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

Episode Date: April 17, 2025

Ben and Daniel Chin begin their weekly Button Mash breakdowns of 'The Last of Us' Season 2 from the perspective of longtime 'The Last of Us' players. First, they describe their experiences with the games, recap the biggest changes Season 1 made to the original 'The Last of Us,' and discuss why 'The Last of Us Part II' poses a greater adaptation challenge. Then they analyze the most significant changes to the story and structure of 'TLOU2' in the first episode of the show's second season, before speculating about what those differences might signify for Episode 2 and beyond. WARNING: spoilers for 'The Last of Us Part II.' Hosts: Ben Lindbergh and Daniel Chin Producer: Devon Renaldo Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, everyone? I'm Nora Prynciotti. And I'm Nathan Hubbard. And we're coming in like a wrecking ball to announce a brand new series. That's right. It's every single album, Miley Cyrus. Deep dive with us into the career of one of our most creative and confounding pop stars. We're starting, of course, with the best of Hannah Montana. And ending with her brand new album Something Beautiful in June. And don't forget about Miley Cyrus and her dead pets. We certainly will not be doing that. So listen now on Spotify or we're all. ever you get your podcasts. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters.

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flu-like symptoms, or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Trimphia today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit trimfireradio.com. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech. Everyone knows winter is the MVP and making a mess. You don't need WeatherTech floor liners in the summer, unless you hit the beach or go camping. Then you'd want a cargo liner. Or a road trip goes sideways, ketchup goes rogue, ice cream drips.

Yeah, you'd be pretty happy about those weather tech seat protectors. So just to be clear as the mud, you're inevitably going to step into the summer. You don't need WeatherTech unless you plan on doing summer. Visit weathertech.com today. And welcome into the ringerverse, your nexus feed for all things fandom. But these days, one thing in fandom especially, the last of us. I am Ben Lindberg, senior editor for the ringer and Buttonmash Foreman, joined this week.

And for the following six weeks by my patrol partner. The only person I'd want with me when I'm stocking clickers at the grocery store, ringer, staff writer, Daniel Chin. Hello, Daniel. Hey, Ben. I'm excited for this run here. You know, I've got to see you twice in a week here. I know this time is virtually, but.

Yeah, two in-person appearances in one week. That would have been a lot for me. Yeah, it would have been too much. At least you're seeing my face. It's, you know, baby steps. But if I were ever to lose you, I'd surely lose myself. So I'm glad that we have found each other again. We have fixed ourselves some whiskey and herbal tea.

We've smoked our shaken stems. And we have started a timer because we are here to discuss the season two premiere of The Last of Us, future days, written and directed by Craig Mason. Now, you might be wondering, why is there a third Ring or Verse podcast about The Last of Us? Haven't we heard all of the takes that the Ring ofverse crew has about this episode? We know it's a good show. We know it's popular, but we've already had the Midnight Boys reaction in the house of our deep dive. So as Charles would say, what are we doing here? Well, this is the Ring of Versus video game podcast.

And the last of us is a video game adaptation. So we will be discussing the series through that lens. This is where we're just going to nerd out about this show as gamers, as fans of the games, who have that perspective on things. And I think maybe we can add a little something that might not be the focus of our other pods. on this network. Do you think we can do it? Can we be additive? Can we not repeat what other people have said? I think so. I mean, this is going to be a different kind of experience. And now that we have gotten a chance to see what this season's going to look like, we're actually have a lot

a lot already to go off of because going into this, we had so many questions. We'll get into that as we as we move forward. But it's exciting that a last of us is here after two years. Yeah. It feels like a long wait, though, by the standards of prestige TV. these days. I guess it's basically standard. Maybe it's actually quick. It's ahead of schedule. But we are going to do things a little bit differently here. We are going to talk about the season through the lens of the video game. We have played The Last of Us part two. And we'll be breaking down each episode. We'll be comparing and contrasting and analyzing those changes. Our format roughly will be that each week we will talk about the new episode. We'll talk about

how it deviated from the script that we've seen. We'll analyze what that means, and we'll do a little forward-looking section where we talk about what could be coming in the season and based on what we've seen so far, based on what we've played. Perhaps we will work in some interviews, too, since this is the premiere,

we'll be doing a little bit of recap and scene setting as well for the season and flashing back to season one. We could also use your help if you'd care to write in, interested in listener feedback and questions and responses, since we're going weekly here and we'll have a little bit more of a consistent presence, please, by all means, email ringerverse gaming at gmail.com. And maybe we can incorporate some listener responses into future episodes. But we've been informed by years of experience with these games. We want to go beyond just pointing out Easter eggs or doing the DiCaprio pointing meme and saying, oh yeah, I love that thing. I remember

when we played that, we're going to try to add a little depth to what we've seen here or what we haven't seen. And because these pods are coming out first thing on Thursdays, we will have the ability to be a bit forward-looking and speculate a little and set up the episode that we're going to see the Sunday to come. Now, based on all of that, we have to do a big red blinking, claxons, alarms, sirens, spoiler warning here. even more than the typical spoiler warning that we do on these podcasts. We have not seen any more of season two than anyone else has. We don't have screeners. We don't even have to resist the temptation. The temptation was not provided to us.

But in a sense, we have seen what we'll be coming in season two because we've played the games. So everything other than the rest of season two, which is off-limits to us, is fair game, so to speak. So be warned. Be careful. Everything that has happened in the Last of Us games, in the Last of Us universe, we will be touching on pretty explicitly here. How many more ways can I say this? I don't want anyone to say that we spoiled anything for them because we had those experiences without being spoiled, hopefully, even though there were a lot of leaks of the Last of Us part two. I avoided the leaks. I experienced the big twist and reveals organically and we

want everyone else to have that same experience. If you have somehow avoided being spoiled all this time, which if you have, I know Mallory Rubin did, pretty impressive if you've actually made it this far. Do you think you would have made it if you didn't already know what you know, would you know by now? It's so tough these days. Like, I feel like if you miss an episode of TV within, if you're just like online at all, if you're on Twitter or blue sky, you'll see spoilers within days.

So something that's as big as this, it's like. I don't know if I would have been. I don't know if I'm admitted. Yeah, it's tough out there for everyone. We feel free if you've got spoiled, but we will do our best not to be the ones who spoil you. So let's briefly recap our histories with TLOU. When did you come to the Last of Us series?

What has it signified for you? So I came to it very late, actually. And remarkably, I actually didn't have any of the spoilers when I was playing it. Like even playing part one, I had no idea how it was going to end with, with Joel in the hospital. I didn't have a PS3. I didn't originally have a PS4 until after the PS5

had already come out. But that was a big, like, pandemic thing for me. That Last of Us and, like, Breath of the Wild on Switch is what got me through the pandemic, honestly. Yeah, for me, I guess it was Animal Crossing and Doom, maybe. Both of those games came out right after coronavirus hit the U.S. And it was like, well, the world is falling apart. But on the other hand, there's a new Animal Crossing game.

So, yeah, yeah. Going for us. Right. And for me, it was definitely funny timing with the pandemic, yeah. I know, I was going to say, that's, you know, I mean, on the one hand, I guess it's on brands. You might as well just wallow in it, but it's not exactly a distraction from the concerns of the real world.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, it added an eerieness to the game as I was playing and just his life, obviously, as we didn't know what was happening. But it was a very, very fun series to escape. into. And the storytelling of this game is so, and both games is so wonderful. So I've been really excited to see them try to adapt this and then make their own changes as it's being ported to television. Yeah, it's funny. I wrote something in 2021 maybe for The Ringer about how I actually like watching pandemic fictional content during a real pandemic. I mean, I'd prefer for there not to be a

real pandemic, to be clear, if anyone was wondering what my position on pandemics is, anti. But, But I actually kind of found that to be comforting in a way, watching Station 11 for instance. Station 11 for sure. Yeah. And it just felt like a lot of people were saying like, I can't, I need a distraction. I need something that's less like real life. But I think it was partly that a lot of post-apocalyptic stories, not so much the last of us part two, but a lot of them have kind of uplifting messages or persevering despite it all and people

coming together despite the circumstances in a way that's maybe over-optimistic based on how we handle the pandemic. But there's usually sort of the human spirit transcends all. Or I also found it comforting because it's like, well, it could be worse, I guess. Like it's really bad. It's terrible. Right. There are mushroom monsters around here.

There aren't mushroom monsters. Crucially, that is a very important distinction. Yet, at least. We'll see how the fungus evolves. based on global warming. I've actually been pretty plugged into like antifungal treatments since the last of us came out. Just like kind of staying apprised, not that I have had a fungus infestation, to be clear, but just because there aren't that many remedies for some of these fungus strains that are resistant to medication,

we've had some breakthroughs lately, which I've been tracking closely because I would prefer to avoid a Last of Us real life scenario. Anyway, it was tough timing for part two to come out in June. of 2020. And that game is just unrelenting. It is dark. It is disturbing. And I had not really revisited it. I mean, I go back to the beginning with The Last of Us. I played the original when it came out. I played the sequel when it came out. But I really have not had the urge to revisit it. Because it's a tough hang. I mean, even if it's cathartic, even if it's challenging in good ways, in ways that we want art to be,

even if there are real emotional takeaways, it's just a tough time, depending on where you are in life, right? And so I've postponed my replay or rewatch until now, prepping for this season when it was like, well, I can't avoid this at this point. I've got to get back in. And I found that actually going back to it,

rewatching season one, replaying the sequel, I think I'm in a better headspace for, it now. Or maybe it's just that I knew what was coming. Yeah. So that helps. Yeah, definitely. All right. So we have warned you all. And from now on, it's a spoiler territory. So check out if you haven't played the games or look, maybe you have played them and you want to listen along. Maybe you don't care about spoilers. Or maybe you have been spoiled already. And you definitely don't have to have played the games to listen to us here. So we hope that the non-gamers in the audience will come along for the ride, even if it's after the season.

Even if you're revisiting these episodes after season two or season three, for that matter, just catch up with us flashback like the last of us will be doing. So our quick take, first of all, on this premiere, on this first episode of season two, we will dive deeper into it in a moment. But what was your initial impression from a game adaptation perspective especially? So I liked the first episode. I didn't love it. And I think part of that to me is just I felt like it was a little bit safe. And we can get into that a little bit more later on. But just in terms of some of the narrative choices and safe in the sense that I feel like any season premiere should kind of function the way that a series premiere does and how they try to draw you into the story a lot.

And I thought that with a series premiere of The Last of Us, they did a fantastic job. Like even rewatching the pilot as I prepared for this whole run, it was. so good and it's so epic and so like sweeping and its scale and with this they're really like hitting all of their their touchstones I feel like in terms of like here's what you need to remember like including just like that very first scene just like recycling the end of the last scene yes from the season finale I was like okay which was itself recycled basically shot word for word yeah yeah but I still like it I think this is a really well-made show and I'm really really interested in the different directions it's taking the story from the game.

Yeah, there's a lot for us to dive into and pull apart here, and we will. I thought the episode, it's nice to be back in this world, even though the world is awful. So it's good to be in Jackson, something you touched on in your recaps, which you're also writing every Sunday or Monday for the ringer.com. What a great website. And I'm editing those pieces. So we're teaming up in multiple ways to cover this season. But as you noted, we're sort of staying put at least for.

the moment. Now we got the tease of Seattle and where we're going to go at some point in the season, but for now at least, there's a real sense of place. And if anything, we actually got more detail and depth on Jackson as a community in the show than we got in the game. But this was just, it was different. It was a little less of an explosive start to the season, but there's going to be plenty of explosiveness coming quite soon, potentially, which we will discuss. So they're easing us into it. It's like the calm before the storm is just a little lull. And after the road trip of season one, we're actually staying in one place for now because Joel and Ellie have found a home.

And so if you don't know what's coming, then it might be even more jarring when we go from this like, oh, civilization. Hey, Joel has a job. And Ellie, maybe, yeah, it's a dance. And oh, puppy love. And isn't this nice. It's going to get darker from there, folks. But it was a nice way to start, I think.

It was not the most headline-grabbing premiere. But again, headlines will be grabbed soon enough. All right. Let us just rewind briefly to season one and just recap some of the bigger changes that were made from the game to the show. And what about them we liked or what, if anything, we didn't care for as much? What stood out to you in season one as, okay, these are the most. significant deviations from the game. I think the one that stood out to me the most just because it has its own episode

and there aren't that many episodes in general was just the Bill and Frank, the expansion of that story. Because in the game, of course, Bill's still alive and you have time to actually spend with Bill and Frank is already dead. And there is some of their history highlighted through different notes and just through conversations with Bill, but in this episode of The Last of Us, you really get to see that history unfold in person. And it's, it's expanded it on a really beautiful way. And it's, it is a really nice episode that it has this beauty before all of the darkness that comes for them on their road trip.

Yeah, you have to find your moments of lightness and levity in a show like this, and in a world like this. Which is hard. It is. It is hard. And that was really beautiful. And, and that's what I want out of an adaptation. Yes, there's all the shot for shot stuff and why mess with success. And the reason why you want to adapt a game like The Last of Us is because of the incredible characters and story, which were essentially tailor-made for an HBO series. But you don't want it to be just a direct remake, or at least I don't. I think there are some people who probably do. But we've seen that. We've played that. You can watch the cutscenes stitch together if that's what you want. And so I don't want everything to be fundamental.

mentally altered in a way that undercuts what I liked about the games. But if you can pick your spots and find places where, okay, here's a little corner of the world that we haven't explored as deeply, or here are some ancillary characters, and it turns out there's much more to them. And it doesn't necessarily contradict things in the game in a really meaningful way, but it just allows you to expand. That's what you could get from TV. I mean, there's so much time, I guess, during a game, but you're busy.

just splattering infected the entire time. So it's nice in a scripted series when it's a little less interactive that you've got to go a little deeper and give us a little more. How did you feel about another new character and expansion, Kathleen and Kathleen's crew? That's an interesting question because Kathleen, unlike Bill or Frank, is completely original to the TV show. And I didn't like it as much as expanding Bill and Frank personally. but I thought that it was a really good way

to kind of humanize this group in the way that they're kind of just NPCs in the video game, right? They're just more enemies for you to take down in Pittsburgh. They obviously change the location, so now it's Kansas City in the TV show, and there's this whole backstory with why Kathleen is hunting down Henry and Sam.

So it creates this new conflict that I think is necessary in terms of creating this drama and creating more, reasons to show that these people have all made mistakes. They've all kind of tapped into the violence that is still here at the end of the world. And it's really setting up this whole cycle of revenge. So I think in a lot of ways it was interesting to me. But at the same time, and I think either you wrote this at some point, I can't remember if Riley wrote this and

the thing that he just wrote up for the ringer, there really wasn't that much time that we get with Joel and Ellie across the season compared to how much. time you have spent with them in the game. So I feel like whenever there are these huge departures, whether it's a whole episode dedicated to Bill and Frank or or getting into the backstory of a new character like Kathleen. And it's also at the same time taking a little bit away from more time to develop Joel and Ellie's relationship, for example. Yeah. There are a lot of moments, even if it's not a scripted cut scene where there's just sort of organic dialogue as you're walking around the world, assuming you're not just sneaking around and trying to stay silent so you don't

get infected. But other than that, there are just a lot of hours there where you get just those small exchanges, not even the big story beats. And it's tough to replicate that. And I'd say that there were some changes to the characters of Joel and Ellie. The broad strokes are similar. I would say there was sort of a softening of Joel. And that's partly because Pedro Pascal is Pedro Pascal. And it's just hard for him not to be lovable and dad-like and somewhat sympathetic. And there is an attachment that you have to a playable character. And of course, you're playing as Joel for almost the entirety of the first game. But you're also just slaughtering so many people.

Not that TV Joel doesn't do that as well. But there was, I think, sort of a softening of his character, a more sympathetic aspect to him. And then also just generally a little less violence, at least. again, by video game standards here. And just fewer infected. And that was actually one of the complaints some people and game players had about the show was that this world felt a little too safe, which tells you how it feels in the games,

I guess. But fewer infected encounters. And one of the desires people had for season two was give me more monsters, scare me more. And I guess we're getting that already in the premiere here. How did you feel about the level of, replicating the violence of a video game on TV? I'm torn. I feel like Craig Mason, I think in particular,

has talked about this and probably Neil Druckman as well in some of their podcasts and inside the episode stuff. But just that the action doesn't work as well on TV as opposed to the video game because you're actively being a part of it. And at a certain point, it gets a little bit stale when you're doing a lot of it. And I understand that sentiment because when we do have these big set pieces with the infected, like the one scene with the bloater in episode five of season one,

it makes that moment be like, oh shit, like these things are crazy. This has like a body armor of fungus. Like what is going on here? And by the time you're doing, like at the end of the game of The Last of Us when you're playing it,

you've fought bloaters before. So they still scare the shit out of you, but like you're more numb to it at that point. So it is, it makes those moments really pop a lot more, I feel like, on TV. So I understand. It didn't bother me as much.

Yeah. And there are other changes like that that don't bother me at all. I mean, things like the timeline shift. It takes place in different years because the show is made later than the game. You want to update the world and the references and everything. It totally makes sense. I'm definitely not an absolutist when it comes to just, again, I want to see everything preserved exactly the way that it was the first time I experienced the story.

What's the point of that? And also just some of the mechanics of the infected. and we'll talk about how this may be changing in season two, but shifting from spores to tendrils as a means of infection, as we saw illustrated quite ghoulishly in Tess's death scene with the fungus kiss essentially that still haunts our nightmares. But that, again, that made sense to me, just going from one medium to the other,

just because it reads a little more clearly on TV and also you don't have to cover up the character's faces with masks all the time, which isn't an issue in the game because you're controlling the character. That's your avatar. If you can't see their face, that's okay because you're probably seeing their back most of the time anyway. And so just little changes like that that it reminds you just these are different mediums, even though this is kind of a prestige TV-esque video game, there are things that still require significant changes,

but not things that bother me at all. seemed like they considered those things pretty deeply and came to a defensible and probably appropriate conclusion. Yeah, yeah. And just to add on to all of this, too, there was a quote that I wanted to add from the inside of the episode, from that episode where test dies at the end. Craig Mason in explaining this, he says, and I quote, in the game, it spreads through biting and saliva, but it also can spread through the air, through spores. And while that works in a video game environment, In real life, spores move around everywhere, and it's just harder to buy into the notion

that spores localize and don't spread. I think that everything you're saying, it's something that comes with the change in the medium, and it is something that new viewers would probably be like, okay, well, why isn't everybody just messed up all the time then? And I think that that is a very legitimate thing to be asking. But when we can get into it later, I'm really curious why they've decided to back up on that

and to actually bring spores back in this reason. Yeah. And we got just little tidbits like Ellie's mom shows up, Anna. And we get to see sort of the origin story of Ellie. And I guess not definitively but strongly implied how and why she became immune. And that was nice, obviously, just to give Ashley Johnson. Yes. Played Ellie in the games a role in the show. But also, I think was another example of, okay, let's take the framework of this thing. But if we can add a little bits, here. and there, and I guess you could debate whether canon is the same in the show versus the games, but to give us a little more insight into the character and the way the world works, I think I appreciate that as someone who has already played through this story and wants to see something new. Yeah, and there's any opportunity to add something like that fans aren't going to be expecting, but we'll surely get a huge kick out of, especially when it's something like Ashley

Johnson getting to give birth to the character that she's. played in The Last of Us. It's like there's a lot of nice moments that they're adding on to the show. Simultaneously give birth and also kill the infected that is trying to kill you. Just impressive physical feat in more than one way. I guess the anxiety of that situation perhaps hastens the delivery. When my wife had our daughter, it was not quite that fast. But also fortunately, there were no infected in the room. So tradeoffs, I think I preferred the way. that it went for us, easy for me to say.

I wasn't the one doing the delivering. I was there, though. So I would say that season one gave me greater confidence in the adaptation, in this creative team, which maybe it goes without saying because the creative team for the show is obviously partly the creative team for the games, which is key to why this has worked so well. And that's kind of been something that people have learned over time when it comes to adapting video games to TV to movies, is that, hey, to involve the original creators, Sometimes that makes a lot of sense.

And so this is a co-production of HBO and Noddy Dog and Sony and PlayStation. And of course, Neil Druckman has been closely involved. So it's not surprising that they did this with care and attention to detail. And generally, when they made significant changes, there was a good rationale for it. But that gave me greater confidence heading into season two, which poses more of a challenge from an adaptation standpoint. And so briefly, because we didn't do a preview pod for this season as we did going into season one, what were some of your big questions for this season, some of which very much still apply? And why do you think this season really was more of a quandary from an adaptation perspective after season one, which was much closer to a one-to-one adaptation of the game? I feel like the biggest challenge begins and ends with Abby.

and just how do you introduce who this character is? At what point do you introduce what she does with Joel? At what point do you lose Joel? Everything that kind of stems from Abby's revenge. And really just especially because the game, you just don't know who she is for so long. And because you have that, when we've talked about this already,

but because you have that first person experience of being able to play with her, play as her rather, it completely changes this dynamic where you empathize with the character more because you are this character. But in this medium of television, you have to change things.

So immediately, that was my concern coming into the season. And what I'm still going to be looking forward to the most in seeing how they kind of grapple with that. Yeah. And season one, it started and ended in mostly the same place. I mean, yeah, they changed some things

and there was the prelude where they sort of set up the infatible, and the outbreak and how that all worked and how you actually experience that with the characters and everything. But then it ultimately resolves in exactly the same way that the game did and why wouldn't it when you have one of the

most famous divisive, polarizing, controversial endings. Of course, you're going to keep that. But this is just much murkier. And that's why I've actually just been anticipating this season more so than I did season one. Not that I wasn't looking forward to it,

But again, I kind of felt like, well, I know where this is going to go. I had this experience and I will have it again, but it's not going to hit quite the same for me the way that it did the first time, the way that it did for people who are watching without playing. Whereas heading into season two, I felt much more in the dark about where are they going to go with this. We know that they're taking a game, which is a much bigger game and just more complicated in its structure and stretching it over multiple seasons. And we didn't know exactly how that was going to go. All we had was tidbits and quotes and hints and trailers, but we didn't really know how exactly they were going to organize things. And we know more now, but there's still a lot that we don't know.

And it's just, it's much more challenging from an adaptation perspective to figure out how do we translate the story to not just one season of TV, but multiple seasons. Yes, exactly. And when does Joel die? That's the big question that, of course, we all had, which, you know, you're going to have your red wedding moment at some point. But how long do you delay that? And we'll speculate about that at the end of this episode. But that was the big question. You have this huge breakout hit.

You have a big star playing Joel, who a lot of TV viewers are attached to. Can you do the hard thing that the game did and rip that Band-Aid off and take him away from people? and how will they respond and will they revolt? And is there a temptation to say, maybe we can hang on to him a little longer and we can avoid this? And then does that detract from the impact of it when it actually happens? So all of those things, I think we're very much on our minds and still are.

So let's talk about future days and what we saw and what we didn't see and the insight that we have gleaned thus far into some of those big season defining questions. So first of all, let's start at the start. Let's start with where this begins. Now, as you said, we get the look back at the end of the last season, just to remind everyone where we've been. But then we have a pretty significant deviation. And maybe this is where we can start.

Instead of the opening scene between Joel and Tommy in the game, we get that entirely replaced or kind of quasi replaced by the therapy session with Gail. an original character. So tell me about the Tommy scene. Talk about why you thought that worked so well in the game and whether you think its absence hurts here. Yeah, you know how they have those director commentaries in the game? I only recently discovered this as I was replaying it, but in that director's commentary, I thought they did a really good job of explaining like the choice behind it, like Neil Druckman was talking about this and how they effectively needed to think of a way to kind of recap what happened in the first game. And I thought this was a fascinating way to kind of recap it because

you get the flashbacks of what Joel did and Joel is telling it to Tommy. But you also have this new dynamic between Tommy and Joel because Joel is in on this horrible secret, that and horrible thing that Joel has done. And you don't know if Ellie knows yet. But now you know that somebody else knows that Joel might have just prevented humanity from getting a cure. to this. So it's just a wild, wild moment in the game. And I think it's also just a way to recap. So I thought that it was a really clever way to do that. And they could have done that in the TV show as well, which is why going back to what I was saying earlier about being safe, it felt a little safe to just recycle the scene of being like Joel, Joel lying to Ellie. Yeah, I guess they could have directly recycled the Tommy scene and they chose not to. So why? would you speculate they decided to do that?

Or what do you think about the addition of Gail? I'm never going to complain about Catherine O'Hara in anything. She can do no wrong. And also, as you were just saying, we need some humor, right? And there's just a little bit of humor that you're getting from a Catherine O'Hara character who's just sort of half in the bag for her birthday, which more power to her. But I just, it's definitely. one of the biggest deviations here.

And some of the language is essentially verbatim, just ported from the Tommy scene to the gale scene. So why would you speculate that they did it this way? And do you think it works as well, A, to have him talking to a character that we've never met before, that we have no relationship with, and then to also have him shut down and refuse to divulge what he did to Tommy in the game? Yeah, no, it's an interesting question because what I'm still wondering to is if Tommy knows,

because now we don't know that. So I think it's going to be something where, like, maybe they still do that scene down the line because I feel like it is so important to their dynamic that Tommy knows this about Joel. And it's a big reason why I feel like you learn a lot about Tommy as a character as he goes after Abby and the rest of them alongside Ellie

because Tommy knows. that Joel has done this. Because as Tommy doesn't know that, it really changes that dynamic a lot because he's left in the dark about it. In terms of why, it's, I think adding gale is, it makes sense for a lot of reasons

in the sense that, and Craig Mason talked about this in the inside the episode afterwards, about how therapists would be very valuable to have in a situation like this in the pandemic. And Joel, for sure, is somebody that could use some therapy. And seeing how,

it's just another dynamic in which, like, Jackson is a functioning society to the point that they actually have a therapist with them. And so in a lot of ways, it kind of mirrors what they're doing in the game. And it's not necessarily a seamless one-to-one thing for everything I'm saying with Tommy, but it works in a lot of ways. But how did you feel about it? Yeah, I thought that some aspects of it, for instance, the Eugene mentioned. Right. Now, Eugene is a character in the games that we don't really get to know, but they've changed his backstory here. We just sort of see him occasionally.

We see him in photos. We hear about him. He dies of natural causes at a relatively advanced age for this world, post-apocalyptic standards. And so they have completely changed that, and they've made it part of Joel's experience in Jackson here. And we're just sort of piecing together what may have happened. And I found that a bit distracting for multiple reasons. One was just that when Catherine Herrera is referring to Eugene, my mind immediately goes to Eugene Levy from Schitt's Creek.

And I don't know if that's intentional, probably not. I mean, it's a character with that name in the game. But that's where my mind went. So suddenly I'm thinking of Schitt's Creek while I'm watching the scene. And that took me out of it just a bit. But also, I guess at first I was thrown by it because I'm thinking, wait, Eugene, do I know what happened here? We're not privy to this backstory, right?

Did I miss? Do I need to go re-watch season one? And there's allusions to it. And I guess we've seen maybe a sneak peek in some preview footage and trailers. So we can guess what may have happened here. It seems like probably Eugene was infected and Joel put him down. And Gail is just trying hard not to hold that against him without much success. But alluding to that backstory that we don't have here,

I felt just a little confused by that at first. And I would imagine that people who don't have as great a grounding in the last of us universe as we do, maybe even more confused by that. Or maybe not because they're not aware of the other Eugene. But yeah, there were some aspects of that that took me out of it a bit. But I have to assume that if Joel is shutting down here and refusing to explain what happened to Gail, now it's one thing to say this to your therapist whose husband you killed. And also you've had five sessions with it. But that's a little different from talking to your brother. But I have to assume that if he's not telling Gail and we get this big dramatic scene

where he seems like he's on the verge of letting it out and he's crying and his eyes are welling up. And so some part of him wants to come clean, but the rest of him can't. And just he undergoes this transformation and says, no, I didn't do anything wrong. I was right and won't exactly explain. he can't have had this conversation with Tommy already, right? I mean, he might still, but it would be strange in my mind, I would think, if we find out that he's already unburdened himself to someone else, even to his brother, if we're making such a big point of him being unable to do that in therapy.

Yeah, and I mean, there's just a lot of changes in the whole dynamic, I feel like, with Tommy in the show, in part because he's a father now. Yes. So I wonder if that's part of the calculus there, too, like, maybe. Maybe Joel's worried about how he would feel about it, or maybe it would emboldened him to do so because maybe now that Tommy's a father, he would understand that feeling more.

Yeah, Mal touched on the Sun House of Art. It could go either way. The fact that Tommy has a son now and Joel has a nephew, maybe Tommy understands even better. Okay, I understand why you couldn't sacrifice Ellie because I have this relationship now. I know how you felt. on the other hand, maybe he would feel some resentment because, hey, maybe my son could be immune

too now. Maybe we could have all had the vaccine and we'd all be safe and we'd actually have a future and you sort of selfishly took that option away. So perhaps they have that conversation and there's a different outcome. Maybe there's less understanding. Maybe there's more understanding, but it's definitely different circumstances. And I guess that goes hand in hand with just the changes to Jackson, And the fact that we're taking a five-year time jump versus a four-year time jump, that doesn't make that much of a difference. But it just emphasizes how safe they feel, maybe, and how set in their ways they are, how much Jackson has developed.

Joel has a job now. He's an important member of the community. He's tinkering with circuits and electricity. He's building housing somewhat reluctantly. He's a pillar of the community, kind of. And so just the greater time elapsing here, I guess, just only emphasizes just how far we removed we are from the events of that first season. And there's a family that's building up here. Otherwise, I don't know if that's just a kind of a cosmetic change or whether that's what they wanted to emphasize with adding an additional year here.

And maybe just feeling like, okay, we put that behind us. No one's suddenly going to come in exact revenge after five years. We probably got away with it. We're safe. No one knows about the slaughter at the hospital. So maybe they've let their guard down even more because of that. And it just shows you how committed Abby is to getting revenge, where it's just yet another year. And she is unwilling or unable to let this go. Yes, yes, exactly. This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business. Fast, Reliable Internet means everything for

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terms of play. With Jackson in general, they really do spend a lot of time just expanding how it functions. And in the introduction of the council, and just actually seeing a scene of how, because they mentioned it in the season one of the council, but actually seeing how it operates, like what it looks like, and really how they are trying to be this society where they've

divided up all responsibilities and resources equally. Yeah. So Joel's relationship with Ellie has soured. They are barely on speaking terms. And yet, Joel now has almost another surrogate daughter that he's picked up along the way because Dina, we've got to talk about the changes to Dina both her relationship with Joel, which is that she has one at all, but also a pretty meaningful one for both of them. And also just the portrayal of Dina by Isabella and Merced here, how that differs from the portrayal in the game. What do you make of the fact that these two actually are tight now, tighter than Joel is with Ellie currently as opposed to just, this is the adopted dad of my girlfriend and I don't really talk to him. And now they kind of have a

back channel where they can talk about things even if Joel and Ellie can't talk about things. And she's sort of a sympathetic ear for him that he can kind of run by, ask for sympathy. Hey, am I the bad guy? You know, and they can kind of nag each other a little bit. So I'm kind of into this dynamic, I guess. But it's definitely something we didn't see in the game. Yeah, yeah. I like it as well, especially because in the game, you don't even really see Dina and Joel, like, interact at all. No. So to have this now, it also just adds more motivation for Dina when she actually joins Ellie and going after Abby because you know that for her, it's going to be like losing a father as well. In the game, it's like she's just a really supportive partner and

friend to Ellie and she's going along with her. But now it's like, well, maybe she has some some revenge that she wants to get as well. Yeah. I guess that's another thing we could have mentioned with season one, just the changes to some character's motivations, like Joel being motivated in large part by his concerns for Tommy, which is not really something that was in the game, right? That's more of a show creation.

And I guess you could say, what's he so worried about? The fact that Tommy just hasn't reported in on the radio for a few weeks. Maybe he's blowing this out of proportion. But it's motivation via family, which I think, again, the show Rainers talked about where it's like in the game, you don't always necessarily need

the most rock-solid character motivations supply to you because you just want to play, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You just want to be Joel and you want to take this trip because you are Joel. And so whether or not he has a great rationale for going out there, obviously, you don't want to just sit in Boston for the entire game.

So, yeah, you want to go. Whereas if you're watching this more passively, it's not an interactive experience, then you kind of need a little bit more explanation. Okay, why is Joel doing this? Why would he want to do this? Where is he going? And so that relationship between Joel and Tommy

was altered somewhat too, even by season one. And so I got to say, like, I think Isabel Merced's portrayal of Dina, she's just like a magnetic character. I mean, you could see, I think, why Ellie wants to connect with her, obviously, here, and why all eyes are on her in the dance scene, and why she would connect with Joel as well, like given this, I don't know,

maybe more outgoing, a little bit bubblier portrayal of Dina, probably than we saw in the game. I think it just kind of makes sense that she would be the type who gravitates towards different generations and forms this bond with Joel, sort of the strong, silent type. So, yeah, I'm into this dynamic. And maybe it makes us feel a little less sorry for Joel, which we're going to have ample opportunity to soon enough.

But just the fact that he's not entirely cut off because, you know, you'd kind of have to worry about our guy here if it's five years later and he hasn't told anyone still. And basically, Ellie is closed off to him. At least he has Dina. Like, I'm happy that he has someone to talk to. If he's not going to share everything with Gail, not that he's told Dina about what he did at that. the hospital either. I imagine that might change that relationship too. But still, the fact that he has someone to talk to who actually wants to be in his company and is not being paid in bad weed to listen to him talk, that's good. I'm happy for him. Yeah, I think, like, Dina is the latest

example of them adding new dimensions to characters. And Dina's obviously a very major character in the game, but I think even in the first season, they were doing a good job of just adding, adding new dimensions to characters that just makes them more, more believable, and you empathize with them more, whether it's exploring Henry and Sam's dynamic a little bit more and showing how far Henry is willing to go in order to save his brother in terms of sacrificing Kathleen's brother to save him. They always do a really good job of, like,

adding new character dynamics like that, new dimensions to characters in ways that will also reflect on our main characters in Joel and Ellie and what's happening to them. So, yeah. So let's talk about the patrol and the lax standards and protocols of a miracle that they have survived this long, if this is sort of their standard approach to a patrol or to clearing a building. I get that Ellie is immune and thus has a little more margin for error than the typical person.

But even so, this is a pretty cavalier approach. And maybe that tells you a little bit about their mindset. And so I could see that working well because to be dragged back into the nightmare of season one and maybe even more so in the rest of season two, this kind of tells you how they're feeling now where it's not as if they're really thinking of the infected as a threat. I mean, maybe Maria is having some inklings and bad feelings about things. But other than the fact that it seems like maybe some infected or congregated, this is somewhat worrisome, but at least like one-on-one, they're just old hands at this by now. Like years have passed, it's just pretty routine for them

to just have hand-to-hand combat with a clicker. And also, like, maybe it feels a little less like the wolves are at their door here. Like, I know that there's the scene where Joel's talking to his nephew, Benji, and they're looking at the map, and they're saying, you know, what's outside the fence monsters?

And yet it doesn't even seem like Ellie or Dina, at least. I mean, the rest of the patrol, they're keeping their wits about them. They're practicing better safety, I would say. I'd rather go on a patrol with them, frankly, I think, than with Ellie or Houdita. As capable as they are, I think they'd get me into more trouble than everyone else on this patrol. But maybe that just goes to show, again, that they've let their guard down a little bit, that they feel like, okay, we're in the post-apocalypse, but we have conquered our immediate surroundings

to the point that the threats are not having enough housing. more so than there's going to be a huge horde or someone's going to come hunting us for what Joel did five years ago. Yeah. I will say Kat also needs to put her, I think that was her name, Kat as the patrol leader. She's got to put her foot down a little bit more. I know. Seriously.

Even with the like, okay, you've got to follow her orders instructions that were given to them before they left, which I guess were given to them with the understanding that they probably wouldn't actually do that. But yeah, even so, you got to like assert your authority a little bit. Yeah, I'll give them five minutes. Yeah, sure. Give them an inch. They'll take a mile.

But what do you make of the fact that Ellie actually gets bitten here? So it's not just a close call, but the teeth break the skin. Now, we can talk about the introduction of the stalker, new infected type. But I thought that was kind of a curious change because that doesn't happen in the game. There's an encounter, but there's no actual. I felt like a lot of this episode was very, very purposeful in every scene in that they're, they're reminding the audience of certain touchstones, like I said earlier. And one of them is obviously that Ellie is immune.

And this was a very, very direct way to be like, yes, there are stakes for Ellie. She still can get, like, mauled to death by these things. Yeah. But if she gets bit, she's all right. Like, she can survive this. And really her concern right now is to cover it up, like to make that bite mark look into more of a cut. But it creates different dynamics, obviously,

because, yes, she's going in very bold, but she's also allowing Dina to go in and do this as well. And Dina's not immune. Yeah. So, yeah, she's got to look up the tattoo artist and cover this one up, I guess also. But maybe there won't be as much of a mark left, we will see. But yeah, in that sense, it almost felt a little heavy-handed.

Like, hey, remember everyone? it's if she gets bit, she's immune. Right. She had already yelled to the hills that she was immune, much to Tommy's dismay. And how many people I wonder are just like, I'll start with season two. Like this is where I want to get on board the Last of Us train. I mean, more power to you, I guess, if you want to. But this is not a like, you can skip season one situation.

This is very far from that sort of show. So I got to think that, you know, given that Ellie being a mule, is central to the last of us, season one. It's the entire point of the season. Can't imagine that's slipped people's minds to the point that you need to demonstrate, okay, this wasn't a one-off. She actually still, the immunity has not worn off.

She can still be bitten and be okay. Yeah, I mean, that's what I mean when I was saying earlier about it, feeling a little bit safe in a lot of respects. I feel like there's a lot of handholding when it comes to these types of things. And like, it is fun to see the immediate, of actually getting more infected in the first episode and you get the introduction of the stalker.

But it felt like another example of that where they're like, all right, we need to remind the audience like there are infected here. And the result of it made me feel like the episode was a little stilted in the way that they're just like, all right, here's, here's this, here's this, here's Jackson, here are these news characters. But yeah, the introduction of the stocker, though, was welcome, I think. And yeah, we can talk in a moment just about how the infected are kind of leveling up in season. But Craig Mason has essentially strongly suggested that there will be a heavier presence for the stocker in this season than in the games. And it's among the most disturbing of many disturbing infected types. Oh, I hate those things. Yeah. And frankly, they seem a little less

concerned about this than they should be. It's just like, hey, I encountered a smart infected who's like sneaking around and is not just charging directly at us making loud sounds. This is kind of concerning. And of course, they're rationalizing like, well, maybe it's just one of them. Maybe it's an outlier. Maybe it was just a genius infected. This seems like cause for concern. Yeah, sure, whatever.

Like, let's go to the dance. You know, let's meeting adjourned. We'll table this. Maybe if there's a second stalker, we'll worry about this. Again, maybe it speaks to the fact that they're feeling themselves at this point. They feel like, okay, we're, we've carved out a little niche for ourselves in civilization. Okay, let's talk about the dance scene, which was, I guess, except for one notable element that differed among the more faithful adaptations of a game scene in the show, except for the fact that the sequencing is very different where it comes in the season versus where it comes in the game. Yeah, I mean, like you're saying, the sequencing is very different. You're getting this a lot earlier.

and it's an interesting choice to me in another case of where I feel like the game was really delaying a lot of the information or at least like alluding to things. Like for example, like when you're starting off the game as Ellie, you hear about all these things that have just happened.

Like you hear about what went down with her and Dina from Jesse when he picks her up to go on patrol. And these moments are alluded to with like Seth gives her that sandwich, which I believe Ellie calls it like the biggest sandwich or something. like that. And you have no idea what's going on with it. But in the TV show, you actually see all

that first. So I don't know. How did you feel about it? Yeah, I thought, right. I mean, some of these things, again, it's just, it's tough to make people wait for an entire TV season or multiple TV seasons for a lot of things where if you're playing, it's a little easier to delay those things than if you're watching, as Druckman has discussed. And I thought the one deviation, from the script in the scene, which was Joel being more aggressive than he is in the game, where he comes in and does a shove instead of a tackle, basically. He really, he really. Yeah.

No, I don't know that that's entirely out of character for Joel to respond that protectively and defensively and violently. And if anything, it does send the signal that that Joel is still simmering under the surface, that, okay, maybe he has a job now. gainful member of society and a valued member of Jackson and he settled down. But that Joel, who's willing to go to any lengths to protect Ellie and possibly excessive lengths, he's still very much there, right? And, you know, I always felt like the reaction by Ellie, and there's just all this baggage

with the scene. And so there's this unspoken tension and history between these characters. and we know that Ellie knows a little more than she's led on about Joel lying to her. And she's had that suspicion for several years at this point and has been waiting for him to come clean and he hasn't. And that has just poisoned their relationship. And so in isolation, it seems like a fairly reasonable response when someone says that to your daughter in front of everyone, right? I mean, not the full-on tackle potentially, but even in the game, Ellie responds in much. the same way, right? You know, what are you doing? I don't need your help. And you do kind of feel

bad for Joel, where Pedro Pascal has this like wounded puppy look and it's just like, I haven't been a dad for a very long time. I don't know how to do this. I haven't had a daughter who was this age and like, how do I get through to you in these circumstances? And he feels like he's standing up for her. And then she washes out and it just makes things even worse. And So you do kind of feel for him while also understanding why Ellie is feeling the way that she does. But I guess that's why they took it up a notch as opposed to the shove, just the full-on knockdown here. It just kind of reinforces who Joel actually was and still is under the surface to some extent. Yeah.

And there really is just a lot of alluding to what has happened to Joel and Ellie in these five years. because we still don't know if, it seems very likely that Ellie knows now. And just having played the game, obviously, that's, if it follows that timeline and all, we know that she does know now. Yeah. But it's definitely like just a way to highlight that

in terms of like, okay, she's still fuming, understandably, that Joel not only did all of this, but that he lied to Ellie about what he did to the fireflies. Yeah. Well, that takes us to maybe the last big change. that we'll discuss here and maybe the biggest of all. And this has to do with the introduction of Abby.

And the sequencing of that and also just how explicit her motivations are made here compared to the game. And since the game is fresh in your mind, do you want to remind people just the basic structure of The Last of Us Part 2 and how Abby is introduced and what we know about her and what we don't know initially? Yeah. If I'm not mistaken, the very first time you pick up, Abby, it's like when she's already outside of Jackson.

And it takes a while for you really to understand that dynamic of who Abby is to the fireflies. You don't know anything about their connection to the whole Salt Lake crew, their connection to the fireflies in general. But you really just, I think the biggest part is you don't know who Abby's father is and you don't know why Abby is going after Joel. Yeah. And technically we still don't know about the father part.

Yes, that's true. That's true. But in that first scene that you have in the TV show now, you have all the graves of the fireflies, and she takes a lot of care of putting that one pendant over a particular grave. So you know that somebody is important to her. And I don't know if you watch the inside of the episode after the show, but Caitlin Dever actually mentions that she's lost her father, which I thought was interesting because we don't actually know that in the show yet. So it's like kind of a spoiler inside the episode. but yeah that's yeah way inside more inside than we would have expected but yeah because it's not totally completely clear okay why is abby taking this so much harder than her friends here why are they

willing to walk away and let it go and she's saying no we have to kill him and we have to kill him slowly and painfully and so yeah it's implied that she had an even deeper more personal connection to someone who lost their life at joel's hands but we don't know quite who would is yet. So that will still be something of a reveal. But just to have that up front, whereas when you start playing as Abby, you don't know that, that's a major change. And that just completely changes how you experience this story. And this is another case of evaluating the different mediums and the different way that people play things versus watch things. And Druckman has talked about this. And again, I think it's a defensible choice.

I mean, before they announced that they were adapting this over multiple seasons, and obviously it's been renewed for season three and maybe beyond, but you wondered, okay, how are they going to do this split protagonist, basically, you know, go back halfway through the game and play everything over from a different perspective and then meet up. And that would just be really tough to work in a show, right? Can you imagine it's just like if this season were the L.E. season and the next season was all Abby or the other way around? Or do you intercut them and we can still talk about how exactly we think they will navigate that?

But it would be a lot to expect people to just watch Abby and not play as Abby, not knowing why she's there or what she wants. Yeah. And I didn't love this introductory scene of them in part because it felt like, a lot of exposition. Yeah. And there are so many powerful ways you can show who she is. Like, yeah. For example,

when you actually switch over to Abby in the game, when you fully switch over to her storyline in Seattle, you have that flashback where it's said earlier and you go like with, with her father. And at the end of it, she, they have this moment where Owen comes and's like, hey,

the girl's here. Right. That can possibly save us all. Yes. That's such like an oh shit moment. Like, wow. This is, this is who Abby is.

And it's such an effective way to reveal that after all this time spent where you're like, huh, maybe she had some reason to actually kill Joel. Yeah. So I don't know. Like to really kind of talk that away instead of doing something like that is tricky to me. But I did like the detail of having like the drafts in the background. Yes. I like that too.

Yeah, it's not just that this is a happy part of Ellie and Joel's experience, but other people are experiencing this and it has a cost. And it's a darker reflection of it. Yes, exactly. And yeah, like you, I felt like it was less effective than it is in the game, but maybe inevitably so. I don't know that I have a better idea than just divulging this upfront, which I think saving that revelation, the way that it works in the game,

that just does hit you harder, I think, than this possibly could to meet this character and learn what she wants in the same scene. It just can't possibly pack the same punch. So that's unfortunate, I guess, but I don't know that there was another way around that, really. Yeah, yeah. I was curious what you would think about this because, I mean, I don't know. I want to do like Monday morning quarterbacking here. Please do.

Hey, Thursday morning. Yeah, let's do it. Exactly, Thursday. But I feel like something that I really love just replaying the game is just the whole recycling of this moment, not exactly recycling, but replaying this nightmare. that Abby is having and how she's reliving this moment over and over again of going to the hospital and stepping into that room and seeing her father on the ground after Joel's killed him. And they do different twists on it where it's like she sees Lev and Yarra at one point because

she feels the guilt of not helping them out or there's one time where she opens it up and she just sees her father standing there. I feel like they could have opened up this season by showing that night showing Joel killing Abby's dad like from her perspective like it's really really revealing who Abby is from the first instant but

if you're going to introduce that connection at all I feel like he might as well go all in but I don't know how do you feel about that? No I think that could work yeah just make it a little more visceral and I'm sure that we'll see that at some point yeah but it's too big not to you

Yeah, but the impact will be lessened a little by just knowing what her goal is here, even if we don't know all the details. But yeah, the Druckman quote to Washington Post was, when you play a character, you have an immediate empathic connection to that. And it's a shortcut that the interactive medium affords us. We don't have that here. We need you to connect through a different way, through empathy, through sympathy, or just tying it back to the events. This felt correct for this version of this story. And yeah, he has a point. And look, this is why we want multiple versions of these things.

why it's even why it makes sense to adapt things and why we love video games and we also love TV for different reasons and why they're different mediums, why we need them both, because there are strengths and weaknesses or even not even strengths and weaknesses, just differences that I think are valuable to preserve, but you do have to adapt things accordingly. So I don't want to wade into Last of Us casting discourse, but I'll just dip my toe in briefly because this can be tiresome and and toxic. I will just say that at no point have I felt what I think a lot of Las of us game fans feel about the casting of Ellie, which is that Bella Ramsey was wrong for this role, that they're not my Ellie, that there could be better Ellie's out there. I think that

Belly Ramsey has done a great job with this character. And the character is a little bit different on TV than in the game, but I think Ramsey has done a perfectly fine job. And so all the people who are, you know, kind of fantasy casting other people who look more like Game Ellie. Yeah. Seems very silly to me. Again, for the same reason that we already have Game Ellie. We don't need a facsimile of Game Ellie on TV. What's the point?

And it seems like a lot of people have approached this as who are the actors who look most like the digital characters that I've spent all this time with. And I don't think that's the best way to do it. I will say, though, that I find it. it slightly jarring, probably more jarring than a TV-only watcher would for Caitlin Dever to be introduced as Abby, given her greater resemblance to Game Ellie than Bella Ramsey, to the extent that, obviously, she has a pre-existing relationship with Nottie Dog and Uncharted and was a popular choice to play Ellie in a potential The Last of Us movie, and she's kind of aged out of that now, potentially, but that was a popular choice forever.

And so only strictly in that sense that Caitlin Dever was so long associated with Ellie and looks a little more like Ellie than Bella Ramsey does to see Caitlin Dever introduced as Ellie's arch nemesis. It kind of threw me a little, even though I love Caitlin Dever and thinks she's an incredible actor and thinks she will be great for this role. Just having that context and that experience, I think probably I experienced that a little bit differently than someone who has not associated Caitlin Dever with an entirely different role in this universe previously.

Yeah, yeah. No, that is really interesting. I'm really curious to see how that plays out to you because it does seem, to your point, like that they're leaning into that parallel now that we have with them in terms of looking similar. But I think it does also just, it's going to be cool to see how we see the similarities and who they are as this story develops. And as we see Abby do the same thing to Ellie that Joel did to her, the loss of fathers,

and how they're both going to be coping with their loss through violence. And I think it's, I didn't love the opening scene with them, but immediately I was like, oh, she's going to be a really good Abby. Exactly. Just the way that the line delivery of everything with like the slowly and all that. I was like. Yeah. Yeah, there's a part of me that, of course, Mrs. Ultra Jack, Abby.

And, you know, not just because that was the character I got to know and because, hey, it's good to have different body types on TV and all those things. But also because it was a reflection of the inner turmoil. And it's just, hey, I'm building up this outer shell. I'm protecting myself. I'm making myself into this machine because I'm fueled by my desire for revenge. And so it suited the character, even at times. it seemed almost improbable in a post-apocalyptic setting.

Like, how is she consuming this many calories? Like, how is she hitting her macros in this world? Nonetheless, respect. And so, look, I guess, you know, we've only seen Caitlin Deaver in the immediate aftermath, really, of the disaster, the tragedy. So for all we know, she'll show up in Jackson and take that coat off and be shredded under there. But I'm guessing probably not. And look, I think it's sort of silly to demand.

that actors have to get, like, improbably ripped to play characters, if anything, we've gone too far with that as a culture. And so, you know, I'm not saying, like, Caitlin Dever needs to get on the Marvel diet to play this character. Like, that would be sort of what I was just criticizing with people saying, Ellie has to look exactly like Ellie. I don't need Abby to look exactly like Abby either. And maybe, as you're saying, it will reinforce the similarities between these two characters.

That's my positive spin here, just because, look, they're, they're, they're, kind of two sides of the same coin. They're mirror images of each other. They've both been through this trauma. They're at each other's throats, but for some similar reasons. And so maybe the physical resemblance here, even if Caitlin Deaver's presence is a little less immediately physically intimidating than Abby's is, maybe that does hammer home the similarities between these characters.

And maybe they can actually use that in some ways that will improve this season. Yeah, I think for me, I definitely agree with you all that. The thing that I'm going to miss with Abby's physicality, honestly, is just the detail in the game that when you're doing those lifts, you know, like all the time, she just like launches them up. I love that detail in the game. She just like throws them because she's so strong.

Yes. But there's less lifts in the TV show, so they probably won't miss it too much. All right. Let's look ahead to this Sunday and yon. As Gail says, tick, tick, tick. Joel's days are numbered. that wasn't the only foreshadowing. There was also Benji pretending to shoot Joel.

And I'm saying, oh, you got me. Again, laying it on a little thick for those of us in the know. But if Joel's days are numbered, how numbers are they? Are they down to one? Is one the number? Is this Sunday the week? From just the trailers, obviously, again, we haven't seen ahead. But just from the trailers, it seems like this big assault that's coming on Jackson with the infected.

Yeah. It seems like he's going to be a round. for it. Like he has this, I can't remember the exact line that he says, but he's like, come in Jackson, like he's trying to radio in. So it feels like he could be around a little bit longer. And again, the fact that they're splitting it off into two seasons, I could see them doing it in like a couple episodes from now, but I don't know. What do you think? It feels imminent. I wouldn't be shocked if it were this Sunday. It could very well be the following Sunday. Yeah. It's hard for me to imagine it being much beyond that

because you have to have that inciting event to then that's the engine for this season. Right. Sort of. So you got to get that out of the way as hard as it is to take away this popular actor and character who people who watch the show have gotten attached to. You got to do it.

And I would respect it almost more if they did it right away. If they did it this coming week, especially in the aftermath of the dance. scene and that last interaction between Joel and if that was like the last time. Oh, God, that would be devastating. Oh, my God. It would, right? But that's what we want. We want this to be devastating. Right. Even if it's, even if it's hard. And so I would respect that creative choice. I don't know whether they'll have the conviction to do that. I don't know whether they'll say, hey, we have Pedro here. Let's, let's keep him for one more episode at least. Like, let's not let go quite yet. But it's got to be coming

soon and I'm bracing myself for the reaction because it's much like the ending of season one where I'd already been through all this, the first round of discourse, and then the second round of discourse years later played out much the same because it was the same circumstances. And now we know what we're in for. And we have this red wedding level event that we're on the precipice of. And so I'm sort of apprehensive, also excited, I guess, for other people to be in on things so that I have to worry less about spoiling people on that. That's a specific plot point. That'll be nice at least.

But it's going to be big. It's going to be a big must-see TV water cooler type talk event one of these Sundays. And the thing that I really liked that they just did in the game, too, is that it's not, although he's gone in the main storyline, he still gets to exist through all the flashbacks. Right. And in the trailers, you can already see that at least we're going to get the flashback of them going to the museum, which is such a lovely scene. in the game as Joel takes Ellie out on her birthday. Yeah, that's like the closest equivalent to the giraffe scene in The Last of Us part two, which is just unrelentingly miserable.

It's finally a reprieve from that. Yeah. But it's really interesting in the way they do it too because, yes, it is a reprieve from that, but it's also so sad because now you know that Joel's gone. So it's like you still see, it's a reminder of what their relationship was. Yes. Which, again, I think it's a really effective thing that they do in the game. And it is another way that we're going to see more with Pedro Pascal.

Yeah. And so I wonder what we haven't seen thus far that we will see. I have noticed there seems to be a bit of adaptation brain among people who have played the game and know what's coming. If they don't see something immediately, they're like, how could they not have that thing? And it's like, there's a whole season here. I know it's seven episodes, but also it's just one of at least two. Like, there's time. We know what's coming.

And so we want everything to happen or be teased immediately, like acknowledging our foreknowledge. But the fact that we didn't see a certain scene immediately doesn't mean we won't see it. Right? The fact that their elements missing doesn't mean that they forgot about them somehow. Oh, yeah, the guitar teaching scene forgot about that one. That just, boy, poor planning on our part. That one just slipped through the cracks.

And we've seen, I guess, like a little tease of what seems like it will probably be that scene. So here we are. Right. And, you know, Ellie's already been playing and knows how to play, but we're going to get that scene at some point in a flashback. And maybe I'm curious to see, like, how long they string along the Joel flashbacks. Like, is Pedro Pascal going to be part of this entire season, even a future season? Are they going to keep bringing him back so that they can retain that connection to that star that people love to watch? And I guess I hope so on some level. Like, I wouldn't want them to use the flashback so much that it feels like he didn't even die. Yeah, that's a good point.

He's just kind of a constant presence. But I'm okay with parceling that out fairly slowly and just given us a little bit of Joel every now and then, which will be even more heart-riching, maybe, given what happens to him by that point. And him and Ellie not knowing that that's coming, but we will know that by that point. So don't worry. Some of those heartfelt scenes were going to be. going to get them. We just didn't get them right off the bat because we had all this other stuff that doesn't come later that they had to move up, or at least they decided to move up. And so you

can't fit everything into a single episode. Based on what we've seen in the trailers, we know that there's this hoard coming. There's this infected assault, which is something that we didn't really get in the game. We're getting spores seemingly. We're getting maybe more stalkers. So what do you think of what appears to be a pivot toward a greater infected presence and also just a more threatening infected presence in this season. I'm very excited to see what it will look like with Jackson becoming this sort of battleground in part because I really enjoy the no return addition to part two where you get actually like experience a little bit of that and like using Jackson as a setting for some of the fighting that you can do. What I'm really curious is is if or how much

the Salt Lake crew is around for whenever that horde comes to. It's a little tricky to see from the trailers because they do show a lot, and they could be showing the scene of Abby meeting the horde on our own when she actually meets up with Joel and Tommy. Or it could be that that is being blended into this horde that's coming to Jackson. It could be that they kill Joel amid this whole crisis that's coming to Jackson. So I feel like there are a lot of different directions they could take it.

But in general, to see more of it is it's always going to be excited. The action is always fun. And I just love what they do with the combination of practical effects and CTI in this show because they manage to capture this like haunting, grotesque, but like weirdly beautiful thing about these mushroom monsters. Yeah. Yeah, it's like, hey, we have HBO budgets here. Let's lean into that.

Like, we don't have dragons. We got to put this money to use somehow. So let's get an infected hoard. It's funny because in the first season, in the left behind the Ellie Riley mall scene, they actually dialed down the infected presence. Because in the game, it's more of a horde. And in the show, it's a single infected, right? And that it hits harder, I think, actually.

It's more painful that it was just sort of a strangler as opposed to just an entire pack. So sometimes less is more, but sometimes more is more. So give us more. I'm interested in seeing more. Since we don't have dragons, are we going to get Rat King action? Do you think America is ready for Rat King on our Sunday night screens? So I actually just played this part in the game. And it was still so terrifying.

It's so funny, like, replaying it because you know what's coming. But the first time, it's just like, what the fuck is this thing chasing you? It's such an incredible moment in the game. And to try to recreate that, on-screen is going to be awesome. I don't know. I kind of suspect that it's going to be in season three. Yeah, me too.

Just because I don't know how much they're going to be able to expand this, but we will definitely, they can't not do it, right? Like, it's too important. It's too big of a... And do you think that we will get just a little bit of Abby, a little bit of Ellie in every episode? Or do you think we will get Abby-only episodes, Ellie-only episodes?

What would be your preference? Do you want that to be undercut and we're following both of these storylines? Or would you rather we just kind of have ISO ball here and we focus on one character and then the spotlight shifts? Or is it more of a like, this is the Abby season,

this is the Ellie season, sort of mirroring the game? Yeah, that's another great question. I mean, it's tough because I feel like the way that they do in the game is so effective. But again, I think in the TV medium, I don't think it's going to work. I think that they're going to need to dip back and forth a little bit more just because you become so invested in characters and the world in TV. And to just reinject somebody, it's like you need to build it up a little bit more. You need to see who these characters are.

so you can buy in a little bit from the beginning. But I don't know. How do you feel? I'm with you. I expect that that's what they'll do. Why would you bother front-loading? More conventional. Yeah, front-loading all of this plot that comes later in the games and these character introductions

if you're not going to just sort of alternate between them throughout the season. And on some level, I'm happy about that because I want it to be different in at least some superficial ways so that it feels like it's not just a carbon copy and that I'm getting something out of this because I thought about that when I was playing the game like, oh, this is such an interesting choice and kind of a controversial choice. And I wonder what else they could have done and what other approaches they talked about. And some of the things that they do in the show, there are things that they talked about doing on the game and they ultimately went in a different direction. And so if we see sort of an alternate history of what the Last of Us Part 2 could have looked like

in the Last of Us season two, then I'm into that, actually. I, I, I want to. want to see a different take on this story. That's the whole point of having one. Or at least for me, it is. For HBO and everyone else, it's for making lots and lots of money and selling many more copies of the game and forming a franchise.

But for me, I want to see something that I haven't seen before. Yeah, yeah. And I thought there was a really interesting detail in that Washington Post article that Gene Park wrote that you shared in the doc. And that in the game, one of the concerns that was on their mind

in having this switch as well was the skill trees. and that when you're playing the game, you're building up all these different skills with the pills and all that. So you can't really just switch back and forth because you've made this progress with one character. You kind of need that clear split between the two. So it's like, all right, I've built up Ellie as a character,

but then now you restart as Abby and then build up that. But obviously, you just don't have that concern. So you kind of don't have to play with that handicap that you would have necessarily in the game. Anything else you want to say before we wrap up any other things that we got a glimpse of in the weeks ahead trailer or any other plot points from down the road in the game that you're now more interested in or wondering how they'll incorporate? I am excited for the seraphites. They have really shown them a lot in the trailers, although they interestingly haven't shown anything with Levin Yara. So I'm curious if that's going to be this season or if that's going to be the next season. I might have missed it, but I didn't really see any casting news around them either.

And I'm also very excited to see Jeffrey Wright in this season and the return of Isaac. And hopefully a lot more of it because I love Jeffrey Wright. And I feel like there is a huge opportunity to do what they've been kind of doing in this show. And that is expanding these characters and making them more three-dimensional. Right. Yeah, I think given the constraints of a seven-episode season shorter than last year and everything they have to cram in here and everything they've moved up from later in the game, something has to give. So some things are just going to have to wait for a later season. That's why you have multiple seasons.

And so as much as we're clamoring for, oh, I want to see this or I want to see that person, they're going to have to hold back for a bit, right? Just so that there's, you know, because if you're front-loading this much, then you're going to have to backload other things that would have come at a certain. point in the game at least. All right. What is the downside to eating a clock? It's time consuming. And we've consumed all the time we have today. I will just leave you with a few programming teases coming up elsewhere on the feed.

Daniel heads up. I'm about to mention the Midnight Boys multiple times just so you're ready. Pee-Pew. You jump the gun that type. Premature. Premature Pupu. It's a problem for a lot of guys. Our Last of Us rotation is set.

So look for reactions from the Midnight Boys. Poo-Pew-Pew! And deep dives from House of Bar on Mondays, followed by our button-mashing first thing Thursdays. Also, the Midnight Boys, pew-poo, will... I'll miss that one. Yeah, it's all right. You did it once. Good enough.

Midnight Boys will react to sinners this week on Friday. That's tomorrow. And House of Bar will do a Daredevil finale deep dive shortly after this episode drops. Of course, Daniel's recap of the Daredevil Finale. Ali, already on Theringer.com. Finally, next week, Andor returns, as if we didn't have enough to watch and talk about how blessed by the content gods are we, The Last of Us and Andor season two double features. This is peak nerd culture.

Ellie may not need Joel's fucking help, or at least may think she doesn't, but we will take all the help we can get here, especially from Devin Ronaldo, who produced this podcast, and Arjuna Ramgapal who gave the... green light to this three podcast we've got going on for the last of us this season. Email us, email us, email us at ringerverse gaming at gmail.com. Daniel, this was fun. To quote Joel, I would do it all over again. And we will next week.

Talk to you then.