. they won. Part of me feels like it definitely would have been a bolder and definitely more frustrating approach to just end it, especially before the gunshot, but just ending it with Abby saying, like the same way they do in the game, with Abby being like, you know, we let you live and you wasted it. But I think the thing that makes it tough is just because of how long it has been we've seen since Abby. Like, I don't know if that would have worked with this particular version with the show as well, too. Yeah. Because of just how much time we've spent

away from it. Like, they are making this scene into being. this huge moment of the convergence. These are the storylines converging. But I think without having seen Abby for most of the season, it just makes it a little bit tough because it's like we've been waiting for all these weeks, all these episodes to finally see this happen. And then it cuts the black. So it's a little bit frustrating, I think, especially knowing how long it's going to be.

Like in the game, it's obviously different because you can just keep playing through it. You know, it's, I don't know. For games, obviously, there's a long wait to. for them to happen, there's a long wait between part one and part two, but the advantage that they have once the whole game is out, is you can just have that whole story to play through consecutively. So there are just some differences there. This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business.

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chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. Yeah, and in the game when we get the protagonist switch, we get some flashback scenes before Abby wakes up. There are some dreams or some memories of her and her dad, and presumably those will be coming in season three at some point, but maybe that would have been too much to add.

add here, we're already kind of overwhelmed by the standoff, the cliffhanger, and then the switch to Abby's POV. But I like the button because it makes clear what's coming. I don't know whether it makes that years-long break any easier. But if you're intrigued by the prospect of getting to see things from Abby's perspective, it's strongly implied that that is what's happening here. Do you want to talk about the little Easter egg with the Benioff book that we see Abby reading? Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, I thought. this was a cool little detail. I mean, in the game, Manny comes in

and wakes Abby up. Abby has City of Thieves by David Benioff on her chest, and there are definitely a lot of connections between City of Thieves and the game itself. I mean, just even down to the fact that two characters going behind enemy lines, and one of the main characters being named Lev, so it's signaling that in a very obvious way.

And I didn't see any interviews or anything like that about this moment, but my assumption was that they made this change because City of Thieves came out. in 2008 in real life. And if Cordyceps took down the world in 2003, in this version of the reality, the TV show universe, that book wouldn't have come out yet. Yeah.

They'll make an exception for Pearl Jam, but not for David. Right, right. Future days exist. I don't know who created it in this universe, but here we have a little play on the title and a play on the author's name with Ben Davidoff instead and Theeves of the City. And it's a whole different cover. I'd be very curious just to see the whole process of creating that prop, too, of producing this book that doesn't exist and all this stuff. But I thought it was a funny little Easter egg. Yep. Yeah, the creators have been pretty open about the influence of that book and also The Road and Cormac McCarthy and other things on The Last of Us. It kind of wears some of its influences on its sleeve. So this was a nice nod. So we've come to the end of this season and we want to look forward to season three and beyond. But just our overall verdict on season two now that we've seen it all, I titled your written recap of the finale, a fan base divided cannot stand.

I think it was always going to be difficult to stand season two for fans of season one not to have some mixed feelings and reservations about season two, whether or not they were game players. If they were game players, well, there were bound to be more changes. And some subset of the audience will complain about changes just because there are changes without weighing their merits. But I think there were legitimate gripes, and we made many of them with some of the changes this season. And of course, it was going to be polarizing just like the game was in the moment and for good faith reasons and just losing the Joel and Ellie relationship and losing Pedro Pascal, especially in the show version. And it's just it's a tougher hang in season two, right? I mean, not that it's all just unicorns and rainbows in season one either. We've got cannibals and we've got various factions doing whatever it takes to survive and we've got our heroes' lives in danger.

they're doing some questionable things to survive and all culminating in Joel's rampage at the hospital. But it's taken to a new level here where the motive is just solely revenge, whereas in season one, at least the impulse is a protective one, potentially taken too far. But you could say at least for a good cause or that's sort of the kernel of why things happen. And so it's just, it's tougher to spend time with these characters doing what they're doing in season two. just as it was in The Last of Us Part 2. But beyond that, what is your overall take on season 2? I mean, I really did enjoy a lot of elements of it. And I know I've been especially critical of this episode.

And I was glad you raised this in a previous one of our recordings of just how, like, when it comes to proceed shows like this, the bar is just raised. And, like, we're not trying to be disparaging of a show like this that is so well produced in so many ways. And obviously, for us at least, we have this connection to the video game. So the bar is just set way higher. And I do just think that, you know, they did a lot of things really, really well. Like I thought the whole episode to the Battle of Jackson, everything that they did there was just really, really masterful. But this was a really tough adaptation on so many levels.

And I thought it was interesting to hear Craig Mason talk a little bit about it on the podcast. as well, where when Troy Baker, who's the host of the podcast, is asking them, like, Druckman as well, and Halle Gross as well, what they're looking forward in season three, Mason was just talking about how he's looking forward to the more straightforward narrative and how, like, especially with this one, it's tricky because you have to jump around a lot. And I think they did struggle to do it. And I think part of that is there is such a love to the source material that they are trying to adhere as close to possible to it in many ways, which is why I feel like some of the choices they end up making were kind of half measures.

Yeah. Like something with Abby, you know, you put everything up front. You tell them who you are, but then you still kind of follow the same narrative structure where you don't see her again. So that makes it tough as a viewer as well. Like, yes, you already know Abby's motivations, but by the time you get to five weeks, later after you see this whole big scene of Abby killing Joel, you haven't seen Abby, but you still get to see Isaac and other members of the WOLF.

I think it's just, it was messy in a lot of ways that the first season wasn't. And I think, again, that comes down to just how hard of an adaptation this was. Yep, I'm with you. And I think part of it is on the creators to some extent that maybe there were choices that could have been better. I understand we're backseat driving here when we make these critiques. and we can't see the full road ahead of us the way that they can. But even so, we have seen the game.

And yeah, there are just certain sticking points that thus far I haven't fully come around on. That said, I think that there was always going to be a little lost in translation here. I think just that was inevitable that it was going to be difficult to adapt that game and not lose something, given the way that it was structured, given the different. demands of these mediums and the different release schedules, I think they made some compromises that I don't think I would have made in retrospect. But even if they hadn't made them, I think there were going to be challenges and obstacles, which is why they made those decisions, because they couldn't just one-to-one ported over the way that season one largely was.

And so when they did go out on a limb and change things, you know, we talked about some of the writing that just seemed heavier-handed than it did at times than it was in season one. And maybe it is just the adaptation dilemma and the same sort of thing we saw in Thrones when you get beyond the source text. Not to suggest that the source material is always perfect and can't be improved upon either. But when you start taking some liberties and some risks there, in this case, it's different, obviously, because you do have and gross with their hands at the wheel as well. But clearly, Mason is kind of steering the show when it comes to writing and adapting here. And he was, I don't want to say cavalier when it came to making changes because I think he deeply considered all of them, clearly, and had the sign-off from Druckman and co.

But he did seem to have kind of a desire to shake things up a little. And whether it was that he just wanted to put his stamp on it or just thought that it needed that, it just, it's, it's. didn't always seem to work as well to me as the very faithful season-od adaptation, which could afford to be faithful just because of the way that it was structured. And, you know, the depiction of Ellie, this is something that we've talked about here, and we've addressed some of the critiques of Bell Ramsey's performance. And generally, we've been of the opinion that it's less about the performance than it is about the writing and just the way that this character was scripted. And so there's this whole debate that's been raging and if anything has been intensified by the finale

about Ellie's competence and Ellie's likability and whether Ellie just should have been better at stuff than she was in this season and whether they tried to kind of give her a hero edit as you'd call it in Survivor and whether that backfired if anything with the different characterization of Ellie here. So now that we've seen the bulk of the Ellie storyline, at least the Seattle portion of it from the game, how much merit do you think there is to that that show Ellie is a drastically different character than game Ellie and in some ways a worse one? Yeah, I mean, I think it is tough because Bella Ramsey is so good and it is very frustrating of how much of this, I think, unfairly so, this unhappiness of what this. character is in the TV show as being targeted at them

but I do think that there is such a difference in seeing how much Ellie especially because you play as Ellie like how many people Ellie kills how competent Ellie is in a lot of the ways that the show version we just don't really get to see like I really liked the moment

for example when Ellie sticks out her arm for Dina like in that episode when they're running away from the horde and the subway like moments like that shows this version of Ellie and how quick thinking and how in these moments of survival, Ellie can be like that. Yeah.

And I would have just liked to have more of that in the way that we didn't get in this season. So I think it's tough. And I think it comes down to a lot of the pacing that we've talked about. I think we could have just spent more time showing Ellie and Dina on their journey, maybe on the front end. But in terms of the unlikeability part of it, like the game version is supposed to be unlikable too. Yes, exactly.

That's the thing that I think a lot of people are like overlooking a little bit too much for maybe their little bit bloodlust when it comes to Ellie. But a lot of the choices they make on this show, I think, line up with what they do in the game. And I do appreciate some of the ways in which they are showing more of the empathy and humanity and morality that Ellie is struggling with in the TV show, even with just moments of like telling Dina the truth, like things that we don't get in the game. because it just aligns more with the evolution of who the character we've seen on this show. And I think it's fine for there to be some differences like that. And I think there should be. Yeah, I agree. And I don't think it's completely inconsistent with the depiction of season one, Ellie.

Now, the reasonable point is that that was five years ago. And Ellie, okay, has been ensconced in the safety of Jackson for much of that time, but has been training, has been going on patrols, has kind of learned at the knee of two stone cold killers in, Tommy and Joel and has been training with weapons, et cetera. And so you do expect a certain level of taking care of herself. And, you know, there are times where it did feel like she just kind of wasn't in charge at any point of this excursion to Seattle, you know, like other than some moments where she kind of, you know, goes agro and just goes after Nora by herself or goes after Abby here.

it does feel as if she is almost the second fiddle to Dina in the show. And we've talked about how the depiction of Dina is different and how she is more active in the show. And I definitely don't mind that. But there are times where it just, it does feel like Dina is the leader. And Ellie is following Dina's lead. And it is a little bit of an inversion there or even Jesse is coming in and saving the day, you know. And so I do think a big part of it is, as you. you were saying that in the show, the game, you know, forces you to kill a lot of people as Ellie,

or at least strongly encourages you to kill a lot of people unless you're more adept at stealth than I am personally. And so it is hard to divorce that experience of just killing wolves, killing dogs, killing infected, just slaughtering people leaving this trail of bodies in your wake from the show where that doesn't happen. And I don't necessarily want that to happen. I think maybe there was a happy medium. Happy is probably the wrong adjective. But, you know, there's some middle ground maybe where there's a little bit more of a body count at a certain point so that we again see what length she's willing to go to before the Noracian, you know, that she is willing and able to kill. I don't need her to be Rambo like she is in the game at times now.

necessarily, but a bit more of that, I think, would not have gone to miss. I would have liked to see a little bit more of that. Yeah, I'm definitely with you there. I think, again, I mean, I keep on mentioning it too, but it's just like, I think it, again, comes down to pacing. It's tough when you only have seven episodes and in one full episode is flashbacks. And even just the way in which that flashback is setting up a lot of the emotional arc for this character and the way that we are understanding what Ellie is going through in the present. It's doing a lot of the heavy. lifting in the way that we're not getting to see that evolution happen in real time in a way that it feels like it's it's kind of just like jumping a little bit too quickly. Yes. And speaking of the seven episodes, so production of the season was delayed a bit by the strikes. But according to the creators, they had already decided that seven episodes was what they wanted for the season.

And Druckman said back in March, he told Game Informer, the reason, for example, we have seven episodes is not because anybody told us do seven or any particular number. It was that we looked at the entire story that was left in front of us that we wanted to tell. And that seventh episode is going to be the breaking point for this story. And then we pick it up in the following season from that point. So unless you think Druckman is running interference for HBO or something, covering for budget cuts or whatever it else, it doesn't seem as if there were any constraints imposed on the creators here that they decided that seven is what it would be. So that is on them if you think that that was the wrong choice or that led to certain things just seeming abrupt or rushed at the end,

which I think is fair, certainly in the finale. That is something that according to them, at least by their own account, they did bring on themselves. And I think this was a natural stopping point for the season, given the way that the game goes. There were aspects to the season that maybe we would have saved for season three, you know, the way that the game saves them for the next season and that maybe that would have allowed more time with with these characters. But that does not appear to have been a top-down imposed constraint or limitation that they had to work around. Yeah, I thought that was really interesting to see because I feel like when it comes to especially

shows like HBO, big, big budget HBO shows like that, you kind of just assume that that's where it comes from, right? Like, it's just, it's hard to produce so many. I mean, we get seven of these. I know we make a lot of criticisms when it comes to the story elements and the writing, but I mean, the sets that they're doing are just ridiculous. And like seeing the making of each week is always my favorite part and just seeing the way that they've created some of these scenes. Like, even for this episode, just watching the behind the scenes of how they did the whole boat sequence and showing the ways that they combine, like, practical locations with, like, a water tank and how Bella Ramsey's actually in the water with all this heavy wet gear on.

It's so amazing to see them do this and to do that for so many episodes is definitely tough. But, again, it's just if we had a little bit more time to let these things play out a little bit more and maybe even just show more moments with the WLF, show more moments with the WLF, show more moments with the seraphites, it'll also just help create more anticipation and more hype around the second season in a way where it doesn't feel quite so abrupt in the end, where we're getting this tease of where we're going to get this next season, but especially a lot of the last episode is so much of hearing about, oh, Abby and her friends are missing except for many, like Abby is going to be the leader. It's, again, because we've played the game, you know exactly where they're going,

But if there was a way for them to spread out a little bit more of those interactions, a little bit more of that knowledge across the season, I think it would have been even more effective. Yeah. And look, it's always going to be unfulfilling when a season ends and the story is not resolved. That's just how serialized storytelling works. Like we're used to cliffhangers on TV. They want to keep us in suspense. Now, when you have very long breaks between seasons, it's hard to have us dangling. We can't keep our handhold on that cliff for that. long without your interest starting to ebb or just forgetting what's going on. And so the idea that they didn't tie everything up, well, yeah, it's season two of a series that will probably run for four seasons. That kind of comes with the territory. But you hope that there's at least sort of an arc that is kind of complete within that partial part of the story. And that just feels like it's kind of lacking here, but also that's kind of the way that the game is structured. So I see why people were left feeling a bit unsatisfied here. Now, one of the things that we have just been stuck on

throughout the season, of course, is what they told us about Abby. And I'll just read a little quote from Variety here about that decision to clue us in to Abby's motivations early on. Mason also said that he and Druckman entertained several options for how to incorporate Abby's story into the show, including intercutting her narrative with Ellie's or alternating episodes between them. But in the end, they decided to stick to the structure of the game, which Mason acknowledged was a considerable risk for a hit show that had already killed off one of its stars in episode two. And Mason says, you keep asking people, I know you love this. We're taking it away and giving you this now. Then hopefully they go, oh, you know what? We actually really like this.

well, there were a lot of changes that we really liked, but I have not yet reached that point with this particular change. And hey, I hope I do. But I'm still not there. And when they talk about, well, they decided to stick to the structure of the game, in the broad strokes they did. But because they told us so much more about Abby than we knew at this point in the game, that is a significant deviation. And having decided to stick this close to the structure, it just. feels to me go all the way. Yeah, it's bold. Yeah, it's risky, but you're taking a different sort of risk by sapping some of the suspense here because, I mean, can you imagine? You don't have to imagine.

You played the game, so you know what it was like for you. But imagine if we have this cliffhanger here and we change to Abby's perspective. And yes, you run the risk of alienating some viewers who are like, I don't want to see an entire season from the perspective of someone who killed Joel senselessly as far as I know. And yet, There's an unknown there. There's a mystery box element to Abby that is missing now because, okay, now we're going to spend an entire season from Abby's perspective and we're going to see things that we haven't seen and we're going to understand her a bit better.

But ultimately, the big reveal, the epiphany that you come to as you're playing Abby's portion of the game, we've had that already, right? And the reaction that Dina has in this episode, when she's... She learns what has been hidden from her by Ellie. I mean, that kind of mirrors the realization that the player has in the second half of the game. And it changes how you feel as the player or the viewer just as it changes how Dina feels about this whole mission. And that moment essentially has been stolen from viewers of the show by the decision to give us Abby's backstory up front. Yeah.

I mean, that just goes back to what I was saying earlier to about just the half-months. measures that are better being taken in this way. Because I completely agree with you. I think if they were going to do this, they should have just gone with the full risk of just not telling us anything because otherwise you are just taking out that mystery. And I think the most intriguing part of that narrative choice that they made was because they withheld that information. But to give us that upfront, but then to still follow the same narrative structure,

it becomes narrative structure, it becomes just a little bit more frustrating in that way. And I really would have been curious to see them lean into this version of it more. and actually show them, try to intercut her narrative a little bit more. And, like, maybe we see a flashback of Abby and her dad early on. Like, I liked that moment of them showing Abby in the hallway of the hospital, like, talking to herself. But I would have liked to see more things like that rather than seeing that up front, if you know what I mean. Yeah. I think there are more show viewers on Team Abby at this point than there were gamers on Team Abby before the person.

perspective switch. And that's because Appie's just a bit more sympathetic. We just see where she's coming from. And so if you're going to give us that much, then why hold back the rest of her story for a season three that's going to be coming years in the future? If you're going to give us that, then it does feel like, yeah, you might as well alternate or intercut. And that would have been complicated too, but it's taking place simultaneously. So I think it could have been doable potentially and probably would have lost something in translation doing it that way, too. I don't know that there was a right, perfect answer that just would have been exactly the experience that we had playing this game given the breaks between seasons and all the rest.

But it does just feel like half measures. Now, as the variety story said, they considered all these options. I'm sure that they gamed all that out and they sketched out how it would go and they came to this conclusion and they've thought more deeply about this than anyone and they have more at stake in this than anyone. one. And so I do give credence to their decision here, but at least for now, and we haven't seen the full story. And so we will reserve some judgment until the end of next season, until the end of the series itself. And perhaps we will come around and we will see the vision when it's all said and

done. And we will say, we're sorry that we ever doubted you. But at this moment, it's hard to say that. And it's hard, I think, for people to stay invested over the many years that they, need to because, yeah, at a certain point, Ellie does become unlikable. That is how the game is designed, and that can be tough on TV when you're not pulled forward by the gameplay of The Last of Us, and that's something that you don't have here, and that was always going to turn some people off. But might as well just go for the boldest, most shocking way of delivering this story instead of making compromises. It was, you know, as Druckman said, and this was an unrelated quote, he was asked about whether Pedro Pascal could be in season three, whether we might

see Joel again. And he hedged, of course, but he said, it's always good to leave some things a mystery, to let the audience use their imagination to fill in the blanks. Obviously, every once in a while, we tap into those mysteries when they're important to the story we're telling here. So I guess never say never. That was about Joel reappearing, but the same could apply to what we're talking about here. Leave some things a mystery.

Leave Abby a mystery. Let the audience use their imagination. Okay, let's talk a little bit about season three then because it's going to be a while. Now, if you had hoped that season three being green lit before season two even premiered would expedite the timeline here, I hate to break it to you, but it does not appear that that is the case. Isabella Merced, who plays Dina, said that production should start next year. And in late May, Druckman, Mazen, and Gross said they didn't know how.

how much Ellie, Dina, and Tommy would appear in season three. Obviously, they're not going to give away everything, but they made it sound as if they're very much still in the storyboarding stage and the not even writing potentially. Bella Ramsey said they haven't seen any scripts yet. So we're a ways out from filming starting, and it's a long way from filming starting to the results being on our screens. So the Last of Us season one came out about 18 months after they started shooting,

Season two, which was shorter, of course, came out about 14 months after it started filming. So even if we say that they'll get going early next year, first thing January, 2026, you're still, if they stick to the same sort of timeline. And if we go back up to eight or nine episodes potentially, you're looking at mid-2020. it seems like, unless they're able to accelerate things in a way that I can't foresee it, it seems like we're looking at another two-year gap. So will audiences come back on the other side of that, given the way that the end of this season went down? I mean, I certainly hope so because I really think that there's so many good parts of this story left to go.

Yeah. It's challenging because if people don't come back, honestly, I do understand it in a lot of respects. But the one thing that I do like about having that. But at the end is that we know for sure where this is going, even if you don't know the whole story from the game. This is about to become Caitlin Deber's show. And I do like how they already set up some of the big things they're going to come.

Obviously, big Sarah fight, WLF battle is going to be spectacular whenever that comes. They had when Ellie and Jesse were walking at one point in the street, You can see the crane in the background, the crane like bridge that the seraphites have. So we're going to get to see Abby dealing with her fear of heights with Lev. Yep. And then just seeing the other side of that whole Tommy sniping scene, which I think knowing that we're going to get all this good stuff made it a little bit frustrating now, just having to have to wait longer. But there really is so many good things still to come. So I do hope that the audience sticks around.

Yeah. I'm not trying to concern troll. It's not that I don't want the show to do well. In fact, it pains me when I see people saying that they're walking away, even though I get it, because there is much more to come. I mean, which is more interesting in your mind? Ellie's three days in Seattle or Abbeys? I think Abbees. I do too.

I think Abbey's for sure. Yeah. Right. And that has nothing to do with Bella Ramsey versus Caitlin Deaver. Caitlin Deaver is great. And it seems like people haven't complained about her as much aside from her musculature. But, yeah, I mean, I'm looking forward to seeing more of her and seeing anything of her in moments where she's not currently, like, murdering protagonists or attempting to, which should make her more sympathetic, even though we know her motivations here. But, yes, I would say that her story is more compelling in a lot of ways than Ellie's.

And so it's almost the shame that Ellie's had to come first. But I do worry just because, look, if this were still a proper country, we could. have just made a 20 episode season and knocked it all out at once. That's the way it used to work, folks. Or, you know, like, I would have loved it if they could film back to back, let's say, right? Just so we could get maybe a year between seasons. And I get that it's hard. You know, the talent has other obligations. And there's so much wrangling you have to do and so much production you have to do that it's, it's tough. But when you can do that, then it helps just to make it feel like a more seamless story. And just the extended break, the absence of Pedro Pascal, the increasingly bleak tone, the prospect of reliving season two's time frame from a less familiar perspective than Ellie's without that suspense and that intrigue of who is happy?

What does she want? Why did she do this? Plus the knowledge that this saga will not resolve itself in three seasons. So it's not as if you can check back in and say, all right, I'll come back for the grand finale here. you know there's another season after season three. They've already said that won't be the end of it. So you have to buy in for at least a couple more. I'd be surprised if the audience doesn't dwindle somewhat.

And I'd be pleasantly surprised if it didn't. If you wanted to doom and gloom and say that that's happening already, you could point out that the season two finale had 3.7 million viewers on Sunday night, which was down from 8.2 million for the season one finale. So that's a big decrease. Granted, it was a holiday weekend. And I imagine that many people will catch up after that. On the other hand, the season one finale went up against the Oscars, so it wasn't as if there was no competition there.

And the season two premiere had 5.3 million viewers, so it was down over that, too. You want to see growth in a second season of a hit show, even if the bar is high to begin with. You want to see growth over the course of a season or season over season. And we haven't seen that, although if you look at not the live viewing, but people who are catching up afterwards, according to a variety story, season two, is overall outperforming season one, tallying roughly 37 million viewers per episode to date up from the 32 million average viewers reached by season one after 90 days of viewing. So we'll see when we get the time delayed data here. I imagine that that number will come up quite a bit. So it's not as if this series audience has cratered, I don't think. But it does seem to me that it will lose some people who will just get off of this boat like Ellie.

We'll think it's capsizing and don't want to end up on Scar Island here. And, you know, how much will we see Ellie in season three? Bella Ramsey said, I think that I'm going to be there, but not a whole bunch. And so it really is a reset. It's a reboot. Joel is off the board. Ellie seemingly will be mostly absent from season three. And so you're asking people to buy into a character that we've hardly seen anything of.

And granted, a great actor. And also, we do understand that character's story in a way that we didn't in the game. But it's a new show. And I think it could be a really good show. And I hope it is and that people will watch it. But it is a lot to ask also. And I think they were aware that it was. is going to be a taller order than getting people to come back for season two.

Definitely. Yeah, and I think the thing that's tough with knowing that we're not going to be seeing much of Ellie is just kind of the way that this season ended up being a little bit messy. And I mean, not to belabor the point too much again, but just to go back to how we found out about Abby's identity so early on, I think one thing that I didn't add was just how much it really shapes our understanding of Ellie in a different way throughout the whole season. Because if we know exactly what has happened as the audience, then we know that Ellie is doing this, that they're like, they had a reason to go after Joel and that Ellie is doing this nonetheless. Like, yes, we didn't know that Ellie knew this already, but as the audience, we did. So it's just already reinforcing that Ellie is doing the wrong thing here. Yes. And most of the time, you just don't have that experience where you're really rooting for Ellie to go get revenge and take out this person, this person that person that just came in here.

and we don't know who they are, and we're with her the whole way. And I think that's something that's lost. And to lose that and then not to have her for a whole other season, potentially, is going to be a little tough because it really makes that convergence that happens eventually so exciting in the game.

Once you finally get back into the theater and you have this confrontation between the two of them, and now you're playing as Abby Felling, fighting Elie. There's this moment when you're playing the game. It's like so wild to be able to see that dynamic. switch. Yep. And that goes to the likeability, unlikeability debate that we were just touching on. And also that complicity that the viewer or gamer has, which I think can be kind of overblown because in the game, you don't have a choice other than to stop playing the game. You know, it's not as if you're,

it's not some sort of bio-shock little sister's situation or something more complex than that, where you are facing some moral decision as a player, do I want to do a bad thing for some sort of reward. The reward is that you get to continue playing the game, I guess, but beyond that, but there is an element of that if you were on Team Ellie and then you realize, oh, well, this is at best a morally gray character here. And maybe I should not have been so gung-ho and wanted to take out Abby myself. Hard to have that change of heart here in the show when you just know too much or you know more at least. And also, you know, we're 16 episodes into this series. So say we double that. Say it's a four.

season show. In terms of total screen time might not be that different from the total playtime of the two games, but a lot of that playtime is gameplay as you sneaking around and foraging and killing and exploring. And here it's all story. It's all cutscene. And so I do wonder at some point do you end up beating a dead horse, which will not be shimmer because shimmer's alive well. But in the book shop scene in the finale, there's an inscription on the wall from Alice in Wonderland. Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it. And it's not hard to find the moral of The Last of Us. It's right on the surface, it's sort of spelled out very explicitly and say the council scene this season. The idea of the cycle of violence, it's not that original or deep. It's effective in the game because you're playing. And so you are a to it and you're immersed in this world and because of your pre-existing attachment to these characters and just seeing them break bad and how that makes you feel and how that makes them feel.

Here, there's no gameplay to break that up. It's just all story and it's all that cycle of violence being emphasized and reemphasized and reemphasized. And so I wonder if we get 32 episodes in, four seasons in whether it's like, okay, we get it. We get the point. We get the moral of this story. It wasn't actually hard to find. So we'll see.

We wanted to wrap up with a couple of listener emails here. One of them came from listener Logan, who writes to RingiverseGaming at gmail.com in your episode six, but MASH Gamer's Guide for The Last of Us, you mentioned that the fireflies didn't have any proof they could make a cure and that it's ambiguous. Neil Druckman just came out a couple days ago

saying that his intentions were always that they would have made the cure. I've always thought personally they wouldn't have been able to make a cure, but now with this information, I was curious if it changes your stance on Joel saving Ellie and just on the story in general. So this is referring to an interview that Druckman did on the Sacred Symbols podcast mid to late May. He said, could the fireflies make a cure? Our intent was that yes, they could.

Now is our science a little shaky that now people are questioning it? Yeah, it was a little shaky and now people are questioning that. I can't say anything. All I can say is that our intent is that they would have made a cure. That makes it a more interesting philosophical question for what Joel does. So let's answer Logan's question. Does this change our stance on Joel's decision or the story? Or how do you feel about Druckman even weighing in on this either way?

It doesn't really change my stance personally. Just because whether or not Joel knew, I think it's horrible nonetheless. I mean, it's just a really tough choice, obviously. But I mean, just the fact that if there is a chance that they can make a cure, then I feel like you have to take it. Of course, if he does know, it's, it's worse in that sense. But yeah, my issue more so is to the last part of your question, at least, was just, I don't know if Druckman should be making it so definitive because I think the more interesting part of the whole philosophical question is whether or not Joel knows as well. I liked how it

was, at least to me, it seemed kind of ambiguous whether or not it was going to be the case. And I understand it from, from Joel's perspective. And I think that. That's what's so beautiful about the way they made that decision unfold in both the first season and the game. It's because we see what the loss of Sarah has done to him. And we've seen how much that has broken him and how Ellie has given him new life to a guy that tried committing suicide shortly after Sarah died. So I understand why Joel did it and all those things. And whether or not the cure could have happened, I don't think that really changes what that meant. for Joel in his mind or for me in the way that Joel made the decision.

Yeah. I support an author's right to come out and explain what they were thinking. In fact, I'm interested in some insight into the thought process and what their intent was or what the backstory was. I do think it's often good when there's something that is left open to interpretation in the text, just to continue to leave that open to interpretation, you know, just like don't say this is what I intended it to be. you kind of left that open-ended in the game. And I just, you know, regardless of what he says,

it's not canon in my mind. It's not binding, you know. It's like the project is out there. The creation is out there. And then we can interpret it the way that we want. And he can have his interpretation. But if it's not made explicit in the text, then that's not necessarily canon in my mind. And I think regardless of what Druckman's intent was, I think what matters is what Joel could have known or thought in that moment. And even if Druckman intended for the cure to happen, there's no particular reason for Joel to be certain that that would happen, given what he knows in that situation and given what we as the player knows. I mean, it seems like there's a lot of doubt in that situation. Now, ultimately, I agree with you that it probably doesn't matter that much.

because even if it was 100% guaranteed, I think Joel would have done exactly what he did. So, you know, it's not as if he justified it by saying you were going to die. And also, I didn't really think that they were going to make the cure anyway. But if I'd really believe that they were going to make the cure, yeah, I just would have let you die. And I wouldn't have slaughtered all the fireflies. I don't think that would have been his thought process. Now, maybe he could tell himself that there was room for doubt there. And that's why he did what he did.

but ultimately his motivation is that he loves Ellie and he's not willing to sacrifice her. And she has not consciously made that sacrifice even if she would be willing to. So I don't think it really changes the interpretation here. Maybe it could change people's interpretation of how guilty Joel was just because there's doubt in our minds about whether he actually cost humanity a cure here. But I think he would have made the same decision regardless. But then again, that's my interpretation, just as this is. Shuckman's interpretation. So it is still an open question in my mind. So the other question that we wanted to consider here, there was an amazing quote. He said that this season was tricky because it was

so driven by this traumatic event, Joel dies. And once Joel dies, it is so big and impactful that you don't have quite as much room to sort of wonder down some side streets. You really need to stick to what happens as a result of that, as well as what happened leading up to it. But I think next season, we probably will have a bit more flexibility. And you know, we'll have a side trip to Indonesia. It's one of our favorite things to do. So maybe, maybe a side trip, you know, Joel and Tommy terrorizing the countryside, we'll never know. So we got an email along those lines from listener Brett, who says, I want to ask a quick question about your wish list for future episodes. The games have some of the most powerful world building sprinkled throughout, small letters or pictures or journal entries

hidden among the wreckage, ish and the tunnel gang stand out from the first game alongside the doomed family inside the aquarium from the sequel, if you had the power to include a bottle episode that covered one of these secondary stories in a future season, which one would you and Daniel choose? So if we could do a Bill and Frank episode for season three, what would it be?

I thought this is a really fun question. Yeah. I feel like there isn't as much of, at least to me, like an obvious like Bill and Frank situation, but when it comes to like some of the notes, like that specific part of the question, One of the ones that I always really liked was the notes that Abby finds on her second day in Seattle in the apartments, which was the story of the neighbors, Sam and Julia are exchanging notes back and forth from their apartment to apartment.

Sam is there with his brother and Julia is there with her mom. And it's just this really nice exchange between two people that are just surviving at the end of the world, trying to get by. I think Julia passes Sam a bottle of vodka. and Sam is just like ecstatic about this bottle of vodka. Yeah. But then as all things go in this world, it gets pretty dark. And Sam's brother is killed by a seraphite. And I feel like there is, there would be room to dramatize this story in a way that could

build up the conflict between the WOLF and the seraphites in a more human and character-driven way than we've seen so far. And obviously, this is where we're heading. And there's just ways in which you could bring in characters like Abby or other people on the WOLF side as more supporting characters and that kind of thing. But that was one that stuck out to me. How about you? Yeah, my thought was along those lines because one of the things I'm most anticipating

is learning more about that, Wolf-Sera fights conflict than we did even in the game, where a lot of it was just this environmental storytelling and we're picking up little snatches and fragments. And here it's just more central. And I don't know if this is exactly what our questioner was going for because this is kind of more integral to the story here. But I would just like to see the prophet in live action and see the whole origin story of the seraphites, which is told pretty explicitly. It's just through notes and journals and letters and prayers.

We don't see the prophet in the game. She's gone by the time Ellie shows up in Seattle. And we've seen the murals in the show and maybe multiple depictions of the prophet. But we are able to piece together through some of those. just things you find around the world. The basic backstory of the prophet. And whether it's faithful to that, or they switch things up, as with Isaac's origin story in the show, I'd just, I'd like to see that because we've skipped over that entirely. We had the one Isaac flashback and then we go to the present day. Let's see the intermediate steps there. Let's see where the seraphites

and wolves are coming from and how they ended up at each other's throats and why the prophet's teachings were so persuasive and how those two eventually ended up at odds. And that seems like something we might actually get. In fact, I'd probably bet on that happening, you know? I mean, maybe to introduce the prophet who's going to be gone by the time we get to the present day timeline, you could still tell that story without getting into all of that detail. But I think that would be nice. I think we could see some flashback material and understand how these two very different tribes ended up that way. Yeah, I think it was funny.

When we saw that first flashback of Isaac and the WOLF, my immediate assumption that was that Hanrahan, I think is the name of the character, was going to be the prophet. I think maybe in part because the character looked a little bit like some of the murals that we've seen in the show, but it seemed like that was killed pretty quickly because we had another flashback sequence in the hospital soon after

where Henrahan was in the WOLF. But I was really interested in the finale, just seeing the different murals and seeing how the profit has kind of been changing in terms of the imagery. And is there more than one profit? Like, I'm curious to see where that comes to. Yeah. All right. Well, another quote that was relevant to something we speculated about, could they maybe continue to tell this story in show form and get ahead of where the game is, Game of Thrones style?

Mason did address this back in March. He told the Hollywood reporter, I am not going to go past the game. I'll just say that flat out. So that sounds pretty definitive. Now, could he change his minds? Could he say, I'm not going to go past the game, but I'm handing off this show to someone else who will, or even Druckman will complete this story in the show and not in the game? Or, as we have speculated, might there be a Last of Us part three by the time we get to season four in 2029 or whenever it is? All of those possibilities are still on the table.

But he has at least denied that that is the plan. for him. Let us talk about the plan for the Ringiverse and House of Ar, because the Last of Us season two is over, as are the gamer guides for now, but the podcast content keeps coming. Post and or post the Last of Us, we have a little relative lull in June before the big superhero blockbuster one-two punch in July, but still plenty to cover. Ringiverse recommends for May is coming in a couple days. There's still time to submit listener nominations for this month to Ringiverse Recommends at gmail.com. If you are not normally a button-mash listener and you just joined us for this ride.

Thank you, but I hope you'll consider staying on board because we've got a lot on the docket for June. On Monday, we will be back to talk about Eldon Ring Night Rain and the Eldon Ring movie news. The week after that, we have a whole new console to unbox and discuss. We'll be talking Switch 2 and Mario Kart World Tour. And then later in June, we will cover the new Hideo-Kajima Joint Death Stranding 2. next week after button mash the midnight boys P-p-poo! One more time, there we go.

We'll have their reactions to ballerina, the John Wick spin-off. House of R will have the usual two pods per week, but topics TBD as we record this, we're going to have to get creative now without the tent pole weekly series to talk about. So perhaps a summer height meter is in the offing, but we will keep the podcast coming and we hope that you will stay with us.

And Daniel, it has been a great pleasure to be a gamer guide along with you. Here you go halfway across the country with someone. We have gone across this entire season despite all the difficulties, the obstacles, the high points, and there were high points, great set pieces, great action scenes, great emotional moments, great acting, and then also some of the stumbles that we talked about, too. But it was always a pleasure to do this with you. So thank you for being my sidekick on this journey.

Thank you, Ben. I mean, it's, it's been a pleasure as well. I mean, it's, we've seen so much of this show. I mean, I'm excited to see where it goes in a couple of years. Hopefully it's a couple of years and not longer. Thank you to Devin Ruln as well. It's been a lot of fun. Yes. Thank you to Devin Rulnado for producing this episode and this series. And thank you to senior podcast manager, Arjuna Ramgapal. He let us live. And I hope we haven't wasted it. Hopefully our gamer guides will be back for season three. But in the meantime, you can listen to our other. podcast coverage, and you can contact us at ringaverse gaming at gmail.com. Shimmer and Alice live!