The Last of Us (S2:E6) - Full Reaction
Added 2025-05-21 18:19:42 +0000 UTCWell this made me feel better and worse at the same time. I miiiiissss him! I did love the last conversation they had, that helped me process. I’m seeing now that in only 7 episodes we’re going to get a cliff hanger... one more to go!
Comments
As someone who has no idea what’s to come, I’m very content with the current pacing. That is what has made this show so good for me. I enjoy being pulled back to a one off episode like they did with Bill & Frank, and the most recent episode. Filling out the narrative has resulted in the two best episodes of the series for me. If they feel they have more in them, I’m currently ok with it, though dragging out seasons has never resulted in anything good in my experience so far.
Cole Jennett
2025-05-22 16:54:41 +0000 UTCThis reaction made me realize that I'm feeling very mixed about the possibility that the Part II story doesn't get concluded in Season 3, since it was shared earlier this week that Craig Mazin thinks they might *need* a Season 4 to complete this story. I personally believe this story can be concluded in a third season, especially if they choose to make the Season 3 finale the same runtime as the Season 1 premiere which was just under 90 mins long. But I don't know much about adapting stories haha. I'm just curious how stretching this story out over years with forced breaks will affect the non-gamers first-time experience of this story. Yes, some people took a break from playing the game after Joel's death, but that was an elected break, not a forced one. Forcing potentially 2 two-year breaks in the Part II story is not sitting well with me, but that's TV. And hey, maybe they'll do it really well and it won't be that big of a deal in the end. I do firmly believe that Seasons 2-3 (and potentially 4) will be better viewed back-to-back in the future once they're all out and viewers can enjoy the whole story in one-go like most people did when the game released.
kaiielle
2025-05-22 16:13:23 +0000 UTCI'm loving the reactions but I wish the little video screen was slightly less blurry. Its really hard to make use of it to re-sync the videos when it is that blurry.
Thoko
2025-05-22 10:41:04 +0000 UTCJoel broke when Sarah died. He crossed lines he probably thought he wasn't capable of crossing. I think when he realized he cared for Ellie as if she was his own daughter he became determined to never lose a daughter again. No. Matter. What. Does what Joel did make him evil. No. But he IS a bad man. He killed innocent people. Even before he met Ellie. I think people see Padro Pascal and confuse his good nature with the character Joel. Just my two cents.
Fireteam Joker
2025-05-22 10:24:44 +0000 UTCI was shocked when Joel nodded his head yes about the vaccine. I know nothing of the game or any backstory. My thought was some two-bit doctor years into the apocalypse didn't really know if vaccine feasible, and if so, no idea about the efficacy. That would have not been enough for me to let the doctor kill my child. I was team Joel 100%. You really have to suspend disbelief to accept that the vaccine was anything more than a 1 in a million chance.
Clay F
2025-05-22 08:47:44 +0000 UTCThis episode might have redeemed Season 2 for me. I 100% agree with Cassie that Joel didn't need to be killed off — I will NEVER agree with that narrative choice and the unforgivable betrayal of the original characters — but at least this episode wasn't a character assassination of Joel, like the episodes that preceded it. It needs to be said that the last scene with Joel and Ellie played out differently than in the game; this episode combined two pivotal scenes into one, which worked in this episode... but might deprive a future scene of its emotional impact. And since they changed and compressed things to give that scene more emotional drama, it's so disappointing that they changed Ellie famous lines: "I was supposed to die in that hospital. My life would’ve f^cking mattered. But you took that from me." Unnecessarily ADDING "You took that from everyone," to demonize Joel and blame him for depriving the world of the cure. I appreciate that Cassie recognized the cure wasn't guaranteed -- it was a long shot at best. And infeasible given the Fireflies apparently only had a single doctor and their numbers had dwindled to under 30 people: The 18 soldiers (including Maureen) and 1 doctor that Joel killed, the 2 nurses he let escape, and Abby and her 4 goons; that's 26 people. Consider that it took tens of thousands of doctors and scientists, and every government and private sector resource, to create the COVID-19 vaccines. Neil Druckman wants us to believe that one quack doctor would've successfully made a cure from killing Ellie, the Fireflies had the capability to mass produce it, and Maureen would've shared it freely with everyone on Earth. NO, I don't believe that for a second. I don't care that it's Neil Druckman's story, so he can say whatever he wants; that doesn't make it good writing. By that logic, Druckman could've made Ellie the next messiah and given her the ability to cure people with her magical touch. Would the Neil Druckman fanboys have zealously supported that alternate version? BTW Druckman had originally kept the viability of the cure ambiguous, even after TLOU2 game was released in 2020. Only recently, during interviews for Season 2, did he confirm that Abby's father would have been successful in making the cure from Ellie. I believe that's because Druckman and the other show writers deliberately demonized Joel to "justify" Abby killing him to avenge her dead doctor daddy. If they were going to make a change to Ellie's line, it should've been Joel telling Ellie that her life mattered to him, and her purpose wasn't to sacrifice herself to cure everyone, rather the two of them to become the family they lost. My takeaway from this episode was that the problem with Season 2 has been Ellie's mischaracterization as an adult. The early flashbacks showed that Joel and Ellie's surrogate father-daughter relationship didn't sour immediately after he lied to her at the end of the first season. They were happy and had a good relationship up until her 17th birthday, when everything seemed to unravel. Joel was portrayed as the greatest dad in the world for his amazing gifts for Ellie's 15th and 16th birthdays, and Ellie was wonderful at those ages. I think this proves that it's the writing and direction of 19-year-old Ellie that is the problem. They made Ellie unlikeably angry and insufferably arrogant by choice. It's not Ellie's character or Bella Ramsy's performance, because she was great in the first half of this episode. I also thought it was structurally flawed to skip past Ellie's 18th birthday and go to 19. At the very least, there should've been an impetus for Ellie to compose the list of questions about Joel's fake story, especially considering that Ellie admitted in Episode 3 that it's not like her to write things down or think before she speaks. Also, Ellie's ultimatum was to give Joel one last chance to tell her the truth, which implied that she asked him about it before, but Joel stuck to his lie. Why not show that in a segment on Ellie's 18th birthday instead of skipping it entirely? I disagree with Joel's decision regarding Eugene, but Ellie's decision to out Joel's well-intended lie to Gail was 100% wrong, because Ellie traumatized Gail even worse than losing her husband. I understand that Ellie was upset because it was confirmation that Joel could look her in the eye and lie to her, but anyone would understand Joel didn't lie to deceive or do harm, rather to spare someone from the harsh truth. The proper way for Ellie to handle it would've been to let Joel lie to Gail, then confront Joel in private afterward. Ellie was being SELFISH by calling out Joel's lie in front of Gail. BTW it was Ellie's FIRST patrol and she wasn't taking it seriously. And it shows how arrogant Ellie was to disagree with how Joel handled Eugene when clearly the patrols had an established protocol for handling people who got infected, to protect everyone in Jackson. Ellie herself told Dina that she knew how ridiculous her immunity claim was and that everyone who gets bitten will say anything to avoid getting put down. So Ellie should've understood that Eugene couldn't be trusted. Also, Eugene's plan was 100% selfish because he wanted Gail to be the last person he saw before he died -- which would've meant shooting him with her there to witness his death. That probably would've been the most traumatic for Gail. And what if Eugene had turned with Gail there to see him? Her last memory of her husband would've been him as an infected zombie trying to kill her! And what about the second person from Jackson, whom the horse was dragging? That person was presumably dead too, but they apparently didn't recover the body -- or the horse -- and no one cared. That's sloppy writing and reminds me of the ending of Episode 2 wherein two of the horses (the dark brown horses that Joel and Ellie were riding) mysteriously disappeared. Or Dina's terrible explanation why she withheld what she knew about Abby and her goons. Overall, this was a good episode and a return to form after 3 sub-par episodes. I'm looking forward to the finale, but I really dislike there are only 7 episodes this season, and they haven't even filmed the other half yet. They knew they were splitting the story from TLOU2 game in half, so WHY didn't they film them all together? Except for episode 2, Ellie and Abby's stories ran in parallel, so it would have been easy to film them during the same production, just like Game of Thrones, which was filmed in multiple locations around the world. The worst part will be the 2-year wait between Season 2 and 3, because they haven't even started filming Season 3 yet.
Rod Reavern
2025-05-22 06:10:58 +0000 UTCI've been waiting for this reaction. I'm glad we got some closure of sorts. It doesn't make Joel's death easier but at least there was some reconciliation between Joel and Ellie that we hadn't previously seen. That porch scene was powerful, in an episode of incredible scenes. Some great acting all around with Pedro really delivering and some strong work from Bella as well. Heck even Joey pants was fantastic as Eugene.
Canadianant
2025-05-22 00:27:00 +0000 UTCGreat ep loved the trip to the museum in the game and they translated it to tv so well, you'd better thoroughly read the instructions on that new watch you don't want it talking full volume during the wedding vows haha
Gray
2025-05-21 23:30:49 +0000 UTC
