This story features spoilers for the finale of The Last of Us.
"This is a love story, and that's not good." Those are the words that The Last of Us showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann wrote on the front page of their outline for the HBO series. The channel announced they were adapting the 2013 Naughty Dog video game (which Druckmann created) in 2020, and as soon as the first episode dropped on January 15, The Last of Us was being considered "the best video game adaptation ever." It didn't take long for the Emmy buzz (and a renewal for season two) to follow.
In case you need a refresher, The Last of Us pilot introduces us to war veteran Joel Miller (played by Pedro Pascal), who is living in post-apocalyptic Boston after a fungal pandemic outbreak. We see the immediate effects of the pandemic play out for Joel — in the death of his daughter Sarah and estrangement from his brother Tommy. Joel is tasked with smuggling a young girl named Ellie (Bella Ramsey) to a group of rebels out west called the Fireflies who are looking for a cure to the infection.
The opening sequence was ominous, and somewhat terrifying, but I was hooked within the first half hour.
While the apocalypse and the infected (which the internet affectionately refers to as “zoombies” because they are fast) are both hallmarks of the horror genre, neither of them serve as the foundation for the storytelling. They're also not the reason why the series beat outHouse of the Dragonand had an increase in viewership week after week (the finale had nearly double the viewers that the pilot did).
The dedication to exploring the connection between humans, and wrestling with the complexity between light and dark, is what sets this show apart. Because in The Last of Us, no one is a bad guy.
Love In "The Last Of Us"
Image via Liane Hentscher/HBO
“Throughout our series, we will continue to come back to the notion that love conquers all, and that's problematic that we think of love as this solely positive thing,”Mazin says in the first episode of the show’s official podcast. While love is a beautiful thing in and of itself, the things that we are willing to sacrifice for the people that we love can quickly turn into something less than pure.
“Love is not always good," Mazin continues, "and when we talk about the show and as we go episode-by-episode, we're gonna meet people that love each other over and over and over. And we're gonna see this dynamic play out over and over and over.”
Each of the characters we meet throughout the season — from Joel and Ellie to brothers Henry and Sam to violent uprising leaders Kathleen and Perry — are all spurred on by their love for their family. Every good decision, as well as every bad decision, are all stemming from a place of care. That looks different in a world ravaged by infection and anarchy, but it makes the viewer question the lengths that we would go to for the people that we love.
Exploring Themes Of Light And Darkness
Image via Liane Hentscher/HBO
With its increase in viewership each week, the show proved that it’s not #toosoon for a pandemic series. The show-runners approached both the outbreak and its consequences differently than they would have had the show been made 10 years ago. After all, every single person watching knows how quickly the entire world can change, which makes the story resonate in a whole new way.
“Everything we wanted to do was to say to people, ‘Listen, we're showing you extraordinary circumstances, a world that's fallen apart. And there are monsters, and all this stuff is happening, but it is applicable to your life right now, here in the world that [hasn’t] fallen apart, and there are no monsters. But there is love, and fear, and hate," Mazin says in episode two of the podcast.
Even if we're not fighting FEDRA officers or trying to escape a military quarantine zone like Ellie and Joel are, we all have different ways of connecting with the series' theme of “when you’re lost in the darkness, look for the light,” a notion that bookends the series as the first and last episode titles. Fans also identified the way it plays a role in the production of the first few episodes.
As soon as they meet, Joel and Ellie do not like each other. However, even as they keep their distance from one another, the potential for a relationship is clear to the audience. Ellie is consistently bathed in light while Joel sits in shadows, foreshadowing her role in his healing process. He begins acting like a father again, opening up in a way that he hasn’t allowed himself to since his daughter Sarah died.
The show also ties Sarah and Ellie together with butterfly motifs, which on their own are a sign of rebirth and beauty, but within the production design of the show, have a more personal touch. Sarah keeps butterflies in her bedroom before the outbreak, and we can see butterflies in Joel's Boston apartment. When we open on Ellie's sleeping form in episode two (once again in light), a butterfly flies across the camera.
The One Sequence In The Finale That Sums Up The Whole Show
Image via Liane Hentscher/HBO
The overarching theme of light and dark can be summed up by one sequence in the final episode of the season. After Joel and Ellie finally make it to Salt Lake City, he vocalizes that she is the one thing that has helped him heal from Sarah's death. But the moment is short-lived as they’re knocked out and separated by the Fireflies.
When Joel wakes up alone, he learns that Ellie will have to unknowingly sacrifice her life to help the doctors create a cure for the pandemic infection. In a moment of pure paternal rage, he kills everyone in the hospital in order to save her and escape — an ending that has caused controversy among fans of the game for a decade.
Joel and Ellie do successfully escape, but when she wakes up, Joel lies to her by swearing that the Fireflies have stopped looking for a cure. Both of these instances highlight the light and the darkness that are both found in love. While Joel's relationship with Ellie is beautiful and life-giving, full of puns and Chef Boyardee ravioli, it's also terrifying because his inability to lose another daughter drives him to do terrible things.
Ellie might be special because of her immunity, but her and Joel are just regular people. They aren't heroic archetypes or Christ figures and something about the selfishness and the darkness that they can exhibit on behalf of each other makes them feel more real.
Both Pascal and Ramsey do a fantastic job (I am in fact one of those fans calling for their Emmy awards). The nuances and choices that they both make are so open and showcase their souls in a really beautiful way. As one Twitter user put it, their partner work creates scenes that make you feel more like a fly on the wall within the fictional universe than a viewer in your own home.
How "The Last Of Us" Reflects Real Life
Image via Liane Hentscher/HBO
As dark and painful as these aspects of the series are, that darkness underscores the beautiful parts of the show even more. Watching Sarah and Joel laugh together before the outbreak, Bill and Frank cry at the taste of fresh strawberries, or Joel and Ellie delight in feeding a giraffe should remind us to hold tightly to moments of awe and joy, and stay present in these daily moments of beauty — because you never know how fleeting they may be.
The grief over everything we lost to the COVID pandemic, collectively and individually, allows us to understand how devastating life can be. It feels like the last three years have been nothing but wave after wave of darkness. But that also means that we understand how important it is to bask in the light when we get the opportunity, and to never give up hope that another good time is coming.
The Last of Us is one of the best shows of 2023 because of the honest way it wrestles with human nature. It examines the tension between light and dark in way that doesn't shy away from good or evil. It uses dark moments to showcase how resilient love can be — because those moments serve as a sharper contrast to the silver lining than if there was no darkness at all.
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Featured image via Liane Hentscher/HBO
