Love in the time of Cordyceps
Back in 2014, I experienced The Last of Us, and thought I will never experience this again. Until Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey showed up at my doorstep in January, 2022.
On the evening of 12th March 2023, I was hanging my head low and simply appreciating the journey that Naughty Dog Studios set for two broken souls, Joel, and Ellie. The Last of Us, the story that hit me 10 years ago and left me dry, now morphed into a full-blown HBO show and had the same, if not bigger, impact. Back in 2014, while writing a review for a video game, I was blown away by the multiple emotions it could stimulate and let me care about two fictional characters having to deal with fictional problems in a fictional world. I wanted to talk about the steady frame-rate on my fast-fading PS3, but my heart wanted to open up about the amount of love the game showed in a world without much hope.
After a break of 10 years and having seen a strikingly different version of Joel-Ellie, played by Pedro Pascal (of the Mandalorian) and Bella Ramsey (of Game of Thrones), my instant reaction was to boot up the original TLOU on my state-of-the-art PS5. The Re-Remaster had an extreme price tag so I decided to disregard the graphical enhancements and just enjoy what my PS5 could deliver with the first Remaster. And I got stuck on that Menu screen yet again for about 20 minutes since booting it. I didn’t move, didn’t flinch. 10 years after, it is still the most peaceful and beautiful 20 minutes I gave myself.
I loved both versions of The Last of Us; I think I mentioned this before. Each one had its own pacing and bond with the audience/gamer. For television, I think the feeling of desolation and ultimate hope in a post-apocalyptic world was long gone, maybe since the Season 4 Finale of The Walking Dead, when Beth Greene was taken from Daryl Dixon. And that’s where The Last of Us hit the audience with curve balls multiple times within a single season. For gamers who knew certain ends were coming, the change of pace (from the game to the show) as well the live action rendition of iconic scenes lent freshness and kept them guessing and rooting for characters. Even as they fell.
The Last of Us game was set up in a simple style: build up suspense, whether in the form of introducing a new character or area, and release the suspense, in either hope or despair. Back in 2013, when games were all about looting banks and hijacking cars, The Last of Us was all about immersion, to the point the person starts caring for the characters, including the NPCs. In all chapters, there was a conscious split ratio of 1:4, where for every 1 minute of cut scene or dialogue content, there would be 4 minutes of gameplay to immerse you in that situation.
With TV content, that vicarious immersion of playing the game and being the characters was out of the window. And it wasn’t a bad thing after all. I first played TLOU 1 when I was 24, so immersion via the joypad was key for me to blend into the story. However, today, as a 34-year-old adult, who has had his share of TV content and more complex forms of video games, I was fine taking a backseat without any hand-eye co-ordination to move the story forward. Today, I primarily pick games to escape and TV shows to find solace, maybe that’s why Death Stranding never worked on me. Although I saw huge potential in it to be a great TV show.
Things could’ve gone all wrong for the TLOU show merely because of the high standards the video game set. Troy Baker was a known phenomenon in the gaming world by then, thanks to the repertoire of characters he played for the video games industry. But Ashley Johnson was a definite outsider. Nobody in this part of the world knew who she was, besides a small cameo in the first Avengers film. Ellie, a foul-mouthed, 14-year-old brat who is also the cure for mankind, was a tricky character to play for a full-blown adult. But Ashley Johnson knocked it out of the park with ease. Her mannerisms were spot on for a lost child, the ups and downs in her voice and the frequent humming and trying to whistle are just tiny pieces that I can chalk out. When you try to re-do what they have done, in your own style, you are largely stepping on some deeply caring fan territory. For all I can say, Pedro and Bella surfed amongst that crowd like proper rockstars.
Bella is a serious actress, especially for her age. When I heard in The Last of Us podcast that she suggested the director/writer to let Ellie keep the knife close to her during her initial days with Joel and Tess, I was blown away by how much this kid got the basics of characters right. Like I said before, Ellie is a complex character. A kid when you see her, but had to prepone adulthood into her, given the circumstances in the world and having to carry that great burden on her, being ‘the cure for the world’. You tread even a bit heavier on either sides of that puberty scale, and the character is doomed. She must constantly humour and un-humour situations, she must swing from being the ‘baby girl’ to being the ‘cargo’. Bella’s age and experience as Lady Mormont accentuated that bit of Ellie’s character.
Pedro, in my opinion, was a notch above what Troy Baker did with Joel’s character. While Baker was exceptional in the way he contoured Joel’s insecurities, love, and fears along with his anti-hero nature, Pedro Pascal showed in a few less words how his presence merely can do the same and more. His flinching during the scene where he got to know that his partner, Tess, was bitten, was insanely beautiful. Although it was inspired by Joel moving away from Tess after seeing the bite-mark in the video game, Pedro did it probably with more impact, as Ellie was still unsure of leaving Tess and moving on with Joel in the show, unlike in the game.
The show did shift and steer away from some parts of the video game, to keep it authentic and surprising in its own ways. One of the best diversions from the game, which was produced in the show, was the story of Bill and Frank. Bill and Frank in the game are at loggerheads with each other, each accusing the other of ruining their lives. Frank was so minor as a character in the game that Bill had to look at his dead corpse and sigh, almost in relief, after getting to know that he was planning to run away with his resources. In the show, Bill and Frank are inseparable from the time they meet. As Frank nears his end, Bill wants to be with his partner, an extension of the promise we see during Riley and Ellie’s night-out when both are bitten and are waiting to die on their own terms, even though it doesn’t end that way. I think that was the longest episode in the show and it deserved some more minutes of run-time if I have to be supremely honest.
In the game, my favourite chapter was perhaps crossing Bill’s town. With its own set of booby traps and clickers waiting to feed on Ellie and Joel. The map, along with its detours, its mission, and its challenges (introducing the first bloater in the game and the upside-down shootout) was pivotal in setting the challenging gameplay in The Last of Us. So, when you take such an iconic chapter out of the show, you need to replace it with something even better, bigger. In a utopian scenario, I would’ve wanted both the TV show version as well as the game version to be in it; a state of decay from Bill and Frank’s POV and a city of traps from Joel and Ellie’s. But even without it, the third episode of The Last of Us TV show is a fantastic testament to great screen writing, acting and fundamentally taking a risk which might take the suspense-led pleasure away from fans.
Playing the game and hearing from Marlene, during her conversation with Joel, and in one of the relic files you recover at the hospital, that Ellie’s mother was instrumental in Marlene’s journey so far; I feel it was extremely important to delve slightly into that, especially now that you have the framework of a 9-episode TV season. And what a way to bring back Ashley Johnson and lending a symbolic applause for her portrayal of Ellie. The scene is as frightening as it is emotional, as a pregnant mother tries her best to save herself and the unborn baby from infected runners.
The very fact that Anna, Ellie’s mom, was played by Ashley, the OG Ellie, kind of makes it even more emotional for gamers who are returning to the show after 10 years. Her association with The Last of Us changed the direction that video games were taking with lead characters, especially female. A bold, wild, female protagonist who was discovering her sexuality as well her chances of surviving in a torn apart world, was class apart from what the industry was producing then — primarily damsels in wrong castles. And maybe even now, if you look at a game like Forspoken.
Anna’s last words as she dies, “You fucking tell ’em Ellie!” is a reflection of Ashley Johnson’s own body of work, known as Ellie. Besides the easter egg dialogue, for me what makes the scene beautiful is how Anna passes on the switchblade that she used to clip the umbilical cord off Ellie to her daughter. The switchblade becomes Ellie’s weapon of choice throughout the show and game, especially so because Joel denies her a gun initially.
The third favourite diversion/inclusion in the show, that I feel was not existing in the game was the neural network of cordyceps that was shown in the chapter leading to Tess’s death. This is a game changer. Had this been included in the game, it would have given the players a slightly more reflex based challenge, and trained them to be self-aware of their surroundings. There are times in the game that I have simply rushed through without caring to look out for cordyceps, especially during human encounters — especially inside the hotel that you need to climb before encountering with Sam and Henry. Had you stepped on a cordyceps network somewhere by accident and triggered a horde, all amidst a human fight, it would have been a really intense playthrough, with a higher pay-off.
And last but not the least, the creative diversion that the team took to portray Tess’ demise was as perfect as perfection can be. In the game, she gets shot at and Joel and Ellie simply walk past her corpse and defends their own lives inside the building. However, in the show, the FEDRA gang is rightfully replaced by the infected; and we see a proper last stand that Tess deserved to put in the game. Infected herself, Tess is shown to battle her own turning and slow it down, even though she cannot save herself from the iconic kiss, and flick that lighter with more power each time to destroy the infected and the being she’s about to turn herself into. Anna Torv replaces the legendary Annie Wersching (who passed away this January) in the TV adaptation and nearly stole the show from Joel and Ellie in that single act.
Some of the iconic elements that were retained from the game were also equally valuable for the show. My mind travels to the first instance of a perfect in-game/in-show moment, and that is the ranch scene. Ellie runs away from Joel and Tommy, after she hears that her journey is about to shift hands from Joel to Tommy, and confronts him and his insecurities, especially in the form of Sarah. In my opinion, both Ashley Johnson and Bella Ramsey peaked in that scene, as Ellie indirectly tries to teach Joel how important he is to her survival. It is a heart wrenching scene where Ellie confronts separation anxiety and Joel confronts the act of caring for someone.
The second iconic retention from the game might look shallow on the surface but is so important as an element that had the potential to make or break this show on authentic terms. And that is the look, sound, and movement of the clickers. I remember when I first played The Last of Us, given my existing history with post-apocalyptic and zombie games, like Left 4 Dead and Resident Evil, the twisted enemies in the game and the way they were historically different to their predecessors, drew me closer to the title. The clickers had a clicking sound, and as they made the sound, they would walk in almost alternate framerates. The runners would hold their head in corners of the map as if it’s a case of Monday migraine and run rabidly towards you if you make the slightest noise. Actors in the show had to put up prosthetics and add several pounds extra to their body and walk around, channelizing their infected and clicking and twitching periodically. I heard in one of the interviews that the bloater costume was a 2-hour preparation and 80 pounds in weight. The finesse in the body language of the runners, clickers and bloaters, despite all these technical drawbacks, is something that only real dedication can pull off.
My personal favourite part to be retained as it is from the game has to be the character arc of David, the antagonist whom Ellie has to face during her journey without Joel. David is the peer opposite of Maria, as a leader. Contrary to the prosecutor who set up Jackson in the heart of a self-sustained hydro dam, David is leading a pack of nomads who go from place to place, ravaging supplies and converting as many to multiply their patriarchal cult family. During the game, Ellie and David had to survive a horde of infected inside an abandoned mill, which partially developed the story. When the TV show version came without that sequence, it needed Bella and Scott Shepherd, the actor who played David, to immediately strike a resemblance with each other after James goes to Lakeside Resort to get penicillin for Ellie. For David, the show creators also developed a short prologue that develops his character without the mill scene, as you get to see him preaching sermons of rebirth, trying to feed his family and showing extreme paternal personality disorders while interacting with his people. David’s emphasis on ‘everything happens for a reason’ and his vision of a world accepting the truth and doing its best to sustain itself (often resorting to cannibalism) is clinical in building Ellie’s character, because she nearly solo’s an entire town without Joel’s help. In the game, Lakeside is my joint favourite level along with Bill’s town and I got what I paid for in Episode 8.
When The Last of Us happened, I had no expectations from the new I.P. except for a glimmer of hope because they were also the creators of Uncharted. When I finished the game, I was shell shocked and stupefied because I have never played or experienced anything like this. When they released ‘Left Behind’ as a DLC on top of this, I knew that the Naughty Dog team were far from done from creating this believable post-apocalyptic world and humans surviving on it every day. Episode 7 of HBO’s The Last of Us developed that DLC into live-action and shot the series out of the universe of perfection. The inseparable tie between Ellie and Riley, that uncertain declaration of love, the very first glimpse of being Ellie’s guardian angel and the rift between FEDRA and the Fireflies are so well stitched in this episode. Along with a massive nod to one of my favourite arcade games while growing up, Mortal Kombat 2. The use of music and soundtrack is the underrated star of the show and in Left Behind we get to hear a version of aha’s Take on Me, which later Ellie plays for her love, Dina and Feels like Heaven by The Cure, both of which lend symbolic strokes to the narrative of the show.
If you ask me if I ever cried while playing the game, I will admit that I have. It was during the death of Sam. Henry and Sam were the ill-fated brothers duo who were travelling, just like Joel and Ellie, to go to the other side of town. Their journey is probably bleaker than that of Joel and Ellie, and the only glimmer of sunshine I saw on young Sam is when him and Ellie discover an abandoned goal post and tries to play football, immediately after surviving a clicker horde. Sam was pure innocence as compared to Ellie, who believed in fairy tales and was fascinated with superheroes. To contrast his reality with his dreams further, the show creators casted an actor who was handicapped to prove that Sam was indeed a special child, surviving the harsh apocalypse without the gift of sound or speech. Perhaps my favourite cameo duos in the show are Sam and Henry as they exude the same innocence and positivity that made them so special to me during the course of the 2014 game. When Sam turns and Henry takes his life immediately after killing his own brother, I had to stop playing The Last of Us for a whole day. Dealing with estranged siblings back in 2014 and reflecting on how some relationships are so special that you cannot live a moment without them already took a toll on my head, as I was trying to play a video game and escape the darker realities. The show and the actors of Sam and Henry outdid all my expectations as a fan of the game and made me mop my eyes all over again, despite having played the game 10 years ago; despite knowing what the outcome looked like in hindsight.
The Last of Us, game and HBO show, start off as this human exodus and apocalypse that is bound to turn the world upside down, but slows down and becomes an ode to love. All kinds of love, between father and daughter, husband and wife, leader and follower, and even a mother and her unborn daughter through a switchblade. And for that act of love, one must fight through like how Joel would, even if it makes one take the worst decision ever and a life of lie from thereon. One must fight off the urge to surrender and give up her humanity, like how Tess would. And one give one’s life up to be with the person he/she loves, like Henry or Bill would. The showrunners and the writers protected the source material and accentuated it with deep love, for research, for interpersonal relationships and impeccable storytelling. And this was a service of love for those who have been entrapped in the admiration of The Last of Us since 2014. For me, I discovered a demo segment of the game in a God of War title back in 2014 and decided to give it a shot. And that single decision changed my devastating year and gave me so much of hope and love, that eventually 2014 wasn’t how 2014 started out to be.
For some, it is still a show that needs to be seen and forgotten, for something new, sure. But those who pledge by The Last of Us and call it a real act of love are sane as well. I have never come across a more compelling combination of story, gameplay, and soundtrack like The Last of Us, nor hope to in the near future. Simply sit down and tune in to the soundtrack that was created by Gustavo Santaolalla and you will find both hope and despair in the same track. And that is how I recognise The Last of Us. It will gut you and make you laugh, within the blink of an eye. And the journey only gets tougher and redemptive from here on, for those who have played the next chapter.
There was an impossible task out in the world back in 2014 to write a good zombie game story, and the creators, led by Druckmann wrote a tale of love coated by a cordyceps plague. There was an impossible task out in the world to write and shoot a show about a human-erasing pandemic, especially after we survived one by the hair. But the sheer love for the show and respect towards its source material made it a possibility. After 10 long years, we did find our Joel in Pedro Pascal and Ellie in Bella Ramsey. And two fantastic storytellers in Neil Druckmann, the original writer and creator of TLOU, and Craig Mazin, the show writer and front man for what you all experienced in live action. To break down an iconic game and present it in a slightly distant, third person point of view is not an easy task, especially when the game rides so much on its gameplay to educate you and break you down. And this was all possible because of the love that the story received perhaps from Day Zero.
It’s like they say,
“Remember when you’re lost in the darkness. Look for the light.”
Love conquers all. Be it a video game or a full-fledged HBO show.
P.S. — Using photos from the game and not the show, as my very first connection to the story is via the source material, as it was.
