'The Last of Us' Season Two: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

I’ve rarely felt such a potent and confusing mixture of emotions about a TV show as I did heading into the start of season two of HBO’s adaptation of The Last of Us. After the reaction I had to the first season back in 2023, I was apprehensive about even watching the season at all. I won’t rehash my critique here, but suffice it to say, I was one of the minority of those who disliked it, and who did so for reasons not related to toxic gamer culture. Yet the second game in the series is my favorite of all time, and the hope—however vague and hazy in the distance it may have been—that it could be adapted well remained a powerful enough beacon to draw me in.

I’ve tried to be charitable and give the show the benefit of the doubt, but we’re four episodes into a seven-episode season, so I think I’ve granted enough of a grace period now. Without further ado, then, let’s just go through what, to me, have so far been the few things that Mazin and co have done right, and the many that they have got wrong, with their take on the greatest video game ever made. In other words, let’s do The Last of Us season 2: The good, the bad, and the ugly. Rarely has there been a stronger case for a subjectivity warning than here! I am blinded by my adoration for the game(s); in writing this, I’ve used up all of my meager critical faculties to try to push through that obstacle, and I’ve ended up an exhausted mess on the floor.

The Good:

The attack on Jackson
A thrilling bit of television in the season’s second episode, this was an effective sequence that wasn’t featured in the game and that served to heighten the sense of just how brutal this world really is (a relative lack of which was one of my main points against the show’s first season). Dynamically shot, with clear stakes and sense of geography, it was a pulse-pounding evocation of how fragile any semblance of security is for the people still alive and un-fungus-ed. Having said all that, how on earth did Tommy survive the day? The way things were staged and shot, with innumerable Infected racing around him, eager for a taste of non-fungoid human flesh, Tommy, one hundred percent, should have died on that street.

Joel pushing Seth
Another of my major issues with the show in its first season was that, like its world, its protagonists were not nearly brutal enough. The two exist in a state of co-causation (is that a term? I don’t care, it is now)—with people like Joel doing horrible things to survive because the world around them is horrible, and thus then in turn making it even more horrible. Despite all the charisma and skill that Pedro Pascal brings (brought) to the role, watching the show, I’ve still never felt that he was the kind of man capable of the sickening violence that he needs to be in order to get as far as he did. The one area where the show improved on the game with this was this moment at the start of season two, where, in a fit of protective rage, show Joel full-on shoves homophobe Seth to the ground. Game Joel doesn’t go quite that far. It works better in the show.

Kaitlyn Dever
Ah, Abby. Poor Abby—the character as well as the actors hired to play you in your various forms who have received grotesque, inhuman treatment from demented ‘fans’. While I have a number of strong criticisms of the way Abby is being handled in the show—more on that later—Dever is a very good actor and is still managing to convey the core of Abby even while being hampered by the script and direction.

Bella Ramsey
Similar to the above. Ellie might be getting even worse treatment from the choices made by the creative team, but Bella is doing some mighty heavy dramatic lifting, and hats off to them for it.

The Bad

Where to start? In the interest of sanity and emotional well-being, I’ll try to be as brief as possible here.

Joel and Ellie
The most important element of the entire story, the relationship between these two is the core of everything that happens. Without it, there’s no point. Season one’s big mistake was that it never developed the relationship to the degree that I believed Joel would commit the act that would come back to haunt him lethally in season two. In season two, the most important and emotionally ravaging aspect is Joel’s death, destroying any chance at the pair’s reconciliation. In the game, it haunts Ellie and the player almost as much as the traumatic death itself. In the long run, it will be the main trauma. The show, meanwhile, uses the little time it has before Joel’s death to disproportionately soften the pair’s spat, dropping hints that maybe things between the two aren’t quite that bad, or that they’re being fixed. This significantly lessens the dramatic impact.

Joel’s death
Perhaps the most pivotal scene in the whole season, or even show, this needed to be handled exceptionally well. Probably the most traumatic moment in many a gamer’s gaming life (mine included), I couldn’t help but feel that the show version made a number of choices that severely undercut the moment and devastating emotion therein. Chiefly, it must be said, this mostly centred around Abby. As already stated, Kaitlyn Dever is doing the best she can with the material, but the decision to expand the minimal amount she says in the game into an amateur villain monologue was a poor one. The choices they made with Abby’s expressions here, drifting into smug or satisfied at times, further diluted the moment. The scene was robbed of most of its gravity, and Abby’s hollow yet horrifically impactful revenge was cheapened.

Abby
The genius of The Last of Us Part II is that it uses the medium to its full potential, exploiting the player’s natural instinct to empathise with the character you play as to a degree that justifies whatever violence is deemed necessary to get that character’s way. Abby’s shocking killing of Joel instills in us a murderous rage that, combined with the subsequent rug pull of then making us play as Abby, was a move so potent that it rocked the whole medium. I talked about it in my review of the game, and YouTube channel ‘Girlfriend Reviews’ did a great video on it:

The game is unafraid to make Abby entirely unsympathetic when we first meet her. Indeed, that’s the whole point. The TV show seems to be taking many steps in order to soften her, and to make the viewer understand and empathize with her motivations from early on. It’s a different medium that doesn’t have the luxury of player participation or the run time of the game, which means choices have to be made. Nothing is un-adaptable. Maybe the show is heading in a direction in which this ultimately pays off, but for now, this is a gross fumbling of the bag.

Ellie
Ellie’s descent into the dark pits of vengeance and her self-alienation from everyone and everything in its pursuit is sickening to behold in the game. She is absolutely broken and blinded by grief and rage, and though we understand it and are complicit in it, we can’t help but feel the poison of it all. I do not feel this at all in the TV adaptation. Ramsey does her level best, and there are moments when it’s almost there—Joel’s death scene for example, or when she wanders alone through his house after his death—but by and large the choices the show makes end up making Ellie come across more like a moody teenager suffering from an annoyance rather than a life-altering and psyche-shattering traumatic event. Dina’s pregnancy is a case in point. In the game, Ellie is hostile on hearing the news, pushing Dina away and calling her a burden. In the show, the mood is relatively light and warm. It’s an odd choice I do not understand at this point in the show’s run. Perhaps it will make sense in the end, though I doubt it.

Everybody saying out loud what they feel all the damn time
A huge problem that I’ve come to notice with this show is one that seems to be present in many modern shows and movies: A glaring lack of subtlety. Maybe it’s because studios are making #content for people streaming stuff while scrolling on their phones, but there is an epidemic of scripts in which characters constantly outright state out loud what they feel instead of letting us feel it by other means. Catherine O’Hara’s character, glorious as she is simply by being played by Catherine O’Hara, seems to exist at the moment simply to give the characters an excuse to state their emotions and the themes of the show out loud for everyone to understand. Compare that to a great current example of the opposite, Severance, in which so much is communicated through cinematography, blocking, and the expressions and body language of the actors. We’re grown-ups for fu*k’s sake. Treat us as such.

The ugly
Everyone complaining about this show for the wrong reasons. I’m not going to dignify it with more space here, as anyone mocking people’s appearance or anything similar doesn’t deserve the space.