He reportedly shouted something about launching nukes into space The post The Internet Reacts To President Trump Wandering Around On The White House Roof appeared first on Kotaku.

En Chine, des usines high-tech produisent désormais des poupées sexuelles plus vraies que nature. Dopées […] Cet article Des poupées sexuelles plus expressives que jamais, fabriquées en Chine a été publié sur REALITE-VIRTUELLE.COM.

Giant Squid’s upcoming title, Sword of the Sea, is a well-crafted union of all the titles the studio and Game Director Matt Nava have worked on. The aquatic wonder of Abzû, The Pathless’s sense of adventure, and Journey’s beautiful desert world. Sword of the Sea weaves those influences together so skillfully that it feels like this atmospheric surfing adventure was the goal all along.  I got a chance to go hands-on with Sword of the Sea and talk with Giant Squid about the new game, coming day one to PlayStation Plus Game Catalog on August 19. Surfing across the sands and sea The game begins as the player awakens as The Wraith, a vessel waiting to be filled, who is given the task of bringing the oceans back to the world. Appearing to be the last being left alive to get the job done, you receive a mystical surfboard and hit the dunes.  The starting area is a vast playground where you can get accustomed to the board, perform tricks, and learn how to interact with the world. As you zoom across the desert, you come across different nodes known as Ocean Seeds that allow you to cleanse the land and restore parts of the ocean and marine life.  Beyond pleasing aesthetics, water and sea life directly impact gameplay. The Wraith is significantly faster on water, leading to greater speed for bigger jumps and more tricks. Some sea life create new paths, like buoyant jellyfish that make great jump pads and long strands of climbable seaweed. Watching the landscape terraform was a highlight, as was searching for all the land’s secrets.  “Sword of the Sea is really all about the spiritual magic of surfing,” Nava explains. “ It’s inspired by my own experiences snowboarding, skateboarding, and surfing throughout my life. When you think of these extreme sports, the first thing that comes to mind is probably the high speed and the danger. But there’s more to it than just an adrenaline rush. When you are surfing on waves in the ocean, you are literally on the boundary between our world and the world beneath the waves, a world beyond our understanding.”  Golden triangles known as Tetra populate the world, acting as currency you can trade to mysterious vendors to learn more tricks, acquire skills, and open new paths. Want to see it all? You’ll have to detour off the main path to see and afford it all. Different vendors, triangles, and Trick Attack arenas are hidden throughout the world.  Show off your tricks and feel the terrain Pulling off stylish moves in Sword of the Sea is straightforward. When surfing, once you jump you can press X again to perform a variety of double jump tricks. Once you acquire advanced tricks from the vendor, you hold L1 and press Triangle, Square, Circle, or X to do special grabs, flips, and spins. They score more points, and combining grabs and flips in different ways create new tricks. While the timing is a little trickier, you can give yourself a much-needed jump boost and score high-point combos when performed just right.  Sword of the Sea constantly keeps score of the tricks you pull and how advanced they are. Hidden Trick Attack arenas let you put those skills to good use. What does racking up a high Trick Score lead to? Yet another mystery we’ll have to wait to uncover. Though the game takes place in the desert, there are plenty of different objects to grind on besides sea and sand. I came across ruins, ceramic tile roofs, and helpful aquatic life. The team at Giant Squid takes full advantage of the DualSense controller haptics to ensure every surface feels and sounds distinct. As I surfed along rooftops, I could hear the melodic tones of tiles underneath and the tingle in my fingers. The sand offers a coarse sensation, and you feel and hear the rushing water as you speed through on the makeshift highways parts of the ocean create. “The haptic feedback of the DualSense controller reacts to each surface differently so you can feel it when you cross from one to the next,” says Nava.  “Combined with special sound effects that play from the controller, it gives a very realistic sense of touching the surfaces you see in the game. We are very excited by the extra layer of detail the haptics adds to the experience of surfing in Sword of the Sea.” You’re free to explore in any given direction, and hard-to-reach places usually reward you with something appropriate for the time and skill it takes to reach them. However, as you explore, you will discover murals and other environmental elements that keep the story ever-present. A tale of loss and destruction, and trying to find out how you fit into it all is an intriguing thread to follow. Especially since at the end of my session, it was clear that a mysterious character was following me. It appeared to be another wraith, but whoever the pursuer was didn’t give vibes of good intentions.  It’s easy to compare Sword of the Sea to its predecessors, but the game truly feels like an evolution of everything the Giant Squid team has worked on to this point. The game’s sights, sounds, and feel connected me with the land, and I can’t wait to hop on the board again and see what’s really out there.  “Our games have a really recognizable and unique art style, and tell atmospheric stories with their bold color and music,” says Nava. “We start with a feeling, an experience, and a message that we want the player to feel. Really, all our games are all about movement, and how it can connect you with nature and the world in different ways. Sword of the Sea builds on the ideas in all our previous games to create something that is both very Giant Squid and an exciting new adventure.” Looking to reel in more Sword of the Sea details? Check out the latest trailer and more details from State of Play. More from June’s State of Play State of Play June 2025: all announcements, trailers 

This article contains spoilers for The Last of Us season 2. Season 2 of The Last of Us was undeniably a huge swing, as was the video game it’s based on. The Last of Us Part II features the death of the first game’s protagonist early on and forces the player to play as his killer not only before the deed is done, but for about half of the game part way through the story. It’s a narrative about cycles of violence and the lengths that people will go to protect who they love, but it’s also an exercise in empathy. There’s a difference between embodying a character for hours at a time in a video game and watching a character do the same actions in a TV show. When you spend hours living and breathing and fighting for your life as a character, it’s easy to form an attachment to them, to prescribe our own ideas onto them as our morals inform theirs. Even though there’s not really anything the player can do to affect the overall outcome of the story in The Last of Us Part II, your playstyle is going to affect your experience. One player may try to sneak by the W.L.F. and Seraphite adversaries as Ellie, trying to kill as few people as possible. Another may go in knives and guns blazing, leaving an even larger trail of bodies in their wake. Neither method is “wrong,” but it is going to affect how you interpret the story and the characters as a player. Translating this story and its structure to television was never going to be easy. The first season of The Last of Us had the luxury of adapting a beginning, middle, and end from the story of the first game. Season 1 also had nine episodes to tell the story of a roughly 10-hour (give or take) game and its approximately two-hour DLC meaning that we got to spend close to the same amount of time with the characters in the show as players do in the game. Season 2, on the other hand, is only adapting part of a game that can take upwards of 24 hours to play through, and only had seven episodes to tell this part of the story.  A lot of criticisms people have shared surrounding season 2 of the show are valid. There are parts of the story, especially when Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Dina (Isabela Merced) get to Seattle, that feel rushed. There are some character choices that are or may seem different from those that are made in the game. But arguably, the heart of The Last of Us Part II’s story is still here, even if this season missed the mark with some aspects. Of course Ellie’s Seattle arc is going to feel rushed when we only get three approximately hour-long episodes to cover it versus the close to eleven hours of gameplay Ellie’s Seattle arc gets in the game. We’re not going to be able to see how Ellie got all of the cuts and bruises that Dina is tending to in the season finale or watch her traverse Seattle in-depth – there’s simply not enough time.  It would have been great to get more time with Ellie and Dina in Seattle. But unfortunately, 13 or even 10 episodes for one season is a luxury that most studios don’t seem to want to afford in the streaming era. Even though The Last of Us co-showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann have said that they chose to end the season at this specific point in the story and felt like seven episodes was enough to do so, I still don’t fault them entirely. Trying to do more with less feels more like a symptom of the state of TV and the industry as a whole than something to only blame The Last of Us writers for doing. At some point you get used to doing more with less and less. With the structure of season 2, Mazin says that they “considered everything.” They thought about interlacing the stories of Ellie and Abby, but ultimately realized that switching perspectives halfway through the story is “part of the genetics of how this story functions.” But now that means “we have to take risks as a television show, and HBO is backing us taking risks. But then again, we just did kill Pedro Pascal. Like [HBO] understands that this show is going to be a different show every season, which is a tricky thing to do when you’re a hit show. You keep asking people like, ‘I know you love this, we’re taking it away and giving you this now.’” Understandably not everyone has been on board with these changes. Season 2 of The Last of Us has a consistently lower IMDb score than season 1, and it’s hard to look through any form of social media without finding a mix of reactions from fans who are enjoying the story as it is and others who think that the writers have massacred their favorite characters. But at the same time, Mazin, Druckmann, and TLOU Part II co-writer Halley Gross clearly have a deep love for this story, even if their interpretation of certain character’s decisions doesn’t always align with the audience’s. The characters in the TV show are different than the characters in the game because they experience these events differently. In the show, Ellie has to sit in a hospital recovering for three months before she can even think about chasing Abby and her crew to Seattle. Setting aside that time for recovery is not necessarily something that a video game has to think about – a physical therapy level isn’t exactly something that players of a game like this are going to be excited about.  Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! It’s not that this version of Ellie is less angry than she is in the game. She’s just had three months to practice burying her anger so it’s more palatable for others. She has to convince the hospital, and Gail (Catherine O’Hara), that she’s fit enough to be released. She has to try and convince the council that she’s fit enough to lead a group to Seattle for justice. She has to convince a pregnant Dina that no matter what happens while they’re in Seattle, that this is the morally right thing for them to do. Because we don’t spend 11-plus hours literally in Ellie’s shoes while watching the TV show, her grief has to be explored in different ways. It’s shown in the brief moment she plays the guitar while waiting for Dina to triangulate a route. Even though Ellie may not be throwing the guitar across the room, there’s still clearly anger mixed with the grief on her face as she plays her and Joel’s song. We see it when she lashes out at Jesse and chooses to go to the aquarium instead of following him to find Tommy. We see it when she screams out in pain in a hospital bed in Jackson. And we see it when Dina tends to her wounds. It’s not that she’s not angry or grieving, we just don’t get to see every single moment of it that we do in the game. And of course Ellie is going to tell Abby that she didn’t mean to hurt her friends and beg her to spare their lives. Abby just shot Jesse dead in front of her and is standing over Tommy with his life in her hands just as she did with Joel. Even if this isn’t exactly how Ellie reacts in the game, it’s a logical trauma response to finally seeing Abby again. Abby was able to kill Joel – someone Ellie looked up to and probably thought was unstoppable as most kids do with their parents in their youth. It makes sense that seeing her again would trigger this kind of response in Ellie too. It’s not that she doesn’t want to kill Abby in this moment – she’s just trying to keep her and her loved ones alive for as long as she can.  We saw her do something similar with David (Scott Shepherd) in season 1. She made herself as non-threatening as possible to get him to let his guard down and then proceeded to viciously attack him. Ellie isn’t a stranger to lying and manipulating to get what she wants, even in stressful circumstances. Why should this be any different? Mazin doesn’t deny that they took some risks with season 2, admitting to The Hollywood Reporter that “I don’t think television is supposed to work like this. We’re clearly breaking quite a few rules, and I love that. And I love it because that is the point. This is not something we’re doing as a gimmick.” Mazin argues that The Last of Us forces us to interrogate what we believe about heroes and villains and see the flaws in that kind of black and white thinking, and he knows that this is “a challenging thing to keep track of emotionally” and that people are going to feel provoked by it. “But part of this story,” he says, “is about examining why we’re so comfortable with following one person’s point of view about everything.” The Last of Us season 2 was never going to be exactly like the game, and that’s okay! When you’ve already made a story that resonates with so many people, it’s not going to be easy to recreate that story in another medium – especially in the streaming era when shows don’t always know if they’re going to be able to get all the seasons they want to tell the story. Time is a luxury that television doesn’t always have. The show may not have hit a home run with every swing they took, but overall the story still lands. The heart of the game and its story of grief and loss and love and violence are still there. Hopefully fans won’t give up on the show just yet and trust that the show’s writers really do care about this story enough to do it justice.

Just a week after its launch, Mud has already left a paw print on the pet care industry. The brand's debut product, The Everyday Wash for Dirty Dogs, is more than a niche grooming product: it's a manifesto. Developed over 18 months and recently awarded at D&AD 2025, the brand aims to challenge a culture of canine coddling. According to co-founders Angelina Pischikova and Karina Zhukovskaya, too often, dogs are treated as ornaments rather than animals. "Dogs don't want to smell like a candle shop," says Angelina. "They have 300 million scent receptors. Most washes are hell for them." Instead, The Everyday Wash is made with oat, aloe, panthenol and bioenzyme odour-fighting tech. It smells like... nothing – but that's on purpose. Not only is it pH-balanced, 100% dog-safe, plant-based and purposefully unscented, but the bottle even swaps out a standard pump for a fully recyclable, squishy nozzle, keeping both form and function canine-conscious. For Angelina and Karina, Mud™ isn't just a clean product; it's a clean break. "We exist to honour the wild in every dog," says Karina. "We think it's time to shift cultural convention away from treating pets as lifestyle accessories and toward recognising them as instinct-driven animals with emotional depth and needs of their own." While the launch range is intentionally minimal, more products are in the works – all guided by a philosophy rooted in respect rather than control. It's this perspective that sets Mud™ apart in a market saturated with pastel palettes, pun-based names and synthetic fragrances. "There is no other brand that does what we do in the category," says Angelina. And she's not just talking about the ethos. Mud™'s design system is just as provocative as its product. The brand's identity, developed in-house, is reactive by nature, including online; the logo expands or contracts based on local weather data. On the packaging, it vanishes and reappears thanks to thermal ink technology. "It's a metaphor for the mess, the rinse, and the return to it," says Karina. "The logo reacts to the weather – expanding with rain, contracting in the dry – just like the mud under their paws." This responsiveness extends to the user experience. The thermal ink on the bottle invites physical interaction, while the weather-reactive digital elements offer a subtle, sensory delight that encourages engagement, play, and even shareability. It's branding as conversation, not a billboard. Mud is also produced in small batches in the UK. Bottles are 100% recyclable and printed directly with eco-compliant inks, eliminating the need for wasteful labels and adhesives. It's a product that feels good and does good, all without shouting about it. For the founders, sustainability is inextricably linked to ethics. "Most dog shampoos are just human ones in disguise," says Karina. "We don't put anything in the bottle that doesn't serve your dog. Nothing that messes with their fur, their senses, or the earth beneath their paws." [2ximage] What Mud™ is ultimately selling isn't just pet care – it's perspective and a rewilding of the pet industry. They're reasserting that animals are not accessories, and if the early traction is any indication, it's a message that resonates well beyond the dog-owning demographic. "We already had people say, 'I don't even have a dog, but your brand and the info on the website changed how I think about them,'" says Angelina. "That's an amazing response." With more products in development, Mud is only just getting started, but its early moves suggest a brand with bite. Clearly, it's not afraid to get dirty, ask difficult questions, and bring a bit of instinct back into a sanitised world.

A new type of fuel cell that runs on sodium metal could one day help clean up sectors where it’s difficult to replace fossil fuels, like rail, regional aviation, and short-distance shipping. The device represents a departure from technologies like lithium-based batteries and is more similar conceptually to hydrogen fuel cell systems.  The sodium-air fuel cell was designed by a team led by Yet-Ming Chiang, a professor of materials science and engineering at MIT. It has a higher energy density than lithium-ion batteries and doesn’t require the super-cold temperatures or high pressures that hydrogen does, making it potentially more practical for transport. “I’m interested in sodium metal as an energy carrier of the future,” Chiang says.   The device’s design, published today in Joule, is related to the technology behind one of Chiang’s companies, Form Energy, which is building iron-air batteries for large energy storage installations like those that could help store wind and solar power on the grid. Form’s batteries rely on water, iron, and air. One technical challenge for metal-air batteries has historically been reversibility. A battery’s chemical reactions must be easily reversed so that in one direction they generate electricity, discharging the battery, and in the other electricity goes into the cell and the reverse reactions happen, charging it up. When a battery’s reactions produce a very stable product, it can be difficult to recharge the battery without losing capacity. To get around this problem, the team at Form had discussions about whether their batteries could be refuelable rather than rechargeable, Chiang says. The idea was that rather than reversing the reactions, they could simply run the system in one direction, add more starting material, and repeat.  Ultimately, Form chose a more traditional battery concept, but the idea stuck with Chiang, who decided to explore it with other metals and landed on the idea of a sodium-based fuel cell.  In this fuel cell format, the device takes in chemicals and runs reactions that generate electricity, after which the products get removed. Then fresh fuel is put in to run the whole thing again—no electrical charging required. (You might recognize this concept from hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, like the Toyota Mirai.) Chiang and his colleagues set out to build a fuel cell that runs on liquid sodium, which could have a much higher energy density than existing commercial technologies, so it would be small and light enough to be used for things like regional airplanes or short-distance shipping. Sodium metal could be used to power regional planes or short distance shipping.GRETCHEN ERTL/MITTR The research team built small test cells to try out the concept and ran them to show that they could use the sodium-metal-based system to generate electricity. Since sodium becomes liquid at about 98 °C (208 °F), the cells operated at moderate temperatures of between 110 °C and 130 °C (or 230 °F and 266°F), which could be practical for use on planes or ships, Chiang says.  From their work with these experimental devices, the researchers estimated that the energy density was about 1,200 watt-hours per kilogram (Wh/kg). That’s much higher than what commercial lithium-ion batteries can reach today (around 300 Wh/kg). Hydrogen fuel cells can achieve high energy density, but that requires the hydrogen to be stored at high pressures and often ultra-low temperatures. “It’s an interesting cell concept,” says Jürgen Janek, a professor at the Institute of Physical Chemistry at the University of Giessen in Germany, who was not involved in the research. There’s been previous research on sodium-air batteries in the past, Janek says, but using this sort of chemistry in a fuel cell instead is new. “One of the critical issues with this type of cell concept is the safety issue,” Janek says. Sodium metal reacts very strongly with water. (You may have seen videos where blocks of sodium metal get thrown into a lake, to dramatic effect). Asked about this issue, Chiang says the design of the cell ensures that water produced during reactions is continuously removed, so there’s not enough around to fuel harmful reactions. The solid electrolyte, a ceramic material, also helps prevent reactions between water and sodium, Chiang adds.  Another question is what happens to one of the cell’s products, sodium hydroxide. Commonly known as lye, it’s an industrial chemical, used in products like liquid drain-cleaning solution. One of the researchers’ suggestions is to dilute the product and release it into the atmosphere or ocean, where it would react with carbon dioxide, capturing it in a stable form and preventing it from contributing to global warming. There are groups pursuing field trials using this exact chemical for ocean-based carbon removal, though some have been met with controversy. The researchers also laid out the potential for a closed system, where the chemical could be collected and sold as a by-product. There are economic factors working in favor of sodium-based systems, though it would take some work to build up the necessary supply chains. Today, sodium metal isn’t produced at very high volumes. However, it can be made from sodium chloride (table salt), which is incredibly cheap. And it was produced more abundantly in the past, since it was used in the process of making leaded gasoline. So there’s a precedent for a larger supply chain, and it’s possible that scaling up production of sodium metal would make it cheap enough to use in fuel cell systems, Chiang says. Chiang has cofounded a company called Propel Aero to commercialize the research. The project received funding from ARPA-E’s Propel-1K program, which aims to develop new forms of high-power energy storage for aircraft, trains, and ships. The next step is to continue research to improve the cells’ performance and energy density, and to start designing small-scale systems. One potential early application is drones. “We’d like to make something fly within the next year,” Chiang says. “If people don’t find it crazy, I’ll be rather disappointed,” Chiang says. “Because if an idea doesn’t sound crazy at the beginning, it probably isn’t as revolutionary as you think. Fortunately, most people think I’m crazy on this one.”

This review contains spoilers for The Last of Us season 2 episode 7. It’s hard to follow the heartbreakingly beautiful and emotional performances we saw in last week’s flashback episode of The Last of Us. Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey brought their A+ game as this episode revealed the ups and downs of Joel and Ellie’s relationship over the last few years, right up until the night before Joel died. And yet, despite this episode arguably being the best of the season, the season finale still manages to take us on a devastating wild ride. Back in Seattle, Dina (Isabela Merced) and Jesse (Young Mazino) deal with the aftermath of getting caught up in the war between the W.L.F. and the Seraphites. While they wait for Ellie to catch back up with them, they deal with Dina’s arrow to the leg and Jesse gets her all patched up. Even though emotions are high, they are still able to have a touching moment together, and it’s clear that the two still care about each other, even if their feelings are no longer romantic. We get to see another moment of care amidst the chaos once Ellie returns to the theater. She goes to check on Dina, who almost immediately starts taking care of Ellie and her battered and bruised body. Ellie is clearly still processing what she did to Nora (Tati Gabrielle) and what she learned about Abby’s (Kaitlyn Dever) location (which isn’t much). In this vulnerable moment, as Ellie verbally grapples with what she did to Nora, she tells Dina about Salt Lake City, including the fact that Joel killed Abby’s dad. Dina seems surprised by this, realizing that Abby may have been more justified in her revenge than she thought. At this point, it seems like everyone but Ellie is ready to put an end to this revenge mission and head back home to Jackson. Jesse is focused on finding Tommy (Gabriel Luna), especially after finding out that he’s going to be a father. But Ellie can’t let her vengeance go. While they’re looking for Tommy, she realizes that Nora’s clues “whale” and “wheel” probably mean that Abby’s at the aquarium – so she ditches Jesse and sets off in that direction. Ellie has so many close calls – if the W.L.F. weren’t planning an invasion of Seraphite territory at the same time, she would have been hung and fileted like the guy they saw in the park. She finds Owen (Spencer Lord) and Mel (Ariela Barer) seemingly arguing over Abby and whether or not to chase after her. When they spot Ellie, she tries to get them to tell her where Abby is, like we’ve seen Joel do before.  Owen moves for a gun, and Ellie reacts, shooting him in the neck and accidentally nicking an artery in Mel’s. Barer gives a devastating performance in Mel’s last moments as she begs Ellie to cut her open and try to save her baby. Ellie just kind of sits there holding her knife in shock over the fact that Mel was pregnant and she just killed her until Jesse and Tommy come rushing in. Tommy immediately goes to her, holding her and helping her up, while Jesse stares at the carnage for a moment after they leave. Even though he doesn’t say anything, it seems like he’s shaken up too – like he’s staring at himself and Dina if they don’t get out of Seattle soon. They get back to the theater and Ellie finally seems ready to leave. Whether it’s the shock of what she just did to Owen and Mel, her near death experience with the Seraphites, or the fact that her leads to find Abby have simply dried up isn’t fully clear, but at least she’s starting to recognize how dangerous it is for everyone else she cares about if they stay. Tommy tries to calm Ellie’s fears, he reassures her that Owen and Mel were still complicit in Joel’s death even if they didn’t hold the golf club themselves, and then leaves her and Jesse to try and reconcile. Ellie thanks Jesse for coming back for her and the two have a heart to heart. Despite their differences, Jesse knows that Ellie would set the world on fire to save him. Their moment is unfortunately short-lived when they hear a commotion in the lobby. They rush out and Jesse is immediately shot dead. We then see Abby for the first time since she killed Joel, now standing over Tommy pointing a gun at his head. Ellie pleads with her, telling her that she’s the one that she wants. There’s true fear in Ellie’s eyes as she worries that Abby will kill more people that she loves, more of her community. Abby then says to Ellie with an intense ferocity, “I let you live. I let you live, and you wasted it,” before turning her gun to Ellie. The screen goes black as we hear a gunshot in the background, not knowing who fired the gun nor who was potentially hit. The episode then goes back in time, taking us to the start of Abby’s journey these last few days. Some may feel like this ending is odd or abrupt, but given how The Last of Us Part II’s story is split up between the two protagonists, Ellie and Abby, and the fact that this season only had seven episodes, this is arguably the best place to end season 2 and a great way to tease what’s to come in season 3. It may not feel as concise as season 1’s ending, but that’s because season 1 had a clear beginning and end to the story. The source material for season 2 is a lot heftier and there’s plenty more of The Last of Us Part II left to be adapted for the show. This episode is a great way to effectively end Ellie’s Seattle arc and this chapter of the story while preparing the audience for next season to shift gears, and protagonists. Hopefully fans of the show will keep an open mind as we prepare to see Abby’s side of the story next season. I know I’ll be seated and ready whenever that time comes. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! All seven episodes of The Last of Us season 2 are available to stream on (soon-to-be HBO) Max now. Learn more about Den of Geek’s review process and why you can trust our recommendations here.

What if there were a battery that could release energy while trapping carbon dioxide? This isn’t science fiction; it’s the promise of lithium-carbon dioxide (Li-CO₂) batteries, which are currently a hot research topic. Li-CO₂ batteries could be a two-in-one solution to the current problems of storing renewable energy and taking carbon emissions out of the air. They absorb carbon dioxide and convert it into a white powder called lithium carbonate while discharging energy. These batteries could have profound implications for cutting emissions from vehicles and industry—and might even enable long-duration missions on Mars, where the atmosphere is 95% CO₂. To make these batteries commercially viable, researchers have mainly been wrestling with problems related to recharging them. Now, our team at the University of Surrey has come up with a promising way forward. So how close are these “CO₂-breathing” batteries to becoming a practical reality? Like many great scientific breakthroughs, Li-CO₂ batteries were a happy accident. Slightly over a decade ago, a U.S.-French team of researchers were trying to address problems with lithium air batteries, another frontier energy-storage technology. Whereas today’s lithium-ion batteries generate power by moving and storing lithium ions within electrodes, lithium air batteries work by creating a chemical reaction between lithium and oxygen. The problem has been the “air” part, since even the tiny (0.04%) volume of CO₂ that’s found in air is enough to disrupt this careful chemistry, producing unwanted lithium carbonate (Li₂CO₃). As many battery scientists will tell you, the presence of Li₂CO₃ can also be a real pain in regular lithium-ion batteries, causing unhelpful side reactions and electrical resistance. Nonetheless the scientists noticed something interesting about this CO₂ contamination: It improved the battery’s amount of charge. From this point on, work began on intentionally adding CO₂ gas to batteries to take advantage of this, and the lithium-CO₂ battery was born. How it works Their great potential relates to the chemical reaction at the positive side of the battery, where small holes are cut in the casing to allow CO₂ gas in. There it dissolves in the liquid electrolyte (which allows the charge to move between the two electrodes) and reacts with lithium that has already been dissolved there. During this reaction, it’s believed that four electrons are exchanged between lithium ions and carbon dioxide. This electron transfer determines the theoretical charge that can be stored in the battery. In a normal lithium-ion battery, the positive electrode exchanges just one electron per reaction. (In lithium air batteries, it’s two to four electrons.) The greater exchange of electrons in the lithium-carbon dioxide battery, combined with the high voltage of the reaction, explains their potential to greatly outperform today’s lithium-ion batteries. However, the technology has a few issues. The batteries don’t last very long. Commercial lithium-ion packs routinely survive 1,000 to 10,000 charging cycles; most LiCO₂ prototypes fade after fewer than 100. They’re also difficult to recharge. This requires breaking down the lithium carbonate to release lithium and CO₂, which can be energy intensive. This energy requirement is a little like a hill that must be cycled up before the reaction can coast, and is known as overpotential. You can reduce this requirement by printing the right catalyst material on the porous positive electrode. Yet these catalysts are typically expensive and rare noble metals, such as ruthenium and platinum, making for a significant barrier to commercial viability. Our team has found an alternative catalyst, caesium phosphomolybdate, which is far cheaper and easy to manufacture at room temperature. This material made the batteries stable for 107 cycles, while also storing 2.5 times as much charge as a lithium ion. And we significantly reduced the energy cost involved in breaking down lithium carbonate, for an overpotential of 0.67 volts, which is only about double what would be necessary in a commercial product. Our research team is now working to further reduce the cost of this technology by developing a catalyst that replaces caesium, since it’s the phosphomolybdate that is key. This could make the system more economically viable and scalable for widespread deployment. We also plan to study how the battery charges and discharges in real time. This will provide a clearer understanding of the internal mechanisms at work, helping to optimize performance and durability. A major focus of upcoming tests will be to evaluate how the battery performs under different CO₂ pressures. So far, the system has only been tested under idealized conditions (1 bar). If it can work at 0.1 bar of pressure, it will be feasible for car exhausts and gas boiler flues, meaning you could capture CO₂ while you drive or heat your home. Demonstrating that this works will be an important confirmation of commercial viability, albeit we would expect the battery’s charge capacity to reduce at this pressure. By our rough calculations, 1kg of catalyst could absorb around 18.5kg of CO₂. Since a car driving 100 miles emits around 18kg to 20kg of CO₂, that means such a battery could potentially offset a day’s drive. If the batteries work at 0.006 bar, the pressure on the Martian atmosphere, they could power anything from an exploration rover to a colony. At 0.0004 bar, Earth’s ambient air pressure, they could capture CO₂ from our atmosphere and store power anywhere. In all cases, the key question will be how it affects the battery’s charge capacity. Meanwhile, to improve the battery’s number of recharge cycles, we need to address the fact that the electrolyte dries out. We’re currently investigating solutions, which probably involve developing casings that only CO₂ can move into. As for reducing the energy required for the catalyst to work, it’s likely to require optimizing the battery’s geometry to maximize the reaction rate—and to introduce a flow of CO₂, comparable to how fuel cells work (typically by feeding in hydrogen and oxygen). If this continued work can push the battery’s cycle life above 1,000 cycles, cut overpotential below 0.3 V, and replace scarce elements entirely, commercial Li-CO₂ packs could become reality. Our experiments will determine just how versatile and far-reaching the battery’s applications might be, from carbon capture on Earth to powering missions on Mars. Daniel Commandeur is a Surrey Future Fellow at the School of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering at the University of Surrey. Mahsa Masoudi is a PhD researcher of chemical engineering at the University of Surrey. Siddharth Gadkari is a lecturer in chemical process engineering at the University of Surrey. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This article contains spoilers for The Last of Us season 2 episode 7. With its season 2 finale, The Last of Us, the show takes viewers back to Seattle, delivering an epic final episode that ends Ellie’s (Bella Ramsey) arc of the story, for now, and sets up Abby’s (Kaitlyn Dever). Ellie and Dina’s (Isabela Merced) journey has only gotten more and more dangerous with violence between the W.L.F. and Seraphites continuing to ramp up. Now that Jesse (Young Mazino) and Tommy (Gabriel Luna) are in the picture, the stakes are even higher to make sure that everyone makes it back to Jackson alive. But just because more of her chosen family is in danger doesn’t mean that Ellie will give up the hunt for Abby so easily. Here’s everything that goes down in the season 2 finale of The Last of Us. Ellie’s Return The episode begins with Dina and Jesse back in the theater. Jesse is tending to Dina’s wound and realizes he has to push the arrow through her leg to avoid further damage to her arteries. Even though tensions are high, it’s clear that the two still care about each other, even if their feelings are no longer romantic. Not long after Jesse sends Dina off to rest, Ellie returns, and immediately starts looking for Dina. She finds her resting in the dressing room, and the two share a tender moment taking care of each other. Ellie checks on Dina’s wound and Dina starts to dress Ellie’s scrapes and bruises. Dina reassures Ellie that the baby is okay and asks Ellie what happened after they got separated. Ellie tells her that she found Nora, but only got two words from her to indicate where Abby is “whale” and “wheel.”  Ellie also confesses that she left Nora to die and succumb to the Cordyceps infection, and that it was easier to hurt her than she thought it was going to be. Dina tries to reassure Ellie that maybe Nora got what she deserved – Nora was the one who held Ellie down and forced her to watch Joel die after all. But Ellie isn’t so sure. She tells Dina about Salt Lake City and what she learned about that day from Nora, that Abby’s father was among the Fireflies that Joel killed. Dina is surprised by this and seems to be realizing that maybe they aren’t so different from Abby and her crew after all. She tells Ellie that they need to go home. Finding Tommy The next morning, Jesse and Ellie head off into Seattle to try and find Tommy. Jesse asks Ellie what’s up with Dina after she declined a drink the night before and insisted that she can’t die. He guesses that she’s pregnant, and Ellie accidentally confirms it, not realizing that Jesse is just guessing. This makes Jesse’s desire to go back to Jackson even stronger, and tells Ellie that now he can’t die for her revenge quest either. As the rain starts to pour, Ellie and Jesse seek refuge in a parking garage, only to nearly be caught in the crossfire between the W.L.F. and the Seraphites. The W.L.F. chase a young Seraphite into the garage, stripping him down and dragging him off. Ellie wants to intervene, stop the W.L.F. from killing the kid, but Jesse holds her back because he doesn’t want to die for a war they have no stake in.  They make it to Jesse and Tommy’s rendezvous point, a bookstore, but Tommy is nowhere to be found. Ellie picks up a children’s book to give to Dina while they wait and tries to have a heart to heart with Jesse about her and Dina’s feelings for each other. Jesse tells Ellie that he fell for a girl who came through Jackson a while back, but that he let her go to fulfill his duty to Jackson. He emphasizes the fact that he was taught to put other people first, and this sets Ellie off. But their argument is interrupted by chatter on the walkie talkie. The W.L.F. are talking about a sniper that sounds an awful lot like Tommy. The Search for Abby Ellie and Jesse go to higher ground to find a way to where Tommy might be, but Ellie gets distracted when she sees the aquarium in the distance. She sees a ferris wheel and realizes that that is likely what Nora was talking about. Jesse insists that they need to go save Tommy from the W.L.F., but Ellie argues that he’d want her to follow this lead. She becomes singularly focused, pushing Jesse to let her follow this lead. Jesse tells her that he voted no back in Jackson because he could see the selfishness in Ellie’s plan, and that it wasn’t for the good of the community. Ellie fights back, saying that Jesse isn’t morally superior just because he puts others first. He let a kid die earlier because he wasn’t in their community. She tells him that she had to watch her community beaten to death in front of her, and that Jesse would do the same if he was in her shoes. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! The two part ways, and Ellie makes her way to the aquarium on her own, nearly dying by both the stormy weather and a group of zealous Seraphites along the way. But despite all of the dangers she encounters in her path, she makes it to the aquarium, finding not Abby, but Owen (Spencer Lord) and Mel (Ariela Barer) instead. The two are arguing about whether or not to go after Abby, wherever she’s gone, and don’t notice that Ellie’s there until it’s too late. She tries to get them to point to Abby’s location on the map, as Joel has done before, but Owen reaches for a gun under the table. Ellie reacts, shooting him in the neck. The bullet goes through him and nicks Mel’s neck accidentally. Ellie panics, rushing to Mel’s side as she gives Ellie instructions to try and save her unborn child. Ellie is clearly shaken, sitting there holding her knife as Mel bleeds out. Tommy and Jesse eventually rush in, taking in the carnage. Tommy holds Ellie and tries to comfort her while Jesse is visibly shaken, as though he knows that this could be him and Dina if they stay in Seattle much longer. What Are the W.L.F. Planning? Meanwhile, the W.L.F. seem to be using the cover of the rainstorm to plan an assault on the Seraphites. On top of planning this, Isaac (Jeffrey Wright) is also looking for Abby, confessing to Sergeant Park that he’s been planning for her to take over the W.L.F. after him. He seems ready to die for his crusade against the Seraphites and wants someone he can trust to lead the army after his death.  It’s fortuitous for Ellie that Isaac is planning this raid. On her way to the Aquarium, she gets caught by a group of Seraphites that are ready to hang and gut her like a fish, until they hear alarm bells from their village. Anyone who is familiar with The Last of Us Part II knows that this attack on the Seraphites plays a big role in Abby’s story and will likely be featured more in-depth next season. Theater Showdown Jesse, Tommy, and Ellie make it back to the theater in one piece, the W.L.F. and Seraphites presumably too distracted by their conflict to pay them much mind. Tommy and Jesse start planning the journey back to Jackson, agreeing to leave as soon as the rain lets up enough to transport Dina safely. Tommy tries to reassure Ellie that Owen and Mel made their choice when they helped Abby kill Joel, and leaves for the lobby to pack. Ellie still doesn’t seem quite ready to leave Seattle with Abby still out there, but has seemed to finally realize how much danger she’s putting the others in by staying.  She and Jesse have a heart to heart and Ellie actually apologizes to Jesse for leaving him behind. Jesse accepts her apology, saying that he knows that she would “set the world on fire” to save him too. Their heartfelt moment is unfortunately short-lived, as they both hear a violent commotion out in the lobby. They rush through the doors, and Jesse is immediately shot dead. Realizing that Abby has found them, she tosses her gun to the side and puts her hands in the air. She pleads with Abby to let Tommy go, not wanting to watch Abby kill another person she loves. Abby tells Ellie that she wasted the second chance she gave her and the screen cuts to black as we hear a gunshot in the background. We’ll likely have to wait until next season to see who fired the gun and who or what was shot. Seattle Day One: Abby Edition The episode ends by going back in time a few days. We see Abby wake up to news that Isaac wants to meet with her. She walks around what appears to be a W.L.F. base of some sort, and the final shot of the episode includes Abby looking out into an old stadium that has now been fashioned into a home.  In The Last of Us Part II, this is where players pick up Abby’s story again and get to control her as a true protagonist of the game. The game follows her over the course of the same three days that we’ve been following Ellie in Seattle, and her arc and perspective are just as important to this story as Ellie’s are. Abby has been a controversial character in the games, but hopefully viewers will keep an open mind as the show transitions to Abby’s side of the story next season.

We made it, everybody. We’ve reached the end of HBO’s The Last of Us. Wait, sorry, I’m getting word in my earpiece that…we’re only halfway done with it because this show’s going for four seasons. At this point, I’m mostly feeling deflated. Last week’s episode was such a catastrophic bummer that it cemented for me that the show fundamentally misunderstands The Last of Us Part II, the game this season and those that are still yet to come are adapting. But you know how your mother would tell you not to play ball in the house because you might accidentally break the priceless vase on display in the living room? Well, if you’ve already broken the vase, you might as well keep playing ball, so we’ll probably be doing this song and dance into 2029. For now, we’re on the season two finale, which essentially wraps up Ellie’s side of this condensed revenge story and reveals the premise of season three. Most game fans probably assumed this was where the season would end and, if nothing else, it’s still a bold cliffhanger to leave off on.Suggested ReadingNintendo Switch 2 Price Is Set at $450 for Now, But Could Go Higher Share SubtitlesOffEnglishSuggested ReadingNintendo Switch 2 Price Is Set at $450 for Now, But Could Go Higher Share SubtitlesOffEnglishNintendo Switch 2 Price Is Set at $450 for Now, But Could Go HigherGuilty as chargedAfter last week’s flashback-heavy episode, we open on Jesse (Young Mazino) tending to wounds the Seraphites have inflicted on Dina (Isabela Merced), which means we get a real heinous scene of him doing some amateur surgeon’s work to remove the arrow she took to the knee. He douses it in alcohol and offers her a sip to dull the pain, but she staunchly refuses without explaining why. They made Jesse an asshole in this show, but he’s still a smart guy. The gears start turning in his head about why she might turn down a swig right now. Nevertheless, he takes that motherfucker out with no anesthetic, booze, or supportive bedside girlfriend to help Dina through it.Speaking of the absent girlfriend, Ellie (Bella Ramsey) finally returns to their theater base of operations. Now that she’s back, all her concern is on Dina, but Jesse is still wondering where the hell she’s been this whole time. Dina is resting backstage, and even though we only see these details for a few minutes, I once again want to shout out the set designers who recreated this little safe haven, which is covered in old show posters and graffiti from bands and artists that performed there before the cordyceps took over. I’m sure Joel would have loved to have seen it.Dina stirs awake and Ellie checks her wound. Jesse’s effort to wrap the injury leaves a lot to be desired, but it should heal in time. Ellie asks if the baby’s alright, and Dina says it’s okay.“How do you know?” Ellie asks.“I just do,” Dina replies.The one who is not okay in the room is Ellie, who is bleeding through the back of her shirt. Dina helps her undress and starts to clean the scratches on her back. As she does, she asks what happened while they were separated. Ellie says she found Nora (Tati Gabrielle), and she knew where Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) was, but only said two words: “Whale” and “Wheel.” Ellie says she doesn’t know what it meant. It could have been nonsense. She was infected, and it was already starting to affect her cognitive state.“I made her talk,” Ellie whispers. “I thought it would be harder to do, but it wasn’t. It was easy. I just kept hurting her.”Image: HBODina asks if Ellie killed her, but she says she just “left her,” meaning that somewhere in this timeline, Nora is wandering the depths of a Seattle hospital with broken legs and an infected mind. I thought the show couldn’t possibly concoct a worse fate for her than what happens in the game, but they found a way. It takes commitment to put down a character like showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann have done for Nora across both video games and television. Personally, I think when you already know that people are wary of the way you treat one of the few Black women in your franchise as if she doesn’t deserve the same dignity as everyone else, maybe you should do better by her when given a second chance, rather than worse. But that’s just me. I’m not the one being paid a bunch of money to butcher this story on HBO Max every Sunday at 9 p.m. Eastern. So what do I know?Maybe this is just part of the contrived sadism the show has attached to Ellie. She thinks violence is easy and it comes naturally to her, so I guess she would beat a woman nearly to death until the fungal infection made her lose her mind. Meanwhile the game version is so traumatized by what she’s done in this moment, she’s practically speechless by the time she reaches the theater. God, I knew this shit was going to happen. Mazin has repeatedly insisted that Ellie is an inherently violent individual, something he’s communicated both in interviews and by having Catherine O’Hara’s Gail, the therapist who tells you what the story is about, say that she’s always been a sadist, probably. Now, when we get to moments like the post-Nora debrief which used to convey that Ellie is Not Cut Out For This Shit, the framing instead becomes “Ellie likes violence and feels bad about how much she likes violence.”Before The Last of Us Part II came out, a lot of Naughty Dog’s promotion for the game was kind of vague and even deceptive in an effort to keep its biggest twists under wraps, and some of the messaging it used to talk about the game’s themes have irrevocably set a precedent for how the game’s story is talked about years later. When the game was first revealed in 2016, the studio said the story would be “about hate,” which paints a much more destructive and myopic picture of Ellie’s journey than the one driven by love and grief she actually experiences through the course of the game.One of the most annoying things about being a Last of Us fan is that its creators love to talk about the series in ways that erase its emotional complexity, making it sound more cynical and underhanded when the actual story it’s telling is anything but. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard people reductively parroting notions that The Last of Us Part II is just about “hate” and “guilting the player” for taking part in horrifying actions when they literally have no choice but to do so, rather than cracking the text open and dissecting that nuance. Mazin’s openly-expressed belief that Ellie is an intrinsically bloodthirsty person similarly bleeds into how a lot of the public perceives her as a character, seeing her as a violent ruffian rather than a grieving daughter who was only ever taught to express her pain by inflicting it on those who made her feel it in the first place. Discussing these games as a fan means having to fight against these notions, but they’re born from a game built on subtext, and thus willingly opens itself to those interpretations.Its willingness to dwell in ambiguity only makes it a more fascinating text to unpack, or it would, if we lived in a world where discussing video games wasn’t a volatile experience in which you constantly run the risk of being targeted for performative online dunks, or running up against rabid console tribalism. Now, the Last of Us show has decided to lean into the most boring interpretation of what this story is about without an ounce of subtlety, nuance, or even sympathy for Ellie’s plight. She is a sadist who does terrible things not simply because she’s grieving her father figure, but because this is just who she is. Mazin has deemed it so, and here we are, and this vision of her will no doubt weave itself into the fabric of how we talk about Ellie Williams, even in the game.This story only has any thematic weight if Ellie’s violent outbursts are rooted in pain, not pleasure. Yeah, what we’re seeing in the show is her acting from a mix of those things but, in the game at least, the most affecting moments of Ellie’s Seattle revenge tour happen when she has to confront how she is not built for acts of violent excess in the same way Joel was. She never has been. Back in Part I, she was sick to her stomach when she committed her first kill to save Joel, and the entire point of Part II was that we see her cut off parts of herself to do what she feels she must, only to find that she’s unable to recognize herself when it’s all over. In the show, she is instead mesmerized by carnage, only to decide she doesn’t like that she feels that way, actually. But all this self-reflection is fleeting, because she’s only killed one person on her list, and there’s a lot more work to do. How many Joels is Nora’s life worth to Ellie? One-fifth?While Ellie is wrestling with these feelings, Dina is about to see things with more clarity than ever. At first, she says that Nora may have deserved this fate worse than death, to which Ellie says “Maybe she didn’t,” before telling her girlfriend everything. She tearfully recounts Joel’s massacre of the Fireflies at the base in Salt Lake City, how the group was going to use her immunity to create a cure, and how Joel killed Abby’s father to save her. Dina puts it all together and asks Ellie if she knew who Abby’s group was. She says she didn’t, but she did know what Joel did. Dina sits with that for a moment, then flatly says the group needs to go home.So I guess this is how the show gets Dina, who’s been pretty revenge-hungry thus far, back onto the track she’s on in the games. Without spoiling scenes in the late game for the uninitiated, some major points of conflict at the end of Part II require her to be less on-board with Ellie’s vendetta, so the fact that she’s been egging her girlfriend on to track down Abby was an odd choice. I wasn’t sure how the show would handle it down the line, but it seems the way HBO’s show has course-corrected was by having her condemn Joel’s actions. Dina had her own relationship with the old man in the show, so I imagine that in a later season she’ll interrogate how she feels about him in light of this new information, but having her more or less get off the ride when she learns what Joel has done sets up a contrast between her and Ellie that I’m curious to see how the show handles.The shame of it, though, is that this is just one more thing that undermines one of the core foundations of the source material, and I have to get at least one more jab in on this topic before we end the season. In The Last of Us Part II, when you look at what is actually expressed in dialogue, you see that characters are often lacking important information about each other. This lack of communication is an important part of its storytelling, but the show is instead having characters tell everyone everything. In Part II, Joel and Ellie don’t know who Abby’s father was. It’s strongly implied that no one other than Joel, Ellie, and Tommy knew about what happened in Salt Lake City, not even Dina. The more the show bridges these gaps of communication, the more senseless this entire tit-for-tat feels. To be clear, it was senseless in the game, but it was in a tragic, “these people are so blinded by their emotions that they can’t fathom another path forward” sort of way. This time around, everyone knows exactly what’s happening and chooses to partake in violence anyway. We don’t have any mystery or lack of communication to fall back on as a we struggle to understand why the characters keep making these self-destructive decisions. Everyone is just knowingly the worst version of themselves this time around, and I guess Mazin thinks that’s the point, which is the kind of boring interpretation that makes the show such an inferior version of this story.Family mattersWe now begin our third day in Seattle. Ellie and Jesse are packing up to get going in the theater lobby. The plan is to find Tommy (Gabriel Luna) somewhere in the city and then head back to Jackson. However, Jesse is a lot less talkative this morning. Dina limps into the lobby, and after a brief scolding for being on her feet, she gives Ellie a bracelet for good luck.“I’m not sure it’s been working for you,” Ellie jokes.“I’m alive,” Dina replies.Jesse is clearly uncomfortable watching his ex (or are they technically still together now? I’m not sure) give Ellie a prized possession, and says he can go alone if Dina wants Ellie to stay. Ellie says they’ll be safer together. Jesse relents and says they should be back by sundown. The tension is radiating off him, but the pair leaves Dina in the safety of the theater.Image: HBOEllie and Jesse awkwardly walk through the remains of Seattle. She finally breaks the silence by asking how he found Ellie and Dina’s theater base. He recounts his two days of tracking, giving a shoutout to the horse Shimmer who’s still vibing in the record store the girls left her at, but he’s clearly pissed. Ellie assumes it’s because he and Tommy had to cross state lines to come find them, but no, there’s something else on his mind. Why do Ellie and Dina look at each other differently? Why did Dina turn down a free drink for the first time in her life? He’s putting it all together. Dina and Ellie are no longer just gals being pals, and his (now ex?) girlfriend is pregnant.“None of this has to change things between us,” Ellie says.“Everything changing doesn’t have to change things?” Jesse asks. “Well, how about this for something new: I’m gonna be a father, which means I can’t die. But because of you, we’re stuck in a warzone. So how about we skip the apologies and just go find Tommy so I can get us and my kid the fuck out of Seattle?”Wow, okay. Judgey, much? I mean, you’re right, Jesse. This is a no good, very bad situation, and Ellie has put your kid in danger and won’t even tell you she was torturing a woman last night. But god, I miss kindhearted Jesse. I miss Ellie’s golden retriever best friend who, when finding out Dina was pregnant, firmly but gently told Ellie it was time to get the fuck out of Seattle. Now that the show has created a messy cheating love triangle out of these three, I’m once again reflecting on how The Last of Us Part II could have very easily made this storyline a dramatic, angry one, and instead it was one of the brighter spots in a dark tale. Meanwhile, in the show, the whole thing feels like it’s regressed to a rote and predictable earlier draft of the story that’s much less refreshing and compelling than the one we already know. Justice for Jesse. This is character assassination of the goodest boy in all of Jackson. Well, actually, that’s Abby’s job. Sorry, sorry. That’s actually not for another 35 minutes.As the two move further into the city, they see more art praising the Seraphite prophet on the buildings, but she looks notably different than in images we’ve seen previously. This art depicts a Black woman, whereas others have typically portrayed the prophet as white. Ellie wonders aloud if there’s “more than one of her.” Jesse says it’s possible, but ushers her forward as rain starts pouring down. I’m curious what the show might be doing here, as this is a divergence from Part II. Could the Seraphites be a kind of polytheistic group in the show that follows multiple prophets? Could they believe the Prophet was reincarnated into a different woman at some point? All we can do is theorize, but we haven’t seen much of the Seraphites this season so we don’t have much to go on. Which is by design, and feels pretty in-line with Part II, which didn’t tell you much about the group during Ellie’s three days in Seattle. We’ll pick this thread back up next season, I’m sure.The pair takes shelter but before they can catch their breath, they hear the popping sound of gunfire nearby as a W.L.F. squad corners a lone Seraphite. Ellie and Jesse watch in horror as the wolves strip and drag him away. Just as Ellie nearly gets out from cover to intervene, Jesse pulls her back. Once the coast is clear, Ellie walks away in a huff. As Jesse follows, he points out that they were outnumbered and would have lost that fight.“He was a fucking kid!” Ellie shouts.“Ellie, these people [are] shooting each other, lynching each other, ripping each other’s guts out,” Jesse says. “Even the kids? I’m not dying out here. Not for any of them. This is not our war.”Who the fuck is this man? I touched on it in episode five, but what is with this show putting all of Ellie’s unlikable traits on other characters so she keeps getting to be the hero? Jesse turns from a selfless guardian into a selfish asshole who will watch a kid get tortured to save himself while Ellie is suddenly very concerned about a war that, in the game, she seemed largely indifferent to. It’s as if The Last of Us’ second season is so concerned with us liking Ellie and feeling like we can root for her that it’s lost sight of anything else.So Jesse gets to be the belligerent asshole and Dina gets to be the revenge-driven one in the relationship. Ellie? She’s just bee-bopping through spouting cool space facts, and so when she tortures Nora, it feels like tonal whiplash. I don’t recognize Jesse. Most of the time, I don’t recognize Ellie. But really, the more I watch this show, the more I hardly recognize anyone, and I don’t have any faith in the series to figure these characters and their relationships out, even if it’s going to go on for two more seasons.Will the circle be unbroken?We shift away from the Jackson crew to check in on Isaac (Jeffrey Wright), who we haven’t seen in a few episodes. Sergeant Park (Hettienne Park) updates the W.L.F. boss that the incoming storm will get worse as the day goes on, but even so, the group is still preparing some kind of operation. She also lets him know the rank and file is a little nervous about whatever’s going on, but Isaac’s only concerned about one person: Abby. From the sound of it, she and most of her crew have all disappeared over the past few days. We’ve seen what happened to Nora, Manny is still around, but Owen and Mel are gone without a trace. Again, Isaac isn’t concerned with them. He’s nervous that they’re going into whatever operation they’re planning without Abby. Park is clearly exhausted by this lane of thinking and asks why he cares so much about the girl.Image: HBOShe starts off asking why one “great” soldier is so important when they have an army, and then gets into a weird aside where she exasperatedly asks Isaac if he’s harboring feelings for the girl when he’s at least 30 years her senior. I don’t know if this line is supposed to be a joke, but it’s not funny, even though Isaac laughs at it. She acknowledges it’s an out-of-pocket question, but says he “wouldn’t be the first old man” to make decisions based on such inappropriate impulses. As much as it’s a stupid thing for Park to say, it’s also a stupid thing for the writers room to nonchalantly whip out in a humorous fashion given The Last of Us’ history of old men preying on young women with the character of David. Why write this non-joke into your script if you don’t want viewers to possibly view his fixation on Abby as potentially untoward? Isaac’s following speech focuses on the preservation of his militia, in a very similar way to how David’s preoccupation with Ellie in season one was born from the cannibal’s warped views on longevity, and if you’re not trying to make this direct connection, why even gesture at it? Yeah, I don’t imagine anyone considered the optics of this obviously flippant, throwaway line, but Christ, if you’re that desperate for a joke or moment to cut the tension, this was the best you could come up with? Amateur shit.Isaac sits Park down and tells her why he cares so much about one soldier. He says there’s a very strong chance that the W.L.F. leadership will be dead by tomorrow morning. If that happens, who can lead the militia in their stead? He wanted it to be Abby. It was “supposed” to be her.“Well she’s fucked off, Isaac,” Park says as she leaves. “So maybe it wasn’t.”We go back to the Jackson crew as Ellie and Jesse reach the rendezvous point in a bookstore, and Tommy isn’t here. The place is in bad shape like most places are in this city, but Ellie gravitates to the children’s books section. She picks up an old Sesame Street book, the Grover classic The Monster at the End of This Book, and picks it up for the bun in the oven as Jesse says she picked a good one. As the quiet creeps in on the two, Ellie tries to break the silence by clarifying what happened, but Jesse says they have enough problems for the moment, so he wants to bury the issue.He says he loves Dina, but not in the same way Ellie does. He remembers a group that passed through Jackson, and how there was a girl he fell hard for. She asked him to leave with her to Mexico, but he declined because he’d found purpose and community in Jackson, and he was taught to put others first. People look to him to become the “next Maria” and lead the town, and he couldn’t abandon them for a girl he’d known for two weeks, even if she made him feel things he’d never felt before.Ellie immediately sees through this story. It’s not about him pointing out how he’s felt love and knows that he and Dina aren’t the real deal; it’s about how she’s putting her own needs and wants ahead of everyone else’s.“Okay, got it,” Ellie says. “So you’re Saint Jesse of Wyoming, and everyone else is a fucking asshole.”“You can make fun of me all you want,” Jesse responds. “But let me ask you this, Ellie: If I go with that girl to Mexico, who saves your ass in Seattle?”Before she can reply, they hear W.L.F. radio chatter about a sniper taking out a squad and assume it’s gotta be Tommy. The two head out to higher ground to get a better look, and Ellie sees a Ferris wheel in the distance. She finally puts Nora’s final words together: Abby is in the aquarium at the edge of the city. Immediately, her focus shifts away from Tommy as she starts trying to figure out how to reach Abby’s apparent hiding spot. Jesse is confused and says that Tommy’s got the W.L.F. pinned down in the opposite direction. Ellie starts coming up with justifications for her plan. They don’t know if that’s actually Tommy. If it is him, he’s got the group pinned down. Either way, he would want her to go after Abby to avenge Joel. Ellie doesn’t understand why Jesse is so against this. He voted to go after Abby’s crew back in Jackson, right?Image: HBONo, actually. He didn’t. He believed this vendetta was selfish and “wasn’t in the best interest of the community.” That sets Ellie off.“Fuck the community!” she screams. “All you do is talk about the fucking community, you hypocrite. You think you’re good and I’m bad? You let a kid die today, Jesse. Because why? He wasn’t in your community? Let me tell you about my community. My community was beaten to death in front of me while I was forced to fucking watch. So don’t look at me like you’re better than me, or like you’d do anything differently if you were in my shoes, because you’re not, and you wouldn’t.”Jesse takes a beat, then tells Ellie he hopes she makes it to the aquarium as he leaves. While this scene does exemplify the show’s typicalal “no subtext allowed” approach to writing that I find so irksome, the storyline of Ellie feeling ostracized by the people of Jackson while constantly being told that she must make compromises for them even as they are incapable of extending the same to her is one of the few embellishments The Last of Us makes that resonates with me. It’s easy to write off Ellie’s revenge tour as a selfish crusade that puts everyone else in harm’s way, but when she’s also one of the few out queer people in a town that mostly coddles bigotry and she’s being constantly belittled and kept from doing things she wants to do like working on the patrol team, why would she feel any kinship to this community? Now, when she’s so close to her goal that she can almost taste it, Jesse wants her to consider the people of Jackson? Why should she do that? They’re hundreds of miles away, and the only people who came to save her and Dina were the ones who already cared about her. Ellie’s disillusionment with her neighbors is one of the few additions to the story that The Last of Us manages to pull off.Ellie reaches the harbor from which she can use a boat to reach the aquarium and finds several Wolves meeting up on vessels heading somewhere off the coast. Isaac is here leading the charge, but it’s unclear where they’re going or what they’re doing. Game fans have the advantage of knowing what’s going on, but the W.L.F. storyline feels underbaked in this season, which is one of the real issues with the show dividing the game’s storyline into multiple seasons. During this section of the game, you get a sense that there’s an untold story happening in the background, and you can learn more about it through notes you can find in the environment and ambient dialogue from enemies. The show doesn’t have those same storytelling tools, so I wouldn’t be surprised if newcomers felt a little disoriented every time we hopped over to Isaac.Once the W.L.F. forces make their way wherever they’re going, Ellie finds one of the spare boats and starts to make her way to the aquarium. The storm is hitting hard, though, and the tide is not on her side. A giant tidal wave knocks her out of the boat and into the sea. (Good thing you learned how to swim, queen.) As she washes up onto the shore, Ellie hears Seraphites whistling as a group of them descends upon her. She’s too weak to get onto her feet and run, so the cultists grab her and carry her to a noose hanging from a tree in the woods. She screams that she’s not a Wolf and that she’s not from here, but they don’t listen. As they wrap the noose around her neck and start to hoist her upward, a horn sounds off in the distance. The lead Scar says to leave her, their village is in danger, so I guess that’s what the W.L.F. operation is targeting? This concludes our latest little exposition detour, as Ellie gets right back into the boat to the aquarium.Image: HBOShe manages to reach the building and finds a broken window through which to enter. Inside, she finds several makeshift beds. Whatever Abby’s doing here, she’s not alone. As Ellie makes her way deeper into the aquarium, she finds a ton of medical supplies, including bloody bandages and surgical equipment. Was Abby injured? Is that why she’s been missing in action as the W.L.F. undergoes a huge, all-hands-on-deck mission? Who’s to say?Quick sidenote: When Ellie infiltrates the aquarium in the game, she’s attacked by a guard dog named Alice. The W.L.F. used trained canines in their war against the Seraphites, but that element has been notably absent from the show. Between this and sparing Shimmer from her explosive fate, The Last of Us has been toning down the animal murder.Ellie keeps walking through the desolate aquarium and eventually finds fresh footsteps. She follows them and soon finds their source: Abby’s friends Owen (Spencer Lord) and Mel (Ariela Barer). The two are arguing about something, though it’s not clear what. Owen wants to go somewhere behind enemy lines, even in the midst of the battle Isaac has just initiated. He says he doesn’t have a choice because “it’s Abby.” Mel says he does have a choice and so does she, and the Abby of it all is why she’s not going along with whatever the plan is. Owen says he’ll do it on his own, and if Mel’s still here when they get back, she can “keep going with [them].” Either way, Owen’s leaving. Mel let’s out a hearty “fuck you, Owen” before realizing that Ellie is there. Sure seems like there’s a whole other story that’s been going on while we’ve been hanging out with Ellie, huh? I wonder if we’ll ever get any further insight into whatever this is. Perhaps in a season entirely dedicated to the other side of what’s going on in Seattle? Maybe in a couple years it might premiere on HBO Max (or whatever it’s called by then)? That would be something!Ellie holds the two at gunpoint and tells them to put their hands up. When she asks where Abby is, Owen realizes who she is and points out that he was the one who kept her alive. Ellie isn’t swayed by this, so he says they don’t know where Abby went. But, of course, they were just talking about her, so Ellie knows that’s not true. She spots a map on the table and decides to pull out an old Joel Miller standard: She tells Mel to bring her the map and point to where Abby is, saying that next she’s going to ask Owen the same question, and the answers had better match. Owen looks at Mel and says that Ellie will kill them either way, so there’s no reason to comply. Ellie says she won’t because she’s “not like” them. When she crosses state lines to torture and kill someone who killed somebody important to her, it’s very different than when they do it, of course.Owen stops Mel from grabbing the map by saying he’ll do it. He slowly turns to the table, but instead of picking up the map, he grabs a handgun stowed under it. Ellie is quick with her trigger finger and shoots him right in the throat. The bullet goes straight through him, and hits Mel in the neck as well. She falls onto her back and, instead of cursing Ellie, she asks for her help. Not to save her life, but someone else’s. She opens her jacket to reveal her pregnant belly, and asks if Ellie has a knife to cut the baby out of her before she dies. Ellie is in shock and doesn’t know what to do. Mel tells her she just needs to make one incision. That isn’t enough direction, and Ellie panics. She doesn’t know how deep or which direction to cut. As Mel starts to become delirious, she repeats “love transfers” and then asks Ellie if the baby is out. But she hasn’t even made one cut. Mel finally drifts off, and Ellie realizes it’s too late. She sits there until, eventually, Tommy and Jesse find her. Tommy attempts to comfort her, but she’s in shock and doesn’t speak. Finally they leave and head back to the theater.Naughty Dog / Cinematic GamingWhy can’t this show stop giving the audience outs to not turn against its leads? The death of Mel, specifically, feels like the show bending over backward to teach Ellie a lesson without laying blame at her feet. Mel’s death here is an accident. She’s an innocent bystander who dies because Owen and Ellie made choices, and she was, quite literally, caught in the crossfire. In Part II, by contrast, Mel “shot first.” Well, she tried to stab Ellie, but that doesn’t have the same ring to it. Ellie reacts in self-defense and stabs her right back, but she did it fully knowing she was about to send Mel to an early grave. The gut punch Ellie feels upon learning that she’s pregnant is a moment of dramatic irony, because the game’s shifting perspectives had already revealed her pregnancy to the player way back in the opening hours. So when you’re slamming the square button to fight back, you know that Mel isn’t the only one about to reach her untimely end. Here, she doesn’t even get that moment of agency to fight to protect herself. She’s just collateral damage. It’s a small but important distinction. At this point in the show, Mel’s only real trait is a clear distaste for Abby’s violence, and now, when she finally shows up again, she’s just an unintended victim of Owen pulling a gun on Ellie. Sure, season three will fill in those gaps, but the end result will be the same. Mel died not because she was fighting back, but because she was an inch too far to the left.Then there’s the matter of her pregnancy. Again, in the game players already knew about this by the time Ellie reached the aquarium, while the show kept it secret until the end. It’s hard not to see this last-minute reveal as a knife being twisted for shock value, but that’s only half the problem. My friend Eric Van Allen (co-host of the Axe of the Blood God podcast) would often joke with his college friends about how Michael Caine’s characters in Christopher Nolan films so often show up just to tell you, the viewer, in very literal terms what the story is about. Throughout most of this season, Gail has been this character, the one burdened with the heavy task of diegetic literary analysis, but Mel’s delirious “love transfers” line may be even sillier than anything Gail spouts; homegirl is bleeding out and telling Ellie that pain is not the only thing we inherit from our parents? Just one week after Joel tearfully told Ellie that he hopes she does better when she has a kid than he or his abusive cop father did?Perhaps in a show that hadn’t already spent two seasons using literalism as a writing crutch, Mel speaking her final hopes for her unborn child might have landed for me. But I think I’m just too jaded towards it now for even what should have been a genuine expression to feel like anything other than a heavy-handed, patronizing declaration of what lessons I’m supposed to take away from the story. I don’t think characters overtly communicating their beliefs and feelings about a situation is an inherently poor way of writing dialogue. In fact, some of my favorite works have managed to execute this well thanks to strong acting and stories that lent themselves well to this style of writing. The Last of Us, a series that often relishes in grounded dialogue that forced you to read between the lines and unearth that meaning yourself, the Last of Us show’s inability to let nearly any emotion, belief, or theme go unspoken feels so contrived and tiresome that even someone expressing something thematically resonate feels like being told what to feel. Mel uses her last words to tell me the themes of the story. Just in case I forgot. Thank you, Last of Us show, I don’t know how I would have ever understood your thematic richness if you didn’t make your characters tell me about it, even in their death gasps.The group makes it back to the theater and Ellie is still in shock, so much so that she doesn’t even look at Dina as she enters the building. Some time passes, and Tommy and Jesse are mapping out their route home on the stage. The storm is still pretty rough, so they’ll stay overnight and hope the sun is out when they wake up. Ellie finally joins the group, and Tommy reassures her that Mel and Owen played their part in Joel’s death, and they made the choices that brought them to that fateful end. Ellie can only fixate on what she didn’t get to do.“But Abby gets to live,” she says.“Yeah,” Tommy responds. “Are you able to make your peace with that?”“I guess I’ll have to,” she says, defeated.She looks to Jesse, who won’t even look up at her. Tommy realizes they might have something to talk about and walks to the lobby to pack. After some awkward silence, Ellie thanks Jesse for coming back for her, even though he had no reason to after the way they clashed.“Maybe I didn’t want to,” he says. “Maybe Tommy made me.”“Did he?” Ellie asks.After a second of contemplation, Jesse drops the act and says, “No.”“Because you’re a good person,” Ellie responds.“Yeah,” Jesse agrees. “But also the thought did occur, that if I were out there somewhere, lost and in trouble, you’d set the world on fire to save me.”Ellie says she would, and the two finally see one another, even if just for a moment. Jesse acknowledges that Ellie’s vendetta isn’t entirely selfish, and that when it comes to defending the people she cares about, dead or alive, you won’t find someone more loyal in all of Jackson. It’s good that they finally had this moment of connection after all this drama. But damn, I miss Ellie and Jesse being bros, and I miss her giving him shit for being a sap in these final moments. But most of all, I miss that dopey good ol’ boy with a heart of gold saying his friends “can’t get out of their own damn way.”All that understanding is short-lived, as the two hear some ruckus in the lobby, grab their guns, and book it to the entrance. The second Jesse opens the door, bam. A gunshot rings out in the lobby, and he is on the floor. We don’t even see that it was Abby who fired it until after we get a gnarly shot of him with his face blown open. He’s gone. It was instant. The Last of Us Part II tends to draw out death. It’s either long and torturous like it was for Joel or Nora, or it’s short like Owen’s and Mel’s, but in any case, the game typically lingers on the fallout for a bit. Jesse’s death, by contrast, happens so fast that you can’t even process it before you have to deal with the situation at hand. The show follows suit, and it’s recreated practically shot for shot. But that’s hardly the most disorienting (complimentary) thing that happens in these final minutes.“Stand up,” Abby growls forcefully from the other side of the desk Ellie has taken cover behind.She repeats herself: “Stand. Up. Hands in the air or I shoot this one, too.”Ellie can see Tommy on the ground with a pistol aimed right at his head. He tells Ellie to just run, but she tosses her gun where Abby can see it and crawls out from cover. Abby recognizes her immediately. Ellie asks her to let Tommy go, to which Abby replies that he killed her friends. Ellie says no, she did.“I was looking for you,” Ellie says. “I didn’t mean to hurt them. I know why you killed Joel. He did what he did to save me, I’m the one that you want. Just let him go.”Naughty Dog / VGS - Video Game SophistryHm. Okay. We’re almost at the end. I gotta get another little quibble in before the curtains close. I mean, come on, we’ve been through seven episodes of me complaining together. You can’t take one last gripe? This line from Ellie is slightly altered to account for the fact that she knows more about Abby in the show than in the game, and it means we miss one of the most important subtle interactions in all of the story. As I mentioned earlier, Ellie doesn’t know anything about Abby’s father in Part II. She assumes that Abby killed Joel because he took away any chance of the Fireflies developing a cure, so she cites that in this high-stakes moment. The original line is almost identical to the one in the show, but instead, Ellie says “there’s no cure because of me” and suggests that killing her would be the extension of Abby’s presumed vendetta. Then, we get some incredible, subtle acting from Abby actor Laura Bailey, who hears what Ellie’s saying, has a brief moment of angry disbelief on her face, and then scoffs under her breath before picking right back up where she left off. In just a few seconds, you see Abby realize that, after everything, these fuckers have no idea how much pain she’s been through over the past five years. But they’re not worth the breath it would take to explain herself. They don’t deserve to know the man her father was and what he meant to her. All that matters right now is that Ellie pays for what she’s done.Abby still views herself as the righteous one here, as she points out that she let Ellie live when she did not have to do that. It turns out that Ellie wasn’t deserving of her mercy, that she squandered it by killing her friends. Part of me has wondered if all the exposition-heavy dialogue in this show, such as Dever’s villain monologue in episode two before she murdered the shit out of Joel, was written to give its actors more words to say in front of a camera. When you’ve got big names like Kaitlyn Dever, Catherine O’Hara, and Pedro Pascal in your cast, you don’t want them to not talk, right? But all these elongated exchanges have also robbed actors like Dever of those subtle moments. Hell, she led an entire film with next to no dialogue in 2023’s No One Will Save You, and was great in it, so she has the chops to pull off that kind of acting. Communicating something through body language and expression is just as powerful as a poetic piece of dialogue (or in this show’s case, the most literal, unpoetic dialogue a person can fathom), but this show rarely, if ever, understands that.Image: HBOAnyway, Abby says that Ellie wasted the chance she was given when the ex-Fireflies spared her, and points her gun right at Ellie. We hear a bullet fire and Ellie shouts before a hard cut to black. But wait. That’s the season finale? You expect us to wait for two years, probably, to find out what happened? Well, about that. You will probably have to wait even longer.We do have one more scene this season, however: a flashback. We see Abby lying down on a comfy couch with an unfinished book resting on her stomach. She’s in a deep sleep before Manny (Danny Ramirez) loudly enters the room and wakes her up. He says Isaac wants to see them, and she stirs awake. She gets up and walks out of this cozy living space and into a giant football stadium. The entire field has been repurposed for agriculture, manufacturing, and housing. Abby takes a second to look at the whole operation before heading to Isaac’s, but the camera lingers over the field as bold white text flashes on the screen: Seattle, Day One.Alright, TV newbies, welcome to the second divisive twist of The Last of Us Part II. In the game, the player goes through Ellie’s three days in Seattle, killing Abby’s friends and mostly ignoring the war between the W.L.F. and the Seraphites. Meanwhile, Abby has been kind of an enigma the whole time. Every time Ellie finds a new lead, Abby has already come and gone. When Abby finally shows up at the theater for another round of vengeance, it’s clear that a lot of the story happening in this game has happened off-screen. That’s because you’re about to see an entirely different perspective on the last three days, and you’re going to play as Abby when you do it.As you can imagine, this shit drove some players nuts at the time, and you’ll still find angry people online complaining about it to this day. For all my problems with this season, I have to commend the show for actually going for it. HBO has taken the coward’s route in adapting this story for so long, it’s almost surprising that it’s ending here and, from the sound of it, season three will be entirely about Abby and what she’s been doing these past three days. It’s very likely we won’t see Ellie again until next season’s finale after we’ve followed Dever’s character for several episodes. Despite some ham-fisted attempts by the show to build sympathy for Abby early on, it seems like swaths of TV newbies still demand blood. Will viewers complain for an entire season as Dever takes on the lead role? I’d like to think they won’t. I hope that new audiences are more open to her than the worst people you’ve ever met were when the game launched.Despite all the golf club swings I’ve taken at this show, I’m looking forward to examining it further as HBO rolls out the next two seasons. The Last of Us Part II is one of my favorite games of all time, but I genuinely fucking hated The Last of Us’ second season. I don’t expect my feelings to improve in season three. At this point, the rot of Mazin’s poor creative decisions runs too deep for the show to be salvaged and reach the highs of the games. But if nothing else, it’s been a rewarding ride. Thank you for joining me on this seven-week journey. I think I’m due for a replay of The Last of Us Part II to wash off this stink. This shit was ass, HBO. I’ll see you in the ring again next time.