Dave Nemetz Reviews The Last Of Us: A Beautifully Brutal Zombie Thriller Gets Even Harder To Watch In Season 2
I gave Season 1 of HBO's The Last of Us a grade of A-minus, hailing it for breathing new life into the zombie genre — but I never actually finished watching the first season. When I went back to finish it recently to prepare for Season 2, I remembered why I stopped: This show is just brutal to watch.
Sure, no zombie show is exactly a walk in the park, but watching The Last of Us is an especially draining experience, pairing abrupt graphic violence with a suffocatingly bleak worldview. (I said in my original review I don't recommend binge-watching more than one episode at a time, and I stand by that.) It's still an exceptionally well-made zombie thriller, and Season 2 — premiering this Sunday at 9/8c; I've seen four of the seven episodes — does push the story forward and find new emotional depth. But it's also even harder to endure than the first season... and that includes a particularly harsh twist.
Season 2 picks up five years later, and zombie apocalypse survivors Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) have found a community called Jackson: a fully functional mountain town that gives them a chance to breathe and regain a sense of normalcy. The zombies, or "clickers," are still out there, but at a safe distance, and human threats begin to loom larger. Peace can only last for so long, though, and soon enough, Joel and Ellie are back on the defensive, forced to fight to keep their newly tranquil lives from slipping back into chaos.
The Last of Us' action scenes are effectively terrifying, and Season 2 delivers nightmarish visions like an army of clickers crawling out of a snowbank and hurtling down a hill at a full sprint, along with a full-on assault that rivals the scale of Game of Thrones' most epic battles. But at times, I get the nagging feeling that this is all just a slightly better version of The Walking Dead, falling into some of the same storytelling pitfalls. (The town of Jackson is a lot like TWD's Woodbury, and once they've achieved a level of safety, the characters are forced to make foolish decisions in order to encounter danger.) The superior writing and performances, though, elevate this to a level beyond anything The Walking Dead ever reached.
There is, as I said, a twist — one that I can't say much more about, but one that fans of the video game series will see coming. I will say the twist was divisive among video game fans, and it's easy to see why. It turns the show into something different, a meditation on the toxic effect of revenge, and it may leave a bad taste in some fans' mouths. It also emphasizes the black cloud of sadness that hangs over everything on The Last of Us: The tension is just about unbearable at times, and Season 2 adds in several sadistic torture scenes that are enough to make you wince. We do find fleeting moments of beauty amid all the carnage, but they're sadly short-lived.
Ellie has grown up a lot since we last saw her, and that gives Ramsey more emotional colors to work with in Season 2. The new cast additions are welcome as well: Isabela Merced has a playful spark as Ellie's new pal Dina, along with TV veterans Catherine O'Hara and Jeffrey Wright. The highlight, though, is Kaitlyn Dever, who makes every TV show she's in better and just dazzled us earlier this year as a phony wellness scammer in Netflix's Apple Cider Vinegar. Here, she plays Abby, who's determined to track down Joel and exact vengeance for the sins of his past. Violence has consequences, and this show forces you to reckon with that — no matter how painful it might be.
It's tough to sustain a zombie show: It either gives us a zombie attack every week and risks becoming repetitive, or it strays away from that pattern and ceases to be a zombie show. It's commendable how Season 2 of The Last of Us tries to advance the narrative in a fresh way, but it's not entirely successful. And the deep sadness that permeates the entire show stubbornly remains. I can say I admire a lot of the craftsmanship that goes into making The Last of Us... but I hope you'll forgive me if I take some time to recover before finishing the rest of the season.
THE TVLINE BOTTOM LINE: The Last of Us remains an exceptionally well-made zombie thriller in Season 2, but it's sadder and harsher than ever — especially after a brutal twist.