The Last of Us Review: Episodes 1-3
Potential spoilers for the first three episodes of The Last of Us.
The first episode of The Last of Us premiered on Jan. 15 on HBO Max. It is an adaptation of the action-adventure game by studio Naughty Dog and was released back in June 2013 on the PlayStation 3.
The story follows Joel, a survivor of the apocalypse who works as a smuggler, 20 years after the initial outbreak of the infection. He’s now tasked by a group known as the "Fireflies” with escorting a teenage girl named Ellie from Boston to Colorado in hopes of developing a vaccine.
The show fleshes out familiar characters in depth and allows the viewers to spend more time and get to know them. We are able to see into their lives before the apocalypse. It expands upon the game’s lore about the infection and how it spread. In the original game, players are initially given control of Sarah, Joel’s daughter, to explore their house as the outbreak is beginning.
The first episode of the show spends more time giving us Sarah’s perspective and we are able to see a glimpse into her life the day before the outbreak, which is Joel’s birthday.
In episode three we get to see more of other characters and their stories like Bill and Frank. Through Bill’s perspective, we are able to see how the government rounded up people in rural areas who weren’t sick and killed some of these people. It builds on Bill’s distrust of the government and people outside of his town, where he lives alone, until he meets and falls in love with Frank.
There is a lot of nuanced world-building in these first three episodes. In the first episode, there are hints at how the infection was able to spread so quickly with the focus placed on what foods the characters are avoiding eating and products containing wheat. In the second episode, it was revealed that one of the first to be infected worked at a wheat factory.
The show also makes changes from the source material to better fit the TV format such as
Cutting out a stealth section to focus more on the infected and the impact of a character’s death.
They explain more about Cordyceps with segments at the beginning of episodes one and two before the outbreak
The Cordyceps is based on a real virus found in ants and they use science and the knowledge of how fungus works to explain how it could’ve evolved to survive human body temperatures due to climate change and the science behind it and how two doctors, who have spent their entire careers studying fungus and how they work, say there is no cure are some of the most terrifying parts of the show.
Overall, the first three episodes of The Last of Us builds and improves upon the game’s story and has elements for fans new and old to enjoy.
