'The Last of Us' Season 2, Episode 4 Deep Dive
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This episode is brought to you by Disney's Lilo and Stitch, only in theaters this Memorial Day. A reimagining of Disney's animated classic, Lilo and Stitch is the wildly funny and touching story of a lonely Hawaiian girl, Lilo, and the fugitive alien, Stitch, who helps to mend her broken family. Lilo and Stitch crashes into theaters May 23rd. Rated PG. Get tickets now.

Welcome back to House of R. I'm Joanna Robinson. Joining me today, looking beautiful as always, it is my beloved Mallory Rubin. Hi, Mallory. No one asked you, jizz boy. Oh, wow. What a response to my compliments. Hello. Hi, my darling. Hello, my dearest. We're here to talk to everyone listening and also each other about season two, episode four of The Last of Us. That's right. Day one.

Very exciting. Thrilled. Great episode of television. Spectacular. Absolutely spectacular. I loved it. Written by Craig Mazin, directed by Kate Herron, who's just like, we're huge fans of on this podcast. Loki legend. Loki legend. Mallory and I hopefully not ungracefully like cornered her at the premiere party to tell her how much we loved her. If all goes according to plan, she will be coming on the Prestige TV podcast later this week to talk about the episode. So yeah.

I was really looking forward to this episode when I saw that Kate was directing it, and I just thought it was phenomenal. Okay. You shouted out early based on the director list. You're like, this is one to watch. The Kate episode. So exciting. Okay. So. Yes. Parking reminders. We are covering The Last of Us.

Right this very second. We're also covering Andor. So later this week, we will have our second-to-last episode covering Andor. Devastating. We also covered Thunderbolts at the end of last week. Yeah. So a lot going on. Great movie. Tremendous content for us to chew through, to get through. Over on the Ringerverse, the Midnight Boys Pew Pew have...

their Last of Us instant reaction up last night, Sunday. Their interview with Underbolt's director Jake Schreier up today. And then their Andorre reactions later in the week. There's also Ben and Dan on Button Mash doing their own Last of Us sort of gamer check-in. And then Tales from the Underground from Mint Edition crew. So that is

It's just a jam-packed week last week and this week on the Ring of Earth schedule. The whole thing is lit up with activity, with content. Molly Rubin, how can folks keep track of all of that? Thanks for asking. I'll keep it simple. Follow the pods. Follow the pods. Great. Follow House of R. Follow the Ring of Earth. Follow the Prestige TV podcast on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can watch.

Full video episodes of House of R and Midnight Boys Pew Pew on Spotify. And you can also watch those full video episodes on the Ringerverse YouTube channel. So subscribe to that as well. While you're at it, follow the Ringerverse on the social media platform of your choosing and send us an email on Last of Us, on Andor, on anything that might be coming. Hobbitsanddragons at gmail.com.

One of my favorite things in the world to do is to, whether intentionally or not, bait a professor into writing into our podcast. So the fact that we got a number of poli-sci professors writing in after last week's discussion really made my week. Thanks so much for your emails. Spoiler warning. Yes. Complicated for this show. Let me explain it really quickly to you. We're not spoiling anything beyond episode four of this television program inside of our unspoiled section of the podcast. Okay.

I have watched a playthrough of the game. Mally Rubin, get out your balloons, has finished playing The Last of Us Part 2. I have. So she's done. She's made it. I'm thrilled. So we'll be using our...

you know, freshly acquired gaming expertise to sort of weigh in on some differences, changes from the game in the unspoiled section. But in the spoiler section, that's where we'll get into sort of like look, look aheads. We had some back and forth today about what belonged there and what didn't. So, you know, we are constantly questioning what,

what makes it into the non-spoiler discussion. We really want to make sure to preserve that experience for everyone who wants to be surprised by the twists and turns of The Last of Us Part II. That's right. It's a story of back and forths, and it's a podcast of back and forths. You know, we talked about what belonged where,

I wondered to myself, should I open with no one asked you, jizz boy? Or should I open with that's how it works. I don't just randomly piss on stuff. And, you know, we make our choices. Every path has a price. Nope. You found a way to do both, didn't you? You did. Mallory, in a non-spoiler way, is there anything you want to communicate about your experience finishing playing the game? Oh, man. Let me just say this.

I love our little family and our little team because I sent you, Steve and Arjuna, no fewer than 5,000 text messages at the very chill hour of like 1030 at night on a Saturday when you guys probably all had plans. And I was like, finish the game.

to engage with me. That's plans. Those are plans. It's true. Those are the kinds of plans I prefer, quiet ones at home. I... Also, Steve told me that my time was respectable. I finished just shy of 35 hours. I was sure I would hit the north side of the 40 in the 30 to 40 range. I feel...

as I often do when I complete a journey that was meaningful and immersive and very rewarding, like really happy and really sad all at once. I'm super sad that I've, I'm going to miss playing the game. Of course, the joy of getting to now watch the show in real time and having, I have some regret about not having gotten further ahead on my, my, my playing journey. But now I'm like, well, here it is. The show is right in front of me every week. That makes my morning period shorter. I just thought the game was spectacular. Like I, I thought it was incredible. Um,

structurally astonishing and very bold. And the story I thought was, was just gorgeous. I thought it was gorgeous and like very, um, thought provoking and emotionally impactful. It will stay with me for some time. So I'm so curious to see how the adaptation continues on and, uh, just really love the world. Really love the world. There's, um, you know,

watching a playthrough as I am, it, I am watching someone else's decisions as they made their way through the game. Um, I'm hitting all the main story beats, but there's like little side tracks and little moments that you can opt to do or not. Um,

So, and one of those moments, which is a key, key scene in this episode, is the scene where Ellie plays guitar for Dina in the music store, the record store. Did you do that full scene when you played through yourself? I, in general, like to try to go into as many scenes

structures as possible because I'm an obsessive looter and resource hoarder mostly because I need every bullet and health kit making that I could possibly find. But, and that's an interesting one when you hit Valiant because you are probably

It's not like there's – it's just any structure on the side and there's no indication that it might be worth your time. We're on Shimmer and there is a prompt like, should we check this for supplies? So you're kind of encouraged, but you don't have to go in. You don't have to go in. You could just decide like I'm on a beeline. I'm on the mission. I'm trying to get to the courthouse. I'm seeking gas to open these many gates. Yeah.

So many gates. So many gates. A number of different choices that you can make. And yeah, it is interesting to, it's something I've been reflecting on a little bit more after finishing just all of the different, you know, first of all, and Mazin and Druckmann both talk about this a lot.

When they're discussing the nature of the adaptation, Ben and Daniel have been doing a great job of discussing this in their button mash coverage. Just like the active or passive distinctions in a video game setting when you're the player versus the experience of watching a television show. So that's kind of on my mind more generally. And then, yeah, like some of the consequences in the game of like, did you go in this building? It's did you get, you know, did you get the binding that you need or the half of a scissor you might need to like to make a shiv?

Something like this is like a real story beat, so it's fascinating to kind of get to the point where you realize that's elective. And I think it is unsurprising that come show adaptation time, that was considered not elective, but essential. Yeah, mandatory. Because it is. It's such an essential moment in that relationship. It's interesting. The version, the playthrough that I'm watching, um...

They went into the record store, they sat down with a guitar, and they played a little bit of something and something else, but they did not play Take On Me. So I was just sort of like, oh, that's interesting. I wonder if that was just edited out of the cut. Maybe. Someone else wrote in saying they went into the record store and they didn't play Take On Me. Interesting. When they played. I don't know. Anyway. Fascinating. But if whoever...

put together this wonderful YouTube playthrough that I'm so grateful for. Edited, take on me out of the cut. I have some questions. Okay. Not a fan of Norwegian music. Who can say, you know? Who can say? All right. So season two, episode four, day one, written by Craig Mazin, directed by Kate Herron. Kate Herron, we already talked about Loki, sex education, another really important character

piece of the Kate Herron puzzle. And then I wanted to shout out the DP on this episode, Catherine Goldschmidt, who just gave great interview in the behind the scenes. And I was like, I know I've seen her talk about House of the Dragon. And I looked it up and I was like, yes, she is a DP on three episodes of House of the Dragon. So shout out. Like, I really, I love the way she talks about her work. I think she's, she's really an intriguing person. So I look forward to more of her work. All right. A little mailbag moment. Yeah.

First, let's start, like, before we go to poli-sci corner, let's go to sports corner. Dan wrote in to say, because we know Joanna is sitting here wondering, wait, did the zombie breakout happen during the baseball season? And is the Detroit Tigers loss record still valid?

The breakout happened September 23rd, 2003. The final game was September 28th. Therefore, the scene was not completed, and it's unclear if we should count it, although they had already lost 118 games by then, setting the record. So what do you say, Mallory? You say it counts? I think if you've lost 118 games, you're standing the test of time as a historic loser. Yeah. Either way, the White Sox never came along. I mean, the White Sox existed, but not the 2024 White Sox. Not the season. Okay.

Aaron wrote in with this really interesting email about, we were talking about the presence of like a couple of folks in wheelchairs and Jackson and like sort of what that meant about the community of Jackson. Yeah.

And she wrote in saying that, and I didn't know this, that anthropologist Margaret Mead described a healed femur bone as the first sign of civilization. A femur fracture for most animals is a death sentence. They can't support their weight, meaning they can't find food, can't run from danger, can't keep up with the herd, can't protect themselves. The femur is the strongest bone, as is my understanding. It's very difficult to fracture. Even today with modern medicine, femur fractures take a long time to fully heal, and often they don't.

They can require surgery and months of painful recovery. In the wild, animals with broken fevers die. So think of what it means to have a healed femur fracture. An ancient human broke their leg badly. They weren't able to keep up with the group or find food or feed themselves or help protect the group. And yet their fracture is healed.

which tells us someone cared for them, perhaps set their bone, brought them food, kept them warm, kept them safe, help them relieve themselves, allow them to rest, let their body naturally heal. So this idea of like, it goes on and on, but like this idea of like, this is what civilization means. Civilization means we have so much structure or comfort or advanced ideas of what it means to be an us, I suppose, that we care for people, um,

you know, be they old or young or this or that or the other thing. And I thought that was really fascinating. And then Jen pointed out on therapy corner, Jen pointed out, well, she enjoys us bringing up whether or not Catherine Harrow is actually on set. She also pointed out the fact that a therapist is not supposed to have like a personal relationship with their, you know, patients and how that you, you brought this up sort of thematically why Gail's isolation makes sense. Yeah.

But Jen was just sort of underlining it as like a, no, we know that Gail doesn't really adhere to him. Yeah, I was going to say, I don't know that that's applicable with Gail, who's like, pay me in weed. And also at the beginning of the session, let's open some bourbon. And then I'm going to go to the youth Little League game and shout at the kids as they fall down on their way to first. I

I don't know that we can use the typical standards of doctor-patient practice for assessing Gail's behavior. She doesn't seem to be abiding by much of it. It's very true. Maybe she uses that as an excuse. She's like, I'd rather not make friends with people, and guess what? I have to for myself. Who's to say? Okay. And then last but not least on PolySciCorner, Dr. Matthew Yunker wrote in...

We talked about John Locke and the two treaties of government and stuff like that last week. And he pointed out this other thing that Locke was interested in when it comes to this idea of vengeance, right? When we're wronged, we can have a lot of trouble being objective when determining what punishment to dole out. So John Locke thinks it is rational to give away our natural right to be judged, jury, and executioner in exchange for more stability. Ellie could be seen as an example of this. She wants to decide the punishment in her own case, right?

and it could be argued, is carried too far by, quote, passion and revenge, where the cooler heads of the, quote, indifferent judge that is the Jackson Council have chosen a different path. In a Lockean sense, Ellie is rejecting the very core of the social contract. One asterisk I would put on that is, like, he put indifferent judge that is the Jackson Council, but of course when you have Tommy...

And Maria and even Jesse on the Jackson Council. Everyone has their own motivation. Everyone has their own. And we don't know what the factors are for the other members of the council who maybe have. Don't like Joel. Lost family members or, yeah, have injured people they're caring for, kids they're caring for. Yeah, just think Ellie's an asshole. Any number of things, just to say. Yeah.

And then I know that you had mentioned to me last week you wanted to talk about this, but we didn't get a chance to. But Dr. Steven Pettigrew, I just like when someone signs their email with their PhD, I am going to put it's not Peter Pettigrew. Oh, I thought you were saying Pettigrew. No. When someone signs their emails wormtail, we have to, simply have to. When they sign a PhD, I want to give them their accolades. So Dr. Steven was asking. Is that a hack now that people are going to use to get their emails to the top of your attention set? Perhaps. I don't know.

If you know what the word disseminate means, I might pay more attention to email. Okay, so I've been curious. Dr. Stephen, I've been curious if Jackson is a democracy. How do the members of the council get selected? Were they elected by the town appointed by Maria, who was elected? How did Jesse get his seat? The big thing that stood out to me the last episode was the eight to three vote.

holding elected officials accountable for their votes and actions is an essential part of a healthy democracy. The fact that they read the votes anonymously, survivor style, suggests that Jackson is not a healthy democracy since the residents of Jackson don't have any way to know for certain which council members voted yes and which voted no. Yeah. I thought also relatedly, like Jesse, who obviously takes the

responsibilities of the role, seriously, like refusing to engage in discussion with Elliot ahead of time was kind of a fascinating insight into that as well. It's like, sure, on the one hand, you don't want to allow to open an avenue for people swaying you outside of that formal forum, but also like

Is there no discussion at all about the things that might impact the society? Now we see, of course, Tommy, Dina, Ellie discuss, but like. No, there's discussion. Scott gets to come like get up and talk about corn and turkey. Before that. Before that formal meeting. Yeah. It's like, is there not any equivalent of like lobbying or like.

You know, what is the like, what is the, what has sprung up around the government that like allows people to kind of try to influence or sway the outcome outside of just I stood up and said this thing in front of the room. We, yeah, we have, we have a lot of questions about how, you know, as Tommy, a very active member, you know, in season one, as we mentioned an episode or two ago, did not understand that he was part of a group.

Yeah, Communist Society in Jackson Hole. So a lot of people, including those who are active participants, have questions. On the survivor front, yeah, I think that the clear tweak that's needed here is –

We need to get the block of vote in there. We need to get the steal of vote in there. We need to get the extra vote in there. That's controversial. We need to add that little element. Aren't there so many people who don't like any of the extra frills inside of a game of Survivor? Do I want him in Survivor? Who's to say? Do I want him in Jackson Hole? Yeah, I think so. You want immunity. You want an idol. I think we need to, yeah, maybe get the shot in the dark in there. Okay. You know, what if Elliot played her shot in the dark? What could have been different? Um.

All right. So that has been us looking deep into the governmental structures of a town that is not part of this episode of television. Let's go forward looking to Seattle with our episode breakdown. ♪

Cold Opens are back, baby. Second week in a row. This is our intro to Isaac and the Fedra team of Seattle 11 years ago, 2018. And this is, as sort of they talked about on the official pod, this is our first glimpse into

inside of Fedra, these bunch of assholes in the truck, that we're seeing what it's like for Fedra to really talk to each other and pal around with each other. And it's not a very flattering image, is it? Yeah. I mean, we have seen some of Fedra before, but not in this exact way. I mean, I guess we got to see Ellie's school,

You know, which is like the making of a Fedra soldier. Yeah, that's very different from a bunch of Fedra guys in a truck palling around. The Fedra soldiers who scan the little sneaker kid at the beginning of the season and then inject him. Yeah, they didn't really like have any conversations. No jizz boy. No jizz boy. No jizz boy. Yeah, no Greenberg and no jizz boy until season two. Until this very moment. Yeah.

The main Fedra guy doing all the yapping in the truck is played by Josh Peck, which was a slightly distracting, though not unwelcome, casting decision for me. This is a Disney kid who, of course, has gone on to do work. Shout out the wackness. Love Josh Peck. But this is like a real, hey, Josh Peck is here. And he's an asshole. How interesting. And we're just sort of like...

jeering and sneering over the violent exploitation of the citizens of Seattle. Um, I have a question. You mentioned federal school. I have a question about education in the mushroom apocalypse outside of federal schools. Uh,

Just in terms of, like, this dissemination question, like, he doesn't know what the word dissemination means, which is, like, fine. It's not the easiest vocab word in the world. But I'm just sort of like, how are these Fedra soldiers educated? Are they all, do they all go through Fedra school? No, not necessarily. Like...

And 11 years ago, I don't know. I was just sort of like, is everyone getting homeschooled? What's homeschooling like? How are we doing with our book learning? This felt like a very anti-intellectual conversation inside of the Fedra truck here. Janowitz's interest in learning who could say Greenberg, clearly not a big bookworm, not a big studier. Yeah, that's apparent. I thought of this too in a very different way, but like...

When at Valiant, Ellie opens the remarkably preserved guitar and basically kisses, licks, smells, inhales the preservation packets. I'm like, did anyone teach Ellie about toxins? Don't lick that, Ellie. Let's get that a little further away from your facial orifices, Ellie. Great call. Great call. Imagine surviving the attack on Jackson and everything with the Salt Lake crew just to die from inhaling a...

moisture packet do you feel like you would die from inhaling a moisture packet I feel like I intend not to find out I feel like you ate it yeah like if they ran out of jerky or they're like jerky's a little mild a little seasoning yes I don't think yeah but I feel like a little sniff you're gonna be okay yeah okay just like Huff and Rido

I can't believe you made that happen in another podcast. All right. Yes, you can. I can. Turns out it was some religious crap is what, what, what Janowit says here. Uh, do you feel like this is, uh, like an early Seraphite mention? Yeah. I think in particular because of the context of, um, uh,

Another fetcher soldier asking Janowitz, was it WLF? So it's like, I thought it was. Turned out later it was some religious crap, but I didn't fucking know that. So it felt like a little way of establishing the wolves and the seraphites as these factions inside of this sprawling Seattle scene that is about to –

I also like this as a connection to the Isaac interrogation later because if we have Fedra, if we hear the story of Greenberg smashing a Seraphite's head against the wall rather than having a conversation with him, and then later we see Isaac who has taken such pains inside of this scene to distinguish himself from Fedra, and where do we meet him 11 years later physically tormenting a Seraphite? Now he will get into whether or not he feels justified in that, but that is a clear connection of like,

Like, as the creators have explicitly said, as Kate Herron explicitly said, Isaac is no better than the Fedra that he tried to leave 11 years ago. I thought you were going to say we found him 11 years later doing an influencer video for saucepans. But the thing you said is also true. Did you look up the saucepans to see if maybe you would want to buy them? No, but...

Should I? I mean, I don't really cook very often. It seems like probably not a necessary or wise purchase. To heat up your soup? You don't need an expensive copper bottom French copper bottom saucepan? Dude, we are heating up a lot of soup around here. I know. I know that. Okay, I'm going to look into it. It's a great call. I think the other thing on that little quick religious crap note is like it's one, yet another way to show us really quickly, and we've had plenty of moments in the show to date where we're like, you know, we know what to think of Fedra, but even so...

This is very much of a piece with the whole conversation in the scene about voters. Like, they don't give a shit who the citizens are. The idea that there are these different groups among the citizenry and a soldier like this can't be bothered to learn anything about them or what might be different about them, what might they believe in that is distinct from their fellow man, et cetera, obviously very...

I found the, like, we mockingly call them voters too bleak to even really engage with. Yeah, a lot of painful stuff here. A lot of painful stuff. Okay, so we get this origin story for Isaac all told through the lens of this character Burton, played by Ben Allers, who has, like, a great, like, cute little puppy dog face. Yes. Molly Rubin. Any Gilded Age takes you care to get off gear when it comes to this actor, Ben Allers.

So this is Jack from the Gilded Age, as Gilded Age heads will know. And I have before tried. Thank you for this generous question. I have before tried and failed.

to lure you into the Gilded Hive. You have. And I have done so multiple times by telling you about a plot point that lasts an entire season, sometimes more. For example, the opera box. So I am going to try the exact same tactic that has previously failed me. Okay, great. By letting you know that Dear Jack spends all of season two

In a plot line about inventing an alarm clock and pursuing a patent. I'm not in. You're welcome to join us at any point. Thanks so much. Thanks for the invite. You are welcome to join us at any point. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Great in this episode. Really, really great. Because he's got like a great face for this. And then even so later, when we see him 11 years later, hardened by his time under Isaac's guidance, like...

That little puppy dog face is still there, but it's like, there's like eyes blink, nobody home, like real, real, real sad stuff. Seeing that sweet little like inquisitive face, just flatly say fucking animals. Yeah. Disturbing as it was intended to be. Yeah. Um,

So as Craig and Neil pointed out in the official pod, we get when we are introduced to the Seraphites, not via cold open, but in that interlude last week on the road. And to Isaac and the beginning of the WLF here, they're presented in relatively... I mean, yes, Isaac does toss a couple grenades inside of a truck, but, you know, to make a stand...

relatively sympathetically, before we get to the depth of what tribalism has done to their moral line. And I really loved Jeffrey Wright, who's just what a thrill and a joy. Sensational. To have Jeffrey Wright back on my Sunday nights HBO. I just love him here. And reprising the role that he voiced Isaac in the game, so that's super fun. But yeah, it gave me my Westworld feelings, gave me my Boardwalk feelings. So he says he feels it felt...

He said in the after episode, he said he feels that Federer has betrayed him in terms of ethics, commitment to citizenry. He takes steps to reinvent himself, maybe at the expense of others.

Toss, toss. Yeah. Yeah. He does give Young Burton a choice before casually, yet also resign. I rewatch, I rewound this moment where he tosses the grenades in five times to see if I could parse the expression on his face with one word. And I couldn't because I feel like he gives a bunch of different flavors inside of this where he's just sort of like, I've seen Jeffrey Wright do this sort of resigned violence before, certainly on Westworld, but there's just like this

I don't know, like casual, disappointed,

There's just like all these different levels to it, as one might hope when you're about to blow up a truck full of people. But yeah, he says you're all green bird. Like, you've gone too far. You're too far gone for me to reason with, which is another connection to his later scene torturing the Seraphite named Isaac, where he's basically decide... Malcolm, sorry. Malcolm, yeah. When he tortures Malcolm, the Seraphite, and basically decides you're... Like, when he holds out his hand for the second time, like, give me that...

burn again. I'm ready. He's like, oh, you're too far gone. I can't even talk to you. Bullet to the head. What do you want to say about this movement? Were you struck by this as well or-

Or am I just over-reading into this? No, no, no. I'm right there with you. I thought this was a pretty extraordinary opening to the episode and scene in general for a couple different reasons. I mean, we agree this was just a fantastic episode of television, a fantastic episode of The Last of Us. And there are a number of different reasons for that. There are some incredibly moving and impactful and important Ellie and Dina scenes. There are some real, like, hey...

This is for the gamers, like resource hoarding and crouching through a breach in the bottom of a wall, etc. Obviously some riveting action. And then there is this deeply insidious origin story and introduction to Isaac, a crucial figure in the story. I...

I think that this, it's all, like, it's such a story in general across the character sets and the timelines of contrast, right? Like, no decision and no person exists in a vacuum. And often when they make really dire mistakes, it's when they make the mistake of thinking that they do. So, like, yeah, Isaac rebelling against

this hideous force in Fedra, he is a rebel. He is part of the team of people who will bring down this oppressive regime. Yeah. But...

In a really horrifying fashion. Like, I think that the way we see him do this is important. There's no conversation. There's no, like, and the lost faith in them, I think, as you noted, you're all Greenbergs, is certainly earned to that point. Like, it feels very, I think, effective to show us that.

Like, there is a version of this where you could say, oh, well, you know, like, they're just like, it's a troop and they're driving around and they're just, like, laughing. But, like, that's not what the point of this is at all, right? The point is to show us the really casual indifference to the citizenry that they overthrow. And so, of course, then we are Team Isaac. And it's fascinating to see, like, the handshake with Hanrahan and –

To learn that this has obviously been something that has been in the works, that he's been like a girding himself or working to this point of readiness to make the move. And it's interesting to like compare this to, to what we know about Isaac in the game and just how this kind of insight into the overthrowing of Fedra in Seattle unfolds in the game, which is much more interesting.

distributed across little bits of insight and discovery. You find, you do find corpses and letters. Exactly. And little nuggets here and there that you're kind of piecing together what happened. Um,

And obviously we have seen, you know, across cities and across episodes and across the timeline, this idea is recurring of like, who will take down Fedra and what will it look like? We had obviously like the Fireflies versus Fedra in Boston in our earliest episodes with the show. We had like Kathleen taking down Fedra. But I was thinking a lot of in the fourth episode then before episode five, because we're obviously like in Kansas City for a couple episodes there in season one.

I was really struck at the time with how amazing in the Inside the Episodes and the official pods talked in season one about Kathleen and what we were witnessing there. And one of the things that he said is like history is full of examples where the revolutionary force is just as bad as what was there before. And so I don't really – obviously what we see with Malcolm, the Seraphite in the kitchen is certainly undeniably a ratcheting up of the horror. And we have to ask, well, what has transpired in this time that led Isaac and Burton to this place?

But what we see right away, like we are so primed inside the universe of this show. And as you noted, like what Isaac's doing, what's on his face, what can we read there? It's not like we're meant to be comfortable with him even for a moment, I don't think. And that kind of dissonance and that kind of complexity is, of course, what makes all of the successful characters in the show different.

So interesting for us to watch. And I just like loved to this little detail of the way to your to your note about just how things visually like strike us the way that we first see the approaching members of the WLF in the rearview mirror. And then we go out and we see more of them walking.

I don't know. It looked to me like they were walkers in The Walking Dead. Oh, yeah. A horde. Yeah, they looked like a horde. Yeah. And the way the arms were moving and just the way they were moving as a group. The neutral tones that they were wearing. Yeah. It's giving very horde. And also to the visual...

The way in which we get the Jeffrey Wright reveal, the Isaac reveal inside the truck. Like, we're inside the truck and we don't see him right away. And then the camera gives us a shot of him in the corner. And I think it's also worth thinking about if this, if Isaac is a leader inside of the WLF and the WLF is what, is where...

Abby and her friends have spent at least some of the time since we first meet them graveside at the beginning of the season to when they go marching into Jackson. Like, this is the group that they have been... You know, we watch what happens to someone like Babyface Burton inside of those, you know, a few years, 11 years. Yes. This is what...

Abby says in episode two, right? I've been in militia for five years now. Seattle, I'd warn you not to go there, but little chance of that. Anyway, our commander trained us to follow a code. We don't kill people that can't defend themselves. And right now, that's you. But I am going to kill you because it doesn't matter if you have a code like me or you're a lawless piece of shit like you. There's just some things everyone agrees are just fucking wrong. So this idea, we've already revisited this, but this idea of the WLF code. Yeah.

comparing that idea versus what we see from the WLF. When does that code apply? How real is that code? Or how much is it just something we tell ourselves to justify what we do? We hear a lot of justifications inside of this episode. And to your point about watching Isaac burn and torture a sort of quivering, naked person up against a wall, and then contrast that with

A bunch of members of the WLF strung up, disemboweled with lights trained on them so that when their friends come to find them, it will be the most horrific tableau you could possibly think of. And, you know, we'll get into this when we get into that torture scene, but just sort of like the justifications everyone gives for how far they're...

how violent they've allowed themselves to get. And when Dina says as an outsider's perspective, like what the fuck is up with Seattle? Like what the fuck is wrong with Seattle? You know, it's interesting. We still don't know a ton about inside of the show. We still don't know a ton about what Dina's life has been like up to this point. We watched, we've watched a lot of Ellie's life. We don't know what Dina's life, we know that what Ellie has seen, but what is Dina's scene? And in this section of the game, it's,

there are, there's significant portions that at least I watched that have to do with like D

Dina's life that we don't get. But also in this spot, as we're looking at, like, fuck Fedra graffiti or whatever it is, Ellie is educating Dina about what it's like to grow up in a QZ, what it's like to grow up under Fedra. Yes. So educating the player as she's telling Dina, we had to stand in line for food and it was like this and, you know, they were assholes for this reason. And so this is, instead of that running narration from Ellie, we get this moment of, like,

Hey, Fedra, they suck. Remember from season one? They suck. So here we are. Yeah. I love that. I was thinking of that code insight from Abby as well in the later Isaac-Malcolm scene because on the one hand, we do get the insight, the horrible, horrifying one from Isaac, which we'll talk about more when we get to that scene. Like, you put an arrow through a little boy's head, right? Nobody's innocent in that scenario. That's, of course, part of the point. And yet...

You could not, in good faith, even attempt to argue that a prisoner of war who was chained and beaten to your wall, executed at point-blank range, is honoring a code. You just couldn't. And I think...

The Geneva Convention did not make it into the Mushroom Hot Clips. No. A few other things did not make it in either, as we'll talk about later. But yeah, that's added to the list. One of the nuggets about who Isaac is that you pick up early in this stretch of the game, there's this WLF agitators moment.

No. That we find, and it's like, Isaac Dixon, colon, murder of federal officer, acts of terrorism, acts of sedition. You go on, you see, like, Patterson and Sanchez gone, Dixon has moved in to fill the void, et cetera. This, well, it wouldn't be a Last of Us pod if we didn't invoke Station Eleven, but it's just yet another perfect, to the monsters were the monsters. Like, you have this idea of Isaac as a person who was overthrowing this corrupt regime, but then...

to the people Isaac is harming or seeking to control subsequently, he's the monster very quickly. So it's fascinating. Reign of terror. Okay, so like...

I think this is a fascinating WLF episode we meet. Yeah. Hanran, played by Alana Yubak. Alana is one of... Not Helm Hammerhand, as I initially heard it on the screen. On the non-captioned screen. Before, thankfully, turning to subtitles. And then remembering that this casting had been announced and character name had been announced. Also thrilled to have Alana back on my Sunday nights HBO When Will Euphoria Come Back? I don't know. Maybe never. But...

I think I did get Bill to commit to podcasting about it on his podcast last week. All of us out here complaining about our two-and-a-half and three-year waits between most prestige shows, and then we remember Euphoria. Euphoria. Maybe it's going to be seven years between seasons. Who knows? It's a big WLF episode so far. Yes. Sort of very carefully planned.

Maison and Druckmann have given us drips of Abby and her pals. We, you know, we see them at the bookends of episode one. They have their big, you know, moment, obviously, in episode two. We get a little Manny in episode three. We don't see any of our major Abby and pal players. We get a mention of Nora, but we don't see them in this episode. What does that mean to you, sort of from a storytelling perspective? Um...

Interesting question. I think a couple things. Like, one...

This, again, feels of a piece with our ongoing discussion about just tracking the nature of the adaptation and what you can do in a show versus the game. And in the game, we are learning things and discovering things as we go, piecing together a larger vision and portrait of a city, a group, whatever the case may be. But we are very firmly rooted in the perspective of the point of view character we are playing as at that moment in time.

And the show is just simply not bound in that way, right? It's a different medium and you can do different things in different mediums. That's part of why adaptations are interesting, whether it's a game to a show or a movie or a book, et cetera. So I think part of it is just that. This is very, like, in keeping to me to what the show has done since the word go of saying, like, okay, a character like Bill is –

in the game, but Frank is basically an echo in a note. What if we turn that into one of the most beautiful portraits of a relationship in a life that anyone has ever gotten to see? I think just in general, this is like a core interest, right? It's saying, let's spend more time with more characters and flesh them out. Sometimes it's by taking somebody who's a mention or a small figure in the game and fleshing them out. Sometimes it's by just creating a character for the show, Kathleen, who wasn't there in the game at all, who represents maybe an idea that they can build upon. So some of it, I think, is that.

In terms of the specifics of broadening the WLF beyond the Salt Lake crew, I think it's a couple things. One...

Again, a lot of the nature of gaming is like you're fighting NPCs and you're like working your way through large swaths of basically like set piece challenges. And of course, it's always going to be more interesting to us if we have characters who are like more fully rounded out for us. Now, Isaac is a character in the game, but to your point about like the other people, you know, Burton, Hanrahan, who we're surrounding him with and just spending time with instead of our foray into the world of the wolves.

When Hanrahan sticks out her hand to Isaac and says, like, welcome to the fight, we understand more clearly something that we already knew, right?

But this group, this city, the conflicts inside of it well predate the Salt Lake crew going to Seattle. You know, we heard, right, that mention by the graveside of like, hey, you know, oh, let's go here to this guy and do this thing. This is beyond the scope of the core conflict of our core characters, and it's important for us to remember that. And so, like, I think that's just a richer and more interesting way to say, like –

Like, we're not actually always viewing everything that happens through one lens of, like, one pursuit. We have that as kind of our North Star and our compass, right? That's our guiding, like, the compass arrow points toward Ellie, Dina, Abby, like, these characters who are at the set of it. But...

Or the heart of it, but it's a larger city with different groups, and, like, it can't just be about a couple people. I think it would make the show feel too small. Yeah, and certainly I wasn't advocating for it to be. I just thought – I did think the inclusion of Manny last week was interesting. Like, in terms of, like, making sure we see them in episode one, we see them again in episode two, we get Manny in episode three, and maybe that's just to, like, let us know, okay, they are there. Like, even if we don't find them right away, they are there in Seattle. Yeah.

But then to not have them here at all, I thought was interesting in a way of just like, I think everything you said is really fascinating. And I also think it's just like,

To show us how far out of their death Ellie and Dina are, which they don't fully realize until they get up on that roof at the end. I mean, they're donning horror throughout the whole episode when they're up on that roof at the end of the episode and they see massive, like massive explosion and gunfire, you know, when, when they're like, how many wolves could there be really? And then they see all that shit in the distance. They're like, Oh fuck. Um, for sure. But so to, to make, um,

are the salt lake city crew which is manny nora mel owen and abby uh inside of the show at least um to make them such needles in the haystack because in this in this section of the game you do encounter a couple people that ellie's like they were there yes people who are not jordan who's not the show yeah who are who are not in the show and so just to like make them just

Out of your reach, out of your grasp, you're here in Seattle, you're like, piece of cake. Seattle, beautiful city. We're going to have a great time here. Yeah. And just kill four to five people and then go home, you know? Crazy. No, not even in sight in this episode. We just get the mention. I think that's a great observation and a great thing to clock because it's like –

You can have the broader portrait of the world and it makes the whole universe of the show like you understand the stakes of what has happened to everybody and what state just mankind is in. But it is actually, as you're noting, really still like a good way to keep in balance. Well, our core people who are most invested in.

Where are they? What are they doing? How does the thing that's happening around them impact them? And if you can't find the people you're looking for, it's also obviously like a nice way to just like keep the clock of the episodes moving and keep the quest of like, okay, well, you hear Nora's name.

on the walkie. And like, now we know what our next target is. And the kind of like pressure of all the precious resources, the single most precious thing of all is information. Right. And so if they're like hard to find, like the currency of any nugget that you're able to glean starts to feel as valuable as any monistat that you might find. As valuable as any monistat. Okay. Let's go to Capitol Hill. Um,

Before we get to the rainbows, you mentioned Monistat. We do stop at a pharmacy. Yeah. Or let me assure you, I'm not procuring or consuming a single thing. If you're like, if you, Mallory, are worried about huffing moisture packets out of the guitar case, I'm worried about any item on any shelf inside of that pharmacy. It's a no, simply a no for me. But Dina snagged some pregnancy tests, as we'll discover later. And I just love their back and forth here, like Ellie from the other room just talking about like,

Do you have a yeast infection? Oh, look, I found some milk. Like, all of this is just, like, really good stuff from them. Ooh, you're rocking a yeast infection. Not today, but give me time. This is a historic moment on the show. It's like, there is actually an incredible amount of, across the episodes and seasons so far, discussion or focus and interest in, like, vaginal goods. You know, we had Ellie finding the tampons. Yeah.

In season one, Maria gifting her the Diva Cup. Now this. The pregnancy test. Great stuff. Are you going to open up a shop in Seattle called Vaginal Goods? Vaginal Goods? This is entirely possible. Who knows what my next career will be? Give me time. All right. This was one of the many, many, many, many moments in this episode where you're like, oh boy, this is what it feels like to play the game. Just like...

Dina crouching through the hole in the wall to get into that back pharmacy room. I could like, you almost feel reflexively your prep, you lift your finger watching to hit the circle button to crouch. Like there were so obviously everything with the ascent up to the window at the TV station. Like there were just in general, just this pursuit of resources. You and Rob were talking last week and Rob was like, you know, I think a lot of people who love the game are like, no,

Not enough drawers. Let's go look for shit. Yeah, not enough foraging. Yeah, you know, we have seen it before, you know, that again, I just mentioned the tampons, like when Ellie was looking for stuff when Joel was trying to find his stash of ammo in season one. It's not like we never get it, but it is a fun little, I think, embrace of the source material whenever there's an interlude like that.

Directly out of the game is this moment where they're in Capitol Hill, which is the queer neighborhood in Seattle. And those slurs, Seth and bigots and slurs may have survived the apocalypse, but not this concept of pride. Dina and Ellie don't understand why there are rainbows all over this neighborhood. We did get an email. I actually think we got it on the Prestige pod. We didn't read it, but it was about this idea of like in the game when they're in Capitol Hill,

I see the rainbow sidewalk, the rainbow crosswalks. Those came after 2003 because of the timeline difference. It's like, will we even get that moment? Will we get it with like rainbow flags? And also Craig and Neil have said, we're not paying too much attention to like what predates 2003 or not. Like we're not letting that hold us back if we need it for something or another. I want to shout out Capitol Hill in Seattle where a couple of years ago I had one of the best chicken sandwiches of my life at this place called Olmstead, which is now closed, which sucks.

but Capitol Hill is an incredible neighborhood. And, um, um, and I really love that. This moment is heartbreaking and it, you know, it feeds into, you know, um, this conversation about bisexuality that happens later in this episode and sort of, you know, where were we when, when it came to discussion about queer identity in 2003, how much of that, you know, endures during the mushroom apocalypse. And, um, yeah,

And just the idea that, like, the joy and the celebration is missing, but the hate is still here is awful. And a really strong...

to put inside of this story. I agree. It's very, very striking to... It's something that hits you almost organically and you can process what it would mean that these are the relative circumstances. But when you do take a minute to reflect on that and think about it, what does it mean that Ellie recognizes that slur from Seth at the dance but that Ellie and Dina don't know what pride means and what the rainbow murals and flags mean? It's really, really heartbreaking. And I agree. It was an effective...

way to not only like tell us something about their lives and the journeys that they are on and that Dina is on inside of this episode and more broadly across her life, but like to think about what it means that hate can last and linger in a way that like love cannot. Post-outbreak, it's just crushing. Something that Isabella Merced said in an interview with Vanity Fair about this episode is she said, like, she's like, I don't think Dina even knows the word bisexual. She's like, I think she doesn't even, she wasn't even ever taught that word.

And, um, all right. On the, on the Seattle front, um, we got, we got, we've gotten so many, uh, emails from listeners that are like, this is wrong. This is incorrect. This is wrong. So I just thought I would shout out, um, Anna from Seattle wrote in to call it a certain sign that they used in this, in, um, this Capitol Hill stretch, uh, for moon photo, uh,

a photo lab. She's like, it's not in Capitol Hill, but let's not worry about that. She says they got the old logo correct at the old sign for Moon Photo Lab, a small business that's been around for 50 plus years in Seattle. And so just like little touches like that are so like beautiful and thoughtful. So good job. Good job, the last of us. Wonderful stuff. I thought it was interesting too, just in terms of our glimpse of this stretch, at least of Seattle, like in the,

Have we mentioned before how long it takes to get through all the Fetcher gates and this starts the game? But like in the early, it took me so long to find the gas. In the...

early portions of Seattle, there's actually a conversation between Ellie and Dina about basically what a wreck it is, how all of the terrain is blasted to shit. Oh, yeah. It had been bombed. So I just thought that was like a little interesting decision to do the opposite here where Dina's like, I don't understand. I thought they bombed here and they're walking around. And it reminded me of what you were saying just about when they looked down off the overpass at Seattle more broadly. And obviously, like, there is –

A lot of decay, of course. How could there not be this far in? But that there was a real beauty to it. And as they – this was a – because of what they are talking about and what they are observing here, this was, I thought, a nice change and a nice part of – we're about two seconds away from talking about how they stumble upon a war zone. I don't want to like –

Like, ignore that. A romantic tank interlude, yeah. Yes, exactly. But, yeah, I just, I don't know. The fact that this community and this neighborhood was preserved in this way, I thought was lovely. Yeah, so Ellie gets excited to see a tank. Again, I'm like, what are they teaching at FedRow School if you've never seen a tank? We really need to, like, look at that curriculum.

She wants to check for ammo, which is one of the most game-centric things that happens in this episode full of game-centric things. I have some serious notes for Ellie. If your whole thing is I'm going to make a fucking shitload of noise opening the hatch because I want to look for ammo, you got to do more than just cast your flashlight down into it. You have to actually jump down and look for ammo. Come on.

Here we get an astronaut Ellie mention, which is like a suitably gruesome fun fact from everyone's messed up teen about Apollo 1. She talks about Gus Grissom, Ed White, Roger Chaffee, who burned up in that capsule. And I'm curious if Joel and Ellie were ever able to find the film The Right Stuff or if it was only Curtis and Viper marathons for them. Because...

Gus Grissom is one of my favorite characters in all of cinema. He's played by the great Fred Ward in The Right Stuff. Add this to the list of things we need to know about Jackson. We know they do movie nights. Is this in the rotation? I mean, it would be a really great one because especially, not just for Astronaut Ellie, and we'll talk about that in a second, but just also what we were trying to achieve with

leaving this planet was like a big thing we were trying to achieve at one point in our history. Craig was talking about, you know, we've been tracking this sort of Astronaut Ellie stuff that we learned in season one. Here into season two, we mentioned like the decor in her room and stuff like that. Craig said they put that stuff in season one because they knew that they wanted to engage with it, how it exists in the game in the second part. And he was like, this is something like, he said, quote, when you realize where you want to go, you run backwards. So we've talked about this a little bit, this idea of like,

Putting Kathleen in season one, like what are the things that they put in season one, knowing the themes or moments that they wanted to hit in a season two and three, knowing that part two of the game already exists? How can we sort of backtrack, backbleed some of that stuff into season one? And this is a great little example of that. Yes.

Anything else you want to talk about in terms of like Dina being like, maybe we shouldn't go to the place that has the giant WLF graffiti. They have the high ground Anakin, like any, anything else you want to say about that? I thought this was an interesting stretch in general for our ongoing assessment of like who is occupying which role in their relationship. And like, we've talked a lot about in the last couple episodes, like,

Ellie moving into that Joel role, you know, the front of the horse, how is she holding her gun, et cetera. But as we also have talked about the last couple episodes, how Dina is the patient one, the planner, the methodical one. And so I thought like we got a ton of that from Dina in this episode, but we had like just, we had a couple moments where Ellie is seeing something that also feel like worth tracking. Like for example, when

they see all of the FEDRA corpses and Ellie is the one who's like, when Dean asks if it was the wolves, you know, I don't know. All these bodies are in FEDRA gear. Almost looks like they were fighting each other. And Dean is like, huh, good eye. Like, I felt glad that we had them

where Ellie was the one to clock something, you know? This is like when John Walker gets something right in Thunderbolts, and I'm like, yeah. Exactly. You should have some wigs. Great comp. Tough comp, but great comp. I like to, when they're after the Apollo 1 moment, that like, well, at least they died for something worthwhile comp, and then like, yeah, these guys were just assholes killed by other assholes.

That question that the show repeatedly poses to us in a number of different forms of like, what is quote unquote worth dying for or fighting for or killing somebody else for, right? That's kind of like always in the back of our minds watching. So I thought that was interesting. And then, yeah, in terms of the actually seeing the TV show.

You know, we're always going to love a, you know, it's over, and can I have the high ground kind of lesson? How could we not? But yeah, this is just right back to Ellie is impulsive. Ellie is acting on emotion. Ellie is rushing. Rush, rush, rush, rush, rush. We talked a lot about rushing in our last Andor pod. Ellie is in rush mode always. And Dina is the one who's like, let's take a beat, and let's think, and let's do this in a way where we have a chance to.

Of making it through, which is obviously, like, deeply necessary in these circumstances, and I think particularly necessary in the show, where, you know, in the game, you're always moving from structure to structure, and you're following the next clue to the next place. But even then, like...

There are plenty of moments in the game where you have a clock established and you're like, we have to get to where we're going next. And then if you want, you can take four hours to fuck around, right? Like you can, you can just go look for, which I do a lot, which is maybe why it took me more than 30 hours to finish the game. But so I think that that is helpful just again, structurally inside of the episode and in the seasons for a character to be the one who says like, let's go hole up and strategize before we head out again, because your inclination and gamer mode would be like, go.

Go. What's next? I think that's interesting. And I think it was interesting in the, in that very fair interview is Mo Merced was talking about how, as the scripts went on in the season, she watched her line count grow and grow and grow. And she was like, wow. Oh my God. And then, and then she made the connection where she was like, oh yeah, I'm in the, in the chatty Ellie role as Ellie gets sort of in the more stoic Joel role. But it is interesting that like, when it comes to sort of like who's leading, who's following, like,

that Dina has to take on also this aspect of Joel, which is the caution and the plan and the experience. Like Ellie has a lot of experience, but she doesn't have that, not a cautious bone in her body when it comes to this kind of thing. Prices keep going up these days. It feels like being on an elevator that only goes up. Going up.

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All right. So take on me. I, what I think is fascinating. What I love about Craig Mason is the moment, the two moments so far that he has talked about getting, being so nervous about getting precisely right are this interlude in the music store with take on me and the dance and the kiss. And they're both the, they're also the two moments where everything is most like the game in terms of like, let's faithfully recreate the set and,

let's mimic camera motions. I mean, there's some differences Dina sitting cross legged across instead of like awkwardly side saddle next to Ellie when the way she is in the game, something like that. But, but like, let's faithfully faithfully recreate this because these are the moments that matter. And that is because Craig Mason understands that in order to enjoy the

the stabby, stabby violence of a show. You need to be emotionally invested in the characters. You need to get the emotionality, the romanticism right. And that what makes The Last of Us

such an indelible game for the people who have played it is that emotional investment in in the characters and so the fact that in season one yeah it's the joel and ellie relationship and season two is the joel and ellie relationship because ellie is driven by her her you know we get this beautiful moment with the guitar joel's there in the scene with the guitar like he is there spiritually like a forest ghost i guess is what craig mason said

But the Dina and Ellie relationship is what is at the beating heart of this section of the story. And so he's like, this is what we have to nail. Like, the Battle of Jackson, sure, et cetera, et cetera. But, like, the Dina and Ellie...

their emotionality and their connection. So what's worth, to your point, dying for? What's worth protecting? How precious and important is this new us? And it needs to be precious and important to us, the audience as well. And that's why this moment is so...

is not optional, as Neil and Craig both said. Yeah. What's worth pausing for, right? What's worth slowing down and taking time to just like linger and luxuriate in and consider. And it's like for us as viewers, it has to be the same thing that it would be for the characters themselves, you know? And like that feels again, so true to life. I thought this was beautiful. This is one of my favorite stretches of the show to date. I just thought it was incredible. I think this is my favorite episode of the show to date, actually. Yeah.

I have no notes. I mean, it's like... Well, I mean, Bill and Frank is almost like its own thing. It's a crowded top of the power ranking for me. I'll wait till the end of this season to maybe rank it. But it's, you know, I think episodes two and four of this season are up there certainly for me with three and...

five and nine from last season. Like, it's just, I mean, the show has a really high batting average of coming through with absolute bangers. It's like kind of astonishing. I, before we break up, break up, break down the scene a little bit more with something you just said made me think like, I, I love you observing that Joel is there. And I think,

And Riley's also there. It's like a scene where so many crucial people for Ellie are there. Like, obviously, Ellie's love of music, it's so central to Joel and it's beautiful to hear her. We're going to talk about this more, obviously, and probably cry in a few minutes, but like to hear her talk about Joel and what he taught her.

But, like, you know, we're thinking back, too, to episode seven from season one and Ellie's Walkman and her earlier love of music. And, like, when do we hear – this is not the first time we hear Take On Me in the show, right? Like, it's what's playing – I think it was used in the trailers for season one, too, right? Because it's obviously so crucial. But then in the mall scene with Riley, to pair that with the escalator moment, like, for that to play for us when we're watching just this, like –

burst and jolt of possibility and euphoria. Like the idea that an escalator could be one of the wonders of the world and young love and just like for a minute thinking good things can still be ahead of you. To have that in our minds too as we watch this beautiful film

budding romance here it's just even richer than if we didn't have those connections to build upon and i thought just like even before the the serenade um just entering the the shop just entering valiant it's like a gorgeous set oh yeah and there is a like serenity and a peacefulness and a sense of hope and again crucially of like wonder and crucially a place for shimmer

Exactly. A place for Shimmer to be safe. I think, like, thank God when Ellie was like, let's find a place for Shimmer where Shimmer can fit through the door. It's like, thank you. Yeah, there's a lot going on, but let's focus on what fucking matters. Dina's like, I already found it. Dina's like, I'm already thinking about that. That's how you know Dina's the one. That's how you know Dina is the one, right? I know. I really was like, just that little shot we get of Shimmer just noshing, noshing on some grass. I felt really...

Really happy. May she nosh there always, honestly. That would be great. I think it is interesting to get this pause to talk about this idea of like the serenity of the music store. I think what adds to that, there's a couple things. One,

So in this stretch of the game, have we mentioned that we've both watched and played the game yet? But like in the stretch of the game, there's this whole long sequence, at least in the playthrough that I watched, where they go into a synagogue. And this is where like Dina talks about her faith and what it means to be Jewish and her sister a lot and things about, you learn a lot about Dina in this whole- The taste of honey on your tongue. Yeah, the taste of apples and stuff like that. So like-

That's missing from this. Given everything where we land at the end of the game, I don't feel bad bringing this up because I don't think we're going back to the synagogue. I don't think it's something like we have time for that move. But this stretch of the game is interesting, I think, to a lot of people because you are sort of roaming about in a way...

Right.

you know, this dangerous mission that they're on and have a Riley Ellie, let's explore the mall sort of experience inside of this beautiful music shop that has the stained glass window from the synagogue. I was looking back through and I don't believe that this is part of the store design in the show. They remark on the stained glass window of the synagogue when they go in there. And so like to have the, there's a stained glass valiant, um,

window in the music store. So to make it an almost church-like or religious space to enter that serenity, Shemra is the place to nosh. The vines have taken over, but it is cool and beautiful and calm here. And we can luxuriate in that peace and luxuriate in each other. Yes. It's just like...

The viewers and the characters alike need these little moments, like brief reprieves, not only to kind of like catch our breath, but to remember, like to remember what you're fighting to preserve or to try to find. And like, I love particularly through the lens of a story like The Last of Us, where so much of shelter seeking or scrounging in the story can be about

sheer necessity, right? Like we need shelter. We will have that later in the episode. We need to find something. We will have, we have had that in this episode. We have it many times. So when you get one of those rare moments where it's less about necessity and more about discovery, right?

or exploration. Yeah, it just feels like so transporting because of the comparison to like the just base reality of what every minute of the day is typically like. And then in this, this is me pretending like I know how to play guitar. This is like the scoring, the score on the show is always beautiful. Again, if anyone hasn't yet heard the wonderful interview that you and Rob did for the episode two pod, check that out. But like there was a

like a plucking, like a little plucking of the guitar strings in this stretch is like the, we mounted and built toward that loft that I don't know, it was just really like magical and beautiful. And we hadn't even gotten to the actual key moment, just our entry. It felt like a portal into another world just for a second. And that's a gift. The thing that Gustavo Santolai, who's the composer, uh,

talks about when he talks about his own music is the eloquence of the silence so the spare plumping of the string yeah the way that they resonate inside of it's not a crowded score often it's very spare um i i think about a lot that idea of the eloquence of the silence but so we go in here um i am going to read a quick shimmer email that we got from megan

Megan from Jackson, Wyoming wrote in an email that's about the flora and fauna of Jackson. On the dried berry and a cookie front, she says they would not have raisins or grapes because of the climate here, but we do have wild blueberries known as huckleberries, as well as wild strawberries, raspberries, service berries, chokeberries, thimbleberries, and several other wild edible berries.

I also want to say, Megan says, that anyone going on a 900-mile horsepack trip, i.e. Jackson to Seattle, should take extra horses, not, quote, conserve resources by only taking one. At 20 miles per day, my estimate is that it took them 45 days to get there if there were absolutely no issues along the way.

However, with just one horse, it would likely take longer. Horses need rest, eat a lot, get hurt, can lose a shoe and go lame and get lonely for other horses. Oh my God. Two people in all that gear on one horse is going to quickly wear Shimmer out. So I would like Shimmer to stay here in Valiant and I would like another horse to wander its way over so Shimmer and that horse can have their own like take on me moment and like find...

companionship in the mushroom safety and companionship that's a beautiful dream I love it now I'm really bummed that's really sad poor lonely shimmer just carrying Ellie and her rage for 45 days the quest for vengeance it's a heavy one okay oh man um

We can cut this out if it's not. Is it okay to say that when Ellie sits down, at least in the playthrough I watch, before she plays take on me, she noodles a little bit of the song Future Days, which, as we heard, was in the trailer for the show, we know is an important song for the show. Yes. Yeah. I think, yeah, we can save further commentary, but I think that is fine to mention. And I felt...

I will say I missed that. You missed it, yeah. Yeah, I think its absence makes sense to me given how things have played out in the show, but I did miss that. I think that's a really lovely little moment in the game. We have so many other lovely moments here that I'm content. But yeah, I was thinking about that as well. Very, very, very quickly, just Ellie opening, we talked about Huff in the...

moisture packs, but Ellie just leaning down to open the guitar case because like, you know, she looks around and they're all decayed. Everything is rotten. Been exposed to the elements because of that frankly stunning breach in the wall. And I don't know if you know this, but as a devotee of the church of Hanks and Ryan, I know that it rains nine months out of the year in Seattle. So it's a lot. It's a lot.

It's a lot. Those moisture packets were working overtime. They really were. They put in the work. Yeah. God damn it. Just the tiniest little moment where Ellie, like, in leaning down to open the guitar case, closes her eyes. And it hit me so hard. It hit me like a Fetcher tank because it felt like – It hit me like a – It hit me like a –

It felt to me like a young child closing their eyes to blow out the candles on their birthday cake. You know, that just like useful hope that you might find something that brings you joy. And for Ellie, it's like a lot of loss and a lot of loneliness and a lot of despair. And I love just that little instance where we get to glimpse again, like Pauline.

possibility and hope on Ellie's face. I thought that was like a precious little thing. That's beautiful. I hadn't thought about that, like a child and their birthday candles. It's beautiful. I thought of it almost like as church, as a moment of prayer. Okay, so we get...

Dina falls in love. This is just unbelievable. This is unbelievable. Take on me by A-ha, as you mentioned, not our first time we've heard it on the show. Something we learned in season one of 80s music equals danger. What could be more dangerous than falling in love?

I don't know. Because my brain is Swiss cheese. I don't remember if I talked about my feelings on Take On Me the first time they used it in the show. But this is one of my favorite songs of all time. Not that that's like an unpopular opinion, but it's the first music video I definitely ever remember watching. And I was obsessed with this music video as a kid because like,

Do you know the Take On Me music video from the 80s? Yeah. So it's like if people don't know and there are plenty of people who don't because it is old at this point and there are young people who listen to podcasts. It's really cool. Go watch it on YouTube. It's like about a real woman who gets pulled into this like hand-drawn world and it's just like this really cool pencil-drawn animation. Yeah.

It's about inviting someone into your world and then leaving your world to find them and all that sort of stuff. And it's like a really visually cool, beautiful, innovative music video. A-Ha is a Norwegian band. Yeah. So I will forgive them. So...

I love that music video. And then my freshman year of college, there's this guy, one of my friends, this guy on our floor, Raj Jetta used to sing this song all the time in the shower in a way that like loudly so that we could all hear. Sure. And he would try to hit the high notes and like, he like, it was just like a funny thing that he would do for all of us on the floor. Um, and then we sang it in my acapella group in college. And so like, I know. Oh my God. All the words to this song, um, because I learned it, uh,

for that. And that is, that is the moment when I learned how grammatically incorrect so many of the lyrics of the song are, but I find it quite charming. Um, like it's no better to be safe than sorry. I mean, I guess anyway, um, uh, but God, all these lyrics like shine away. I'll be stumbling away slowly learning that life is okay. Um,

um it's no better to be safe than sorry is a good one i'll be gone in a day or two this idea of like later in the end of this episode we'll hear dina talk about like this future that i envisioned with you i thought it was gone yeah yeah like this we you know tomorrow's not promised for us for any of us but certainly inside of the mushroom apocalypse inside of seattle uh when everyone's trying to kill you um

This idea of take on me, take me on, like, it's not just like be with me or love me or kiss me or anything like that. It's like, take me on the project of me, the complication of me, the hard, like, way in which I navigate this world. Can you take that on? Like, will you take that on and add that to the burdens that exist in your world as well? And I just, I really love that. And this, like, it's no better to be safe than sorry, right?

Like how risky it is, how scary it is to make yourself vulnerable to someone else. And how much we've watched these girls only the course of a few episodes, but just sort of like,

be shy or uncertain or whatever it is with each other. Dina being as bold as she is, but still unsure. And Ellie being as obvious as she is, but still don't fuck it up, don't fuck it up, don't fuck it up, unsure. And so I just think it's... Rate it a kiss of six, never forget. It's... Fuck you, six. I just think it's...

It's a Beatles song. And Craig talking about the way in which he talked to Bella about, he was like, there's two ways to play the guitar. You can play it to seduce someone. You can be like, anyway, here's Wonderwall. Or you can play it quite shyly and only occasionally sort of look up to see like how they're reacting, which is of course the way that Bella as Ellie plays it here. And I was, I was just thinking about this, like,

This is not a seduction technique. Like, Ellie starts this before Dina even comes upstairs, right? This is like Ellie thinking about Joel moment, thinking about Riley perhaps moment, but not like an intentional come hear me play acoustic guitar. But I was just thinking about it as like later when Isaac talks about how he was too shy to talk to women, so he learned how to cook. Yeah.

Yeah. Just this idea of like, how do we make connections with people? Yeah, sure. Through these, like through the arts, through the art, the culinary arts, whatever it is. Anyway, I, I, I sobbed. I sobbed watching this. Amazing. I think Isabella Merced showing us Dina's

I guess the way they're describing it is falling in love, but I think just, like, knowing for certain that she's in love. Understanding that she's in love. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Beautiful. Both performances in this scene were so extraordinary. I was just like, we are lucky. I mean, really lucky to get to watch them in these roles. And I was thinking back last episode, I'm paraphrasing, but one of the things that Mason said was, like, this is our us now, right? Like, the idea of really, like, cementing this duo. And so we already cared, but...

boy, this episode gives us a couple scenes to really cement that in full. Yeah. I just thought this was, like, so moving. I watched this so many times. I couldn't get enough of it. It was so gorgeous. And, like, I love the lyrics that you called out. And one of the things I really loved, there was a lot about how the scene was, like, framed and choreographed and timed that I really loved. Like...

shying away, I'll be coming for your love, okay, that pairs with Dina emerging, right? Like, I'll be coming for your love, okay, with Dina walking up the steps. Just perfect. I think my single favorite pairing of a lyric with a moment connects to another beautiful point you made about when do you look up and doing it sparingly. The thing that destroyed me the most in this entire sequence was...

Ellie looking up and making or looking up from the guitar, looking down at Dina and locking eyes for a second during slowly learning that life is okay. Like the idea that that's because of Dina, it was just so gorgeous. And then obviously like the tears welling in Dina's eyes. I just thought this was so, so beautiful. And like on the, you noted already on the framing front,

Then in the game, Dina is sort of like to the side of Ellie. And one of the things that we've tracked from our season one coverage onward is these sets were like

A beam of light makes its way through the shadow and, like, breaks the dark. And I just thought this was perfect to have Dina sit in front of Ellie, not only because of that, like, eye contact that they're able to make, but just because then the light that is coming through that breach in the wall behind Ellie is, like, casting down on Dina. And they are, like...

In this beam of possibility and hope and love together and everything around is shadow and danger and darkness and like what a message, right? That there could be like refuge and safety in the bond and connection with another person. I thought that was extraordinarily powerful visually. Yeah.

And there's, like, a timing thing here, too, right? You know, we're obviously going to get to the scene later in the episode where they are intimate with each other and they sleep together for the first time. And, you know, we talked about a little bit in the non-spoiler section, kind of, like, alluding to some changes, but talked more in prior episodes about in our spoiler sections about, like...

okay, the sex scene, it's not... They're waiting. They're waiting. It's not here where it was in the game. And so, you know, this feel, this... There are a lot of things that I love about how that plays out in the game, and there are a lot of things that I loved about how this ultimately played out in the show. This was the scene where I felt like the genius of it because...

Joe, this was just yearning tendrils, right? Like, they have not yet taken that step in their relationship. By the time we have the take-on-me moment at Valiant in the game, they have been intimate with each other. They are together. That is just a really notable distinction in where they are in their relationship. Dina in that scene is almost just kind of like bopping to them, like enjoying it, but

but not like being transformed by it. I got a good one. I got a cool one. Yeah. Yeah. It is really different. Yeah. Like the thing that I love about, you know, we cite the official pod a lot. It's a great official companion podcast and,

Troy does a great job posting it. Neil and Craig are so thoughtful on it. But the thing that Craig can't help doing because he has his own podcast, Script Notes, where he does this, is just talk about sort of the philosophy of writing television. And so when he talks about the philosophy of writing television as it pertains to this show...

And how when they write action, that there has to be a movement inside of a character relationship or character dynamic inside of that action moment, or else it's just, you know, action for action's sake. And he's like, that's not why we want to do action. We want action. So, like, you could argue...

Again, I found the Battle of Jackson slightly lacking, but you could argue that we learned something about Tommy as a leader or Tommy's relationship with Maria. That is definitely like an intention inside of the way they put that sequence together. And so he was like, the same philosophy applies here. If we're going to pause for a musical break, he's like, we want character relationship movement inside of it.

He's like, it's optional for the gamer. It's not optional for the viewer of our television show. They have to sit through Take On Me with the rest of us. And if they're going to do that, we're going to move the needle on something. And so watching Dina, and again, as Abelmer said in this interview with Derek Lawrence at Vanity Fair, was talking about how, you know, he asked her about like, you're so emotional in that moment. What was it like to tap into that? And she was like, I was actually trying to be less emotional.

emotional. She was like, you know, we watch her sort of like slapping away tears, holding back tears. And it's just sort of like, she was just like, Bella was just incredible. Sounded amazing. There was just something so powerful about that, that I was overwhelmed by it. And so, um,

Yeah, I feel really lucky that we get inside of our mushroom zombie show that we get moments like this. I know. Something that Neil said on the official pod this week was they haven't been completely corrupted by this world. That was very important for our story. And, like, it is. It is important to have those moments where you see that and they see it too, right? Like, there can be something good. And, you know, another – this is –

of a piece with what you were just talking about with like the action and what a scene like this has to be able to emotionally convey. Another thing, whether it's a big set piece battle or something as like tender and sweet as this, it's going to be most impactful if we're feeling it in all directions. And that was another thing that this scene just like nailed, nailed. You know, when Dina, I mean, we're going to hear Dina explain so much about

how she has come to, like, understand herself, right? And her sexuality and her identity and her desire. And I thought that, like, when we see on her face there, just, like, there is something here that she cannot deny. And it's not just about to Ellie. It's, like, to herself. And that's, like, amazing to get to see that, you know? It's beautiful. And I thought, like, you know, we move into a sequence here where Ellie talks about Joel and, like,

What she learned from him. And like, you know, we've, we've talked a few times. I love this idea too, of just music in the show inside of the Joel Ellie relationship or Ellie Dina, like for many of us in real life, like there's something about music where like it can allow you to express something that you don't know how to express. I was about to say exactly this because how can we not be thinking about Bill and Frank and like the way in which a musical moment, you know, a character performing for another character, Linda, my queen, uh,

unlocks something inside someone who is maybe reticent to express themselves. This is why I love a musical so much because like, this is what happens inside of a musical when the emotions are too big for you to be able to convey them via just speaking them, you sing them. And so, yeah, like Bill and Frank being able to like,

open their connection to each other via a musical moment and then to have it again here. Again, I don't know the specifics of this. I'd be interested to ask Craig and Neil, but like, I know so much thought went into Long, Long Time, but I'd be curious if they put that there as an almost pre-echo of this moment here. Again, knowing that this key moment was coming in part two. That feels right to me, hearing you say it. But no matter what, like...

To your point, music as connection for Joel and Ellie, et cetera, et cetera, is so important. Yeah. And there was just something about, you know, Dina compliments Ellie. She says, ah, thanks. Like there's that shyness, right? Which Bella's face just conveys so magnetically throughout this whole scene. And when Ellie says, ah, thanks, all those lessons from Joel, he taught you well, he did. Yeah.

I was thinking again about the adaptive choice to introduce more time after Joel's death. And like, I really felt the value of that in a moment like that. Because Ellie's got a lot to work through, to be clear. But this was like, you know, part of the process of mourning somebody that you've lost is like getting to a place where...

remembering them can feel like a gift, not just a source of anguish. And it's still both. I mean, we were one episode removed from weeping into the jacket. It's not like that. That's very present. But I don't know. It felt like this like really – like a little life raft for Ellie to be able to say that with like a smile and gratitude and just for like something that – it's not just the thing that Ellie is carrying from having lost Joel –

One of those things is this quest for vengeance. One of those things is the violence and the rage where they've been standing side by side from the start, everything we talked about last week. And one of those things, too, is like the gift of something inherited from him, which is this, you know, he taught her to play guitar. Like, we talked about this a lot in season one, her love of music, Joel expressing that, like, yeah, I wanted to be a singer. And then when he finds the guitar and he's like,

would you like to learn? And then we get to this season and then the premiere, he sees the discarded guitar and he's like, you've been playing much? Enough. Yeah. And then the strings and the offer to replace them and then what it does to us when we see the guitar back in Ellie's room on the stand, like in a position of pride in the next episode. So like, I don't know, this is just such an important strand of DNA in their relationship. And I love that Ellie got to like,

cherish it and reflect on it for a second in a way that brought her joy, not just pain and sorrow. And I, and share joy because, you know, something, something, an adaptive choice that they made was to have Dina and Joel have more of a relationship. We see that, of course, Dina being in the room to watch what happened to Joel, well, not she was sleeping, but before that, be in the room with Joel and then like, be instructed by Joel in the first episode. They were both taught by Joel. Joel taught Dina,

how to do mechanic repair stuff. Don't lick the ends. Don't lick the ends. Lessons stuck, I remember. Things we learn from Joel. What did we learn from Joel? We as a unit. So Dina can share in that. And...

In terms of processing your grief, in terms of remembering, remember the good times, remember the good things, remember the happiness, remember the joy, it so helps to do that with someone who knew that person as well. So the way in which Dina and Ellie can just say, Joel, Joel's here. Joel's here in this moment. And we remember him and we know him, I think is really beautiful. And then the lingering shot of the guitar all alone. Help. Oh my God, it really upset me.

And then it ends with a comedy beat because Deanna says, I'll make us beef jerky is like my absolute queen. Such a Mallory Rubin moment. I'll make us beef jerky, not I'll open the beef jerky. I'll whip us up some beef jerky. And then we transition into a very different cooking scene where meat is, Sunkind is back on the menu. For the hand flush. Yeah. Oh man, what a scene.

What a joy to podcast with you, Mallory Rubin. That was very special. I loved sharing that with you. Truly. You're the best. I don't know if you know this, but if you own a Mobile, you should use a Mobile. And we get this whole, again, in the beginning of the episode, we're in the federal truck and we get Isaac as a reveal. Here we get the Seraphite Malcolm as a reveal. Isaac's in the kitchen and he's talking to, he's monologuing to someone. Boy, is he. In such a blasé way. Yeah. Yeah.

the reveal that he is monologuing to an absolutely battered and tormented, naked individual, barely propped up against the wall. Is this just like horrific, obviously horrific moment. You might think like, oh, is he talking to Burton?

Still, like, you know, when he says the thing about like William Sonoma, it's a cooking story, you wouldn't know it. Like this is a this is like a key sort of like generational. Yeah, I was alive before mushrooms took over and I know what William Sonoma is and you don't sort of moment. But Craig Mazin described this speech about cookware as a very Craigish sort of move, which I which I really like.

Some of the apocalypse is doing something extraordinary, but they didn't start that way. They just started as a guy who didn't know how to talk to women. So he got into cooking instead. And the word choice that I want to zero in on here when he's talking about the pans is like,

Too cash poor to afford the finer things. Too shy to talk to girls. All this sort of stuff with an aspirational desire, but also a sense of entitlement because he says, I was good enough to deserve quality tools. Now, listen, in my utopia, we all have equal access to whatever level of cooking where we most desire. I don't believe we should, you know, I believe we all deserve a lot of things, but there was just something about the way that he says...

I deserved this thing and I didn't have it. Just gives us just a little extra insight into who Isaac is. No question. And to that, to that amazing idea about, I'm always thinking about how almost everyone we meet in the apocalypse is doing something extraordinary. Isaac saying the strange benefits of the apocalypse is,

is so fucking disturbing. And like, that's, you know, it's very, I think they might've actually talked about this in the same stretch on the official pod, but like, it,

I think it was impossible not to think about David from season one watching this and like, I was a teacher and then I became a preacher and now here's my flock. Like who leans in? Who looks at the horror and the decimation around them and says, now's my chance at last to rise. The things that I was deprived of, I will be deprived of no longer. And everyone else will like shudder in the wake of my ascent. It's just so fucking disturbing. Yeah.

But there's also a charm to it. Like, this is the thing about a Jeffrey Wright performance, is that Isaac is a hauntingly creepy character. Yeah.

And there's warmth and charisma there, too. When he says son to Malcolm, it's disturbing and it's also avuncular. You know what I mean? Yeah. Listening to him talk about the saucepan was, I thought, like, riveting. You understand why people would want to, like, study at his knee. You understand why Burton made the choice that he made. This was a great scene. This was one of the few I don't tend to get –

trailer shy because like I like to go frame by frame and break it down and then I don't typically feel like anything is dampened by having seen it in a trailer but I was like as soon as you see kind of the setting I'm like this is the the bloody beaten Sarah fight yeah into that week because the those moments in the trailer were so striking when Malcolm looks up and just like you're gonna lose I was like

whoa, what are we getting here? And this, before we break this down and the particulars of what they say, I'll just note too, this is like on the adaptation tracker front, I think another great example of what the show does consistently really well. You know, in the game, when you're making your way through like a space that Isaac is in, you know, or the fob, like a wolf base, you know, there are pretty,

And, like, people mopping up floors. And it's very clear the torture is unfolding. And you do actually, like, you encounter Isaac as he is torturing someone. But you are coming, you're, like, you're seeking something as somebody else. So to get to be inside of that scene in full, like, you just know that those are the moments where they're, like, okay, something we glimpsed for 10 seconds, something that is implied. Like, we can make it explicit here. And we can spend time.

every word of that, every crinkling, burning bit of flesh with these characters to understand why they do the things that we do. We get to see it through Isaac's eyes, not just another character's eyes. And the fact that, like,

Craig is like, he's given this monologue. This is his go-to torture monologue. I love knowing this about Isaac. Yeah. This is what he does. This is his bit. We got an email from our listener, Nerf, who did not ask specifically this question, but it was sort of implied in a larger email. So I'm going to like attribute it to this email to say, to ask you, Myla Rubin, knowing that Isaac just went to, Isaac went to his local William Sonoma to get these copper bottom pots.

What luxury goods store are you rating first come the apocalypse? Oh, man. So I would definitely do something completely impractical. Sure. I feel sure, you know? I mean, copper-bottomed pots are not – they don't hold the heat. They don't retain the heat. The steel handle, though. It's the little touches. That was great. It's the little things. I – once the looting became undeniable. Yeah. And you no longer felt – You're not the first looter. Yeah, like a moral imperative to not participate. Sure.

I am doing something stupid, like getting a lot of really nice sneakers that I then wouldn't wear because I wouldn't want to wear them. Oh, you wouldn't wear them? Yeah. And then I would have to confront the fact that I'm weighing down Shimmer with a bunch of like... Not just that, that people are going shoeless because you're hoarding the shoes and not wearing them. Well, they should have hit StockX HQ before I did. Wow.

What about you? What are you getting first? I simply wouldn't loot any of my loot. It's a callback to our Yellow Jackets coverage, folks. Yeah, I don't know. Because anything I would want to steal is something that I would want in a home that I am... Yeah. If I'm on the road...

Do I steal a Jansport backpack? Like, I don't know. That's not luxury. Yeah, very practical. Yeah. I love Jansport. Yeah, most of my, like, indulgences are, you know... Some good boots? I don't know. Maybe I would get a really... I would load a really nice jacket. Though I probably would just have the jacket I needed already. Honestly, I don't know.

I like a lot of electronics and rare books, but none of that seems – I don't have a generator on me necessarily, and I don't want my books to be soiled. You and I are definitely looting the rare bookstore. I think that's what we should do. We should loot the rare bookstore, and then we should procure space for –

where we can keep the books. Like in our version of the show, Ellie opens the guitar case and it's just full of folios. I was going to say, I was going to say, whatever space we do has to be just filled with those moisture packets. Yeah.

It's just 50% moisture packet, 50% book. Okay. Oh, God. Now is the moment on this podcast where Mallory and I reveal that we are podcasting soulmates and let you know that when Malcolm and Isaac are trading differing interpretations of who started the civil war between the Seraphites and the WLF, we both went to House of the Dragon quotes. We picked different ones, though. Yes. Related. So I will quote the queen who never was, Rhaenys. Yeah.

Who said, when talking to Rhaenyra, she says, soon they will not even remember what it was that began the war in the first place. Rhaenyra's like, that is easy enough. They usurped my throne. And Rhaenys is like, that's one answer. Or was it when the child was beheaded? Or when Aemon killed Luke? Or when Luke took Aemon's eye? We teeter now at the point where none of it will matter and the desire to kill and burn takes hold and reason is forgotten. Wow.

Mallory, what do you have? Great stuff. Related idea from that same stretch of Hot D, our guy, Simon Strong, imparting a little Blackwood Bracken history. You know that idea, sin begets sin begets sin. I thought this was like a fascinating conversation between Isaac and Malcolm in part because the way that Malcolm does not shrink from Isaac, which obviously just made this scene like, you know, electric and very disturbing. Yeah.

But the mutual blame and the idea of cycles, it's funny. I was like writing, you know, chicken and egg in my notes. And then Isaac literally says like, I don't want to, I'm not going to do like chicken and egg with you. But it is worth thinking about. And how can we not, you know, what's the chicken and what's the egg, but also which came first, the chicken or the egg. And it does kind of like invite that philosophical, um,

And I think that the show's ongoing interest in the cycles of violence and the way that they build and compound and specifically the way the characters then use that to justify the atrocities that they commit on other people. Yeah. Like the stretch of this conversation where, I mean, I thought there was some really interesting stuff about the heretic prophet stuff that maybe we can circle back to in a second. But in terms of just the like, you put an arrow in a little boy's head and that like idea of because you're wolves,

Kill them because you trained them to shoot at us because you broke the truce because you broke the truce. Like, if each side is always going to blame the other, there's no path forward. How could there be? I wonder if there's any real-world situation where we can apply that to you. Okay, so, yeah, I mean, to go back to Tommy's discussion of Joel when he says he was just coming up with justifications and stuff, all he was doing was lashing out. Like, this idea of...

How do we dig ourselves out of something like this? And especially when there are some people, though not all people, obviously, but some people who are just using it as cover to do whatever it is they want to do. On the profit front, right? So, like, we get – I think it was really interesting to, you know, Neil was talking about this and really wanting to underline what we learn, which is –

Isaac says, listen, you know, there's some of you who know that the prophet was a flesh and blood person. And Malcolm immediately sort of basically hisses heretic, right? And so Neil in the official podcast is like, let's underline that and say, okay, the group we met last week on the road fleeing war-

Yes. Who said, we're talking about the prophet in a way that was heretical to what this Seraphite believes. There is a schism inside of the Seraphite world. There are true believers and there are heretics. So that is something that we learn inside of this. This idea of the prophet, this idea of love, this idea of devotion and following,

This is where our beloved creators, Neil and Greg, went on a tangent that I'm not sure I can fully follow. If Malcolm is like the idea of the prophet inside of the Seraphite lore that is Malcolm's true north and a true north that will justify violent acts...

I can easily take that and apply it to Ellie and Joel. Joel is Ellie's true north inside of this, a way in which she can justify violence and other things that she does here inside of this episode when she stabs a guy in the neck, right? But then he was like, Joel is like a prophet to her. And then he's like, he's like a force ghost, right?

And I want to ask you, Myla Rubin, Star Wars aficionado. We're recording this on Cinco de Mayo, but not that far off from May the 4th. Yeah. What did you think of this moment from Craig and Neil talking about Joel as a Force ghost? Let me just say that by the end or pot on Thursday, I'll have my Oriole Star Wars May the 4th bobbleheads behind me. Mark my words. Can't wait. I... So...

What clocked for me and what rang true to me in that, like, so Neil said, now Ellie is chasing the idea of someone that is no longer around. Joel is gone. Nothing she will do will ever bring him back. But there's a belief inside of her that in pursuing justice to the ends of the earth that she will do right by him. These people are in love with a religious figure. They love this prophet so much that they are willing to do anything to protect the idea of her.

The thing that then, so like Joel, I do not think of Joel as a force ghost for Ellie. I almost like in some ways think of him as the opposite of that because when Obi, part of what is happening with Obi-Wan is like Luke. You know, there's an active guidance.

And a messaging. Luke, Ellie, don't go to Seattle. I wouldn't want you to. 45 days is too many for one horse. Shimmer is... What it made me think about was devotion. And...

specifically the shape that devotion takes in absence instead of in the presence of something. And I think that is interesting. And there's something there that feels like a more, maybe like an applicable parallel across the different character sets. Like so much of this is defined by contradiction. So you take, you know, we have both said many times on many podcasts that we are not

religious people, but we are interested in understanding faith and what relationship people have when they ascribe to a certain faith. I think putting your faith in a person or putting your faith in a relationship or putting your faith in a group of people and a philosophy and a belief system, it's like, where in the apocalypse do you find belief in

where it just guides you and how do you hold on to that. I think even like this, you know, connects to something to what you're saying just a couple minutes ago about that heretic moment where like,

I thought it was really fascinating that on the one hand we actually see from Isaac here like a recognition that the Seraphites, this opposing force, that they are not a monolith, that there is variance inside of them. That's like actually a fascinating thing to know about him, that he can see the distinction inside of the groups. But what's more relevant ultimately as a takeaway is that it doesn't matter.

He's still just like, tribalism, us, you, where are you attacking next? You're the enemy. And so what happens then when everybody's belief system becomes the paramount driving force and there's, even if you can see that there's a nuance and a variance in opinion or the way that people conduct their lives inside of your opposing group, they're all the scars to you, to Isaac. It's disturbing. I think that...

There's a moment, if I'm remembering correctly, inside of this torment, there is a moment when Isaac says scars and Malcolm just says seraphites. Yep. And did you think of Uruk? I mean, as you know, he's always on my mind. Uruk. Okay. That's a rings of power. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so. Perfect comp.

Thanks. All right. So I was thinking about this a lot. I was thinking about what Isabella Merced said about this idea that Dita doesn't even know the word bisexual, which is like, how do you define yourself? How do you locate your identity without the tools to be able to describe it or define it? And when society restarts itself, right?

the way that it has had to in an apocalypse. And there are people who still know what William Sonoma is, and there are people who have never heard of William Sonoma. Like then we're speaking different languages in terms of like, how do we define ourselves? If you have these, if you know what disseminate means and I don't or whatever it is, like we're working with different tools. And so then in terms of that tribalism,

it becomes all the more important, this idea of us. If defining self as an individual is so much harder in this world where all of our structures and our systems are topsy-turvy...

how do I define myself in relation to you and you in relation to me and the us? And so this idea of tribalism as an infection, which Craig says all the time and very specifically when talking about this scene, this idea of like, this is the true cordyceps infection. This is a true contagion is this idea of tribalism. Well, you get ensconced inside of these communities or ensconced inside of these pairings because it's so hard in an uncertain world to know yourself.

Without that mirror of someone else reflecting back to you, you're like me. We're the same. Or here's how we're measurably different. And so I think that's really interesting when you think about

and faith specifically. And the idea of community that it can give to people who, like for some people, religion is an individual practice, a one-on-one relationship that they feel like they have with their chosen force or deity or whatever it is. But for many, many people, religion is community and common cause and common set of morality and whatever it is. And so, yeah.

I think this idea of a religious shape to a community is so important when we're examining how things would pan out in the reboot of our society. So, yeah, it's really fascinating. I love that. That's beautiful. That...

That's another distinction then, right, between the wolves and the Seraphites and Ellie in terms of the Joel as love, devotion, comp, because Ellie's religion and the Church of Joel and that relationship and that then quest for vengeance is a private one. And, like, you know, obviously it's shared in this quest with Dina and Ellie wanted, you know, Tommy to back her, but, like...

It was on my mind, too, in the later scene between Ellie and Dina when Ellie says, like, you know, the little things, when you keep them secret, they become big things. It's like...

A lot of Ellie's history with Joel is still a secret to other people, including to Dina. Yeah. So that's like a big thing to carry alone. That's a distinction. What's really interesting about where we meet Ellie this season is she's in that sort of individuating stage. Like in among all the other things that are true that are secret. Yeah. When Gail and...

Joel are talking about she's a 19 year old girl he's her dad this is just what happens that's also true Gail's like it's not true but it's also true and so that that was a way in which Ellie was like what is what is me without you like what what is the me outside of the us yeah which is an important thing for you know someone who's that age to to go through okay yeah so

Anything you want to say about before we go outside the door and check back in with Burton, anything else you want to say about this Isaac Malcolm exchange? One more thing quickly, which is just like, I think that the, and this connects to what you were just saying about the community and this, do you have this mirror? Like, then how do you start to see other people then if like a lot of those aspects of how we form an understanding of ourselves and others and, you know,

in real life now are ripped away. And I was really struck by, on both sides, I think you feel it most from Isaac to Malcolm, but it is ultimately mutual, the absolute disdain for the other party. And like the...

almost casual but deeply rooted dismissal. This is something we talk about a lot in stories is like when a villain, quote unquote, and this is I think a story that in many ways kind of like rejects those easy labels, right? But when a character who's doing terrible things and seeking to harm other people, right?

diminishes something about them. It always tells us something crucial about them. I thought when Isaac was like... Malcolm stands up to Isaac and says, every day one of your wolves comes to see the truth and takes her into your heart every day. Every day a wolf leaves you to take the holy mortification to become a seraphite, and none of us ever leave to become a wolf. The moment where Isaac is like...

We have automatic weapons and hospitals and you lunatics have bolt action rifles, bows and arrows and superstition. So tell me, how are we going to lose? Like, it just feels like everyone is committing this sin here, which I always like to track.

And I think also that it's just worth saying before we get to the TV station that this is the second episode in a row where at least initially the Seraphites are presented to us. Last episode as we talked about and then here with Malcolm in this position as like an abused and then murdered executed prisoner of war where the wolves are the aggressors and the Seraphites are not. So it felt very important then inside of this scene for Isaac to establish like you're here because you shot a kid in the head and you guys do that.

repeatedly, before we then get to the obviously disemboweled hanging wolf display where the brutality and savagery, it's undeniable that it's operating in both directions. So the kind of progression that were on there felt notable. On that, I love that. On that dehumanization or... I think it's so necessary that...

Even though they call themselves the wolves, right? Right. Show your fangs or, like, whatever. Like, they call themselves wolves. But, like, for the Seraphites to be able to say those are wolves, those are animals. Those are wolves. They're animals, right? And then for the wolves to say you're scars. You're nothing more than this, like, thing you've done to yourself. But you're not a person. And this is, of course, what...

sweet young Burton who has been calcified into something else. We hear him from off screen earlier as this other guard is like, oh, this doesn't sound great. Right. And

Burton says Gar got what he deserved. Fucking animal. Just this is a guard presumably chosen by Isaac to stand that close to this crucial thing and saying to Burton, like, I don't really like what's going on in there. It feels pretty important adjacent to Malcolm saying to Isaac, like, you sure everyone thinks that what you're doing is right? Like inside your own ranks, we just get an immediate snapshot. Yeah. Great point.

Something that Craig and Neil have said is that whatever it is that Isaac is pursuing as larger goals and stuff like that will not be answered in season two. And this is a really interesting conversation that Troy had with them about this idea of like, did you write this season at all? Sort of. Right.

With the idea that you might not get a season three, did you consider structuring it in a way where like, even if we don't get a season three, all questions will be answered, stuff like that? And Neil and Craig were both like, no. That they were like, that's a, that they felt that that was sort of like a, I don't know, artistically slightly bankrupt or to write from a fear space like that is just something that they weren't interested in. So, you know, we don't want to get into, we might talk about this a little bit more in the spoiler section. I don't want to get into spoilers here, but

This is a very interestingly structured game. Yeah. And so to let us know that answers will be waiting for us in season three, I think let some gamers know who had some questions about how this was going to shake out. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Jellybean? Okay. I do indeed. I thought that was interesting as well. I think I admired the courage of the comments and also think it's...

Last of Us Season 1 was an astonishingly popular show, so that probably provides just like a jolt of comfort. Very true. And like they got the official announcement of a renewal of Season 3, that doesn't mean they didn't already know. Yeah.

Can you imagine if HBO was like, we're good. We're not going to make season three of The Last of Us? Honestly, Warner Brothers, you never know. That's true. I'm with you. I thought that was really illuminating and cool to hear. And I admire the conviction to say we're going to tell the story the way that we know is right, not the way that we would do if we were worried about whether we would get enough time. I think that's awesome. Leads to a better show. No question.

W-M-A-B in Seattle. Yeah. Sorry, I almost said Cincinnati because of W-K-R-P in Cincinnati. Okay, so Dina and Ellie. That's a very old reference. Look it up. Okay, so Dina and Ellie, as they plan to break into the TV station here, share this look of like...

What do we do if we find members of the WLF who weren't in Jackson? And it's just a very like, we kill them. They don't say it. D just says, I agree. So that's what they're going to do. And that is of course what they do. I do think it's interesting to have that conversation on the heels of their conversation last week about like, who's the first person you killed. So we, so we are, it is on our mind. The first time that Ellie killed someone who was not mushroom infected. And, uh,

who that Ellie was versus who this Ellie is. Uh, again, what the justifications are for going from stabbing people who are, and like, it's the way she does it because I don't think it's a spoiler to say, and we discussed whether or not it was, I watched Ellie stab a lot of people in the neck. Um, a lot of wolves in the neck. Um, and,

In this specific section of the game, there's just, like, a lot more encounters she has on her way to the TV station, et cetera, et cetera. And she's just, like, the way that my person was playing it was just, like, do the, like, stealth grab with the gun. You have to. Stab, stab, stab in the neck down to the ground. You gotta do the stealth grab if you have a chance. Over and over and over and over again. And so, but it is interesting. This is how she kills infected. So, like, Dina shoots someone in the back of the head, which happens frequently.

In the game as well. But like Ellie killing them in the same way we saw her kill a mushroom infected person earlier is, I think, a striking visual. Yeah, absolutely. It's like...

It almost feels like a version to go back to Star Wars of, like, the idea in the prequels of, like, the clone troopers with their helmets on and the droids as these, like, two faceless armies. And then, like, part of the joy and magic of Clone Wars, the animated series, is you're like, oh, everyone's a person. And, like, you know, boy, if you think that these are just, like, nameless, faceless droids you're taking down. I thought it was really interesting to hear Neil describe this as, like...

Now death doesn't have the same cost to her in terms of how she felt, how Ellie felt about killing Brian in Kansas City. And like, yeah, I agree with you. I think that feels like why we got that exchange last week. It also feels like then...

For Ellie, we have that reminder of what that was like to, like, process that and how this is almost casual, right? This is routine. This is necessary. You can't stop to think about it. It's what must be done, or at least that's what you tell yourself. And for Dina, it's like Ellie didn't...

ask last week. You and Rob talked about it. Like, we do get insights from Dina in the game, but Ellie didn't ask about it last week. Dina, like, what about you? And so we don't have that. And so there's something like almost even more, even though we know that Dina is a very capable and accomplished warrior, we see Dina and Ellie in the grocery store sequence together. We obviously hear from Jesse, like, people look up to you. We know that Dina is seasoned and capable, but still, it's like unflinching from both of them in this stretch. Yeah.

I don't, I feel like we've covered everything I want to cover in the TV station. Anything else you want to add about anything we have to say? I think just the visuals, you know, and how striking this is. I mean, it's very similar to the game in terms of the setting and the- Except it's daytime in the game. The daytime, nighttime. Yeah. And like the- So that makes the positioning of the lights, because like it's one thing to string up a bunch of people in the daylight and be like, their friends are going to see them in the daylight. That's upsetting. And it's another thing to stage it at night and then just put a bunch of lights out on them. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, I think- For a bunch of Luddites like the Seraphites, that's some real, that's some real good theater tech work from them, I think. Totally. And like, you know, we're looking at brutality and evisceration, right? So like, there's again, the like,

undeniable aspect that the Seraphites are capable of committing atrocities to. Like, this isn't just defense. This isn't, this is not defense. This is ritualistic slaughter. So that's something for us to see. And then, of course, Ellie follows, like, the blood trail over to the feel-her-love message on the wall. The symbol recognizes the symbol from having come across it on the road. And so Ellie and Dina have the same kind of moment that viewers do of, like,

No, no, no, no, no. Nobody's like the quote unquote like good guy here. Everybody's doing terrible shit all the time. That's, you know, an iconic to see the message. The feel her love is that that gave me a little bit of a chill. That was really cool to see. But yeah, The Last of Us is doing its best without the tool of you're playing this character.

and then you're playing Abby and then you're doing this or whatever as you do in the very beginning of The Last of Us Part II, it's giving you that shift of perspective. I'm with this person. Oh, wait, that person, those people are also doing this shit. Holy shit. You know, like all that, that zigging and zagging of whose team am I?

Who's awesome am I a part of? Yeah. And this is, again, very connected to that hot D like sin begets sin begets sin idea because like the commander, we could hear the commander of this group of wolves saying like, I don't give a shit if it's a woman or a kid. I don't care if it's a fucking baby. Look what they did. That you just are always ready to justify the next heinous act, which of course then the other group will respond to by exponentially racking it up further and then what? Yeah.

Do you think Force Ghost Anakin Skywalker heard that part? He's like, yes, the women and the children too. Younglings. Dear God, Mallory, help me. It's a crevice. I thought of you. I did. Dina and Ellie at the shimmy, their narrow little 19-year-old asses into a piece of the wall that the wolves cannot follow them through. Yeah. But they're like, it's fine because we know where they're going. Let's just go through the other way. That was tough. Something.

The only I'm tracking that I like, I don't know if I just haven't been paying enough attention to my HBO Sunday night, but I feel like we got a couple of like very overt commercial break moments inside of this episode. I thought like this is one we go to complete black and silence. We do it again later when Ellie sort of like falls asleep and then wakes up. Just something to track in our new HBO Max reality when they have ad breaks on certain levels at HBO. Did not occur to me. I was like, ooh, dramatic. Yeah.

You're a scholar. It's something that Alan Semple brought up to me years ago. We were doing our Lost podcast, and he was like, you know what I really miss in the age of streaming is the ad break. And the most iconic one is in the Lost finale. There's like a character is doing a flying punch in midair. Yeah.

And even if you watch it now on Hulu without ads, you just have to go to a commercial break and then resume the flying punch in midair. It's great stuff. Oh, man. Incredible. Here we are in the transit tunnel. An incredible set piece. The music store, beautiful. This is incredible. They transformed an old paper mill that had train tracks on it into an underground subway situation. And it is...

Deeply upsetting. This was fucking scary. So scary. And great. And this part in the game. Yeah. I imagine it's much scarier to play, even much scarier to play than it is to watch. It's scary. I thought this was way scarier than this section of the game. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So this is the, here comes the horde.

Dina's little counting game from the store. Not of use to her here. Too many to count. Great detail. Great detail because we have the comp of it being relevant in the grocery store. She's trembling. Ellie has tears in her eyes. This is terrifying for them. Craig called this the third army, that there are three factions in Seattle all fighting for dominance. We got this email from Clarissa who says...

was thinking about, this is sort of similar to what we were just talking about, thinking about how groups of us had different approaches to safety and security in the apocalypse. We see the people of Jackson Hole using walls, a town council, and a community structure to protect themselves. We got to see this religious group that finds safety and protection through faith and in a prophet.

And then at the end of the episode, we see the WLF who depend on military organization and strength to make them feel safe and secure. Last week's episode. I also think it's really interesting when we saw these groups fighting each other, mostly in the case of the religious group and the WLFs, not the actual apocalypse of mushroom zombies. Like the lines of a common enemy have been blurred now that people have found their own ways of existing. Just something I thought was interesting. So like, here we got our Seraphites, WLF, and the

zombies battling for dominance in Seattle. It's interesting at this part of the game before you get to, I think the underground sequence, I think there's some, my memory, and maybe, maybe this is actually in the show. I, it might've blurred, but there's this moment where it's like, Hey, why haven't they cleaned this up?

Like, because there would be no... You go through all these gates to get inside of Seattle. Yeah. And then there's zombies here in Jackson. We got walls and gates and there's no zombies on the inside. We're not dealing with this. And I just think that that's... Like, Gina's like, what the hell is going on here? Why they got zombies inside their gates? What? Yeah.

The thing that this reminded me of was Kansas City because there's the like – Oh, the underground. Yeah, the brief little exchange here of when we – because God, the switch in fear, the ratcheting up in fear from like, okay, the wolves have found them in the tunnel. Fuck. And then, oh, we don't have to worry about them, but we have a way bigger problem. And then the wolves are like, I thought the tunnel was clear. Ew.

And hearing in Kansas City, you know, from Henry, yeah, well, the tunnels are clear, but then we have the other, like the, you know, the Kathleen, like, we don't need to worry about the like burbling beneath the ground. And it made me think of like that idea again of complacency, you know, in a community. And like when you, this is not a world and this is not an outbreak where anything is ever complacent.

Not sure if you've heard this is why the fireflies wanted to cut into Ellie's brain so that everyone could have a vaccine. But like if something's clear, OK, but like it's not going to be clear forever. That's not how this works. There are always going to be more infected. And so the idea that you could get comfortable for a minute and think you were safe, like that's when you're dead. What a way to live. Horrible.

This sequence is very upsetting and very, very good. The red bathed light. The flares. The flares are so central to the trailers and the marketing. Obviously the red imagery, very key in general. Before the horde gets there, the little tendrils. Dude, the worldwide web keeps kicking in. The tendrils signaled the horde last time. It's just they're always listening. Don't do it. Tess taught Ellie and us early. And we, unlike basically everybody else in the show, have been on the lookout since. Ah!

Okay, so here comes the horde. Very upsetting. Great, great action set pieces. And again, inside Kate Herron, inside of an episode where you give us this musical interlude where we saw Kate and Craig, who wrote it, we also get this truly, I think, top-tier action sequence. Yeah.

I like this. Okay. I don't need to keep hammering the battle of Jackson. Um, I like this better though. I thought this was really, really good. I love the sequence that we get to, um, the part in the, it's, I looked this up. It's still called a turnstile, even when it goes all the way up the rusted turnstile where Ellie has to throw her arm in front of Dina to save her from a bite. Uh, it's a slightly different in the game and the game they're dealing with spores. Craig talks about this. So I feel like it's safe to talk about. Uh,

Ellie's mask is broken and Dina goes to rip her own mask off to give it to Ellie. And Ellie's like, stop, stop, stop. I'm fine. Look, I'm not coughing. So inside the mechanic of the game...

Dina has no doubt whether or not Ellie is immune because if you're not immune, you're coughing immediately and then it's like, it's over for you with the spores. They haven't done the spores in the show, but they will. We've seen it in the trailer. And so this is a slightly different thing. We get this beat where Dina isn't sure whether or not she's going to have to shoot Ellie. It's very, very dramatically very good. The slight difference we get here is

is that Dina knowing she's pregnant. Yeah. Uh, goes to pull her own mask off of her face and give it to Ellie. Like doesn't think twice about it. This is her instinct is just like, I'm going to do this. The reverse is Ellie knowing she's immune, throws her arm up in front of Dina. It's just a slightly different, uh, stakes on the gesture there. Um,

But it's still definitely Ellie saving Dina. And then we go to the pinnacle theater. Anything you want to say before we get to a night at the theater? No, a lot of scary things in that sequence. Very few things in the universe give me as much PTSD as the rusted turnstile that you're just really trying to quickly get through before you die. Yeah, I think the...

the switch from Spore, Broken Mask to Bite and the extra time then that that necessitates for the anxiety to mount and build. It introduces some fascinating comps to Ellie's season one

The red test on the neck reveal with Tess and Joel. So that's a really, it sounds weird to say it's fun, but I do think it's fun and interesting for us then to think back to that moment and to know how Ellie is thinking of that moment as Ellie makes the pitch to Dina, like, sit in that chair across from me, like, I'll sleep and watch. I really liked that as a parallel and this idea of, like, these ripples across time. But just going into the theater...

Ellie is like, all right, we got out. Let's run for safety. And Dina, the gun, out. And we think back to the moments of levity and the humor of like, did you get bit? Do I have to shoot you in the fucking face? And that this thing that's a joke, at some point, if you're a person in this world, becomes...

and like a thing you might have to do to somebody that you love. And how can we not think of Ellie, like who had to do this to Riley, you know, and would know what it would, not only is in the position of needing to convince Dina, wait, the bites it's got, like, we're not going to see any like festering wound, yearning tendril creep through my skin. It's going to be fine, but also has to be thinking of a moment where she had to do this to somebody that she loved. Great point. Um, we get this, uh,

It's like the aha, take on me moment, loosen the jar, and then now the lid's gone and we can't even find it. And all the vulnerability is spilling out, right? So truths are coming out of I'm immune. Yeah. I'm pregnant. Yeah.

Ellie's saying a lot of times I wish this wasn't true. I'm going to wake up exactly as I am now, me. There's just so many levels to that. That is like, what a thing to say to someone as a bid for your life. But also just like, there are all these like bids for intimacy here. It's just like, you know, showing the bite. Like, I just think this is such a beautiful... And then this is where we get...

them finally having sex. And so versus where it happens before Joel's death in the game, we get it here. There were some people who were quite upset that we didn't get it earlier. There's some people I'm sure who are still upset, you know, because like for some people, they're like, it has to happen the way it happens in the game. And I won't take it any other way. I really like this change. I really like it here. And I think that like,

Ellie bringing Dina inside of that trust circle of like, I mean, yes, she has to for her life. But now you know this thing that really only Joel and like Tommy and Maria perhaps like knew. And when you lose someone, I will just say this in terms of processing grief. When you lose someone who knows you the way that Joel knew Ellie...

you feel like you lose a piece of yourself because you lose that part of you that someone knew and now that person's gone. And so this process of showing that part of yourself or more of yourself than you've ever shown before to someone new is also part of this, like, grief and growth and healing that Ellie is doing around Joel and deepening her relationship with Dina. Yeah. I love that, Joe. And...

It also, it's like, it is a defiance. It's one of necessity, as you said. It's one of embrace because Dina is somebody that Ellie loves. But it is also this act of defiance of, like, the lessons for years from Joel and then Tommy. We don't tell people. Tell no one. Yeah, yeah. You know, Marlene before, like, the warnings of what would happen if people, like...

There's a reason that Ellie had to – I loved the humor of like I really missed wearing short sleeves. But like why did Ellie have to burn her arm and then cover that with a tattoo? It's like why did Ellie have to cut with her knife, with her switchblade, into the bite on the abdomen after the grocery store? By the way, by my count, and who knows how many we missed in the five-year time jump, four bites. Yeah. Fucking lot. Ellie, it's a lot. Yeah.

I think that just means more tattoos. There you go. We're tattoo enthusiasts, so I love it. You're always thinking. You're always thinking. I was also really struck, as you were, by the – a lot of the time I wish this wasn't true, but I'm going to wake up exactly as I am right now. And, like, you know, the vulnerability of, like, saying to somebody I don't always like who I am, but, like, will you love me anyway? It's just absolutely beautiful. And then for Dina to say, you know, yes is just very, very moving. Yeah.

This was a great scene of, like, intense suspense. Yeah. Beautiful emotional resonance and somehow humor. The drop of water hitting Ellie's face. And her just sort of, like, jerking. Yeah. No, it's not the infection. Like, that's, like, a master class in being able to stitch together all of these different emotional notes inside of one really high, intense stretch. Yeah.

And obviously, like, them, Ellie and Dina having sex, like, this is, I thought this was a beautiful scene. I thought the passion and the depth of that passion and yearning for each other was so palpable. And the way that this happened with the move, you know, we had speculated about, like, well, okay, if this comes a couple episodes later, and, like, what would it mean for it to be after Joel instead of before? I think, like, the...

The fact that, you know, we've talked a lot about how Mazin likes to say, like, you know, the good things in this universe are always immediately followed by loss. And, like, it's not like that's not going to continue to be true. Like, it's not like it's all sunshine and daisies moving forward, right? That's just – there's no way. I know. It's not the story they're telling. Weird. But –

You know, to not immediately have, like, that great happy moment lead to, like, the defining tragedy of Ellie's life and instead have it be this, like...

salve of not just the actual connection with Dina, but the idea that you can build something with somebody else, like feel so magical and like such a gift. And again, very, very much of a piece with the music scene. It's so meaningful for both of them. And we understand why. And they talk about why with each other and they open up. I had like the one little, like can't turn off the logic part of my brain that was like,

Deena should be asking more questions about Ellie's immunity, but I do think that, like, that will presumably come, I assume, in a subsequent episode. And I thought it was appropriate, ultimately, for, like,

The fear of the tunnel sequence and then the fear of losing Ellie to be the thing that cements for Dina, okay, I'm ready to say this thing out loud, a very Gale-esque say it out loud kind of moment for both of them. And that the heightened emotional state that they were in leading to this culmination of their physical culmination of this love for each other felt really right in the universe of the show. So I thought this was great.

I thought you were gone and then all of a sudden this future I was imagining wasn't going to happen. How can we not think about future days? Obviously, this idea of a future with someone. Her discussion of struggling to come to terms with bisexuality, how her mother reacted, how she really tried with Jesse just because she likes Jesse. She genuinely does. And this helped heal for me a little bit this like,

Well, now that we know that Dina's pregnant, we can say that in the spoiler section, we were talking about this idea of the timeline, the three-month timeline, and how Dina had to go back to Jesse after she kisses Ellie in order to make the pregnancy math work. We were talking about that in the spoiler section. And, like, I'm not mad about it at all, but this, like, makes it even, like,

you know, she's just sort of like, she's like, I feel like I'm supposed to be with Jesse. That's who I'm supposed to be. What is wrong with me that I can't make that work? And it, it, I still don't know if we've gotten to the very bottom of this whole, does Jesse strike you as sad question that we got it last week. I still don't feel like I have my fully my arms around it, but like, yeah, I can understand if Dean is like, is Jesse sad by nature or is me trying to,

to care for him, but not getting, being able to match him where he is contributing to that. Am I making him sad because I'm pretending to be someone I'm not inside of this relationship and I don't know how to be what he needs me to be because I want this other thing that I think I'm not supposed to have. Like, it's, um...

I think that's at least part of it, if not the whole of what she was getting at with that question. I really like that. That adds a lot of clarity. I think also it feels to me like that's about Ellie for Dina, too. Like...

This I because the why would you hope that is what Ellie said about the idea of Jesse being sad. And then Dina said, well, because if it's not that, then it's me. And like the idea of like the person that you're with and you have this closeness to like what can you not access maybe about their emotional state? And are you in some way the cause of that? Or is there just something that you can't that they have not allowed you to like see yet? Yeah. But yeah, I really love what you just what you just said.

Okay. This was not a six, Joe. This was not a six. This was a 10. 12 out of 10, I think. Not everyone's as brave as you. We get jerky to help with the morning after breath. So good. Very Miley Rubin coded. So we're all having a baby. Bella is very funny. I'm going to be a dad like Joel. And then we get the ending. We get Nora. We get the hospital. We get widespread gunfire. And then we get this like, hey, man, you're pregnant.

Should you maybe not do this with me anymore? And Dina being like, no, this is it. We're together. I'm with you. Like, we're in us. You don't get to get rid of me. So... I thought this was really a very propulsive and fun way to set up the next episode. I was like...

Can I watch it immediately? Like, if this were a binge show, I just would not stop. I'm glad we're getting it weekly, obviously. But, you know, not everyone's as brave as you. I'm not brave. I'm just obvious. Moment that was so sweet. Like, from Ellie's perspective, you know, it makes us think back to the Sam-Ellie exchange of, like, I'm scared all the time. But then, like, to move into what bravery looks like for Dina and this idea. Like, there was some discussion last week of, like, you know, in the game, like,

That great moment of like, I don't want you to feel like you have to. This is when they're still in Jackson before they depart. And...

Dina taking Ellie's face and cupping it and saying, Ellie, you go, I go, end of story. It's like, again, in the show, they have a closeness. They're, quote, best friends. But they hadn't taken that next step yet. And so this actually feels like a more appropriate place for show Dina to have that moment. You go, I go. We're in it. And I loved the idea of when they both say...

It's different now because Ellie's talking about the pregnancy and the baby, but Dina's talking about it's – yeah, it is different. Like – We're together. We're together. It's our baby. And I'm not letting you do it without me. Like, it's our future sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah. And I love that immediate, like, it's our baby. Like, you're part of it. Like, immediately. Yeah. And the way that also, like, from the generosity I thought from Ellie of, like –

There's not the jealousy there. It's like, so all of us. You mean Jesse? Yeah. This is Last of Us, Cold and Modern Family? Yeah. Amanda, our listener Amanda wrote in with this interesting email interpretation of the obvious part where they wrote, being obvious could mean Ellie is a teenager with a crush on Dina. That's not very subtle, but the obvious I also interpreted was the way Ellie carries herself as a queer person. She's known in the community of Jackson as the only other lesbian beside Kat, not even named as a lesbian, just the other one.

From the info we're given, Ellie doesn't make any effort to hide who she is, even in a world where there's no pride or queer community to speak of. She's just herself anyway.

Dina's upbringing and being told she was wrong for bisexuality at such a young age is also indicative of where history stopped. These girls who have known nothing but this post-apocalyptic world, nothing of what a pride flag means or anything still managed to find each other in a weird way. It gives me hope that the way the current administration legislation tries to erase us, that even in the mushroom apocalypse, there are and will always be queer people. Thank you for that email. Thank you for the show. Anything else you want to say in the spoiler free section?

I don't think so. All right. I don't think so. Tell us what mushroom dish you made this week. Oh, I didn't even make it. So my pal, Lindsay Garcia, who is an incredible cook, she owns Platecraft. I'm just going to give her a free ad. She owns Platecraft Catering in the East Bay and she is incredible and you should check them out. She used to cater for the A's before the A's left. So she is incredible at what she does. It was her birthday and it was her birthday wish to come make us dinner. That's what she wanted to do for her birthday. And

she listens to this podcast so she didn't say it but I'm pretty sure that's why she brought mushrooms she brought these beautiful morel mushrooms and she made this delicious bucatini dish with garlic ramps and morel mushrooms you posted this on Instagram and I was salivating oh my god it was so good so shout out to Plate Craft shout out to Lindsay for her incredible work with mushrooms this week damn let's go now to our spoiler section

You've been warned. If you do not want to hear about game details that have not yet made their way into the show. Bye. We love you. Thank you for spending your Monday evening slash Tuesday morning slash whenever with us. We will see you next week for episode five of seven. Wow. Did you go?

I'm going to start with shamblers. That's an easy place to start, okay? Yeah, yes. That's a, yeah. In the train tunnel section. Yeah, yeah. There are these shamblers. Yes. Who emit acid. They're very upsetting. They burn you. Here's the thing about shamblers. They're terrifying at first. They're actually kind of easier to beat. Like when you first see them, you're like, oh, fuck.

We're leveling up from the bloaters. No, maybe this is just my personal experience, but I have a way harder time taking down a bloater. I need way more ammo and molotovs or whatever to get through a bloater. Shamblers I can take down in a couple. Shambler Slayer. These dipshits catch on fire with a quickness. And then if you just avoid the plume, you can definitely evade them pretty quickly when you run and you avoid the plume. It is a very amusing experience.

when you do die from the acid exposure, I will say. She's like, wah, wah, wah.

Your skin just melts off. I hope that's the thumbnail for this video. I hope it's not. I'm sure I'll do something equally stupid when we formally post. I wonder if the Shamblers are coming to the show. I have no idea. Got stalkers. Yeah. You met the Rat King. Do you think we're going to get a Rat King before the end? I don't know if it'll be this season or next season because that's an Abby conflict, but...

And I still have no idea how they're going to break up the structure of the season, but we're more than halfway through, so I assume they are going to follow something closer to the, I don't know, the game. I mean, I think the fact that they call this episode Day One feels like... So next season we get Day One version two? In the premiere, yeah. I think Rat King is iconic and you can't skip it. You just simply can't skip it. So I wonder if we'll get like a... The scenes for next week that they had at the end of episode four...

I haven't seen Beyond Episode 4, but I was like, oh, okay. They're teasing the Rat King because the teaser for next episode for Episode 5, there's like, and there's nothing on the floor down there at the hospital. Not even. Feels like we'll set it up and build and then we'll get it next season. Spores in the trailer. Yeah. It's in the air. Hetienne Park's character makes her debut in

Shout out the Hannibal Hive. But yeah, Spore is in the air in the trailer for next week. We're in the hospital. Nora's here. Scary shit's happening. Shimmer, we want to say. Have you left? Are you gone? Shimmer just gets shot in the head in the game. First, they all run over a mine. Yeah, and Dina gets blown into a ditch. And you're like, that's bad. And then Shimmer gets shot in the head. So...

Very upsetting. We think and hope that Shimmer's just going to stay at the record store and a friend is going to come join Shimmer and that's going to be the end of that, right? That's my dearest hope. I don't want to allow myself to believe because we, you know, routinely confront very painful things in this television show, so I'm prepared to lose Shimmer. But...

I would really celebrate it if Shimmer made it out okay, though I will wonder why Ellie doesn't then go to try to find Shimmer, but maybe that will happen too. That would be great. I just, yeah, it would be nice. We have a lot of, like, dog death coming our way, so to not have to lose Shimmer would be nice.

Dude, is Nora, do you think Nora and the hospital, like, obviously we're going to the hospital next episode. So my assumption is that, and we hear obviously Nora, like, so I assume that's going to all happen next week. That's going to be brutal, really intense. And I'm trying to think about just like the pace of the rest of the season. And the question I have now is like, that feels right in terms of the present storyline. When are the flashbacks going to start?

We've gone two episodes since we lost Joel without them, which felt appropriate, I think. Here's my thought. But they've got to be soon. Well, yeah. Well, here's the thought. It's like, if this is day one, and next week is day two. So that's the time. And then...

finale is day three. So is it between next week and the finale? Oh, like a whole episode in the past instead of a Or you think they put it out in day two? I don't know. That's a good question. I have kind of been assuming that they would be sprinkling them throughout episodes rather than clustering them. But I feel like they would have been like, when does the sprinkle start?

Well, that's why I'm like, if it's going to be Sprinkles, I mean, it would have to be next week that they begin. It would have to be. And I do think it feels right to deprive us of Joel for three and four. But then if we are going to be in Sprinkle territory for both the Ellie episodes and the eventual Abby episodes, if Sprinkles are going to be the method, then we've got to. I think we would have to get our first one next week. I have no idea.

I'm excited to find out. I'm going to be a wreck when we get our first flashback. A wreck. Yeah. Astronaut Ellie is just tough. Okay. Still no... Do Jesse... So, Jesse and Tommy... Okay. So, I...

can't remember which of our ringer colleagues said this last week. Could have, it could have been you and Rob in the game spoiler section or how many of you last of a sponsor? My brain, my brain is the rat King, just the melded gnarled monster. Um,

It might have been Ben and Daniel, but this point that one of the things that's really different... I still assume Tommy is coming and coming down more to try to help and save Ellie. Coming with Jesse. Yeah. Not only is the obvious difference of we're not Ellie and Dina are not just pursuing Abby, but in the game they're haunting Tommy's steps and they're following the clues of where Tommy is as much as anything else.

But the point from one of the other bots, I'm sorry, my brain, was that there's a huge difference there because Tommy puts Seattle on high alert, his presence. And so, like, I thought that was really interesting. That's a button mash. Yeah, Daniel and Ben must have been talking. I was like, oh, yeah, that is really different. That, like—

Obviously, there's enough. And I think that's maybe also part of why we have a lot of like just like wolf seraphite. They're all out there. They're against each other because maybe you have less of like Tommy is this inciting in real time in the moment. Let's go out there and like try to like get this sniper. So that's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I thought you were gone. And then all of a sudden this future I was imagining wasn't going to happen is what Dina says in this episode. Sad. Yeah.

I think Ellie saying, I want it with you, when Dina's like, I don't even know if that's what you want. I want it with you. I think it would have destroyed me at any point, but having literally finished the game this weekend, including playing the stretch where Ellie makes the decision to leave Dina and JJ in the farm, which is one of the, like,

most intense things I've ever experienced consuming a story. I was just like destroyed by it. This killed me. And obviously this is there for like setting up that, that eventual moment. I mean, this was, this was absolutely heartbreaking, heartbreaking. What do you want to say about Isaac? I thought this was just fantastic as an expansion and an introduction and a setup for future stuff. I mean, I think like the, the,

On that, like, mockery point, you know, kind of, like, diminishing your enemy, I was just like, wait till Yara kills you, you fucking monster. So that was fun to think about. But I thought that...

And Malcolm also deserves some criticism here because that idea of nobody ever leaving the Seraphites, it's like, well, two of the—again, I have not seen anything about casting for this season, so I have to assume Yara and Lev are coming in season three at this point, right? Yeah. Which makes sense if season three is broadly an Abby season. Yeah.

there we've already talked about the schisms inside of the seraphites but obviously they are our like primary point of view characters into that idea that like that community that you are raised in and indoctrinated in is not necessarily going to serve you well so um felt like an interesting setup for that and then i think just like isaac too with this setup of like the wolves who don't

Who aren't all on the same page, both in what Malcolm says, what we see with Burton and the other guard. And then with Isaac and his federal origin story, what Isaac is willing to do to his own people when he loses faith in them immediately. Yeah.

Like, the way that the hunt for Owen, you know, kicks in after just some kind of, like, whispers about what happened with Danny. And then, obviously, like, everything that happens with Abby, who is trying to protect Owen. Like, it's just kind of, like, felt like the perfect foundation for understanding this character. Jeffrey Wright. Boy, the best. So good. You mentioned wanting...

you know, anything you want to say about the Qatar? Or, no, the Qatar and Astron Ellie, I guess the last two things we want to hit before we go. Well, I guess the Astron thing feels like a connection to what we were just talking about with, like, when will we get some of the flashbacks? Because that also, you could argue it either way. It's like a baseball statistic. You can find, like, the advanced metric you need to make your case. But, like, I guess you could say that's just a kind of, like, be patient, we'll get there little morsel. I was sort of, like,

You feel like it has to be next week. But I don't know. I don't know. The guitar, the framing of that

It's almost an identical visual to how Ellie leaves Joel's guitar in front of the window at the farm at the very end of the game. So it felt like, again, a little nod to that iconic... A pre-echo? A pre-stir egg? A pre-stir egg. The favorite. A pre-stir egg. A pre-stir egg. Oh, man. Dude, I'm sad we only have three episodes left. I know. Any chance that we're going to find out that they secretly already filmed season three and it comes out in like six months? And Jason Ritter's in it? Maybe. Maybe.

That's the Yellow Jackets reference. Three more weeks with The Last of Us. Two more weeks with Andor. This... I'm going to be a wreck in June. This blender of content has been burned through way too quickly. To everyone who worked on this podcast. That's Mallory Rubin. That's me. Yes. But there's also Carlos Chiriboga. Carlos, welcome back. There's Steve Altman. Steve, welcome back. There's John Richter. John, you never left.

It's our junior regal pal out, but still with us. And tell me you're dinner on. Always here. Remember, the fungus loves too. And we'll see you soon. Bye.