The Last of Us season two: Sublime moments make weigh station chapter worthwhile

Not long ago, the prevailing wisdom was every screen adaptation, especially a live-action one, of a video game was a dud.

It wasn’t until the 2019 movie Pokemon Detective Pikachu did the genre register its first positive Rotten Tomatoes score, the first victor atop steaming pile of critical misfires including Super Mario Bros, Tomb Raider and Street Fighter with our very own Kylie.

When The Last of Us premiered its first season in 2023, it was an entirely different ballgame. It wasn’t, “Hey, that’s pretty good for a TV series adapted from a video game”. It was “Holy crap, this is superb television”.

Created by Chernobyl writer Craig Mazin and one of the game’s masterminds, Neil Druckmann, The Last of Us drew on its rich source material, a game that had a wealth of cinematic detail with a focus on character-driven story beats.

Yes, the series had an advantageous starting point but it was able to transition that abundance into a different art form.

The alchemic casting of Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey was a masterstroke. The two were able to bring a de facto father-and-daughter dynamic to their characters and infuse it with warmth and pathos.

In the two years since that first season wrapped up to universal acclaim, fans have been patiently waiting for its return. There are questions abound, including how the show will treat significant plot points gamers are already familiar with – and which we will not be spoiling here.

Let’s just say that it is done with great respect to the original game’s rendering, a knock-out moment that will floor the unsuspecting and satisfy those in the know.

Set two decades after a fungal virus spread across the world, bringing on the apocalypse as infected humans turn into “clickers” (basically, mushroom zombies), the first chapter followed smuggler Joel (Pascal) and immune teenager Ellie (Ramsey) as they travelled across the US to meet a group of scientists and doctors trying to manufacture a cure and a vaccine.

At the end of the first season, Joel discovers the procedure would mean Ellie’s immediate death and he killed everyone in that hospital, including the doctor. Crucially, as they left, Joel lied to Ellie, shielding her from the truth of his actions.

The second season picks up five years later and Joel and Ellie have settled into the sanctuary city of Jackson, Wyoming, where Joel’s brother, Tommy (Gabriel Luna), lives with his family.

The town is a functioning society with a robust trading and bartering system, community meetings where decisions are made by council and shared duties patrolling their surrounds from both raiders and “clickers”.

But Joel and Ellie are on the outs, and the strain of their fracturing weighs on them, the people around them and on the audience, who had spent the previous season watching their bond develop and evolve, when it was mostly just the two of them, trying to survive.

In Ellie’s life there is Dina (Isabela Merced), a resourceful young woman, and Ellie’s love interest. Among the newbies, there is Jesse (Young Mazino), a responsible young man who is teaching Ellie combat skills, and with whom Dina had an on-and-off thing, and Gail (Catherine O’Hara), the town’s therapist.

There’s also the introduction of Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) and her group of friends (Tati Gabrielle, Danny Ramirez, Ariela Barer and Spencer Lord), who is trying to track down Joel. Abby is the daughter of the doctor Joel killed, and serves as the primary antagonist, or sometimes just the spectre of one, this season.

The thing about The Last of Us is that while there is a lot happening including elaborate action sequences such as zombie attacks or propulsive chases through the ruins of a metropolis, it is always focused on character.

At every point, the series gives you a clear idea of how everyone is feeling, not just what they’re doing. That’s down to the writing and the performances, a synchronous marriage that elevates the viewing experience.

If the question is whether this season lives up to the first? It doesn’t, but it’s still better than 97 per cent of TV that is made.

Some of those niggles are structural and almost unavoidable. The second game, on which this season is based, is much longer so necessitates that it be split into two, maybe three seasons.

So, this batch’s seven episodes climax to a point that is less of a book-end than the first instalment. That also goes for Ellie’s emotional arc, which will carry over into next season, already greenlit.

There are also fewer contained story arcs than the first and a couple of chapters bleed into each other.

One episode this season is a transcendent hour of TV. It is quiet and contemplative, joyful and sad, a showcase for the power of Pascal and Ramsey’s talent and the onscreen magic they can create together. That sounds vague but there are super strict spoiler/reveals conditions attached by HBO.

Often these middle seasons can feel like a weigh station, an impatient stopover until the meat of the work in the final act but The Last of Us gifts the audience with many sublime moments that make it more than worthwhile in the meantime.

The pay-off will, in theory, will come later but the foundations have to be laid now. If Mazin and Druckmann can continue on this course and land this ship by the series’ end, the show could surpass the game as the defining version of The Last of Us.

The Last of Us is streaming on Max with new episodes weekly on Mondays.