Anyone who played The Last of Us Part II, or is online enough to experience the very annoying and spoilery fans who like to make “subtle” jabs about what happens, knew that this episode was likely going to be a big one. With things tense between Ellie and Joel, a new player on the scene, and rumors of a bunch of infected hanging around Jackson, the story was set up for what turned out to be a landmark episode for this show.
There will be major spoilers below for this week’s episode, “Through the Valley,” and the story moving forward, so be warned.
While there is so much to talk about from this episode, there is only one thing anyone is going to talk about, and that is Joel’s death. Anyone even briefly familiar with The Last of Us Part II likely knew this happens. Leaks of Joel’s death happened before the game even released, and a small but extremely vocal group online still blames this moment for practically triggering the fall of manly culture and the gaming industry. It is a touchstone moment for the current Gamergate 2.0 nonsense happening around every new game announcement. Every comment section about the show, since the day the show was announced, has probably mentioned what happens to Joel.
TV audiences likely won’t react the same way, as they are used to heartbreaking and sudden deaths of their faves, but there is no doubt that this will be a huge moment for the show. It might be the biggest water cooler moment The Last of Us ever has.
Obviously, this is for a good reason. Joel is one of the heartbeats of the show. People connected to The Last of Us, both in game and TV form, because of Joel’s relationship with Ellie. They are the foundation upon which the audience invests their emotional energy. Killing one of them off is a shocking, risky thing to do, and everyone involved has to be confident both in Ellie (and Abby) to carry more of the story without him, rather than lose interest because the entire reason you play/watch has been violently ripped away.
And make no mistake, The Last of Us violently rips Joel away here. If anything this was more heartbreaking in the show’s version of events, as we see more of the vicious beating that Abby gives Joel before killing him. Kaitlyn Dever is asked to go hard here, and she completely owns the violence and anger and emptiness of Abby’s vengeance. She wanted something else from this act, or at least from Joel, that she did not get, and you can see it on her face when she and her group leave at the end of the episode. She sought this man’s death in hopes it would quiet the grief she felt for her father, and now has to deal with the fact it quieted absolutely nothing.
For very different reasons, the same is true of Ellie, who looks completely adrift in the aftermath of Joel’s death. Bella Ramsey also deserves her flowers, purely for the aftermath as she crawled over to Joel’s body, and the look on her face as they drag his body by horse to a devastated Jackson.
Ellie told us how important Joel was last season, when she said everyone she cared about has either died or left her, except for Joel. Even with all the anger she felt towards him over his lie, it doesn’t change that Joel was her foundation. She certainly feels adrift and aimless without sacrificing herself for a cure, but she still has Joel, and could take for granted that he was there even when she doesn’t want him around. He was the one thing that remained constant. Now she truly has nothing anchoring her, and finds herself feeling exactly the same way Abby did about her father.
Which, of course, has always been a major point of this story. It’s why Joel’s death hit the player so hard in the game, and why we are so angry. We as players lost one of the foundations of the franchise, just like Ellie loses one of the foundations of her life, before handing us the controller and letting us seek cathartic revenge on everyone involved. Joel’s death asks the player/viewer to engage with the story in a way that is uncomfortable, and won’t work for everyone, but it will definitely provoke emotion.
(Don’t get me started on the Ashley Johnson needle-drop.)
As one of those people who knew what would happen, it’s hard not to compare it to the games. I could spend this entire review comparing and contrasting. I’ll keep things simple, though, and just say that for better or worse, every change has a certain logic to it, and in some ways The Last of Us made the scene even more brutal and soul-crushing than the game did. Really, that is all I can ask.
I can see how Dina being there instead of Tommy adds to her motivation to join Ellie on her trip to Seattle to hunt down Abby and her crew. I understand why Abby lays out the reasoning for wanting Joel dead, where in the game her motivations remain a mystery for half the game because we don’t have the benefit of seeing the perspectives the same way.
Tommy not being there just makes his guilt and inability to cope all the more heartbreaking, and since he does not have a brush with death, there’s nothing to scare him from going to Seattle to hunt Joel’s killers. I had my reservations about giving Jackson this big battle scene against a horde, and wondered how it would affect everything happening with Joel and Abby. The more thought I put into it, though, the more it serves the changes they have made with these characters. This, of course, relies on the show following through on those changes and keeping in line with them.
On top of this, of course, the battle was excellent, and one of the best big zombie horde scenes I can recall ever seeing on TV. Besides the one goofy moment where Tommy runs right into the horde to distract the Bloater and somehow doesn’t get ripped to shreds by the infected running right past him, this battle was a well thought out, well-executed piece of action, and exactly the kind of set piece people wanted more of in the first season.
With Jackson having to regroup and recover from the damage done, they are not exactly left in a position to seek vengeance on Abby or the WLF she belongs to. Abby accidentally triggering this horde adds to the accidental consequences of her reckless pursuit of revenge. This damage also serves as a metaphor for the importance of losing Joel on the community of Jackson. Ellie and Tommy leaving it behind speaks to the selfishness of hunting Abby.
Consider me a fan. Maybe none of these changes are necessary, but I can at least tell that they were all thought out, and I would imagine the remainder of the story will reflect that. Most importantly, the changes do not detract from the spirit of the source material, and arguably enhance it.
It’s very possible that this episode here is the apex of The Last of Us in the pop culture conversation. I love the places this story goes, and fully expect this season to remain popular, but as far as singular moments that people talk about? This may be it. There may never be a bigger, more shocking, more controversial moment that causes the level of water cooler talk and angry social media posts that Joel’s death causes. This is the Red Wedding moment HBO has sought to replicate for so long.
I’m glad I can say that The Last of Us manages to put a pretty freaking good episode around it.
Images Courtesy of HBO
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