Hey everyone welcome back to my recap and review of another episode of The Last of Us. The show which I’m liking, based on a video game I’ve never played on a system that that I didn’t continue playing after the second generation. As per usual this review will not feature any Easter eggs, because frankly I wouldn’t know what one would be if I came across one. We’ll, we’ve made it to the finale and I believe this may be one of the more shorter episodes in this season. This gives some quick, straight the point answers about Ellie and her immunity to the virus as well as sets up a situation that will surely carry over into next season. It looks like I’m back on my super late to the party recap and review party, so let’s get right into it.
We start off with a pregnant woman who is running through the forest who obviously has gone into labor. She stumbles into a house and heads upstairs into a room, closes the door and sits against the wall as she is trying to keep quiet to avoid any unwanted attention. You can hear a growling from a far and an infected breaks through the door and attacks her. She pulls out her pocket knife and kills the infected, then realized that as she was fighting off the infected she happen to push out a baby. She quickly cuts the umbilical cord and picks up the newborn. While admiring the life that she just birthed she notices that she has been bitten. I’m going to stop right here and tell you that this really hit me in the feels. I was just last night looking at pictures of my daughter when she was born and getting sentimental, so this didn’t help at all. Not only did this woman just put her life on the line to protect her baby, she now has to show this baby a lifetime of love in a short period because she knows she won’t be around for very long. We cut to Marlene, who we haven’t see since the first episode, entering the house and following the sound of a woman singing. Marlene enters a room and finds Anna holding a swaddled newborn and singing to her. The infected still lay dead next to her. She hands the baby to Marlene and tells her that she was bit before cutting the umbilical cord and tells her that the baby’s name is Ellie. She asks for help doing three things. The first is to feed her. She didn’t want to feed the baby while being infected, the second thing is to take care of the baby and the last is to take care of her by killing her. After some hesitation she hands the baby to another man that accompanied her and kills Anna.
We cut to current day and Ellie is staring off in the distance as Joel scavenges for items. He mentions that the hospital where they are to meet the fireflys is near and they continue. Ellie seems more quiet than normal and Joel picks up on that. They get to a city where they make their way up a building where Ellie calls for Joel as there’s a Giraffe there just handing out eating leaves. It’s a nice moment as this is another moment where Joel gets to bring out his fatherly side and this almost imitates him and his daughter being at a zoo. The look in his eyes says it all and it’s almost like there is no apocalypse, just a father and daughter hanging out. As they continue walking a smoke grenade is thrown and Ellie taken out as Joel is knocked out.
Joel wakes up to Marlene standing there. Joel asks where Ellie is and she explains that she is being prepped for surgery. There’s a doctor who believes that Ellie has enough of the virus inside of her to fool the virus enough to think that she is already fully infected, so it doesn’t start taking over her body. The doctor is going to isolate that part of what keeps Ellie safe and extract it, making Ellie vulnerable like everyone else. She then tells Joel that he will be escorted out to the highway, given some supplies and that’s the end of his journey with Ellie. Joel is escorted out and then wrestles the gun away from his escort, kills him and continues taking out every person in the hospital until he gets to where Ellie is being prepped for surgery. He shoots the doctor and orders the nurses to unhook an unconscious Ellie. As he makes his way with Ellie to the garage to locate a vehicle to use, he comes across Marlene who begs him to let this surgery happen.
The next scene is Joel driving Ellie who wakes up and asks where everyone is. Joel lies and says that there are others like Ellie out there that raiders took he clothes so that’s why she is still in her hospital gown. She’s still woozy from the anesthetic and we cut to their vehicle broken down on the side of the road. Joel remarks that their next destination is about a 5-hour hike and as they walk Joel remarks that Ellie would have like his daughter and she would have liked her. Ellie stops and asks Joel is everything that she had been told about the fireflies by Joel was true. Joel has a flashback of shooting Marlene and leaving with Ellie and then turns to Ellie and says yes it was true.
I really liked this episode but felt it went really fast. I like they didn’t spend too much time on the explination of Ellie’s immunity and didn’t overly complicate it, but I also like how this really did feel like the end of a chapter in their lives. Ellie confirmed that the first person she ever killed was her friend in the mall and Joel admitted to trying to kill himself after his daughter died. Each of them lost someone and finding eachother is what kept them whole. It’s no doubt that Joel has gone full stepdad and when speaking to Ellie he didn’t come out and say it, but he implied it was Ellie who saved him. Joel made a choice to keep Ellie in his life, even though it meant that a cure would not be made. It was a tough choice and honestly I don’t know if I would have made a different one. What if something happened during surgery and she didn’t make it through and the cure didn’t turn out to be something that could be made. Joel would have no one in his life. Even though his brother’s alive, he wouldn’t want to burden him with his moping around. He would just continue wondering until his day comes. Like I’ve said multiple times, I haven’t played the games, but I know more or less what happens and it’s hard to not get pre-sad on what may or may not happen in the next season. I wonder if we’ll hear him sing Future Days by Pearl Jam.