HBO's "The Last Of Us" (Season 2)

[Jay Mammoth]

Great finale. Awesome performance from Bella as usual, bring on season 3.

[supersix4]

Bella just can’t carry the range of emotion required for this season…

I’m guessing it won’t get better the more seasons that go on just hope they find ways to work around it

[King O.A.]

Is this a solid adaptation? Sure. Will some fans be happy? Sure. But I can’t sit here and say I wasn’t disappointed with this season. Most of the writing is questionable and Bella Ramsey REALLY struggled to carry the show.

6.5/10

That being said, Kaitlyn Dever will knock S3 out of the park. Really looking forward to that.

[RYJAPE21]

I thought it was a solid finale and season overall. I guess I’m in the minority, but I really like Bella’s performance. She’s still a departure from her game counterpart, but I think she handled certain intense sections well

[Show spoiler]particularly Joel’s death, her confrontation with Abby’s friend in the spores, and a few others.

That said, I’m sure Season 3 will be even more polarizing, but I’m excited to see it play out.

[jeff BD]

Originally Posted by Havok83

You're completely ignoring the context for the Jol situation. Joel got shot in the leg surrounded by a bunch of strangers. He's no Superman. The second he got shot, it was a wrap for him. Its no different than him getting fatally wounded in the first game/season. He would have died had Ellie no saved him and the difference here is that he diid not have her. And the only reason Joel wound up in that ambush was bc he was escaping a horde of infected. There was nothing about Abby that was threatening prior to that. The scenario presented was very plausible

Again anyone is vulnerable to a gun. They werent in combat. Jesse ran into that bullet and there wasnt much he could do to avoid that. Its actually more believable in the show than game bc Jesse and Tommy arent together when she takes them out.

And part of your argument is that Jesse is on of Jackson's toughest, well the same is true for Abby when it comes to the WLFs. She arguably has more combat training and experience than he. The WLF are a much larger organized militant group that has been at war and before that she was a Firefly. She's no slouch and in the game at least she becomes obsessed with taking on Joel which led

[Show spoiler]to 4-5 years of straight training fo that purpose

Was your wife familiar with the story? I can see things feeling choppy and confusing to non-gamers

Sorry but i refuse to believe Joel would have let his guard down to strangers that could be raider and get bested. And i refuse to believe Abby, the shows version, is this experienced combat veteran lol verisimilitude just goes out the window with this season. Again you’re happy because “well it happened in the game”. Doesn’t work in live action. At least not to me

[jeff BD]

Originally Posted by MuffinMcFluffin

I expect major dropoff in viewership next season. Some won't warm up to Abby, or gave it just long enough of a leash to not care a couple of years from now.

I dont see how a season 4 gets greenlit(especially with how much seasons cost) if viewership hypothetically is cut in half.

[joshsquash729]

I thought it was a pretty solid episode overall. The season ended where I thought it would, and I'm glad to see they didn't chicken out of killing who they killed. I definitely have some mixed feelings on the season. The game is one of my favorites of all time, so that was probably always going to be the case. I'm trying to stay open-minded and realize the need for changes and the reasons behind them. Watching the little making-ofs and listening to the podcast has helped understand the reasons, even if I still don't quite agree with them.

The little detour to Seraphite Island was kinda cool, but didn't feel all that necessary. We've already seen some of what the Seraphites are capable of and how depraved they are. Unless they change things, which is totally possible, it's probably going to

[Show spoiler]end up feeling a bit redundant when more or less the same thing happens next season too. Abby is going to be saved last minute by Lev and Yara, just like Ellie was saved last minute by the horn.

As-is, you can remove that sequence entirely from the episode and it wouldn't change anything, so I'm interested to see what, if any, payoff it has later. I'm excited to get more into the Seraphites in general- Lev is one of my favorite characters in the game.

My biggest gripe, I think, was just the pacing. They hit most of the major beats, but there was definitely a few things missing- important or not- and a little breathing room here and there would've been nice for certain things to really sink in. Even like one more episode could've made a difference. I think including Jordan from Abby's group would've been a smart move- yeah, he's perhaps the least important, but showing more of the dynamic between Dina and Ellie, and more of the hostility (and humanity) of the Wolves would've been nice. Could even have tied him into Ellie and Dina's chat about the first person they killed. He's not a necessary character, per se, but it does add fuel to the fire of why Ellie is so increasingly on-edge with each member of Abby's group she finds, and part of what fuels her action with Mel later on.

My second biggest gripe, I think, is just Ellie's lack of (or different way of expressing) rage. In the game, Ellie was drastically different than her first game counterpart- you really felt that the revelation had changed her, arguably for the worst. She was borderline unlikable- at times not even borderline- and that was the point- you were supposed to question rooting for her to achieve her goals. Whereas here, she still feels very much like the kid she was in season 1. Which isn't a bad thing, per se, but feels a bit out of place. She's supposed to mirror Abby in that she's basically had her whole world taken from her- her mentor, her purpose, her joy. She only has her small little circle to keep her from going fully over the edge, and she slowly starts to lose or alienate them with her blind devotion. If she was the comic relief in part 1, she very much becomes the straight man here, so seeing her continue to crack jokes and such felt a bit strange. I get that it's a tricky balance to maintain without feeling redundant or boring, but it's not impossible. I get that they're still doing the "she's pushing those close to her away" thing on the show, but it doesn't feel quite as natural to me here. Because instead of being fueled by hatred, it just kinda comes across more as her making poor decisions or not getting the point (which, yes, also happened in the game, but I digress)

The moment with Mel and Owen, for instance. Yeah, I can totally see how Ellie killing a pregnant woman would be controversial and in bad taste, but that's kind of the point. That's the moment that first starts to convince Ellie she's gone a bit too far. In both the game and the show, Ellie didn't know Mel was pregnant when she killed her, so it's not like she just ruthlessly killed a pregnant woman. I will say, I did quite like the change of Mel trying to talk Ellie through saving the baby- it was a very powerful moment- but I think that could've still played out if she'd purposely wounded her too. It feels hella weird to advocate for the killing of a pregnant woman, but you know what I mean. I suppose ultimately it still got the message across, but again- by removing her blind rage, you change the context of the action- instead of being blinded by the need for revenge to the point that she's quick and careless, this was just a poorly placed accident. I'm also interested to see how they explain Abby making her way back to the theater, since she's supposed to track Ellie from the map she accidentally leaves behind, which didn't happen in the show.

And my last big gripe is the lack of nuance. It really does feel like they're afraid to let Ellie become unlikable. I think there's a difference between a character being unlikable but still liked by the audience because the actor is so charismatic or sells the material, and a character just being unlikable. I know it can be hard for some people to root for the bad guy or someone who does bad things, but the story as a whole is supposed to make us question things, just like what Joel did in part 1. We're supposed to do some soul searching after being presented with a difficult action; we're supposed to argue whether or not it was the right thing, instead of being told that it was or wasn't. Opening the season with telling us explicitly who Abby was and what her motivation is was just the absolute wrong thing to do. It totally removes the tension from the scene in episode 2. Not knowing who she is or why she's doing what she does adds to the shock of it all and fuels the audience's dislike of Abby. They still get the chance to humanize her later on, and the point is that you're supposed to feel bad for hating her and wanting her dead, especially as she continues to suffer more and more. If you know she's going to kill Joel right off the bat, it's not a surprise when she immediately does it. Like with Ellie, it feels like they're so desperate to humanize Abby right off the bat, which I don't think is the right choice. Give the audience the benefit of the doubt- let the non-game players debate who she is and why she does what she does, at least for a week or two. But in the opening moments of the season? Naaah. Let us sit with her and her actions for a bit and try to rationalize it; like Ellie, we need that "What the hell just happened" moment. If we know why she's doing it, we'll immediately rationalize it and excuse it, at least to a point, and it won't hit the same.

I can certainly see next season being divisive. Part of me applauds them for doing it, since they'll be without the main star of the show for probably 95% of the season. Part of me still wishes they'd have done the two sides concurrently, which I think could've helped alleviate their worries about not getting payoff to certain setups for years (not like that hasn't happened in other shows too, though.) I kinda expect viewership to fall a little bit, but I do hope people will give it a chance, or come around to it if they see it getting good word of mouth. Some of my favorite sequences in the game are in the Abby storyline. Kaitlyn Dever has done a great job so far, I think, and I'm excited to see her get a lot more to do. No doubt there'll be some great acting on display.

All in all, a decent enough season. I didn't hate it, despite what it may seem. It'll take me some time to come around to some of the decisions made, but I'll try to reserve final judgement until the story of part 2 is fully over and see what still feels wrong.

[Lemmy Lugosi]

We’re not going to find out what happened until the end of the next season, are we? Sigh.

[emailking1]

Originally Posted by Lemmy Lugosi

We’re not going to find out what happened until the end of the next season, are we? Sigh.

Maybe not the end, but definitely not at the beginning.

It's unfortunate, but not sure there's any way around it once they decided to adapt the games and do it mostly faithfully. There's a cliffhanger in the game too, but you can push through it to get back to that point. No forced 1-2 year break.

On the plus side, there's a lot of awesome stuff coming in the leadup to that!

[supersix4]

Originally Posted by jeff BD

I dont see how a season 4 gets greenlit(especially with how much seasons cost) if viewership hypothetically is cut in half.

Easy if they do it like the game where its half abby half Elle where they could spend a whole next season on abby (yara, lev, etc) and set it up for the finish in season 4... Although I'm sure that would throw the audicene for a loop if season 3 ended up being 90% abby

[jeff BD]

Originally Posted by supersix4

Easy if they do it like the game where its half abby half Elle where they could spend a whole next season on abby (yara, lev, etc) and set it up for the finish in season 4... Although I'm sure that would throw the audicene for a loop if season 3 ended up being 90% abby

Ppl have to stop saying “like the game”. 2 completely different mediums and they don’t work the same.

[MuffinMcFluffin]

Originally Posted by supersix4

Easy if they do it like the game where its half abby half Elle where they could spend a whole next season on abby (yara, lev, etc) and set it up for the finish in season 4... Although I'm sure that would throw the audicene for a loop if season 3 ended up being 90% abby

I think those who are a little Bella-iffy (not the actress, but the portrayal as a whole) yet are willing to keep on the show will end up liking Abby more than Ellie, so they may be okay.

I think they're going to lose a lot of viewership before that, though. Main reason? The 18-24 month wait. If it continued next week, you'd probably get a spike in viewership because of the cliffhanger.

Originally Posted by jeff BD

Ppl have to stop saying “like the game”. 2 completely different mediums and they don’t work the same.

But that's the narrative.

You literally just saw Ellie's three days in Seattle, plus flashbacks covering a five-year span. Now you'll see all that Abby went through over the course of three days (and probably expected to see some 19-year-old Abby as well), and we need to catch up to how Day Three ends.

The show is clearly setting it up that way, and the game (yes, that thing) did it similarly. The big difference, of course, is that when playing the game you still don't know that the doctor is Abby's father at this point.

After that, then I suppose all bets are off.

[Havok83]

Originally Posted by jeff BD

Sorry but i refuse to believe Joel would have let his guard down to strangers that could be raider and get bested. And i refuse to believe Abby, the shows version, is this experienced combat veteran lol verisimilitude just goes out the window with this season. Again you’re happy because “well it happened in the game”. Doesn’t work in live action. At least not to me

Abby is a girl the same age as Ellie. Upon first glance, she does not seem threatening. He meets her literally as she is being attacked by infected and then go on the run immediately. He doesnt have time to stop and process things and even if he did, the immediate threat is the infected he is trying to get away from. Again he is not Superman or invulnerable. He made a bad decision and one that cost him his life but he's human

We've barely seen Abby. Next season will get into her training and show us how experienced she actually is. Not that this matters bc that didn't come into play yet. She had a gun and sho immediately, giving Joel nor Jessie to counter her. Alot of times Joel is able ot do that bc people talk, they are slow and they give him a chance. Abby crippling him in the leg was a smart thing on her part bc she cant fight him hand to hand and it wouldnt have been wise to give him an opportunity to disarm her.

[MuffinMcFluffin]

Originally Posted by jeff BD

Sorry but i refuse to believe Joel would have let his guard down to strangers that could be raider and get bested. And i refuse to believe Abby, the shows version, is this experienced combat veteran lol verisimilitude just goes out the window with this season. Again you’re happy because “well it happened in the game”. Doesn’t work in live action. At least not to me

In comparison, Joel letting his guard down was a weak point in the game. He volunteers his name (though I thought he would here after he had to in S1E6 and it brought him to the safe haven that is Jackson), and unlike the show he's not distracted by his community being attacked and seemingly burned to the ground.

As far as Abby goes, the show hasn't done anything to say that she is some powerful brute. I think you're letting people's comments about the game (or your own knowledge) creep in when you imply such things. But when you watch S2E2 play out as it does when Abby's crew overtakes Joel and Dina, tell me exactly what Joel could've done to counter them. I don't possibly see a way.

And if you don't recognize after her monologue that he accepted his fate (especially after this season continued playing our, up through the porch scene in S2E6), then you're not paying attention. I don't mean you specifically, I just mean the idea of being blind to it. He wasn't ever going to attempt to overtake her, at least not until he got a glimpse of Ellie (but at that point he was immobilized and on his last breath).

[Lemmy Lugosi]

Just rewatched the finale, and it was just okay. I will watch it when it comes back, but it’s almost a chore to watch. I don’t care much about any of the characters, let alone their years-long histories and motivations. It’s okay, but quite far from great.

[Bishop_99]

Did they end up

[Show spoiler] shooting Tommy in the head?

[Foggy]

Originally Posted by jeff BD

Ppl have to stop saying “like the game”. 2 completely different mediums and they don’t work the same.

All due respect, these are exceptionally faithful adaptations, (I’m not saying that isn’t a flaw, I actually think it is to the show’s detriment) so it makes sense that people will respond with full knowledge of the story and can understand some of the choices being made within the bigger picture. Yeah they’re different mediums, but they’re both very linear narrative experiences that they’re choosing to follow the same paths. It’s similar to how the Harry Potter films would introduce something in earlier instalments and book readers would say “that’s important for when they get to The Deathly Hallows”.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t sit your frustrations, but you do have to expect a few people to respond with a few “erm, actually”’s if they’re seeing where things are going. It’s just going to come with the territory of adaptation, particularly with something this huge, and also more accessible.

[BluBonnet]

Did Pedro Pascal’s departure end up hurting the show? Or was it other things?

[emailking1]

The article literally says right under that headline that it's because of the holiday weekend and it will pick up over the week.

[MuffinMcFluffin]

Originally Posted by emailking1

The article literally says right under that headline that it's because of the holiday weekend and it will pick up over the week.

Yeah, but YT grifters will ignore that.