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.

The Last of Us showrunners discuss where season three will go Once spore unto the breach. Image credit: HBO News by Victoria Phillips Kennedy News Reporter Published on May 26, 2025 The Last of Us' cast and crew have shed some insight into where the show will go during its third season. Please note, there will be major spoilers for The Last of Us season two finale below. The Death of Console Exclusives Is Inevitable and I Don't Know How I Feel About It. Watch on YouTube Earlier today, The Last of Us' second season wrapped. It ended with a cliffhanger, showing Kaitlyn Dever's Abby shooting Jesse dead, before she points her gun at Ellie. She fires again, and the screen cuts to black. We are then transported back to "Seattle: Day One", but this time we are not seeing events through the eyes of Ellie. This time, we are with Abby, who walks out into the massive football stadium the WLF have made their base camp. Speaking about season two's finale during a press conference held earlier this month, showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann said they don't currently know how much viewers can expect to see Ellie, Dina, Tommy and Jesse during the show's third season. However, even if these characters aren't on screen as much as they were during season two, their presence will still be felt. Image credit: HBO "Even if I thought I knew now exactly how it was going to go, I'm experienced enough to know that two weeks from now we may have a different idea of how it should go," Mazin said (thanks, Variety). "All I can say is we haven't seen the last of Kaitlyn Dever and we haven't seen the last of Bella Ramsey, and we haven't seen the last of Isabela Merced, and we haven't seen the last of a lot of people who are currently dead in the story." Meanwhile, Mazin affirmed The Last of Us season three will provide more clarity to some of the events that were playing off in the background of season two, including the WLF's war with the Seraphites. "Those questions are correct and will be answered," Mazin noted. "How did that war start? Why? How did the Seraphites start? Who is [their] prophet? What happened to her? What does Isaac want? What's happening at the end of Episode 7? What is this explosion? All of it will become clear." Image credit: HBO Now, don't get your hopes up here, but during this same conference Druckman didn't rule out Pedro Pascal making a return as Joel via flashbacks. In season one, we saw Anna Torv's Tess pop up again, despite her character being killed off earlier in the show. Meanwhile, season two featured an episode made up almost entirely of flashbacks, which included the introduction of Joel's father, a character not seen in the games. "I wouldn't have guessed we would have a short story about Joel's dad before we wrote the season, so there you go," Druckmann said of that scene, adding: "You can't predict these things." Image credit: HBO In a separate interview with the publication, Ramsey added they "most likely" expect their presence in the show to be smaller than in previous seasons when series three rolls around. "I haven't seen any scripts, but yes, I do expect that," Ramsey said. "I think that I'm going to be there, but not a whole bunch. We've had conversations about that. I sort of have a rough idea of what it's going to be, but I can't tell you." For more on the show, you can check out my discussion feature: The Last of Us season two wraps with episode seven, but was it a satisfying finale?

[Ed. note: This story contains major spoilers through The Last of Us season 2 finale.] By now, it’s hopefully not much of a spoiler to know that gaming’s gruffest dad suffers an untimely death early on in the latest season of HBO’s The Last of Us. You’d think, like the games, that this would mean the end of Joel as a character in the show. But according to the showrunners, you can’t rule it out entirely. In a press event held late last week, showrunners Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin sat down for an hour to talk shop about the season 2 finale of The Last of Us. During the Q&A portion of the event, Druckmann and Mazin were asked if the show would ever explore the events between the death of Joel’s daughter Sarah and the time period before he meets Ellie. While the duo initially demurred, both conceded that it wasn’t out of the question in its entirety. “It’s always good to leave some things a mystery, to let the audience use their imagination to fill in the blanks,” Druckmann says. “Obviously, every once in a while, we tap into those mysteries when they’re important for the story we’re telling here. So, I guess, never say never.” Mazin repeated that they’d “never” say the show wouldn’t explore more of Joel, but in the case of season 2, going down that narrative path was a complicated proposition. “And this season was tricky because it was so driven by this traumatic event: Joel dies,” Mazin muses. “And once Joel dies, it is so big and impactful that you don’t have quite as much room to sort of wander down some side streets, you really need to stick to what happens as a result of that, as well as what happened leading up to it. “But I think next season, we probably will have a bit more flexibility. And you know, we love a side trip to Indonesia, it’s one of our favorite things to do, so maybe- maybe a side trip to, you know, Joel and Tommy terrorizing the countryside, we’ll never know.” Druckman chimed in by stating that they never would have guessed that the show would end up exploring Joel’s childhood, as it did in episode 6 of season 2. “You can’t predict these things,” Druckmann says. This sentiment was echoed later by Mazin when discussing the topic of what’s going to happen in season 3. “I’m experienced enough to know that two weeks from now we may have a different idea of how it should go,” Mazin says. “All I can say is we haven’t seen the last of Kaitlyn Dever and we haven’t seen the last of Bella Ramsey, and we haven’t seen the last of Isabela Merced, and we haven’t seen the last of a lot of people who are currently dead in the story.” It’s worth noting that in real life, the cast of The Last of Us already held a “wrap” party for Joel’s actor, Pedro Pascal. You might have already seen footage of Pascal celebrating by dancing with what appears to be a giant rainbow glow stick. To some, this may read as if Pascal’s time on The Last of Us is done. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Capital Buzz (@capitalbuzz) But more Joel wouldn’t necessarily mean that the show brings Pedro Pascal back into the mix. Theoretically, the writers could depict a younger Joel with a different actor, as it did when it depicted Joel as a teen. For now, all we know is that season three will likely place the focus more on Abby to mirror the perspective changes found all throughout the game. The season 2 finale ends with Abby overlooking an enormous Wolf base in Seattle, after all.

HBO’s version of The Last of Us is pretty good at maintaining fidelity to the lauded Naughty Dog games, especially when it comes to the blocking of major scenes. But in a way, that exactitude only magnifies the ways in which the show deviates from the games. While viewers expected changes — a good adaptation needs to justify a reason to exist — some of the creative changes have been met with mixed reactions from the audience. As the showrunners tell it, these creative liberties weren’t done thoughtlessly. In a recent press event for The Last of Us, showrunners Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin dove deep into season 2 as a whole over the course of an hour. Discussions often circled back to the wider topic of what’s possible in games versus film, and how these strengths guided their decisions for what the show would explore and how. On the cliffhanger ending By the time season 2 ends, the show is ambiguous about what happens to Ellie. The last we see of her, it seems as if she gets shot dead by Abby — only for the show to then transition to a totally different day, before any of that happens. Apparently, other endings to the season were considered but nothing stuck. “This always felt like the natural end point for the season,” Druckmann says. Mazin went even further, noting that the choice was made to balance out the changes to the story up until that point. He says, “we have to take risks as a television show, and HBO is to back us taking risks. But then again, we just did kill Pedro Pascal. They understand that this show is going to be a different show every season, which is a sort of 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.‘ And then, hopefully they go, ‘Oh, well, you know what, we actually really like this.’ ‘Oh, that’s nice. Now we’re giving you this now because that’s how the story works.’” On adding Gail as a character Druckmann revealed that they have a “running list” of things that are easier to do in each medium, and changes in perspective are categorized under the TV list. Unlike games, television doesn’t lock you into the perspective of the person you’re controlling; it can be natural for a show to jump around in storylines from scene to scene. “And obviously in the game, perspective shifts in cut scenes, but they are limited by design, they have to be,” Mazin says. “[TV is] nothing but cut scenes.” The ease afforded by TV for different perspectives is partially how the pair arrived at the character of Gail, a therapist in the show who lends Joel an ear. Joel has trouble opening up to Gail, because that would mean admitting that he mowed down a hospital to keep Ellie alive. Gail emphasizes the importance of vocalizing difficult thoughts, which she illustrates by telling Joel that deep down, she hates him. As it turns out, Joel killed Gail’s husband Eugene after he got infected, and it’s something she has never been able to fully get over. “So, Gail in particular, gave us a moment to figure out, not only where is Joel now emotionally, but what’s the story he’s telling himself?,” Mazin says. “What is the thing he’s most afraid of? And what is his opinion about his actions? And all of that is setting up, ultimately, a moment where he, a) has to finally confront the truth, and then b) has to pay the price.” As players know, the start of The Last of Us Part 2 focuses on Abby, the daughter of a doctor killed by Joel in the first game. This was meant as a surprise for players. Naughty Dog went to such lengths to contain this piece of information that in an extended preview of the game, a trailer made it look like Joel was still alive during the journey Ellie embarks on. Pulling off something like that, Maizin says, is way harder on TV because “what we can’t do is reproduce the shock of becoming another person. “In games, you are Joel, you are Ellie, you are Abby, and when that shift happens it’s jarring because you have been someone. But here, we are watching everybody equally on a screen. We may identify with time to time in different ways and we may be conflicted but we’re not them.” On Alice the dog In the season 2 finale of TLOU, Ellie arrives at the aquarium in search of Abby. In the games, there’s a dark moment when Ellie kills a dog named Alice at the aquarium — but it doesn’t happen in the show. In the interactive version, the death is particularly brutal because you also spend some of Abby’s storyline with Alice at your side. The valiant pup saves you from danger and is well-loved, and at least one scene depicts playtime with Alice. Why leave something like that out? Well, Mazin wrote Chernobyl, and in that show, there’s a segment where pets left behind in the nuclear disaster are culled in an effort to prevent further spread of radiation. “I think you get like one dog murdering episode a lifetime,” Mazin says. “There are two cardinal rules in Hollywood, one, don’t spend your own money, two, don’t kill a dog.” That’s the jokey reason, anyway. He continues, “Plus, because it’s live action, the nature of violence becomes much more, well, graphic. It’s more graphic because…it’s not like there’s an animation between you and it, [and] it’s very disturbing.” Druckmann also notes that the timeline of events during the show, the aquarium is sandwiched between a string of heavy moments. Ellie almost dies in one scene, Mel and Owen are killed, and later on, Jessie meets his end as well. “And in our conversation, we’re like this [is] probably one too many,” Druckmann says. On Joel’s last words In the games, the player does not find out that Ellie spoke to Joel the night before he died until well into the story. The show, on the other hand, parades this pivotal moment right away. Except in this version of events, Joel tells Ellie that he killed all those people at the hospital because he loves her in a way she can’t understand. “It also speaks to the adaptation process, which is Pedro’s Joel is more articulate, more outwardly vulnerable than Troy Baker’s Joel, and therefore there are these tiny differences that felt appropriate,” Druckmann says. “It’s harder for me to imagine that line coming out of the game Joel.” The writers wanted to help viewers tie that exchange with the one we see Joel have with his dad earlier in the season. In that episode, Joel confronts his father about his tendency to beat his children. Joel’s dad breaks down and says he’s doing the best he can, and that hopefully, Joel can do a little bit better than he did when he has kids of his own. Legacy and what we inherit from our parents is a more overt theme in the show. Ellie remarks that she’s going to be a father in one scene that doesn’t happen in the games, and later on, she’s shown picking up a book for Dina’s baby. On Tommy’s absence The circumstances surrounding Joel’s death are a tad different in the source material. In the games, Tommy and Joel come across Abby during a patrol. On TV, Dina and Joel collide with Abby’s group while Tommy is seen back in Jackson, defending the town from a wave of infected. In the games, Tommy is the first one to leave for Seattle in search of revenge after Ellie fails to get Jackson’s blessing. For some viewers, this change was frustrating because it made Tommy less active in the story. As the showrunners see it, Tommy isn’t lessened by these changes. Both Mazin and Druckmann point out that Tommy still sees plenty of action, as we watch him defend Jackson and take down a massive infected monster. “We thought it would be interesting if, rather than him going, ‘I’m just going to run out there and kill whoever did this,’ especially without a lot of information, that we would give Ellie and Dina that agency. “But now we know that Tommy is somewhere in there in Seattle, because he and Jesse went after them to save them. And what Tommy does now, once he is outside the confines of Jackson, remember, he’s a veteran. He’s been in war, and we also know that for some time he and Joel were doing some pretty bad things. So, there is the potential of seeing this other side of Tommy, and that is now about him delivering on his promise to his brother, ‘I’m not going to let anything bad happen to that kid’.” For those keeping track, this list of five changes hardly covers every difference between the show and the games. One of the most controversial changes for the fandom lies with Abby. In the games, Abby sports a buff, imposing frame. Kaitlyn Dever, who depicts Abby on-screen, has a much more svelte silhouette. For some, this casting choice felt too “Hollywood.” We’re told that Abby has been obsessing over Joel since the death of her father, and that she spends years getting ready for that moment. Presumably, this motivates Abby to undergo intense physical training — so viewers attach a lot of meaning to that specific character design. If you’re wondering why the show didn’t follow suit, though, that’s a topic that Druckmann and Mazin explored a month ago, in the inaugural podcast that accompanies the show. Dever, they said, was initially in the running to be Ellie when the games were being adapted to a movie. “It was very easy to close your eyes and see her as this character and see that– because this character, going back to what Craig was saying earlier, just has this drive, this passion, this intensity, this intense pursuit of justice, and has to be, like, extremely vulnerable at the same time,” Druckmann said at the time. “And have all these other facets that we haven’t even seen yet. It didn’t take much imagination to view her in that role.” Here, too, Mazin emphasized the differences between TV and movies. During the podcast, Mazin said that the reason Abby is so muscular in the games is because designers have to think about player experiences. When players change perspective, they expect that their actions will feel different in some way too. An effective way of getting there is by giving characters different ranges in physicality. TV, though, doesn’t have that constraint. This allowed the showrunners to focus on other aspects of Abby’s character. “So, to me,” Mazin said, “the key was to find a certain ferocity and a relentlessness. And I think you’ll see some of that as the season goes on and certainly as we go forward with the show.”

The Last of Us season two wraps with episode seven, but was it a satisfying finale? Fun-gal and games. Image credit: HBO Feature by Victoria Phillips Kennedy News Reporter Published on May 26, 2025 The Last of Us' second season has now come to an end, with a gritty episode which delved further into the themes of grief and revenge. Please note, there will be spoilers for The Last of Us - both the show and the game - below. Image credit: HBO I never thought this last episode of The Last of Us season two was going to be easy to pull off. The showrunners delivered a moving episode last week, which, while a great watch, staggered the current day's momentum. And, unfortunately, I don't feel the series gained enough of that momentum back in season two's seventh episode to make for a truly great finale. The finale is not quite 50 minutes long, picking up after the main events of episode five. Jesse is with a wounded Dina in the theatre, where he proceeds to remove the arrow from her leg. Dina tells him she can't die, and also refuses to drink any alcohol, rousing his suspicions that there is something more she isn't telling him. A short time later, Ellie arrives back at the theatre, following her confrontation with Nora. It is clear that this Ellie is a very different person from the Ellie we saw in season one, who after beating David to death was unable to contain her emotions despite her actions in that moment saving her life. She was distressed, crying and shaking. After Ellie beats Nora in Seattle, though, she is almost numb. She does not lash out, but rather stares vacantly as Dina tends to her wounds, calmly saying how she made Nora talk. The Ellie we once knew is fading away. Image credit: HBO The dynamic between Ellie, Dina, and Jesse during the season two finale is a high point of the episode. The three young actors each show an earnestness in their performances. When Ellie tells Isabela Merced's Dina what Joel did at the Firefly hospital, Dina firmly says they need to leave Seattle. They need to go home (this does water down her speach about revenge from earlier in the season, though, it has to be said). Young Mazino's Jesse, meanwhile, serves as the level-headed, parental voice of reason, taking on a role well beyond his years as he rallies the team to find Tommy before they leave Seattle. Lastly, Bella Ramsey continues to deliver a tenacious performance as Ellie. I particularly liked the scene between Ellie and Jesse in the bookshop. Here, Jesse admits that he not only once considered leaving Jackson to be with a woman he had fallen in love with, but that he had voted not to go after Abby during the council meeting several episodes earlier. Jesse does not patronise Ellie here. Instead, he is calm and collected. He explains his reasons, stating that Jackson's community is what's important to him. He acts for the greater good, even if that means sacrificing his personal happiness. He is a natural and capable leader, something that highlights Ellie's increasingly warped sense of reality and scrappiness. Unfortunately though, Jesse's sound words are not enough to get through to Ellie, who sees an opportunity to find Abby, and takes it, even though she promised to go home. And, from here on, the season finale begins to struggle. Image credit: HBO Ellie separates from Dina and Jesse to find Abby, and on her way comes across Seraphites, as well as Mel and Owen. But, while these scenes do pack a punch - seeing Ellie getting hoisted by the neck by the Seraphites is certainly not an easy watch - they don't get enough time to stand on their own and really make an impact on the viewer. The confrontation with the Serphites in the woods is a footnote on Ellie's way to the aquarium. Did it really need to be there? For Ellie's story, I really don't think it did. I appreciate there is the war between the WLF and the Serpaphites ticking along in the background of this episode, but I have played the games. I know what the showrunners are building up to with the WLF and the Seraphites in the background, but if someone doesn't know the source material already, I wonder if these moments - including the one between Isaac and Park at a WLF camp - may fall a little flat due to their lack of clear direction. The Last of Us season two's finale teased events beyond Ellie and Dina, but given viewers will have to wait (potentially) a couple of years to find out what these story scraps all mean, are they actually worth it? | Image credit: HBO Then there is that confrontation between Ellie, Mel and Owen. I say confrontation, but actually the show changes some narrative points here, and I think this is to the detriment of the story. In the show, Ellie shoots Owen in the throat, killing him. Meanwhile, a rogue piece of detritus from the shot lodges itself in Mel's neck, wounding her enough that her death is inevitable. So, Mel's death was accidental. I don't think it should have been. In the game, Ellie knows what she is doing as she kills Mel, and I wish the series had committed to making Ellie's killing spree, which continues to show her downward spiral on her quest for revenge, intentional. I will say this, though. The moment it is revealed that Mel is pregnant is certainly a harrowing one, and Ariela Barer does a brilliant job bringing emotion to Mel's death as she reaches out to Ellie in a bid to save her unborn child. I wish Ellie had been stronger here. Ellie is clearly upset by the accident which led to Mel's death, and is deeply affected at the realisation that Mel is pregnant. Of course, it reflects Dina's pregnancy. And yet, when in her dying moments Mel asks Ellie if her baby is OK, Ellie can't even muster a small lie to ease her passing. She just stays silent. Changes like making Mel's death accidental dilute the impact of The Last of Us Part 2's story. I feel the show made Ellie seem quite infantile here, when really by this moment in the game we are starting to see the real darkness in Ellie, which makes the player further question if her bloody quest for revenge is actually justifiable any more. Meanwhile, although I can not fault the actors who continue to deliver some truly outstanding performances, any impact this moment may have had on viewers is over too quickly. Jesse and Tommy arrive to see Ellie looking distressed, and swiftly remove both her and, by extension, the viewers from the scene. It's uncomfortable, but it would have benefited the story to let us all sit in that moment for longer, to allow the reality of it all to nestle in. Image credit: HBO The rest of the episode continues to happen at breakneck speed, and while she doesn't get much screen time, Kaitlyn Dever steals the scene with Abby's return, making a big impression very quickly. Prior to the season two's debut, there was much chatter about Dever being physically very different from her in-game counterpart. But, while smaller in build, there is no doubting Abby's capabilities in the show. She means business, and while Ellie's kills have often been messy and lacking finesse, it is clear Abby has military training and a steady resolve. The show ends with a cliffhanger, with Jesse dead Abby shoots at Ellie before we cut back to Abby at the WLF base in Seattle. "Day One," the screen teases. Now, we are going to hear Abby's side of the story. It is an interesting set up, for sure. But, again, I worry how those who have not played the games will feel about season two ending this way. Has the show done enough to pull viewers back for season three, which is still potentially several years away, where the focus will be on a character we have actually spent very little time with? Image credit: HBO The second season of The Last of Us has been uneven. There is no doubting the production value behind the season, and the actors have all done a phenomenal job bringing Naughty Dog's characters to life for TV. Merced's Dina has been a particular highlight this season and, along with Mazino, has been a brilliant addition to the cast. But, despite these great performances, the story has felt both too slow and too rushed. Episodes such as the series' second instalment offered plenty of action, but then episodes such as the fifth and today's finale felt more like a patchwork of convenient and sometimes rather dull moments, all dashing to an all-too-quick conclusion. Spores, for example, only showed up once to serve Nora's death. It would have been good to have seen them at least one more during the season to make their introduction feel less contrived. Image credit: HBO Saying that, though, I am genuinely looking forward to season three, which was confirmed earlier this year. Showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann have an interesting journey ahead of them, and I am curious to see how they will continue to evolve and adapt The Last of Us Part 2 for TV. Before I go, I will give season two credit for something extra, though - I am so glad we didn't have to see Ellie kill a dog (also, thank you Jesse for confirming Shimmer is actually OK, despite seemingly being forgotten about Ellie and Dina). She lives! | Image credit: HBO And with that, that's a wrap on The Last of Us season two. Thank you for joining me each week to discuss the episodes as they happen. Until next time, keep looking for the light!

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.

Rick and Morty remains a staggering work of chaotic creativity. Previewing a handful of episodes from season 8, which premieres Sunday, May 25 with a Matrix-themed story inspired by phone charger theft, I still had that brain-melty “How do they think of this stuff?” feeling from when the show premiered more than a decade ago. The characters aren’t all the same as they were back in 2013 (voice actors aside): Morty has an edge from being around the galactic block a few hundred times, and Rick, while still a maniac, seems to carry the weight of cloning his daughter Beth that one time.  But the sheer amount of wackadoo sci-fi comedy that creator Dan Harmon, showrunner Scott Marder, and their team of writers pack into each half-hour hasn’t lost the awe. This season, that includes everything from a body-horror spin on the Easter Bunny to a “spiritual sequel” (Harmon’s words) to season 3’s beloved Citadel episode “The Ricklantis Mixup.” So where does writing yet another season of Rick and Morty begin? And what does a new season need to accomplish at this point? Polygon talked to Harmon and Marder, who wrote seasons 8, 9, and 10 all in one go, about the tall-order task of reapproaching the Adult Swim series with so much madcap history behind them. Polygon: Where do you even start writing a new episode, when your show can zip in any fantastical direction, or go completely ham on its own mythology? Scott Marder: You might be surprised that we never start off a season with “What’s the canon we owe?” That’s the heavy lifting, and not necessarily how we want to start a season off. There are always people on staff that are hyper-aware of where we are in that central arc that’s going across the whole series, but it’s like any writers room — people are coming in with ideas they’re excited about. You can just see it on their faces. You can feel their energy and just spit it out, and people just start firing off things they’re excited about. We don’t try to have any rules or any setup. Sometimes there are seasons where we owe something from the previous season. In season 8, we didn’t, and that was luxurious. Dan Harmon: I always reference the Dexter season where they tried to save the revelation that a Fight Club was happening for the end, and after the first episode, all of Reddit had decoded it. I marked that moment as sort of “We are now in post-payoff TV.” As TV writers, we have to use what the audience doesn’t have, which is a TV writers room. That isn’t 10 people sitting around planning a funhouse, because they’re not going to plan as good a funhouse as a million people can plan for free by crowdsourcing.  But we can mix chocolate with giant machines that people can’t afford and don’t have in their kitchen. We can use resources and things to make something that’s delicious to watch. So that becomes the obligation when we sit down for seasons. We never go, “What’s going to be the big payoff? What’s going to be the big old twist? What are we going to reveal?” I think that that’s a non-starter for the modern audience. You just have to hope that the thing that ends up making headlines is a “How is it still good?” kind of thing — that’s the only narrative you can blow people’s minds with. Even if “lore” isn’t the genesis of a new season, Rick & Morty still exists in an interesting middle ground between episodic and serialized storytelling. Do you need the show to have one or the other when you want a season to have impact? Harmon: It’s less episodic than Hercules or Xena. It’s not Small Wonder or something where canon would defeat their own purpose. But it is way more episodic than Yellowjackets — I walked in on Cody [Heller, Harmon’s partner] watching season 2 of [Yellowjackets], and literally there wasn’t a single line of dialogue that made sense to me, and that was how she liked it. They were all talking about whatever happened in season 1.  Referencing The Pitt, I think is the new perfect example of how you can’t shake your cane at serialization. In a post-streaming marketplace, The Pitt represents a new opportunity for old showrunners, new viewers to do things you couldn’t do before, that you can now do with serialization, and issuing the time-slot-driven narrative model. Our show needs to be Doctor Who or Deep Space Nine. It comes from a tradition of, you need to be able to eat one piece of chocolate out of the box, but the characters need to, more so than a Saved by the Bell character, grow and change and have things about them that get revealed over time that don’t then get retconned. Marder: Ideally, the show’s evergreen, generally episodic. But we’re keeping an eye on serialized stuff, moments across each season that keep everyone engaged. I know people care about all that stuff. I think all of that combined makes for a perfect Rick and Morty season. How reactive is writing a new season of Rick and Morty? Does season 8 feel very 2025 to you, or is the goal timelessness? Harmon: The show has seen such a turbulent decade, and one of the cultural things that has happened is, TV is now always being watched by the entire planet. So people often ask “Is there anything that you’re afraid to do or can’t do?” The answer to that is “No.” But then at the same time, I don’t think the show has an edge that it needs to push, or would profit from pushing. It’s almost the opposite, in that the difficult thing is figuring out how to keep Rick from being Flanderized as a character that was a nihilist 10 years ago, where across an epoch of culture and TV, Rick was simply the guy saying, “By the way, God doesn’t exist” and having a cash register “Cha-ching!” from him saying that.  How do you keep House from not becoming pathetic on the 10th season of House if House has made people go, “I trust House because he’s such a crab-ass and he doesn’t care about your feelings when he diagnoses you!” I mean, you need to very delicately cultivate a House. So if you do care about the character, and value its outside perspective, it needs to be delicately changed to balance a changing ecosystem.  What a weird rambling answer to that question. But yeah, with Rick, it’s now like, “What if you’re kind of post-achievement? What if your nihilism isn’t going to pay the rent, as far as emotional relationships?” It’s not going to blow anyone’s mind, least of all his own. Where does that leave him? A new set of challenges. He’s still cynical, he’s still a nihilist. He’s still self-loathing, and filled with self-damage. Those things are wired into him. And yet he’s also acknowledged that other people are arbitrarily important to him. And so I guess we start there — that’s the only thing we can do to challenge ourselves.  Marder: I would say, just yes-anding Harmon, that’s sort of the light arc that runs through the season. Just kind of Rick living in a “retirement state.” What does he do now that this vendetta is over? He’s dealing with the family now, dealing with the Beths. That’s some of the stuff that we touch on lightly through it.  Which characters were you excited to see grow this season? Marder: I don’t think anyone had an agenda. It just kind of happened that we ended up finding a really neat Beth arc once Beth got split in two. It made her a way more intriguing character. One part of you literally gets to live the road less traveled, and this season really explores whether either of them are leading a happier life. Rick has to deal with being at the root of all that.  When we stumble onto something like a Jerry episode, like the Easter [one], that’s a treat, or Summer and the phone charger. She’s such an awesome character. It’s cool to see how she and Morty are evolving and becoming better at being the sidekick and handling themselves. It was cool watching her become a powerful CEO, then step back into her old life. We are very lucky that we’ve got a strong cast.  Are there any concepts in season 8 you’ve tried to get in the show for years and only now found a way? Harmon: My frustrating answer to that question is that the answer to that question is one that happens in season 9! [A thing] I’ve actually been wanting to do in television or in movies forever, and we figured out how to do it.  There are definitely things in every episode, but it’s hard to tell which ones. We have a shoebox of “Oh, this idea can’t be done now,” but it’s like a cow’s digestive system. Ideas for seasons just keep getting passed down. Marder: There are a few that are magnetic that we can’t crack, and that we kind of leave on the board, hoping that maybe a new guy will come in and see it comedically. I feel like every season, a new person will come in and see that we have “time loop” up on the board, and they’ll crack their knuckles and be like, “I’m going to break the time loop.” And then we all spend three days trying to break “time loop.” Then it goes back on the board, and we’re reminded why we don’t do time loops.  Harmon: That is so funny. That is the reality, and it’s funny how mythical it is. It’s like an island on a pre-Columbian map in a ship’s galley, and some new deckhand comes in going, “What’s the Galapagos?” And we’re like, “Yarr, you little piece of shit, sit down and I’ll tell you a tale!” And they’ll either be successfully warned off, or they’ll go, “I’m going to take it.” Marder: It’s always like, “I can’t remember why that one made it back on the board… I can’t remember why we couldn’t crack it…” And then three days later, you’re like, “I remember why we couldn’t crack it.” Now an eager young writer is seasoned and grizzled. “It was a mistake to go to the time loop.”

Back in 2010, when Cartoon Network first announced its plan to reboot the beloved 1985 animated TV series Thundercats, the first thought that went through my mind was, “That’s great! Do Blackstar next!” In 2014, when Boat Rocker Media announced its reboot of 1981’s Danger Mouse, same thing: “Huh, interesting, but do Blackstar next.” 2016’s Disney reveal about its reboot of 1987’s Duck Tales? “Rad. But… Blackstar?” And so it went, year after year, with the announcements about 2018’s Netflix reboot of She-Ra: Princess of Power, 2021’s He-Man reboot Masters of the Universe: Revelation, the CG version of Inspector Gadget, the American Voltron update Voltron: Legendary Defender, half a dozen new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Transformers projects, a little-loved second Thundercats series, and every single Smurfs movie. I get it — the kids of the ’80s are producers and writers and showrunners now, with enough clout to get their childhood memories turned into new shows. But apparently none of them watched Blackstar, easily one of the coolest animated series of the 1980s, built around the coolest sword. There’s a direct genetic line between the success of 1977’s Star Wars and the wave of space-set, fantasy-themed Saturday morning cartoons that closely followed. Star Wars beget ABC’s popular Thundarr the Barbarian, a post-apocalyptic dystopian-future fantasy about a muscular hero who fought oppressive magical villains while wearing a fur skirt, hanging out with a leotard-clad sorceress, and more or less carrying a lightsaber and traveling with a Wookiee. Thundarr helped inspire Blackstar, CBS’ equivalent show, about a muscular hero who fought oppressive magical villains while wearing a fur skirt, hanging out with a leotard-clad sorceress, and carrying his own form of laser sword. (No Wookiee, though — instead, series hero Blackstar got to ride a dragon.) Both shows were on the leading edge of the post-Star Wars dark fantasy wave, leading to movies like Excalibur, Conan the Barbarian, and Dragonslayer. But unlike most of those ’80s fantasies — Flash Gordon aside — Thundarr and Blackstar kept a foot in Star Wars’ science fiction roots, hanging onto the idea of worlds where technology and mysticism met and clashed. Thundarr was more popular, but Blackstar was more compelling: a weirder, darker, richer world with a lot more going on, and a much more imaginative sword that wasn’t just a lightly reskinned lightsaber. Though the show only managed a single season and 13 episodes (compared with Thundarr’s two-year, 21-episode stint), Blackstar’s potential still sticks with me decades later. The story in brief: An astronaut from a future Earth, John Blackstar, enters a black hole in his experimental timeship, and winds up trapped on an ancient alien world, full of magic and monsters. (It’s essentially an isekai series, decades before isekai was the hottest trend in anime and manga.) The local Sauron equivalent, the Overlord, dominates the planet Sagar with an artifact called the Powerstar, a huge two-handed crystalline energy sword. Somehow, the Powerstar gets broken into identical halves, producing two badass weapons: the Power Sword, which the Overlord still holds, and the Star Sword, which falls into Blackstar’s hands. Blackstar winds up as the figurehead in a growing rebellion against the Overlord’s. Meanwhile, the Overlord wants not just to squash this budding rebellion, but to reclaim the Star Sword and take up the Powerstar again. In a series of interviews for Blackstar’s 2006 DVD release, the creators and writers cop to some of their influences in writing the show: The protagonist is a little bit John Carter of Mars (the original Edgar Rice Burroughs version, not the 2012 fantasy-movie version) and a little bit Flash Gordon, though he also closely resembles the protagonist of the 1979 live-action series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. The Trobbits — tiny comedy-relief people who find and rescue Blackstar after his timeship crashes — take a little inspiration from J.R.R. Tolkien’s hobbits, and a lot more from Disney’s seven dwarfs, complete with the “one personality trait apiece” dynamic, and a youngest member who never speaks. (There are also seven of them.)  The Overlord is somewhere between Darth Vader and Ming the Merciless, while Blackstar’s sorceress companion, Mara, is basically just a reskin of Thundarr’s Princess Ariel, with very similar powers, a similar elegant, educated personality and role as party historian, and similar obvious crush on the oblivious hero. Although these characters rarely feel unique, the mythology and setting of Blackstar’s world very much do, and the central plot device of the Powerstar is unique in fantasy animation. The symmetry of the central villain and hero each having half of the world’s most legendary weapon — which is to say, half of the power left in a world struggling to define itself — is a clever riff on the idea that heroes and villains should mirror each other for maximum thematic impact. Their connection through the sundered Powerstar gives the protagonist and antagonist an intimate personal connection, a reason to clash again and again. It also helps define their characters, and what they do with power. It’s no coincidence that in the Overlord’s hands, the Power Sword is all blunt force, used solely to blast or slash, while Blackstar uses the Star Sword as a finesse weapon with flexible magical abilities. (Too flexible, really: Its magic is ill-defined, and the show’s writers invented new Star Sword powers in nearly every episode.) The idea of these two swords as yin and yang, perfect halves that assemble into a greater whole, is unusually elegant for an ’80s cartoon — and one of the series’ many ideas that was never really explored to full advantage. For modern viewers Blackstar is fairly close to unwatchable. Its production company, Filmation, emerged from a series of commercial jobs in the 1960s, but by the 1980s, it specialized in budget-priced television animated entirely in America, rather than in cheaper overseas production houses. That necessitated a lot of cost-saving devices, like recycling the same hand-drawn sequences many times over, often within the same episode, and using a hilariously limited library of sound effects. Blackstar’s sound design is garish and repetitive, with vocal work that sounds like almost everyone is shouting. The scripts are clunky: Blackstar is conceived as a quippy hero who peppers his foes with snarky one-liners, but his jokes are cataclysmically stiff. About the best he can muster is a jaunty “Putting on a little weight, aren’t you, Rocko?” when hefting one rock elemental to toss it onto another during a battle. And the series is designed for the syndication of the era, meaning that episodes might re-air in any order. So there’s no story development, no character arcs, not even an opening episode to establish Blackstar’s origins. Continuity glitches, inconsistent design and storytelling, and budget-saving slow pans across paintings abound. But the world it’s set in is fascinating. There are hints here and there of ancient technologies and centuries-old civilizations buried under what’s become a verdant forest, centered on the magic of the gigantic central Sagar tree, a mystic font of power the Trobbits live in and tend to. Sagar is a world full of weird creatures that seem either like evolutions of familiar animals, or like magical constructs — shark-bats and frog-rabbits and monkey-birds, long before Avatar: The Last Airbender made these kinds of amalgams a running joke. Those slow-pan, cash-saving painting backgrounds are rich, elaborate, and colorful, suggesting a world with the darkness and detail of Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal.  While so much of 1980s animation was about the clear line between good and evil, there’s a sense throughout Blackstar that most of the world of Sagar isn’t aspected in such a black-and-white way. It’s just a chaotic ruin, where hungry monsters, prim but weary civilizations, and barbaric enclaves all exist side by side, divided by lethal geography. Every scattered outpost and wandering monster is equally dangerous to Blackstar and the Overlord, but ripe for either of them to exploit for an advantage in their ongoing war. There are even hints at a nuanced system for magic, where the mental power of sorcery and the elemental power of nature magic are different things that work in different ways. After Blackstar’s single season ended, Filmation immediately followed it with the Mattel-backed and far better funded He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, a series based on an existing toy line, but just as clearly based on elements borrowed from Blackstar. Once again, there’s a muscular hero in a fur skirt with a magic sword, battling a sorcerous villain in a chaotic technofantasy world packed with environmental hazards and weird, wildly diverse humanoids. Filmation regular Alan Oppenheimer voiced both Blackstar’s Overlord and He-Man’s Skeletor; similarly, Linda Gary voiced Blackstar’s leading lady Mara and He-Man’s Teela. Filmation staff writer Tom Ruegger developed the series bible for both shows, and it shows, in everything from the similar heroes’ and rogues’ galleries to the sprawling high-and-low-tech world where magic and robots co-exist. One He-Man episode, “The Remedy,” even reused several Blackstar sequences, reintroducing Blackstar’s dragon-horse Warlock as a beast He-Man saves from a giant spider, then rides around. While He-Man had many of the same budgetary and aesthetic limitations as Blackstar — frequently recycled animation, obnoxious sound design, goofy and often ineffectual comedy relief — He-Man was immediately more popular. So popular, in fact that toy maker Galoob tried to nab some of Mattel’s sales success by putting out a weirdly modeled toy line for Blackstar, two full years after the show was canceled. (Those toys did not do well.) Now, we’re in an era where He-Man gets reboot after reboot — an all-ages animated version, a CG version for kids, a new live-action movie scheduled for 2026 — while Blackstar is all but forgotten. And I find that so strange. The bid to reboot and update every hit cartoon of the 1980s seems like a natural enough progression for an era of media fueled by nostalgia, but I’ve never understood why there isn’t more of it for Blackstar, a series that was more imaginative and ambitious than either the predecessor it was trying to outdo or the follower that got all the glory. In the way of so many other ’80s cartoons, my interest in a reboot is much less about re-creating an often janky, limited, cheaply made TV series, and much more about realizing the potential these characters and this world couldn’t take advantage of in the 1980s. A modern version with up-to-date animation could give John Blackstar a proper backstory, and actually make some sense of the biggest hero/villain themes the ’80s version lightly touched on. It could take advantage of the retro-future magic setting and the sprawling original world of Sagar in ways Filmation never dreamed of.  And most importantly, a proper modern update could finally dig into the event that split the Powerstar and turned its two halves into thematic weapons. There are so many story possibilities for that particular cool sword, just waiting to be discovered by a new generation.

After years of development, HBO has finally released a teaser for its prequel series, It: Welcome To Derry, which will debut this fall. The series is developed by It and It: Chapter Two director/screenwriter duo Andy Muschietti and Barbara Muschietti, with Andy set to direct multiple episodes of the series. “Set in the world of Stephen King’s ‘IT’ universe, IT: WELCOME TO DERRY is based on King’s ‘IT’ novel and expands the vision established by filmmaker Andy Muschietti in the feature films ‘IT’ and ‘IT Chapter Two,’” reads the official longline. The series takes place 27 years prior to the events of both films. According to the lore, the malevolent entity known as It preys on children before entering a 27-year slumber. This show explores its earlier killing spree, setting the stage for the events depicted in the It movies. In a conversation with Radio TU (via Bloody Disgusting), Muschietti teased that “the first season is 1962, the second season is 1935, and the third season is 1908.” These time periods are drawn from the interludes in the novel, which follow Mike Hanlon’s research into Derry’s dark history and the three major incidents believed to be caused by It. Bill Skarsgård is set to reprise his role as Pennywise the Dancing Clown, which Stephen King fans widely praised as perfect casting for the iconic villain. Although Skarsgård wasn’t originally attached to the project, he ultimately decided to join the show. Taylour Paige, Jovan Adepo, Chris Chalk, James Remar, Stephen Rider, Madeleine Stowe, and Rudy Mancuso round out the cast. Jason Fuchs, who wrote the teleplay for the first episode, and Brad Caleb Kane serve as co-showrunners on the project.

This article contains spoilers for Hacks season 4 episode 7. Hollywood changes people. But rarely has the glitz and glamor of Tinseltown changed somebody more quickly than Dance Mom on Hacks. In the fourth episode of the fourth season of this beloved comedy on HBO Max (Hey, we get to call it “HBO Max” again!), Julianne Nicholson’s unnamed character is introduced as a humble, middle-aged TikTok content creator from rural Alberta who just wants to dance…hence: Dance Mom. Recognizing that Deborah Vance’s (Jean Smart) late night show has a female demographic problem, her co-manager Kayla Schaeffer (Megan Stalter) identifies Dance Mom as a potential solution. Dance Mom might as well have been constructed in an Ellen DeGeneres laboratory to appeal to middle America. Her humble Canadian origins and inoffensive personality shine through in her first meeting with Jimmy LaSaque (Paul W. Downs) and Kayla as they show her around some major Los Angeles landmarks like Rodeo Drive, Sunset Boulevard, and, of course, the Ripley’s Believe It or Not on Hollywood Boulevard. “I feel like the Beverly Hills Chihuahua!” Dance Mom exclaims as she takes in all the beautiful people wearing makeup in the daytime. This is only her second time in the States, with the first being a trip to the Heinz (as in Ketchup) History Center in Pittsburgh as a child. It takes some convincing but Dance Mom agrees to try out for Deborah’s show. She’s then invited on to perform that same day after Deborah and lead writer Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder) alienate the studio audience with an argument. Thankfully, Dance Mom’s wholesome routine wins the audience back and she becomes a mainstay for the show, counterbalancing Deborah’s caustic sense of humor with a cheerful smile. Two episodes later Dance Mom is living in Adam Levine’s 12-bedroom mansion; has blown through $1 million in 48 hours on cars, clothes, and whippets; and has lost a crucial Old Navy brand ambassadorship. Oh, and she doesn’t have any kids by the way. The rapid rise and fall of Dance Mom represents the kind of fun a long-running comedy can have when it’s firing on all cylinders. Through three (very heavily-awarded and acclaimed) seasons, Hacks has its most important dynamic down pat. The creative push and pull between platonic soulmates Deborah Vance and Ava Daniels give Hacks all the energy it needs to drive multiple seasons of comedic storytelling. With the time it has left over for B-plots and C-plots, the show can afford to get experimental. While a less confident series might have spread the dancing Albertan’s degeneracy across a whole season, Hacks maximizes its impact with a two-episode whip cut. One day Dance Mom is respectfully declining sparkling water (“Not for me, too spicy”), the next day she’s yeeting a spent “Astro Gas” canister while yelling “Steve Nash!,” which is obviously the Canadian version of “Kobe!”* *It must be pointed out that someone on the Hacks writing staff really knows ball. Of course, the saga of Dance Mom wouldn’t hit quite as hard without the right performance. Thanks to Julianne Nicholson, series showrunners Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, Jen Statsky have found exactly that. Even before Hacks gave her the opportunity to lounge around Adam Levine’s place, Nicholson has been having a hell of a year. Hulu subscribers may recognize her Samantha “Sinatra” Redmond, the creative lynchpin of sci-fi/thriller Paradise. Before that, the Massachusetts-born actress won an Emmy for playing beleaguered mother Lori Ross in Mare of Easttown. As evidenced by her most notable characters’ hyper-regional specificity (Delaware County, Alberta, and a post-apocalyptic underground bunker), Nicholson is a versatile performer. Through many of her roles though, she brings a similar sense of impishness. Lori Ross, Sinatra, and Dance Mom all possess a child-like sense of frustration and disappointment to varying degrees, as though they woke up one day in adult bodies without their consent. In that way, Nicholson brings a welcome Carrie Coon vibe to the table. And anyone who knows anything about Den of Geek knows we don’t make that comparison lightly. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! Nicholson brings not only an offbeat gravitas to the role but a sense of pure joy at being able to cut loose. With only three episodes left to go in Hacks season 4, it remains to be seen how much further Dance Mom can fall. If this is it, however, one can’t say that Dance Mom didn’t go out her way: by doing a lot of drugs and dancing…but mostly the drugs. New episodes of Hacks season 4 premiere Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on (soon-to-be HBO) Max, culminating with the finale on May 29.