The Last of Us

We trace the history of Naughty Dog's pop culture phenomenon, from the video game's 2013 debut to its adaptation as an HBO series 10 years later.

I think ‘The Last of Us,’ for it to be authentic to take place in the United States, has to explore all those kinds of characters.” Straley left Naughty Dog not long after the release of 2016’s “Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End,” before HBO was involved in a “Last of Us” series, and is not credited on the HBO series. “Maybe we need unions in the video game industry to be able to protect creators.” HBO and Sony declined to comment on the record. We get to explore the downbeats of these characters and we get to flesh them out in ways we couldn’t in the game.” The studio support was always there, says Asad Qizilbash, the head of PlayStation Productions, who was working in Sony’s marketing department when “The Last of Us” was released. In “The Last of Us,” Joel starts to see the world through the eyes of Ellie, and Ellie, who has never been out of militarized zones, often finds the beauty in ruins. “The Last of Us” was the rare game that sought to avoid action, letting Ellie pester Joel with questions about what it was like to be alive before the apocalypse. No, it’s because “The Last of Us” always felt like a mission statement, a game that wanted to prove that big-budget action shooters — “AAA games” in industry speak — could not only have a sense of gravitas but could advance the medium in narrative, gameplay and representation. “The Last of Us” has its share of those, but by and large they’re unexpectedly brief and often interrupted with opportunities to guide the character or to initiate an optional conversation. Now, “The Last of Us” is a While there’s no shortage of violence in the video game space, “The Last of Us” did it differently. Sony’s landmark 2013 game “The Last of Us” didn’t make it easy on players.

HBO's adaptation of the brutal, post-apocalyptic video game is entirely faithful to its source material—yet pushes it beyond its creators' wildest ...

[Marvel Cinematic Universe](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a40458776/marvel-cinematic-universe-mcu/) is playfully hop-skipping through the aftermath of losing half of its own population. For the uninitiated: The Last of Us doesn't have the merriest worldview of the end of civilization. The Last of Us has always seemed to say that the end of times will reduce each of us to our extremes—our very worst and, if we're lucky, very best parts. The Last of Us—which visually, in the best way, watches like a shot-for-shot recreation of the video game—opens with the grizzly Joel (Pascal) and his brother, Tommy (Gabriel Luna) on the day that shit hits the fan. [2013's ](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a40960610/the-last-of-us-hbo-release-date-trailer-details/) [The Last of Us](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a23036/the-last-of-us-video-game/)—game developer Naughty Dog's brutalist masterpiece—to my fellow editors at Esquire. Loyalists of the video game will probably ask if The Last of Us is even half as harsh as its PlayStation counterpart. [The Last of Us Part II](https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/a32907593/last-of-us-part-2-review-ellie-abby/) completionists certainly know—the game goes to painstaking lengths to show you its belief that we're all capable of becoming the thing we swear we are not. [sequel](https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/a32910275/last-of-us-part-2-narrative-lead-halley-gross-interview/) released in 2017), or are simply curious about why [Pedro Pascal](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a39752344/pedro-pascal-oscar-isaac-video-interview/) and Bella Ramsey are hamming it up on a press tour together, fear not: HBO's The Last of Us, which debuts January 15, pushes the already-brilliant story beyond its creators' wildest nightmares. Joel gets wrapped up in the wheelings and dealings of a rebel faction, called the Fireflies, who ask him to smuggle a young girl named Ellie (Ramsey) across the cordyceps-ridden country. In the distance, as Joel and Ellie platform buildings, we see toppled skyscrapers, leaning on each other like books on a shelf. Really, it's 2023's [first great television show](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/g42288393/best-tv-shows-2023/). That's the gist of The Last of Us, to which HBO said [fuck-your-video-game-adaptation-curse](https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/g27664881/best-video-game-movies/), developed it into a TV series, and cleared its coveted Sunday night slot for it to air.

Pedro Pascal brings Joel to life in "The Last of Us," HBO's adaptation of the beloved, critically acclaimed video game. Liane Hentscher/HBO.

“The Last of Us” doesn’t necessarily reinvent the post-apocalyptic genre, but “The Walking Dead,” this is not. Oh, and sensitive viewers, beware – “The Last of Us” can be deeply sad. [ “Mandalorian,”](https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/30/media/the-mandalorian-season-2-disney-star-wars/index.html) “Narcos,” “Game of Thrones”) as Joel and breakthrough performer Bella Ramsey (also of “Game of Thrones,” “Catherine Called Birdy”) as Ellie. Joel and Ellie are still our protagonists, and most of the series is dedicated to their relationship (albeit with some attacks by fungus-monster-people interspersed). That might rattle “The Last of Us” players used to destroying fungus-faced monsters between cutscenes, though there are still scares. [“The Last of Us”](https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/10/entertainment/the-last-of-us-review/index.html) is now widely recognized as one of the best video games of all time. [bleak “Chernobyl” miniseries](https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/22/entertainment/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes-review/index.html). (In its original 2013 interview, IGN called their rapport “one of the great highlights” of the game.) He’s an often relentless smuggler with a deep-buried paternal side; she’s a parentless teen with the mouth of a sailor and a dangerous secret. From its heart-wrenching story to its celebrated cast, here’s why fans of the game and prospective new viewers can’t wait to watch “The Last of Us” when it debuts Sunday night. What’s so unpredictable about “The Last of Us” is how deftly it balances engaging gameplay with compelling, often heartbreaking storytelling. [ “The Walking Dead”](https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/21/entertainment/the-walking-dead-series-finale/index.html) had concluded its third season, [“World War Z”](https://www.cnn.com/2013/06/21/showbiz/celebrity-news-gossip/world-war-z-review-ew/index.html) was expected to be a summer blockbuster and “Resident Evil” was still perhaps the best-known zombie-starring video game. But “The Last of Us” also always prioritized the relationship between Joel and Ellie.

The Last of Us stars Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey as the central duo of Joel and Ellie, but who else stars in the series and who do they play?

Who is Henry? Who is Sam? Who is Marlene? Who is Ellie? Who is Tommy? Henry is Sam's brother. Who is Joel? Sam is Henry's brother. She is also known for her TV roles in Station 19, Truth Be Told, [The Flight Attendant](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/the-flight-attendant-season-2-release-date/) and Greenleaf. Offerman has had a long career in TV and film and is particularly known for his comedic roles, including as Ron Swanson in Parks and Recreation. Tommy is Joel's younger brother. He has also had major roles in films including [Kingsman: The Golden Circle](https://www.radiotimes.com/movies/kingsman-movies-order/), [Wonder Woman 1984](https://www.radiotimes.com/movies/wonder-woman-3-release-date/) and The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.

"The Last of Us" creators Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin explain why they did not want to include gameplay sequences in their HBO adaptation.

“It’s a big time jump,” he says of the game’s sequel. It also seems inevitable that “The Last of Us” will extend beyond its first season, which covers the full storyline of the first game. Sony released “The Last of Us Part II” for Playstation 4 in 2020, which makes a sizable time jump and tells an even more sprawling story with several new characters, but Mazin is cagey about how future seasons of the series might unfold. In the game, Marlene only shows up “when Joel meets Marlene and no other time,” he says. But he understood innately that it would be a “mistake” to try to replicate the way the game is played on the show itself. “These characters that sometimes hunt you in the game, we get to humanize them in the show,” he says. “However, in the show, we were able to say oh, this moment that’s kind of hinted at, of what was it like when Ellie met Marlene for the first time, we get to dramatize that in the show.” Even more provocatively, Druckmann says the show will also spend time with the (non-zombie) enemies that players must kill to advance in the game. But Mazin and Druckmann used those sequences to draw viewers deeper into the emotional arcs of the characters rather than the harrowing spectacle surrounding them. “When you’re playing those sequences, that immersion really makes you connect with the player you’re controlling. “But ‘The Last of Us,’ more than any other video game I’ve ever played, connected me to character and relationship. Players must guide Joel and Ellie as they navigate through dilapidated office buildings and snowed-in ski resorts, and then utilize whatever weapons they have on them to take out the swarms of zombies — or mercenaries, or cannibals — that could just as easily kill them.

Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey lead HBO's adaptation of video game "The Last of Us," which breaks the curse of bad video game TV shows and movies.

Like a cut scene in a video game, the story sometimes meanders away from Joel and Ellie's journey west and focuses on other slices of humanity surviving in the wake of the end of the world, and these vignettes are what really makes "Us" compelling. More than anything else, "Us" feels designed not to offend those gamers who love the original so much, down to a massive super-zombie showing up in one episode who feels straight out of a "boss fight" in the game. "Us" is likely to face endless comparisons to "Walking Dead," given the latter's one-time status as the show-of-the-moment, but "Us" feels visually distinct from that series, which was all boring blood and guts and Georgia backwoods. Starring "Game of Thrones" alums Pedro Pascal and [Bella Ramsey](https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/movies/2022/10/07/bella-ramsey-interview-catherine-called-birdy-movie/8205305001/), it brings the visceral, intimate quality of a video game without feeling like you're stuck in an uncanny valley playing one. It's clear, even for someone who has never played a single minute of "Us" on a PlayStation, that there's something special about the story, and that Mazin has done a thoughtful job bringing it to life. film, which plays like a bad "Saturday Night Live" sketch (an upcoming Mario film, featuring [Chris Pratt voicing the titular plumber](https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/movies/2021/09/23/chris-pratt-voice-super-mario-movie/5836924001/), has already been maligned online before its release).

In 2003, Joel (Pedro Pascal) wakes up on his birthday like every other morning, sitting down for breakfast with his 12-year-old daughter Sarah.

The Last of Us is The show delicately and impactfully handles themes of isolation, the need for connection, and the impact of familial loss. [rave](https://www.metacritic.com/tv/the-last-of-us) [reviews](https://www.theringer.com/tv/2023/1/13/23552715/the-last-of-us-hbo-prestige-tv-video-game-adaptation-curse-lifted)from critics (and a [97% score on Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/the_last_of_us)!), and many are saying the show is paving the way and making an argument for more video game adaptations on the silver screen ( [a contentious subject](https://www.cbr.com/video-game-movies-tv-disappoint/)). [Narcos](https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2018/11/216993/narcos-characters-in-real-life-season-4-cast)and [Game of Thrones](https://www.refinery29.com/en-ca/2019/05/233361/game-of-thrones-finale-unanswered-questions), is relative newcomer Bella Ramsey. Outside of the main cast, the series also boasts a ton of familiar faces, who’ll pop up among the rubble and zombies as Joel, Tara, and Ellie trek across the United States. [based off a 2013 video game](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ3k1V8WN6Q)series of the same name. Coined as a “post-apocalyptic drama,” The Last of Us follows Joe — a smuggler — as he tries to escort Ellie (Bella Ramsey) across the country from Boston to Colorado. With HBO at the helm, and an all-star cast, this series is going to be *the* show of 2023 to watch. By the end of the day, the world as Joel — and everyone else — knows it is gone. Created by developer Naughty Dog and released by Sony Entertainment, the has become well known, and popular, among gamers for its complex storytelling and narrative framework, as well as its ability to [convey a very human story of loss and hope](https://levvvel.com/the-last-of-us-statistics/). Alongside Pedro Pascal, who’s known for The Mandalorian, Those who survived the outbreak are just trying to stay alive in a pretty dismal version of America and aren't optimistic anything's going to change.

HBO's The Last of Us airs tonight; the TV adaptation of the popular video game stars Game of Thrones alums Pedro Pascal & Bella Ramsey.

[drop us a message here](https://wikiofthrones.com/contact-us). R. George R. ET), which you might remember as the time slot occupied by House of the Dragon last year on HBO and HBO Max. Watch the trailer right here: HBO is one of the leading networks in the world of television.

The Last of Us stars Pedro Pascal as the haunted Joel, and kicks off Jan. 15. HBO. Joel and Ellie's apocalyptic journey arrives on HBO ...

However, The Last of Us and [its 2020 sequel](/deals/the-last-of-us-part-2-is-a-profound-and-harrowing-sequel/) are some of the most engaging games ever made. [came out in 2013](https://www.cnet.com/reviews/the-last-of-us-playstation-3-preview/)) with some storylines and background elements expanded. It's more thriller than horror, with plenty of intense moments. [The Mandalorian](https://www.cnet.com/culture/entertainment/the-mandalorian-season-3-trailer-march-release-date-and-baby-yoda-future/)'s [Pedro Pascal](https://www.cnet.com/culture/entertainment/game-of-thrones-already-lost-its-greatest-hero-oberyn-martell/) as Joel, with his fellow [Game of Thrones](https://www.cnet.com/culture/entertainment/we-were-too-harsh-on-game-of-thrones/) alumnus [Bella Ramsey](https://www.cnet.com/culture/our-new-game-of-thrones-hero-a-10-year-old-badass/) as Ellie. - Episode 7: Sunday, Feb. - Episode 6: Sunday, Feb. - Episode 5: Sunday, Feb. - Episode 4: Sunday, Feb. PT (9 p.m. New episodes will arrive at 6 p.m. - Episode 1: Sunday, Jan. The show adapts [the legendary PlayStation video game series](/tech/gaming/the-last-of-us-part-1-is-a-expensive-way-to-revisit-naughty-dog-masterpiece/) from developer Naughty Dog, with the nine-episode season 1 focusing on the initial entry in the franchise.

The HBO drama, based on a video game, works best as a post-catastrophe travelogue, teasing out the ways survivors rebuild mini-societies with new alignments ...

Multicolored fungi bloom across the faces of the infected, leaving intact the mouths and teeth with which they attack, as they join a teeming, growing army that appears to know no natural death, and only lies dormant, waiting. Scott Shepherd is as terrifying as any of the spore-heads in his role as a soft-voiced pastor who preys on his followers’ need for solace and guidance. Between the monomaniacal militias and the self-cannibalizing cults, a deserted preschool classroom, constructed underground, stands as a brightly muraled testament to the blind hope that many parents still nursed for their children, while a heavily guarded commune risks the messy ideals of equality and coöperation even in the face of existential peril. A fascination with panicked brutality links “The Last of Us,” co-created by Craig Mazin, to his previous series, “Chernobyl.” On the autumn night in 2003 that the cordyceps arrive in Austin, a construction worker named Joel (Pedro Pascal) attempts to flee in a truck with his teen-age daughter, Sarah (Nico Parker), and his younger brother, Tommy (Gabriel Luna). “Station Eleven,” the defiantly optimistic portrait of a Shakespearean theatre troupe wayfaring through a post-pandemic Midwest, is another precursor, in images if not in tone; the Ozymandian sights of nature’s reclamations in “The Last of Us”—ducks and frogs swimming blithely in a flooded hotel lobby, or a herd of roaming giraffes seemingly escaped from a zoo—conjure that same beauty of perseverance amid desolation. When the mutation is first discovered, in Jakarta, a petrified mycologist advises, “Bomb this city and everyone in it.”

Here's a sentence that I never thought I'd type: The Last of Us airs its first episode tonight on HBO and HBO Max. It's a surreal feeling.

Neil, Craig and the production team took this opportunity to weave in new characters, themes, and locations — only where they felt true to the characters and the world, the “soul” of The Last of Us. As you can imagine, I’m extremely excited (and extremely nervous) for PlayStation and Naughty Dog fans to dive into the first episode and experience for themselves the love the cast and crew has poured into this adaptation. I can’t wait for the world to experience their portrayals and the rest of these unforgettable characters in an entirely new way.

Inspired by the Naughty Dog video game, the new HBO Max series stars Pedro Pascal as Joel and Bella Ramsey as Ellie — here's when and how to stream.

[Best Buy](https://howl.me/ciVCIgP6lUk) [Best Buy](https://howl.me/ciVCHNjQWvd) [GameStop](https://go.skimresources.com?id=87443X1644750&xs=1&xcust=THR--watchthelastofus&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gamestop.com%2Fvideo-games%2Fplaystation-4%2Fproducts%2Fthe-last-of-us-part-ii---playstation-4%2F217700.html&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hollywoodreporter.com%2Flifestyle%2Flifestyle-news%2Fwatch-the-last-of-us-online-1235300059%2F) [GameStop](https://go.skimresources.com?id=87443X1644750&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gamestop.com%2Fvideo-games%2Fplaystation-5%2Fproducts%2Fthe-last-of-us-part-1-playstation-5%2F344866.html&xcust=THR--watchthelastofus&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hollywoodreporter.com%2Flifestyle%2Flifestyle-news%2Fwatch-the-last-of-us-online-1235300059%2F) Alternatively, you can subscribe to [Prime Video](https://www.amazon.com/hp/video/offers/?_encoding=UTF8&tag=hollywoodre01-20&linkCode=ur2&linkId=af95329876de6cd89bca85bb435cbc9e&camp=1789&creative=9325&asc_source=web&asc_campaign=web&asc_refurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hollywoodreporter.com%2Flifestyle%2Flifestyle-news%2Fwatch-the-last-of-us-online-1235300059%2F) as a standalone service for $9 monthly. Prime Video is access included with a membership to [Amazon Prime](https://www.amazon.com/amazonprime?linkCode=ll2&tag=hollywoodre01-20&linkId=7a0b52b2d6b8dc93380cf3ea9b3f836c&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl&asc_source=web&asc_campaign=web&asc_refurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hollywoodreporter.com%2Flifestyle%2Flifestyle-news%2Fwatch-the-last-of-us-online-1235300059%2F) ($15 monthly or $139 annually), offers a 30-day free trial for new members. While it’s not required to have survived the action horror game to understand the show, see below to find out where to shop The Last of Us video games and comic book spinoffs online. A remake, The Last of Us: Part I was released last September for PS5, and it will soon be available on the gaming platform [Hulu](https://go.skimresources.com/?id=87443X1644750&xs=1&xcust=THR--watchthelastofus%7Cxid%3Afr1673812277529gbh&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hulu.com%2Fhbomax&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hollywoodreporter.com%2Flifestyle%2Flifestyle-news%2Fwatch-the-last-of-us-online-1235300059%2F) or when they add the [HBO Max channel](https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/storefront?contentType=subscription&contentId=hbomaxus&benefitId=hbomaxus&linkCode=ll2&tag=hollywoodre01-20&linkId=d6388faa4314532058c2c7786b263e46&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl&asc_source=web&asc_campaign=web&asc_refurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hollywoodreporter.com%2Flifestyle%2Flifestyle-news%2Fwatch-the-last-of-us-online-1235300059%2F) on Amazon’s Prime Video, which both offer seven-day free trials. PT/9 p.m. Once bitten by one of the infected, the teen’s immunity may hold the secret to a cure for the virus that has wiped out most of humanity. The TV adaptation of the popular post-apocalyptic video game debuts Sunday exclusively on HBO Max, and brings together a slew of fan-favorite stars from the studio’s other hit series.

Now, HBO is bringing Joel and Ellie's post-apocalyptic journey to the small screen with stars Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian) and Bella Ramsey (Game of Thrones), ...

Clint Barton](https://gamerant.com/disney-plus-hawkeye-series-logan/) (Jeremy Renner) — is there to save the day. The [duo has great comedic chemistry](https://gamerant.com/best-marvel-comics-duos/), and Clint comes to see Kate as more than just a kid with a bow, but a worthy peer. [James Mangold](https://gamerant.com/hugh-jackman-wolverine-deadpool-3-logan-james-mangold-response/)’s Logan (2017). The [Adamantium-clawed Laura](https://gamerant.com/marvels-wolverine-x-23-role-potential-spin-off-good/) is one of several children Transgien birthed using mutant DNA, in the hopes of creating mutant weapons. [Clem is the heart of the story](https://gamerant.com/telltales-the-walking-dead-anniversary-2012-2022-clementine/), the player’s moral compass and reason to keep fighting. [a Wolverine who’s been beaten down](https://gamerant.com/logan-wolverine-death-explained/) — who’s watched as his chosen family and friends were hunted down. This Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) series opens with a flashback to 2012: New York is under attack and the Avengers are battling Loki’s (Tom Hiddleston) Chitauri fleet. What could have been a long and winding escort mission turns into [something deeper](https://gamerant.com/last-us-2-ellie-vs-walking-dead-clementine/). [Robert Kirkman’s graphic novel series of the same name](https://gamerant.com/walking-dead-comic-clementine-telltale/), the episodic video game raised the bar with its character-driven narrative and focus on player choice. [The Last of Us](https://gamerant.com/tag/the-last-of-us/) is composed of Part I and Part II as well as the side story, Left Behind, which fills in some gaps in Ellie’s story. [The adventure will take her to parallel universes](https://gamerant.com/hbo-drops-trailer-dark-materials-season-2/) and deep into an epic war that's centuries in the making. Lyra pulls together a ragtag crew, including the [exiled armored bear](https://gamerant.com/best-bears-in-movies/), but Iorek is reluctant to join Lyra, a young and weak human, on her expedition north.

[Ed. note: The rest of this piece contains incrementally increasing spoilers for The Last of Us (2013).] pedro pascal crouching, with bella ramsey at his ...

In the final act of The Last of Us (2013), Joel and an unconscious Ellie arrive in Salt Lake City following many brutal adventures, and Ellie is immediately taken in for treatment. Whether the ending of The Last of Us is a true twist ending is arguable. And The Last of Us has plenty of child death to go around (and not just the horrific one in its first episode). But it is an ending that firmly recontextualizes the kind of story that The Last of Us is. The ending of The Last Of Us is not ambiguous in its contents, containing a crystal clear succession of events and motivations — and at the same time, it leaves room for every player to form their own opinion on it. If you were within five yards of a video game in 2013, you may have gotten the sense that The Last of Us tells a story whose ending spawned significant debate.

Joel - Pedro Pascal · READ MORE · Ellie - Bella Ramsey · Trending · Tommy - Gabriel Luna · Tess - Anna Torv · Related articles · Sarah - Nico Parker.

The HBO and Sky Atlantic drama is ready to premiere with much excitement surrounding the first episode's release. The Last of Us premieres on Sunday, January 15, on HBO in the USA and Sky Atlantic and NOW in the UK. Who is in the cast of The Last of Us? Tommy is the younger brother of Joel in The Last of Us game so it is believed this will be his role in the show as well. Ramsey's character Ellie in The Last of Us is vital as she is seen as the key to starting a new world as she is immune to the infection that killed billions. The Last of Us is making its debut in the US this weekend, but who stars in the cast?

A man and a teenage girl creep through an abandoned museum by the light of a. How much time will we be spending with Joel and Ellie? Credit: Liane Hentscher/HBO ...

In theory, that means both a hypothetical Season 2 and Season 3 of The Last of Us would tackle The Last of Us Part II. But as a writer, I don’t want to be in the position of spinning plates to just spool out season after season of stuff," Mazin told Gizmodo. The inclusion of [Left Behind](https://mashable.com/article/last-of-us-left-behind-women-representation-video-games) means we'll be seeing key elements of Ellie's backstory during the season as well. So assuming we can keep going forward, the idea would be to do more than just one more season." Remaking TLoU in a different medium allows Mazin and Druckmann to expand on characters and events we don't necessarily see in the game. [that doesn't stop the show from paying tribute to the game's best mechanics](https://helios-preview.mashable.com/article/the-last-of-us-hbo-game-vs-show).

Pedro Pascal is Joel<p> Game of Thrones/The Mandalorian's Pedro Pascal stars. 20 Images. Bella Ramsey as Ellie<p> Game of Thrones' Bella Ramsey plays Ellie ...

Though the trailers have given us a glimpse that much of the premise will follow along with the original game, chances are there are going to be a lot of shake ups along the way. In the The Last of Us: American Dreams prequel comic, we see that Ellie and her friend Riley were captured by the Fireflies, and the latter worked hard to join the group only to die after being infected through a bite. The Last of Us is based in a post-apocalyptic world where a mutation of the cordyceps fungus broke out and decimated the population. In the beginning, the Fireflies not only wanted to end FEDRA’s violent rule and return to a more democratic form of government, they were also a primary group actively searching for a cure. One major teaser dropped in The Last of Us trailers has been the introduction of the Fireflies, a major rebellious faction in the games that just about every character is tied to in some way or another. After the 2011 release of Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us game, it didn’t take long for the concept to dip its toe in the world of the multimedia franchise.

'The Last of Us' set a gold standard for video-game storytelling. The adaptation's premiere makes it clear HBO doesn't want to screw that up.

She also learns that Marlene does not like being called a terrorist, particularly when she knows she’s working for a greater purpose and Ellie is essential to the cause. Meanwhile, Joel and Tess plot payback on the battery dealer who ripped them off, a pursuit that eventually brings them to Firefly headquarters, or what’s left of it. These include, of course, FEDRA soldiers, including Joel’s painkiller customer, who seems willing to bargain with them for their escape until Ellie stabs him before he can see she tests positive for infection, after which Joel murders him with his bare fists (after a brief flashback to Sarah) as Tess and Ellie look on. But that doesn’t get in the way of her expressing her resentment with defiant sarcasm. After Sarah joins Joel and Tommy in a pick-up with a quarter tank of gas, the three speed across the outskirts of Austin only to find the highway choked with traffic and the fields filled with soldiers. There’s kindness in the way the soldier tells the girl, “What if I told you that after we gave you some medicine, we’re going to find you your favorite food to eat?” but it’s a lie. When Joel and Sarah encounter a soldier, it quickly becomes apparent he’s going to kill them, presumably acting on orders to take extreme measures to contain the spread of the infection. When Tess finds herself in the middle of a FEDRA-Firefly street fight, she does her best not to get involved. The series begins in a slightly different place, opening with a scene set at the taping of a talk show in 1968 in which a smug interviewer talks to two scientists. (Could the sirens she’s been hearing all day have something to do with it?) And she’s helpful with the Adlers, the family next door with the nice dog and a senile, wheelchair-bound mother named Connie who never talks. [PlayStation 3 game in the summer of 2013](https://www.vulture.com/article/the-last-of-us-hbo-adaptation-review-non-gamers.html), The Last of Us drew breathless praise from reviewers, but that’s not particularly unusual. But the show also feels like its own creation, in large part because the series, and its well-chosen cast, emphasize the emotions at the heart of the game, including an interest in what place morality has in a brutal postapocalyptic world and a sense that it is connections between people that make life meaningful, even when surrounded by monsters.

HBO's super-sized series premiere saw Joel (Pedro Pascal) navigate trauma and find new purpose in Ellie (Bella Ramsey), plus some video-game callbacks.

People don’t love that sequence because it’s two minutes of CGI forming different shapes; they love it because it’s two minutes of CGI telling a story of sorts by establishing the geography of the series as a whole and of individual episodes, changing periodically to introduce new spots on the map or prepare us to return to little-visited places like The Pyke. While the idea of the spores rising into something resembling a city — i.e., a metaphor for how the world as we know it has been consumed by the mushrooms — is clever, it’s still ultimately just a bunch of shapes, and not interesting enough to go on for as long as it does. And we discover that Marlene needs Ellie to get to her other Fireflies out west because Ellie is somehow immune to the infection. Ellie is not as in command of the situation as Tess was, but we also quickly see that she is not afraid of being shackled to a wall by armed people who won’t explain why they want her. Then purpose arrives in the form of Ellie, a girl close in age to Sarah who needs passage out of the city. He is emotionally closed-off and efficiently brutal, and when his new charge Ellie is threatened by a soldier late in the episode, he has a PTSD flashback to Sarah’s death and turns absolutely savage in the way he beats on this man. [zombies](https://www.rollingstone.com/t/zombies/), though we do get the disgusting imagery of a dead body absorbed into a wall of fungus when Joel and the others traverse an underground tunnel late in the hour. (We are introduced to her surrounded by armed men after a beating, yet it is clear that she is in command of the room the entire time, and would likely have found a way out of her predicament even if a conveniently-timed Firefly bomb hadn’t given her an escape route.) He is existing rather than living, haunted by the loss of his daughter even more than the loss of everything else he knew, with few goals beyond getting through the next day. Before we get to that violent escape from Boston, we first have to establish the state of America 20 years after the zombie uprising. So I’ll be discussing this episode, and all the ones to come, solely on the basis of how it works as a television show. But before that, we have to watch civilization fall in the way it tends to in so many dystopian shows and movies. Instead, creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann are using those scenes to establish emotional stakes for Joel, and to make us deeply feel at least some of the pain he experiences when Sarah is shot by a panicked soldier on the night the world is wrecked.

Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey take their first steps through HBO's all-new take on the apocalypse. Here's how the first round of 'The Last of Us' plays out.

She spends it fixing her dad’s watch (with her dad’s money), studying after school with the next-door neighbor (why is one of them acting so strange, and what’s up with those whispy tendrils poking out of her mouth?), and falling asleep next to Joel while watching a movie. It doesn’t matter what it is, at least not now, and certainly not after Joel clobbers this neighbor over the head with a wrench, scoops Sarah up into a truck alongside his brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna), and hits the road for somewhere—anywhere—safe. In the scene, Hannah’s scientist delivers a chilling monologue, predicting the fall of mankind to a terrifying and unlikely culprit: fungus. Hailing from the house that built House of the Dragon, The Last of Us stands out as HBO’s first major post-dragon genre effort. “One gene mutates,” he continues, “and any one of them could become capable of burrowing into our brains and taking control of not millions of us, but billions of us. In today’s day and age, a tragic amount of folks have celebrated their birthdays with pandemic pancakes.

For existing fans of this series, the opening chapter of this story is one of the most heartbreaking stories ever told in a video game, and yet this new series ...

Joel and Tess head through the subway to get to Robert, and upon entering a marked door, find the decomposed body of a man stuck to the wall from a severe infection, covered in fungi and looking like he died screaming in pain. As the song plays, we see the nightmare that Joel, Tess, and Ellie will have to face on their journey ahead. Marlene tells Ellie she stopped the Fireflies from trying to shoot her, and unchains “Veronica.” Ellie asks, “is it going to happen?” to which Marlene says “no,” and also tells her she can't leave. When Joel wakes up, Ellis states that she’s never been on the other side of the QZ wall, then asks Joel if they're going to be okay once they get to the other side, to which Joel says that they will. A FEDRA officer handcuffs Tess and takes her to the ground, as she yells, “I’m not a Firefly!” However, she claims to be named Veronica, and as her captors leave her once more, we see the Fireflies' logo on the door. The SWAT member tells his commander the situation, and it’s clear that his orders are to take out Joel and Sarah. Joel and Tommy make plans to go through town and pick up on the interstate on the other side. Tommy slows down to help the couple and their child, but Joel demands that they keep going. The woman runs towards Joel viciously, and Joel takes her out with a wrench. She tells him she stole $20 from him to fix the watch, saying that he was never going to do it for himself—a fact that Joel seems to acknowledge as true. Over the radio, we hear vague reports of disturbances in Jakarta, and before the trio leaves for the day, Sarah goes to her father's bedroom, takes his broken watch and a few dollars, and looks over her father’s pocket knife.

Episode 1 of HBO's The Last of Us thrillingly lays the foundations for the emotional torture ready to hurt us along every step of its journey.

We don’t get to spend a whole lot of time with her this time around, but it’s clear that Ramsey is set to be a force of nature to be reckoned with over the course of the series - and one that may be needed in order to reclaim the world from the sickly nature that has overcome it. But now, after centuries of servitude, Renfield is finally ready to see if there’s a life away from The Prince of Darkness. As Joel, Ellie, and Tess venture off into the unknown together, we’re finally given a moment to catch our breath. Concepts such as the outbreak, quarantine zones, the Fireflies, and the general state of the world are presented at breakneck speed. All around the cast do a fantastic job of building not one, but two very different and very human places in this opening chapter. They are learning to exist in a world as abruptly as the world is learning to exist with them - neither doing a great job of it as the deliberately frantic action displays. Sarah’s passing signals a change in the camera's focus to Joel 20 years later as browns, greens, and greys desaturate the world and signal darker times are here to stay. As normal life draws to a close, the impending disaster is kept ominously out of focus - quite literally so in the haunting image of Sarah's convulsing elderly neighbour. Interestingly, one of the first of these almost directly imitates the positioning of the in-game camera as we sit in the backseat of a truck with Sarah and watch the chaos unfold from her perspective. Warm sunlight floods the screen before alarming reds and blues dart through darkness as the lens is exposed, just as we are, to the creeping momentum of the outbreak. When on foot, we start to get a full sense of the threat that now sweeps through the streets as fires burn, vehicles explode, and the infected are born. It’s an ethos repeated throughout the series premiere, which acts as a brilliant new entry point into the world of The Last of Us.

The zombie apocalypse depicted in the popular video game series and newly adapted HBO series “The Last of Us” derives from a mutation to a type of fungus ...

The zombie apocalypse depicted in the popular video game series and newly adapted HBO series “The Last of Us” derives from a mutation to a type of fungus called cordyceps. This should probably come as no surprise, though: Unlike in the games and show, cordyceps, as we currently know it, will not turn you into a zombie. Cordyceps is real, and some

The opening scene shows two epidemiologists speaking on a talk show in 1968, speculating about significant viral threats to human existence. One says viruses ...

We wanted to give us much reality as we could because the realer that is, the more we connect to the characters that are in that space playing around.” The game had spores in the air and people had to wear gas masks, and we decided, early on, that we didn’t want to do that for the show,” he said. Druckmann added: “With the more recently infected, we had a lot of conversation about what that vector could look like because there are certain things from the game that we took away. Mazin continued that the audience is more knowledgeable about pandemics these days than they were when the game first came out in 2013. This scene is pivotal to explaining how the outbreak in The Last of Us begins. The disease that wipes out most of humanity in The Last of Us is a fungus—a mutated microorganism known as cordyceps, which actually does exist in real life, but it can’t infect humans. “There’s a fungus that infects insects, it gets inside an ant, travels through its circulatory system to the ant’s brain and then floods it with hallucinogens, thus bending the ant’s mind to its will. The airborne spores that required gas masks to navigate are gone and instead, we have tendrils (which, by the way, will make your skin crawl from a visual perspective), potentially given the real-life COVID pandemic wherein a mask helps slows transmission. “So, if that happens—” the talk show host begins. [devour its host](https://stylecaster.com/watch-the-walking-dead-online-free/) from within replacing, the ant’s flesh with its own, but it doesn’t let its victim die. How did The Last of Us outbreak start? But in the end, we always win,” he explains, adding that fungus will be humanity’s undoing “in the most dire terms” and alludes to how it might begin.

While The Last of Us is deservingly praised for its human drama, the cordyceps help the franchise to also stand above other horror zombie productions.

In The Last of Us, human neurology is also altered to make the host more aggressive and more likely to bite and spread the fungi to new victims. While The Last of Us is deservingly praised for its human drama, the cordyceps help the franchise to also stand above other horror productions focused on zombies. But in the case of cordyceps, the result is terrifying. Since the planet's average temperature is rising, mutations that turn species more resistant to heat become more adapted to the environment. All the stories you heard about zombie ants eaten from the inside out by fungi are true, and the cordyceps are to blame. But there’s another reason why The Last of Us is such an exciting show.

Writer-producer Craig Mazin fact-checks the HBO premiere's eerie prologue ("It's real…"), plus discusses that perfect song choice at the episode's end.

And I needed it to have context. I needed to have be foreboding, and ideally, without being super on the nose, give me a comment. I needed to be meaningful. I need it to be a song that I kind of know but I haven’t heard in a long time. — from a purely scientific point of view, would they do exactly to us what they do to ants? “It’s real — it’s real to the extent that everything he says that fungus do, they do,” Mazin says. I needed to start a particular way so we can show that radio turning on. It was so upsetting to say to people, ‘We knew about this, it’s been there, now we’re gonna show you the night it finally happens.’ Not suddenly, but finally.” “And they currently do it and have been doing it forever. “If the world were to get slightly warmer, then there is reason to evolve,” he said. The Last of Us got underway Sunday night with an eerie cold open prologue that’s set on a talk show in 1963. An epidemiologist (played by the wonderful John Hannah, of The Mummy and Spartacus fame) gives a dire warning to an incredulous host (Silicon Valley’s Joshua Max Brener) about the looming fungal threat.

It's too soon to say whether HBO's big-budget video game adaptation will become a zombie classic. But it delivers one heck of an opening catastrophe.

So as I write about the show, I will be focusing on how it works as a television series, and not on how well it does or does not adapt the game. With a well-thumbed volume of “The Billboard Book of Number 1 Hits” by his side, he waits to hear specific songs that signal whether it’s safe to venture beyond the Q.Z. Besides, I believe this show is a work of fiction, given that we don’t live in a 2023 where half the population has been taken over by fungi. [Bella Ramsey](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/11/arts/television/bella-ramsey-the-last-of-us.html)), a feisty 14-year-old who is the only known person to survive an infection — and, hence, could be the key to saving humanity. (In 2023, they are called “FEDRA,” for the Federal Disaster Response Agency.) And he smuggles drugs with his business and romantic partner, Tess (played by the magnificent Anna Torv, beloved of science-fiction/fantasy/horror fans from her days on “Fringe”). Set in 1968, the prologue features a TV interview with a scientist who explains that his greatest fear isn’t a “global pandemic” (a term that, in a moment of dark humor from Mazin and Druckmann, is defined by another guest for the blissfully ignorant ’60s audience) but rather a mind-controlling fungus that could one day thrive on a warming planet, turning humans into fiends. Beyond establishing the miserable conditions of 2023, Mazin and Druckmann must introduce the show’s other leading character: Ellie ( (“They’re coming to get you, Barbara!”) Or think of the 2004 remake of Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead,” or the first episode of “The Walking Dead,” both of which begin as the heroes wake up in a nightmarish world that collapsed while they were asleep. But I’ll say this for the series’s creators, Craig Mazin (the Emmy-winning writer and producer of “Chernobyl”) and Neil Druckmann (a creator of the video game): They do deliver one heck of an opening catastrophe. We see during the escape that Joel is willing to ignore other people’s suffering, or even to inflict harm wantonly, in order to protect himself and his family. And we discover that the government’s response to this crisis can be as destructive as the crisis itself. Most of the Texas scenes are from Sarah’s point of view, too, although there are sly hints throughout that something bigger is happening.

The laughter from the studio audience dissipates as the epidemiologist gravely explains how a parasitic fungus can do more than simply kill its host. As science ...

The sight of a gun pointed at a young girl reminds Joel of the soldier that killed Sarah, and in a rage he rushes the soldier and beats him senseless. Marlene promises that if Ellie is delivered safely to the State House, the Fireflies there will provide him and Tess with everything they need to track down Tommy. Tommy, we learn, is a Firefly, too, and this was a major cause of tension between the brothers. Robert, apparently, was going to sell the battery to the Fireflies instead of Tess. The Fireflies detonated a car bomb and are trading bullets with the gathering FEDRA forces. But Marlene ( [Merle Dandridge](https://ew.com/person/merle-dandridge/)), the leader of this area's Firefly faction, appears confident that she's healthy. A filthy child wanders through an empty park overgrown with weeds, staring down the blasted ruins of Boston, where slumping highrises and the vestiges of infrastructure are choked with suffocating vines and wads of dirt-crusted stone. The trio's offroading leads them to a downtown in disarray. Ambulances and police cars blare in the streets, jets carve the clouds, and the radio reports of unrest in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta. [Pedro Pascal](https://ew.com/person/pedro-pascal/)) is the single father of Sarah (Nico Parker). A smirking host speaks with a pair of epidemiologists about the possibility of a pandemic. Joel and Sarah's quiet night celebrating his birthday is disrupted when Tommy calls to ask his brother to bail him out of jail.

The first episode of HBO's The Last of Us largely sticks to the original script, with a couple of tweaks. Here's how it differs.

But the conclusion is very much the same: Sarah is killed by a trigger happy soldier ordered to enforce the town's quarantine at any cost, leaving Joel to grieve for years to come. That's covered in a short, 15-minute prologue in the game, extended to just over half an hour in the show. [game narrative](https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/the-last-of-us-part-ii-neil-druckmann-interview), its 81 minutes of runtime covering around the first hour of gameplay.

The pilot episode of "TLOU" strongly mirrors the beginning of the video game from which its adapted. There's one big change from the start of the game.

Viewers should hone in on the different reactions both Sarah and Ellie have to witnessing Joel kill someone in front of them. In the game, a truck slams into the side of Tommy and Joel's vehicle. Sarah forgets to give her dad the card in the video game. An injury on the neck, face, or head takes five to 15 minutes. "I suggested this change because it would allow the show's main timeline to be now, in 2023," Mazin continued. The front also shows an artist in a different pose. "I just had this thing where if I'm watching a show and it takes place 20 years in the future from my time now, it just seems less real," Mazin told Insider with a laugh. "The fungus begins to devour its host from within, replacing the ant's flesh with its own." The show introduces us to Joel Miller, who Pedro Pascal plays, in 2003. "The fungus needs food to live," Dr. The fungus then controls the "zombified" ants until they reach an area where the fungus can grow before killing it. He discusses how this fungus, cordyceps, travels through an ant's circulatory system to its brain, flooding it with hallucinogens, "thus bending the ant's mind to its will.

The Cordyceps brain infection, as it would come to be known, infected and/or killed roughly 60% of the population just a short time later. The amount who ...

The Last of Us is available on HBO in US. So, we challenged ourselves to come up with an interesting new way for the fungus to spread." Then after a year has passed, the fungus scars the host and blinds them completely, forcing them to use a new, primitive method of echolocation to find their way around. Within two weeks of infection, the host begins to lose their sight as a fungal growth corrupts their visual cortex. Those are the clickers who you're going to see a lot of this season. That's where we see the host lose their higher brain function, leaving behind those aggressive, irrational, zombie-like people we see at the start of the show and game. The Cordyceps brain infection, as it would come to be known, infected and/or killed roughly 60% of the population just a short time later. [The Last of Us](https://www.digitalspy.com/last-of-us/) isn't exactly [your standard zombie thriller](https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/ustv/a42429477/last-of-us-review-tv/), and that's clear from the beginning of the very first episode. How do we know 60% of the population were lost so quickly? In 1968, there was no evidence that this same process could affect humans because the human body is simply too warm for these strains of fungi to survive in. Humans now live in closed-off areas where guards check anyone coming in to see if they've been infected by the outbreak. [The Last of Us](https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/ustv/a42141245/the-last-of-us-first-trailer/) spoilers follow.

The first episode of The Last of Us on HBO establishes a new world for the video game series, with plenty of differences and similarities.

The two make a plan to find Robert and confront him in order to find out where the battery ended up. In the chaos, the guard points his rifle at Ellie, and Joel jumps in between them, unarmed, to try and talk him down. - There’s a clear shot of dust in the light in the first scene in Joel’s apartment. Fortunately, as it turns out, the guard is the one Joel provided pills to earlier in the episode. Tess escapes to see that a FEDRA vehicle has been bombed, and that a sniper is on a nearby rooftop, firing on FEDRA soldiers. A guard notices the child, and rushes to assist as he collapses. As Joel tries to explain that neither of them are infected, the soldier radios for instructions on how to handle the situation. Just as the monster is about to pounce, it’s shot by a soldier, who then keeps Joel and Sarah at gunpoint. As Sarah gets outside, Joel and Tommy careen onto the scene in their pickup truck, and Joel kills the infected woman with a wrench, without hesitation. Joel is painted as being forgetful and preoccupied with his work and his need to keep his family afloat, though has a clear lighthearted side, and is very open to playfully jesting with Sarah and Tommy. Post title credits, the episode then jumps ahead to a suburb of Texas in 2003, where single father Joel Miller (Pedro Pascal), a building contractor, and his teenage daughter Sarah (Nico Parker), are starting their day. One of the guests begins to talk about the very real concept of parasitic fungi – organisms that infect, kill, and control the body of their host to further spread their existence.

It has been described as "comfortably the best adaptation of a video game ever made" that has been able to "break the curse" on gaming-TV crossovers.

"Through Ellie, we see its wonder. "Through Joel, we feel the heartbreak of this world," its chief television critic said. "The design is stunning: vistas of deserted, bombed out metropolises are matched by sprawling, Western inflected, shots of rural America." All this to an audience who may not traditionally engage with games. [there's some stand out acting in the series](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/jan/11/the-last-of-us-tv-finally-has-the-perfect-video-game-adaptation) acknowledging "it's a bold statement to make" but episode three "might well be one of the TV episodes of 2023". [gave it four stars, saying](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/reviews/the-last-of-us-review-pedro-pascal-hbo-b2258847.html) it's "undoubtedly a new landmark in the seemingly impossible task of adapting video games".

These early scenes do a fantastic job of not only relating us to a once familiar world, but also to the key paternal relationship of Joel and Sarah - both ...

We don’t get to spend a whole lot of time with her this time around, but it’s clear that Ramsey is set to be a force of nature to be reckoned with over the course of the series - and one that may be needed in order to reclaim the world from the sickly nature that has overcome it. All around the cast do a fantastic job of building not one, but two very different and very human places in this opening chapter. They are learning to exist in a world as abruptly as the world is learning to exist with them - neither doing a great job of it as the deliberately frantic action displays. As normal life draws to a close, the impending disaster is kept ominously out of focus - quite literally so in the haunting image of Sarah's convulsing elderly neighbour. Interestingly, one of the first of these almost directly imitates the positioning of the in-game camera as we sit in the backseat of a truck with Sarah and watch the chaos unfold from her perspective. It’s an ethos repeated throughout the series premiere, which acts as a brilliant new entry point into the world of The Last of Us.

We zip forward to 2003, ten years before the opening of the game, and get a really nice sequence with Joel (Pedro Pascal), his brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna) and ...

In this case, the writers and producers had to condense a 15-hour game into a 10-hour season of television. It doesn’t always work out (many movie adaptations of video games aren’t exactly great), but things can’t stay always precisely the same as they were in the source. Deviating from Joel and Ellie’s story to tell another one in this universe — something that wouldn’t be possible for the game to do — is an exciting change. I enjoyed the first Sonic the Hedgehog movie, which is nothing like any of the games, and I’m interested to see how the Gran Turismo film shakes out, given that it’s about someone who’s very skilled at those games becoming a real-life racing driver. In the same way, a movie that adapted any of the core Mario games exactly would quickly fall flat. We get to see some of what Sarah’s day-to-day existence is like in the hours before the outbreak occurs. Changing how the infection spreads from spores to fungus, for instance, means that the actors don’t have to wear masks in some scenes. They hit the story beats they needed to while changing things up enough to surprise fans of the game and, at least in some places, make the narrative work better in another medium. Things that work in a novel may not in a film, and retelling a game beat-for-beat in a TV show doesn’t make a lot of sense. The cold open is a scene from a ‘60s talk show, which is immediately a new twist. Thanks in part to some of the different paths it takes, HBO’s adaptation of the 2013 game is off to a stellar start. Even when it’s a game that’s as cinematic as The Last of Us.

Though based on the 2013 video game series by PlayStation Studio, Naughty Dog, it's immediately clear that the show, written by Craig Mazin (Chernobyl) and Neil ...

The two make a plan to find Robert and confront him in order to find out where the battery ended up. In the chaos, the guard points his rifle at Ellie, and Joel jumps in between them, unarmed, to try and talk him down. - There’s a clear shot of dust in the light in the first scene in Joel’s apartment. Fortunately, as it turns out, the guard is the one Joel provided pills to earlier in the episode. Tess escapes to see that a FEDRA vehicle has been bombed, and that a sniper is on a nearby rooftop, firing on FEDRA soldiers. A guard notices the child, and rushes to assist as he collapses. As Joel tries to explain that neither of them are infected, the soldier radios for instructions on how to handle the situation. Just as the monster is about to pounce, it’s shot by a soldier, who then keeps Joel and Sarah at gunpoint. As Sarah gets outside, Joel and Tommy careen onto the scene in their pickup truck, and Joel kills the infected woman with a wrench, without hesitation. Joel is painted as being forgetful and preoccupied with his work and his need to keep his family afloat, though has a clear lighthearted side, and is very open to playfully jesting with Sarah and Tommy. Post title credits, the episode then jumps ahead to a suburb of Texas in 2003, where single father Joel Miller (Pedro Pascal), a building contractor, and his teenage daughter Sarah (Nico Parker), are starting their day. One of the guests begins to talk about the very real concept of parasitic fungi – organisms that infect, kill, and control the body of their host to further spread their existence.

To badly bastardise the words of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Spores, spores everywhere and not a drop of a vaccine. That's the main issue facing the human race ...

[Comicbook.com](https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/news/the-last-of-us-spores-changed-games-tv-show-adaptation/): “In the game, there are these [parts] where you encounter spores and you need to put a gas mask on. [Collider](https://collider.com/the-last-of-us-craig-mazin-neil-druckmann-interview/): “The game had spores in the air and people had to wear gas masks, and we decided, early on, that we didn’t wanna do that for the show. [The Last Of Us](https://www.reddit.com/r/thelastofus/comments/105251c/hbo_series_will_not_include_spores/) Reddit page (this very subject kicked off a 1,200+ post discussion about it) one person commented: “I did find the spores to be a really unique aspect of the cordyceps fungi, and the overall infected in the universe. The writer and creative direction for The Last Of Us game, Neil Druckmann, told To badly bastardise the words of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Spores, spores everywhere and not a drop of a vaccine. If you breathed in infected air of those suffering, there’s a good chance you would catch it too.

The "zombie virus" introduced in HBO's The Last of Us is unlike any you've ever seen before...

What’s so terrifying about this infection is that while we typically think of zombies as reanimated corpses that have been killed and then brought back to life by some sort of virus, the Cordyceps fungus technically keeps the host alive through this entire process, even though they aren’t conscious or in control. This stage of Cordyceps can occur anywhere between two weeks to a year after infection as the fungus takes further control over the host’s body. The next stage of infection is the Stalker, categorized by fungal plates that have begun to grow over the eyes. With that said, let’s dive into the different stages of infection we could see in this season of The Last of Us. Even though a newspaper found in the prologue of the game shows that the FDA tried to slow the spread by issuing food recalls, the incubation rate is so fast that hospitals quickly became overwhelmed at the onset of the outbreak. In this world, the Cordyceps fungus has mutated to infect the brains of humans, turning them into violent and bloodthirsty creatures intent on spreading the fungus as widely as possible.

Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey lead this white-knuckle adaptation of the survival-horror gaming classic. Plus: Maternal is a fast-paced and stressful new ...

The scheming mayor’s young ward, Atari, flies to the island in search of his pet, and falls in with a canine pack voiced by the likes of Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton and Bill Murray. The second of three shaming films by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein reaches the outbreak of war and unambiguous news of Nazi atrocities against European Jews. This new series of the compelling documentary strand was filmed last spring but even then – as paramedics respond to cardiac arrests, epileptic seizures and nasty falls – waiting times were stretching out alarmingly. This catchup revisits the venue a year later to see how Covid affected its attempt to attract a new clientele and balance the books. Last February, the BBC aired a charming documentary about a struggling Clacton working men’s club, which was attempting to modernise thanks to the proprietor’s daughters. It’s essentially a post-apocalyptic drama, but thanks to its origins, the story has real white-knuckle jeopardy.

HBO's apocalyptic blockbuster debuts with an explosive, exposition-heavy episode.

The confrontation is tense (Tess calls Marlene the “Che Guevara of Boston”), but they eventually make a deal: if the pair get Ellie out of the quarantine zone, they’ll be rewarded with all the equipment they need. During the showdown, the soldier tests Ellie (she scans red, which means she’s infected), but Joel and Tess take her through the zone anyway. There’s plenty of murky sub-plot about underground dealings, but the short of it is that they’re looking for a car battery. Joel and Tommy (who sound like a pair of English builders) turn up just in time, killing the neighbour, and taking Sarah away in the truck. Their relationship, which hints at a past potentially unrequited love, is the best part of this new world. Tommy is clearly no good, but Joel can’t resist his brother, a quality I am sure will come to bite him in the ass later. The purplish hues, Noughties music (and warnings from Jakarta about the virus) on the radio, jokes about the Atkins diet: there’s a sense of humour and lived-in texture that’s missing elsewhere. She ventures next door, and we get our first glimpse of the infected. Anyway, for Joel’s birthday, Sarah gets his watch fixed (using his money: it’s the thought that counts!), but when she’s at the repair shop, she is booted out. The writing in this scene, funny and a little menacing, is the best of the episode. Later, to celebrate Joel’s birthday, she borrows a DVD from her elderly neighbour and they watch it on the sofa. Dr Newman (an exquisitely dour John Hannah) believes that fungi will most likely be the end of us, once they learn how to live inside humans.

Naughty Dog's Neil Druckmann was working on it to make sure it was faithful to the game. Chernobyl's Craig Mazin was writing it. It was on HBO. And when early ...

Fanboys made a big deal out of a quote where she said she was told not to play the game, implying that would make her performance unfaithful. While everyone remembers the breakout performance she gave in a few scenes as young Lyanna Mormont in Game of Thrones, she was a somewhat unknown quantity here. Hell, even one of the same actresses shows up to play the same role she had a decade ago (Marlene). HBO, even going through massive cutbacks in the David Zaslav era, has clearly unleashed the floodgates to give The Last of Us whatever budget it needs. Even getting my hopes way, way up ahead of the premiere of The Last of Us last night, even counting the series as one of my favorites in video game history, it actually exceeded my expectations. Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann was working on it to make sure it was faithful to the game.

HBO's The Last of Us is a mostly faithful adaptation of the hit PlayStation game. But just how close to its source material does it get? We've gathered images ...

But now, after centuries of servitude, Renfield is finally ready to see if there’s a life away from The Prince of Darkness. He's forced to procure his master’s prey and do his bidding, no matter how debased. But just how close to its source material does it get?

In its first 25 minutes, the HBO adaptation of 'The Last of Us' achieves an energy the game longed to emulate.

For those with a strong attachment to the original work, the last decade was essentially building up to this moment, and what transpires in the TV adaptation is something close to a (The remake with more modern tech, released last fall, is only somewhat better.) Since this is a game, it’s also a sequence with a fail state. It’s really something to see a prestige TV show literally translate a scene from a game that was, in its own way, already emulating a prestige TV show. The plane crash, for example, is an invention for the show; in the video game, Sarah and Joel are knocked out when another car slams into theirs. The HBO remake of the outbreak sequence is striking in how it fully realizes what the original work was simulating. Playing the game, you can feel The Last of Us strain to use its elemental tools to achieve the kind of cinematic storytelling it’s going for, even as it’s ultimately successful. The camera assumes a view from the back seat, mimicking Sarah’s perspective as the family tries to get out of Dodge. (Though one could possibly argue Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men, which does a ton of world-building through background elements that the camera often glides by, came quite close.) The very first character you control is Sarah, whom you guide through a splendid sequence that evokes the feeling of being a child alone at home. John Hannah plays the more portentous of the duo, laying out the mechanics of what will eventually drive the apocalypse in this universe: mind-controlling fungus, previously a phenomenon contained to the insect world, pushed by climate change to evolve such that it makes the jump into human beings. As someone long familiar with the source material, the choice is exciting: the HBO version places a premium on leaving room to breathe. This wasn’t necessarily the case in the source material. However, back in 2013, the game was still doing its best with the tools it had within the context of its medium.

The zombifying fungal infection that wiped out humanity in The Last of Us is based on a very real set of parasitic fungi that hijack insects and compel them ...

Though not confirmed, fans widely [expect](https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/01/14/will-naughty-dogs-next-game-be-the-last-of-us-part-3/?sh=3d9fa9907d0f) Naughty Dog will announce a third title in the game’s main series in the future and Druckmann has openly stated he feels there is “more story to tell.” [said](https://collider.com/the-last-of-us-cordyceps-infection-explained-neil-druckmann-craig-mazin-comments/) was taken to avoid actors having to wear obstructive gas masks for large portions of the show. This is a major departure from what happens in nature, where zombie fungi actually steer well clear of the brain and manipulate behavior with chemical signals, Hughes said. This discovery was made fairly recently and after the first game had been released. Presently, details are scarce, though a small amount of Araújo said it was a “shame” fungal spores have been removed from the show, a decision showmakers Since its release it has been remastered, remade and spawned a sequel, The Last of Us Part II. Though based on a game, viewers don’t need to have [played the game](https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/01/15/do-you-need-to-have-played-the-last-of-us-to-watch-the-hbo-show/?sh=3fba09355f95) in order to follow or appreciate the show and it [is](https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2023/01/10/hbos-the-last-of-us-review/) reportedly a [faithful adaptation](https://www.theverge.com/23550842/hbo-the-last-of-us-neil-druckmann-craig-mazin-interview), albeit with some significant differences. [concept art](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-last-of-us-factions-multiplayer-gets-new-concept-art/1100-6510286/) has been released. The first episode of HBO’s The Last of Us was released on Sunday. The first game, released in 2013 by studio Naughty Dog, is one of the most De Bekker said it was great the infected are shown as living beings—rather than the less natural “undead” commonly deployed in the zombie genre—but that their aggressive behavior is not in line with what infected insects do.

"The Last of Us" showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann explained the opening scene on the official HBO podcast.

"One of the things that the opening does is place everything also within the context of a longer time span," said Mazin. This is part of the natural cycle of the planet. "I thought it was important to say to people, we are not a show that's asking you to share some of your own personal horror about the viral pandemic with us. "There was also a chance to address the elephant in the global room, which is we all just went through a viral pandemic," said Mazin. Starting the series this way has the simultaneous effect of keeping fans of the game on their toes and giving important context to newcomers to The Last of Us. [The Dick Cavett Show](https://www.youtube.com/@TheDickCavettShow), which is the scene that ends up in the series. It's a scene that's not present [in the game](https://mashable.com/article/the-last-of-us-hbo-game-vs-show); the cause of the Infected is explained through the game's opening credits news coverage montage and through various dialogue in cutscenes. The idea of this foreboding interview came from director Mazin, who spoke about the scene on Speaking with host and original Joel Miller voice actor Troy Baker, Mazin unpacked the cold open and how he had pitched two ideas for it to his fellow showrunner, The Last of Us creator Druckmann. Schoenheiss (played by Christopher Heyerdahl), who explains that fungal infection of this kind, though real, is not present in humans. And in the [HBO](https://mashable.com/category/hbo) adaptation, showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann kick off the anticipated series with an extra introduction to the game's context to really hammer this mushroom foe home alongside the idea that disasters don't just happen overnight, somebody always sees them coming. Neuman (played by John Hannah) speaks on an interview show about the prospect of a viral pandemic.

Pedro Pascal is Joel<p> Game of Thrones/The Mandalorian's Pedro Pascal stars. 20 Images. Bella Ramsey as Ellie<p> Game of Thrones' Bella Ramsey plays Ellie ...

And in the game, while we may have seen her give the fixed watch to Joel, we didn’t see the thought that went into heading to the city to get it repaired. And it also gives Druckmann, the writer behind all of this, the chance to improve upon his own work from a decade ago, an opportunity many writers would kill for. But that question perhaps hangs heavier over this adaptation than others, as The Last of Us’ story is one that could very easily be transferred to television without many tweaks and still be riveting. As Sarah, she’s constantly relatable and charming, and the tear that escapes from her eye as she struggles to remain calm while Tommy and Joel rush them out of town is a brilliant little touch. As with any adaptation, one of the main questions facing HBO’s The Last of Us has been how much it will deviate from the source material. And that shot of the elderly Adler, Connie, subtly showing symptoms in the background while Sarah reads a DVD box? From there, we see her going through the day-to-day motions – attending school, heading into the city to get Joel’s watch fixed, reluctantly spending time with the neighbors, and watching in horror as the pandemic begins to unfold. Of those 34 minutes, only about 10 are spent directly adapting scenes from the game – specifically, when Joel, Sarah, and Tommy (Gabriel Luna) are booking it out of town, and staying true to its source to the point of showing Joel electing to keep driving past a family begging for help. Firstly, some context for the virus that the characters are about to face, with a talk show clip from 1968 that has doctors explaining the threat that a certain type of fungus could pose to the human race (interestingly enough, the game saved its snippets of panicked news reports for after the initial intro, placing them over the opening credits that follow the title card). The end result – Sarah dying in Joel’s (Pedro Pascal) arms – is the same, but the journey to get there is a key example of how adaptations can build upon their predecessors while staying loyal to them. It’s one of the things that made The Last of Us the touchstone that it is, establishing an integral part of our protagonist’s motivations and setting the stage for one emotionally grueling game. In fact, it quite literally doubles the runtime of the intro;

The trailer also spotlights Anna Torv, Nick Offerman, Storm Reid, and more. Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey as Joel and Ellie in The Last of Us ...

Merle Dandridge’s Marlene had previously teased Ellie’s relationship with Riley (Storm Reid) and the character appears in the trailer as well. Some of them include characters teased by the codes from Joel’s radio like Henry (Lamar Johnson), Sam (Keivonn Woodard), Bill (Nick Offerman), and Frank (Murray Bartlett). As we look forward to the next episode, HBO has released a trailer teasing what comes next for the trio, and how Joel and Ellie’s relationship will develop.

"The Last of Us" showrunner Craig Mazin said it's based on real science and there are "documentaries that you can watch that are quite terrifying."

He explained: "Which means that right now, there's something that's just waiting to blow up — you just don't know about it. On the other hand, he's right — LSD and psilocybin do come from fungus." — from a purely scientific point of view, would they do exactly to us what they do to ants? The showrunner said: "Now his warning — what if they evolve and get into us? "And they currently do it and have been doing it forever. [The show's premiere](https://www.insider.com/the-last-of-us-season-one-recap-details-you-missed) opens with a brief prologue in 1968, in which Dr.

The Last of Us's Fireflies, led by Marlene, are freedom fighters and one of the main political players in HBO's post-apocalyptic drama.

The Fireflies also partner with smugglers and criminals to get the supplies they need to fight their war, ultimately putting innocent lives at risk. What makes The Last of Us such an exciting story is that, so far, there’s no absolute good or evil in the show. While the Fireflies fight for democracy, they don’t refrain from playing dirty to get what they want. This military organization is more concerned with the ends than with the means, leading them to crush the survivors and impose brutal restrictions on individual freedom. Episode 1 introduces us to Joel ( [Pedro Pascal](https://collider.com/tag/pedro-pascal/)), Ellie (Bella Ramsey), and Tess (Anna Torv), teasing their journey across a destroyed version of the U.S. [The Last of Us](https://collider.com/tag/the-last-of-us/) justifies all the hype surrounding HBO’s highly-anticipated zombie apocalypse drama.

A prequel comic dropped not long after, and since then, we've seen board games, remasters, TTRPGs, and more. After some starts and stops on a potential film ...

Though the trailers have given us a glimpse that much of the premise will follow along with the original game, chances are there are going to be a lot of shake ups along the way. In the The Last of Us: American Dreams prequel comic, we see that Ellie and her friend Riley were captured by the Fireflies, and the latter worked hard to join the group only to die after being infected through a bite. The Last of Us is based in a post-apocalyptic world where a mutation of the cordyceps fungus broke out and decimated the population. In the beginning, the Fireflies not only wanted to end FEDRA’s violent rule and return to a more democratic form of government, they were also a primary group actively searching for a cure. One major teaser dropped in The Last of Us trailers has been the introduction of the Fireflies, a major rebellious faction in the games that just about every character is tied to in some way or another. After the 2011 release of Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us game, it didn’t take long for the concept to dip its toe in the world of the multimedia franchise.

SPOILER ALERT for TLOU Part I and Part II ! Only watch if you've played the games. Hope you enjoy! Like and comment below what you think of the show so far!

Creators Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin say the new scenes with Marlene and Ellie in the premiere will bring "a greater payoff" by the end of the show.

That was an opportunity to start showing more of that relationship with Marlene, which then has a greater payoff later because we've established the relationship more explicitly here." Baker will appear later in The Last of Us as James, a minor character from the games that has been expanded on for the show. Scenes between her character and Ramsey's Ellie confirm that Marlene is somehow linked to the girl's origin story. The BAFTA Award winner is the only legacy actor from the original video games to play the same role in the live-action series adaptation, that of Marlene, the leader of the rebel group known as the Fireflies. "Don't ever stand next to her in a picture," warns Neil Druckmann, who created the games and now heads the show with Mazin. She was a little more weathered and [had] a little more grey in her hair."

The post-apocalyptic American drama is here. Created by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, the efforts have already paid off as the series currently boasts a ...

The Last of Us season 1 has nine episodes in total. [HBO](/topic/hbo)’s The Last of Us. And it looks to have paid off, since the first season of the programme presently boasts a 97% critic score on [Rotten Tomatoes](/topic/rotten-tomatoes).

This desperately moving drama set in a zombie-ravaged US is a phenomenal blend of horror and heart, with a cast that could not be more perfect.

Yet it manages to find humanity in the ruins – and that makes it worth the hardship. It is a gorgeous detour into the wider world; as many critics have said already, it might be one of the finest episodes of TV you will see this year. The fact that it manages to resist a sentimental approach and yet still finds such soul is a real achievement. What is left of society is in the hands of an authoritarian military regime fighting rebel groups classed as terrorists and it is bleak as hell. The Last of Us is violent and maudlin. That is the terrifying premise of The Last of Us (Sky Atlantic), another post-apocalyptic prestige drama in a TV landscape that, for understandable reasons, is stuffed with game-over scenarios.

It's early days, but this video-game adaptation about the world being overrun by fungal zombies is expertly done. Newcomers and original gamers will be ...

I want to try to keep comparisons and mentions of the video game to a minimum and treat this as a separate entity – it has to work as a standalone, not just for fans of the game who know what’s coming – but so far, this series has done an amazing job of transporting the characters to screen. They accepted the mission, only to encounter the Fedra soldier Joel had sold pills to earlier in the episode. After Joel smashed their neighbour Mrs Adler’s head in with a spanner, he, Sarah and Tommy tried to escape the area in their pickup truck as all hell broke loose around them. Boston, 2023, and the world is wrecked. We heard about a disturbance in Jakarta on radio – ominous – and learned Joel works in construction – handy. Hello and welcome to The Last of Us episode recaps.

Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for the first episode of The Last of Us.The harrowing opening to the acclaimed video game, · When Sarah ( ...

[The opening part of this first episode](https://collider.com/the-last-of-us-episode-1-recap-when-youre-lost-in-the-darkness/) is given more time to breathe and ensures the way the loss that tears through everything hits harder than it ever did before. Where they are united is in an emphasis on the small details of life that play out even when characters are unknowingly on the precipice of an event that will consume all they know. As will become even more profoundly felt throughout this first season, this is what matters when all else has been lost forever and what Joel will spend the rest of his life trying to recover. It is an understated way of reminding us how the quotidian details of a life, while commonplace when part of our daily rhythms, become something we ache and yearn for when they are ripped away from us. While the show is very much about the moments of spectacle, it devotes time to the minutiae as well. This emphasis strikes a better sense of balance and command of tone that will be familiar to those that have seen co-creator In addition to going a long way to distinguishing itself early on, it signals the beginning of a refreshing willingness to get more wrapped up in storylines that the game had only begun to scratch the surface of. [calm before the coming storm](https://collider.com/the-last-of-us-video-game-choices/) that we are allowed to float in for just a bit longer. Nothing would be more obnoxious than adding in scenes to an existing story that merely serve to wink to the audience and over-explain backgrounds that would better stand alone. The series takes that a step further in a way that feels earned as opposed to being just about providing exposition and backstory. Rather, it adds a texture that brings the world to life that much more even for the characters who won't survive to see it. [Nico Parker](https://collider.com/the-last-of-us-image-sarah-nico-parker/)) meets her end, it still is as painful and brutal as it was in the game.

From 1993's Super Mario Bros film which regularly features on lists of the worst films of all time, to the three Lara Croft Tomb Raider films released from 2001 ...

When a video game adaption is trading on the brand and reputation of its source material, not winning over the original fans and players can leave them with few other audiences. The characters and overall narrative were deemed too dissimilar to their original video game sources, leaving viewers frustrated. When the game was released in 2013 for the PlayStation 3, it received unanimous critical and popular acclaim and is considered one of the greatest video games of all time. Human civilisation has collapsed and is contained in quarantined zones after the spread of a highly contagious fungal infection that transforms victims into mindless and aggressive monsters. However, HBO did a lot of things right. A film was announced in 2014 before falling through. All the ingredients, you would think, needed for a television or film hit. When HBO announced in 2020 a television series was in the planning stages, this was met with some scepticism. It’s a long running joke just how terrible film and television series based on video games inevitably are. IGN – the list goes on. Frustratingly, there is no reason for this terrible track record. However, to say video game adaptations are often awful is an understatement.

Phillip Kovats, who voices the male Clickers, is the Director of Sound at PlayStation, so it is no surprise that he was able to create the horrifying noise.

Now, it seems like the pair have reprised their role to voice the Clickers for the HBO adaption of The Last of Us. This includes Ellie’s voice actor, Ashley Johnson, taking on the role of Ellie’s mother, Troy Baker, the voice of Joel, becoming a member of David’s group and finally Merle Dandridge, who has reprised herself as the Firefly leader, Marlene. It is no easy task to find voice actors who can match their voices to the horrific appearance of the Clickers – but it appears as though these two nailed it.