'The Last of Us' Season 2, Episode 5 Deep Dive
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Hello, welcome back to House of R. You may have just finished listening to our Friday and our pod, and it is time for our Monday Last of Us pod. I'm Joanna Robinson, and joining me today, the most beautiful, radiant little spore that ever did podcast, it's Molly Rubin. Jo, I'm going to leave you alone now. I'm going to go explore the rest of this place because you're smart as fuck and you're figuring it out. Okay, hello.

We're going to talk to you about Last of Us Season 2, Episode 5. Feel her love. Before we get into that, and we have a lot to say and a lot to think about, a lot of great emails from you all, let's talk about some programming reminders. Okay. Actually, first and foremost, I'm going to do a programming reminder about our own show covering this show. We've had a lot of people ask us, hey, man, you keep saying you covered Season 1 of The Last of Us, but we can't find it. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, wow. And I feel your love and I feel your pain and I'm here to tell you we covered it on the Prestige TV podcast feed. Why? Don't ask us why. But that's where it is. So if you want to hear us talk about season one of The Last of Us, it exists on the Prestige TV podcast feed. So that's where you can find it. Elsewhere in the ringerverse, the Midnight Boys are, of course, also covering The Last of Us. Their pod is already up. We already got an email about their coverage asking us what we thought about their coverage. Can't wait to talk about it.

Also, we're both covering Andor. The Midnight Boys will be covering the last batch of Andor episodes sort of right after they drop this week. I'm in mourning. And then we will be covering it later in the week. And we are devastated already. Can't wait to talk about it, though. And then we have some plans to sort of extend our time in the Andorverse. That is what is happening with us. Also, we should mention, of course...

and Daniel are covering The Last of Us over on Button Mash. And then Rob and I are covering The Last of Us over on the Prestige TV podcast feed. Had a great chat with Kate Herron last week. We got some really interesting insights from the costume designer on the show from this week. Oh, fun! Specifically how you make mushrooms grow out of a costume because that is like something that they have to think about, which is really fascinating. So...

That is what is going on here, there, and elsewhere. Malia Rubin, how can folks keep track of all of that juicy, mushroomy, and dory content? I'm going to keep it simple. Follow the pods. Why not?

Yeah. Follow House of R, follow The Ringerverse, 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 on Spotify or The Ringerverse YouTube channel. So subscribe to that as well. And then while you're at it, follow The Ringerverse on the social media platform of your choosing and send us your emails.

The inbox is open, hobbitsanddragonsatgmail.com. Keep the last of us emails coming. Send us your Andor emails.

We want to hear from you about everything. Okay. Can I just say, you know, sometimes we get tagged in people's Instagram posts or whatever it is. My favorite one I saw this weekend was one of our listeners on Mother's Day wrote, well, Mother's really one for Mother's Day is like nearly four hours alone to watch Mallory and Joanna talk about Andor with a frosty beverage. So if you celebrate Mother's Day watching us talk about Star Wars,

You rule and we love you. And however you celebrate, whatever you celebrate, we support you. Okay. Season two, episode five, feel her love written by Craig Mazin directed by Stephen Williams. And this is just like the thrill of my lifetime. That's a big moment for the lost heads here. It's really excited. Mallory and I love a TV show called loss. I don't know if you've heard of it, but Stephen Williams is like a, like it's like Jack Bender and Stephen Williams are like the top loss directors. Um,

I've talked to Stephen Williams about Lost for a Lost podcast I did. I've talked to Stephen Williams about Watchmen when he directed one of the best episodes of television ever on Watchmen. So some of our very favorite Lost episodes were directed by this guy. And also, I just love the way that Stephen talks about his work. If you watch the after episode, you've got like a mere taste of the way that Stephen talks about his work. A mushroomy morsel. Yeah, it's just like incredibly thoughtful. And I just...

I love his work and I just got so excited. Like depressingly though, this is a short episode. It's a 45 minute episode of The Last of Us. How did you feel about that when you clocked the runtime, Mallory?

You know, I'm a glutton. I always want as much as we can get. But I was trying to remember if this was the shortest. I know there were two episodes in season one, so I went back to, like, this is a minute shy of being the shortest. Episode four in season one was 46 minutes, and the finale was 44. So this comes right in the middle at 45. So there's some elite company there, obviously, with the season one finale also being very compact. Yeah.

And as this episode reminded us, Last of Us is capable of achieving quite a bit in a compact runtime. No questions. Spores, seraphites, a lot's going on. Jesse's here. Okay, so it was a very action-packed episode and also huge character moment for our main character, Ellie. Yeah.

What are your sort of big picture thoughts about this episode of television, Mallory? Have we given our spoiler warning yet? Spoiler warning. Listen, this is what we do. This is what we do on this podcast. Thanks for reminding me. Yes. Mallory's played the game. She finished it. She's such a champ. I watched a playthrough of the game. So we know...

How this story ends. But we will not talk about it until the spoiler section at the end of this podcast. So we will use gameplay to inform the way in which we talk about this episode, compare and contrast some adaptive changes, etc., etc. But there will be big, loud spoiler warning before we get into future days that are awaiting us on this podcast.

podcast on this game on this show. Two real camps emerging among the bad babies for the spoiler warning sound effect we have chosen. There's the

Guys, I appreciate it, but it does lead me to the brink of an actual heart attack. And then there's the, I really want to say thanks because there's quite literally no way that I could miss that the spoiler section is about to begin. And that is our intention. But you still hear from people who are like, I was doing the dishes and I couldn't get to the, and I'm just sort of like, okay, well. Get free camps. I don't know. When we're nearing the two hour mark, I would say dry your hands off and get ready. Okay, so.

Big picture, now that the spoiler warning has been safely issued, big picture thoughts on this episode. Mallory Rubin, what did you think? You know, this was bleak. It's a bleak episode of TV, and I admire that. I appreciate it. I think that is the appropriate place to be at this point in the story, and both where we concluded last week and then the place that we wind up in this episode, but also even just inside of this episode, going from...

the little smile that Dina and Ellie share into the absolute conviction of the good when Ellie, having picked up the guitar, then confirms with Dina that they have a path. And then, of course, everything that we head into with Nora. So, you know, Ellie's face when it's bathed in red at the end and the hallway is bathed in red, that color treatment that is so central in the game and has been very present already so far this season, right?

I think for a lot of people who listen to this podcast and spend a lot of time in the nerdverse, probably hard not to think of the Sith-like overtones. It's, you know, basically akin to the first time that we see the red filling Anakin Skywalker's eyes, and that feels appropriate. So it's an intense episode. It's an emotionally wrenching episode. I thought once again, like last week, the way that we have like a opening scene with a different character

a set of characters. Obviously, we met Hannah Han last week, but hadn't spent much time, is just structurally kind of like a really interesting choice. So there's a lot here to break down and some just, you know, incredibly grim stuff to work through together. I'm glad to have you as always to lean on. You're not here physically, but digitally and work through my feelings together. And also, I just like, you know, obviously, we're going to talk about it at the end, but

The episode ends with a couple seconds in the past. And if anybody watched the next time on for next week, it's clear what awaits. So there's not only the emotion of what we witnessed inside of this episode, but then the emotion of the promise of what awaits. So it's an intense time to be a Last of Us fan. How about you? You have to get through...

the hospital basement hallway in order to have the reward that is getting to see Joel at the end of this episode. I really liked this episode a lot. I think it was interesting to me. I've been, you know, I've been dipping in and out of the Last of Us subreddits, and there's several different Last of Us subreddits. There's like game focused, this, that, and the other thing. One of our listeners wrote in because I was sort of

The discourse as it was with the show has been quite charged around this season of television. And you and I generally like to sort of not engage with bad faith arguments. And I get kind of tired of repetitive sort of...

shallow dismissals I don't mind a well thought out critique at all and a critique of the show we want to hear about it we want to engage with it but like you know some just sort of people who went into the season sort of determined not to like it and then I'm just sort of repeating those ideas over and over again that sort of gets in the way of me trying to figure out

What else people are thinking about? So one of our listeners, Daniel, who's actually a moderator of one of the subreddits, wrote in to me to, like, give me a breakdown of, like, all the subreddits and sort of, like, what kind of thing you can expect to find there. And he recommended his own, like, you know, which is...

The Last of Us HBO series is the name of the subreddit that he runs, which is not like a niche board. It's a very populated board. But I checked in on that one on Sunday night, and I had a great time with that board because there are still people, again, who have criticisms of the show. But what I saw overall was a lot of people who have had those criticisms in the past, and the main criticism seems to be this characterization of Ellie in the show so far seemed lighter and bubblier than...

than the version of Ellie that they felt like they got in the game. And I feel like a lot, what I saw resoundingly on Sunday night on that board and a few of the others that I checked out was here she is at last, the Ellie that we recognize, which is,

Bella Ramsey in a red lit hallway with complete blacked out eyes, like looking absolutely terrifying. And so, um, the show made a decision about how to deploy that transformation or that moment. Um, and, and, and,

You know, I have thoughts about that when we get... I do want to talk about this, but I don't want to... For people who haven't engaged in the trailer for next week, I don't want to, like, get too far into it. So I'll save that sort of for the very last. But...

It's worked for me. I think I see the vision, but I can understand why people watching it until they saw this were worried we weren't going to go as dark as they wanted to go in as the game is capable of. And then you see Bella Ramsey pick up a bent pipe and bash a dying woman in the leg. And you're like, oh, oh, oh, okay. We're going there. Here we go. So I thought that was a really interesting...

I really, I mean, harrowing, tough to watch. It's hard for me to say, like, I loved it, but I did love it because I thought the performances were really good. The visuals were really good. And I think it made a lot of the lighter moments that we got this season. I don't, it doesn't feel disjointed to me. It feels, yeah.

important to me. So we'll get back to that maybe a little later on. Before I get into any other emails, I just need to state for the record that it has been eight days since we last saw Shimmer. I'm counting the days and the hours. I need... You know how...

On the internet, the old interwebs. Yeah. You'll get like a little cam for a bird. Hamsters. Yeah, yeah. Some sort of... A kitten cam. Yeah. Some sort of animal in the wild who we are monitoring with great interest because we are so invested in the well-being of that creature. That is what I believe we deserve for Shimmer. Shimmer cam. So let's get a little Shimmer cam going in the music shop so that we can...

Keep tabs and be assured that the grass is lasting. It rains a lot in Seattle. Hopefully some of that rainwater has made it in for Shimmer's refreshment. I really enjoyed the conversation that you and Rob had about what music Shimmer might be rocking out to. Maybe we could get some confirmation on that front as well. I would have that going on a second screen, I think, pretty much 24-7.

I love the free idea. HBO. When Kate, when Kate Heron was talking on the podcast last week about, you know, a shimmer centric spinoff episode, um,

The reference that I couldn't reach in that moment, but I was thinking about was like, like Appa's last days. Like, let's just, let's just follow Shimmer around. That'd be great. Way less traumatic version of Appa's last days, but it's just Shimmer vibing out, getting some Seattle coffee, going to Pike's market. Like, you know, just like what are, what else, you know, don't go to the aquarium. It's bad there. Like whatever. So, okay. Little mailbag moment. Okay.

Speaking of Lost, Amarina wrote in and said, During the If You Are Mobile, You Use Mobile section of your last pod, I really liked your discussion about, quote, the kind of person who leans in and rises up during an apocalypse. That instantly made me think of John Locke in Lost. Ever heard of it?

And maybe also Misty Quigley in Yellow Jackets. I'm only a few episodes in, so I have no idea what her full arc is. Don't spoil it. I started watching Yellow Jackets so I could listen to you guys' thought about it. Someone said something to me about not having to seek justice because the universe always finds balance. I don't know if I believe that per se, but it's interesting to imagine that when these underdog characters find themselves on the fortunate...

air quotes for the video people, side of disaster. They may feel a sense that the universe has brought all of this on specifically for them. They may be sure that the universe knew it was the only way for them to live the lives and have the status they were meant to live and have. I loved, I got so excited when I saw a John Locke, Misty Quigley comp email from our listener here. Mallory, do you have any thoughts about this?

I think this is a great observation and we won't, per the request, spoil Yellowjackets. I'm thrilled that yet another bad baby is joining us out in the wilderness. But if this is the subject and the premise that is interesting to you, then Yellowjackets is certainly a good story because Misty's certainly not the only character where that kind of idea is relevant. You know? Yep. Who can move quickly from, oh no, our plane crashed, our lives as we know it are over, into...

This is the power I was always meant to have. Oh, queen me? Okay. I've always looked great in antlers. Pass it over. You know? Yeah. John Locke, I think, again, you know, not to spoil loss for maybe people haven't seen, but John Locke is one of the most fascinating characters that ever exist on television. One of my all-time favorites. Yeah. And that sense of like impotent entitlement and,

To be clear, I love John Locke. I actually feel empathy for him while also just watching all these moves he makes and...

and shuddering and being upset about what I'm watching happen. So I think for Isaac, we know so little relatively to a character like John Locke or Mr. Quigley. We only have this little morsel on that what Mallory and I know from the game, but I think that's a really fascinating psychological profile to think about in the context of the mushroom apocalypse. And thinking about like maybe characters we already know, I don't think...

I would accuse anyone like Jesse or Tommy or Maria or anyone we see in leadership in Jackson of being this person. But I would say someone like Maria, whose main character trait is she was a prosecutor once. That's basically the sum total of what we know about Maria. But like...

Someone who thinks she is the right person to lead. Maria would not say Jon Snow, like, I don't want it. She's like, I should do this job. I'm good at it and I should do it. But the distinctions then between the Marias or the Johns and the Mistys, the people who maybe were in positions of power and then can continue to wield that power in a new context, and then the people who are like, at last, right?

My purpose is clear to me and other people who the circumstances have changed for them. Yes. And now they will recognize my worth. It's just so interesting when a character's in that place. I mean, thinking of someone like Isaac, we don't know, again, in the context of the show, we don't know more than what we've seen here. But I do think it's interesting given what we know from what we've seen here is like we saw –

Alana Yubak's character, Hanrahan, like, invite him to the resistance. Yes. In a position seemingly of leadership inside of that crowd. Mm-hmm. But now she is his subordinate and he is in charge, right? That is indicated by Elise in the cold open of this episode saying, like, yeah, if you're going to execute me, Isaac will be here. Like, the leader would be here. You know? So, like, what happened that Isaac hop-skipped and jumped over Hanrahan to become the leader? And, like...

Yeah. Is it just his military background? Is it, you know, what is it that he is uniquely qualified to do that she can't do? And who knows how much space and time, because Hanrahan is a show-invented character, how much space and time they have for a story like that. I don't know. But there's just like little hints in the margin about, you know, Isaac's psychology here that I think is interesting to glom onto. For sure. Yeah. All right.

Our listener, Cloud, wrote a great email about the guitar scene in the music store last week. And I do want to say, on the guitar front, we got a lot of emails from people who thought, disagreed that the silica packet was a silica packet and they thought it was guitar strings. That doesn't make a ton of sense to me. Because Ellie's like,

like, an immediate, like, sort of, like, yes, this is here. And I don't think she would, like... Guitar strings could be sentimental to her. She's like, oh, guitar strings. Like, the conversation I had with Joel at the end of, like, blah, blah, blah. But, like, um...

but this is a very much like, thank you. You're here right now. And then we also got a bunch of emails from people about whether or not it would be unsafe to be like huffing a silica packet or be that close. Thanks for the bad babies. Um,

But Cloud wrote this really interesting email about Ellie, and I'll only read a part of it because some of it is spoilery. But she wrote, Ellie thanks and huffs the silica packets for preserving the guitar and the person who left the guitar in the case with the silica packets, but doesn't offer the same courtesy to anyone who might come after her. And Cloud writes this in reference to the fact that Ellie just leaves the guitar out on a stand when she walks out.

Ellie gets a moment of real joy in connection to both Dina and to Joel because of someone's efforts to preserve the guitar, but it makes no effort to reciprocate that preservation. The guitar will just rot like the rest of them. Ellie is destructive. But at this point, she's still carelessly, thoughtlessly destructive. She probably didn't leave the guitar out purposely to ruin it. She just didn't even think about how it would decay if she didn't make an active effort to preserve it. I think that, like in the game, the encounter with Nora... Cloud wrote this before this episode, but...

uh the encounter with nora likely the next episode will be the turning point for ellie re thoughtless destruction versus intentional destruction killing nora is the moment she decides to proceed in excess of what is necessary to achieve her goals killing nora is the first time she chooses destruction when she herself feels she does not have to um what do you think about that you know it's funny um

I want to respond to this carefully, like, because we talked about leaving the guitar in the spoiler section last week. I'm not going to get into any of that. In a different context. Yeah, it's a completely different context, so I'm not going to get into any of that here. But I will just say that's where my head was. Yeah, yeah. We talked about elsewhere in the pod. But the first message that I got from anyone in my life who I'm not podcasting with about the show, so not you, about this episode was about that. Like, outrage. Yeah.

that she just left the guitar to then rot like all of the other things that she had that had walked in and initially discovered in that like befouled crumbling state so it was interesting because that had not occurred to me because my head was in a different place with it but i think clearly that's something that a lot of people were feeling after watching that which is fascinating well here's what's possible perhaps shiver clip clopped her way upstairs put it away delicately mouthed

lifted the guitar, put it away in the case, made sure to sort of nudge the silica packet back into the case, shut it, buckled it. I think that's possible, and I would like to say one more time, there's a way we could know for sure. HBO, we're waiting. I used to watch Mr. Ed a lot when I was a kid, and Mr. Ed could do all kinds of things. So I believe in Shimmer. I believe that Shimmer preserved that guitar. Okay. Should we go to the deep dive? Let's do it!

Not since Stannis Baratheon burned his daughter alive on Father's Day have we spent a more troubling holiday on HBO Sunday night. Happy Mother's Day from HBO and The Last of Us as we get to meet Elise Park and find out what happened to her son, Leon. It's grim. Spoilers for Game of Thrones, I guess. Okay. Yeah.

Once again, as we did before, we start inside of WLF territory. This is the more recent past. And Alana Yubak, as we mentioned, is here as Hanrahan and Hetian Park as Elise Park in the origin story of B-level containment. I just like overall, how

how did this cold open work for you? Did you have a, not a good time with it, but did you have a compelling time with it? Yeah. Yeah. Like you, you know, like you noted earlier, it's kind of a fucked up episode as last of us episodes often are to say like, boy, I enjoyed my, my time, you know, it seems sick and wrong, but I thought this was fascinating. And I,

I will obviously go beat by beat through the scene and talk about more of the particulars here, but for a number of reasons, like rooting us in, as you already noted with something like the org chart hierarchy for Isaac and Hanahan, that's interesting. But like also even something like the way that we saw Hanahan in the, um,

the flashback last episode in like plain clothes, you know, dressed in a city. And now it's like, everyone's fully militia out. And even just the way that, uh, the WLF presence is, uh, the, uh,

spread throughout the hospital. You have some insights coming on like the factions within the factions, but just like this is a military unit that has set up, posted, and claimed this hospital as a base and a base of consequence. So there's all of that, right? The way that we're getting to glimpse just very quickly as we roam through the hallways, the way that the operation functions. Mm-hmm.

That's a very interesting place to start. I thought that the little things like the design, the set design of the boarded-up door, incredible. The way that that so quickly to us simultaneously conveyed the...

urgency of like this required everything we had. We threw everything we had at this right away. And then welded it. And then welded it shut. Everything we had and then let's get this on right now. But also like we had to do it with a quickness. This looks like it's a child's like art project, you know, art installations in a good way, in an effective way. And then, you know, obviously everything that we're going to talk about here with Leon and the

absolute gut punch of the end of this conversation when we realize that Leon is Lisa's son and the comparisons and points of contrast that that invites us to make between another

parent and child duo in our story. I thought this was like a really rich opening for this episode and a great bookend for a lot of what, maybe it's not a bookend, it's like a middle end. I don't know because it connects to so much that came in the past, but also so much of where we find our characters at the end of the episode. So I liked it quite a bit. I do think it's interesting bookend to start with Elise and end with Joel. That's the sort of

pastry shell around this episode. Yeah, so in terms of the factions within the factions, it was interesting to me that Craig Mazin in the official pod was making sort of much of the fact that the soldiers here are not sort of

by Hanrahan's presence that when she first walks in and before she sees Elise, she sees Elise's men, this idea that their loyalty is to Elise. And that's something Hanrahan says in this first scene, your soldiers are loyal to you. So I just thought it was interesting to think about the factions within factions inside of the WLF. You had raised this last week when you mentioned that the guard outside of Isaac's

cookware hour and torture extravaganza was uncertain about what was going on in there. And so this idea that we are not, we are the WLF, we have

our jeans for cargo pants. We are a militia, but we're not all on the same page here. And who is the us? Who are the smaller us's inside of the larger us's? Right. Where do our loyalties lie? I

Yeah, and we love tracking that in general in the show. And we talked about a version of that with the Seraphites, where this first glimpse of the Seraphites that we get is a group that is choosing to leave. And then obviously last week and now certainly this week, we have other insights into how certain members of the Seraphite community conduct themselves. So all of that is a fascinating continued peeling back of the layers of these different groups. I guess the other thing, just on an opening note, is...

So much of what unfolds at the end is about Ellie and Nora specifically and also the spores. But just for like how the episode starts and the scope of the presence that we see, we're also like Ellie is heading into an army base. And we talked about this on our... Terrifying. I don't know if you noticed, nearly four hour Andor pod that we did last week. The people were saying that it was either just the right length or not long enough. Not long enough is what I heard. Okay.

What are we going to crack for is the question. Bunch of sickos. We love you all. This idea that I like to hammer on about suspense versus surprise, right? So an and or...

If you're not caught up with Andor, I won't spoil it, but we are privy to a sort of a horror that's awaiting some of our heroes that they are not privy to. And here we know that there are spores on B2, and we know that the hospital is just bristling with militia. And so as...

Ellie makes her way inside of the hospital. We know that there's all these soldiers waiting for her. And also when she and Nora go down that elevator shaft, which gets a mention here, we know what they're headed towards. And that is like, there could be the element of, if you don't have this opener, we could just be like, surprise, there are spores down there. Now this is helpful. This serves like a narrative function in terms of like, gets us prepared for what it means to like,

be down there gets us prepared to understand what has happened to leon when we see leon down there all of this sort of stuff um uh okay so we have this like at least looking at this really faded it hurts chart with the one to ten emoji uh which is like broke me yeah it's like so

I don't know when they stopped doing this. Like, this is definitely for children, but I also remember filling out one of these in college. So I don't know when they decide you're, like, not, you're too mature for the emoji chart anymore. Well, that'll be a through line of this discussion today, right? Are people who are college-age still just children? Yeah, that's a great question.

But, you know, surely she has to be, like, remembering something about Leon being quite small at some point and also the way in which her son is hurting. And also just, like, for us as viewers, I don't know, it ports you back into a pre-outbreak time where...

horror could be measured in this way and pain could be measured in this way on a scale where it's like, yeah. When was the last time we were a two? Exactly. And then that's on our mind then later, you know, in the Dina Ellie conversation where it's like, everyone's got their fucked up story and everyone has their horrors. And in the past, it's like the baseline is what? Seven? Yeah. It's just when your day tips into a 10 or a 12 if we're on the midnight meter. Yeah, I was going to say. I think we're on midnight meter territory where like everything's a 10 and sometimes it's a 12, you know? I think that's right. Yeah. Um, I,

We learn a lot. We learn, you know, if you step out of line, you might get executed. You know, this is something that the WLF is ready to do to their own high-ranking people. And that Isaac is a bit of the man who passes the sentence. Swings the sword. Swings the sword. Swings the saucepan. Okay. Interesting. And then it's war again. Yes. Yes.

And the borderline between us and the scars. And we later get a taste of that border in the park sequence when our, when Dina and Jesse and Ellie run into the park and the WF is like, whoa, not in there. No, no, no, no. Dude. There's ferns in there. No, thank you.

Let me tell you something. That forest was beautiful. I love a fir. Oh my goodness. Absolutely beautiful. I was like, I wrote in my notes, I was like Pacific Northwest looking amazing. And then of course I found out it's Canada, but still.

It's like the PNW represented the PNW with the red ones and the ferns. You love to see it. Okay. Beautiful stuff. I thought that borderline, like this was again, the season is just overall. So, so deft to me in really quick glimpses or exchanges telling us something crucial about the state of play. So, you know, the fact that there is a shot over the borderline and Isaac needs to be dealing with that, it tells us something really,

is changing. Like, there is an encroachment and a shifting of circumstances in real time that marks some sort of evolution of the state of affairs.

But last week in the conversation between Isaac and Malcolm, you know, you kill our children never by choice. You train them to shoot because your wolves kill them because you train them to shoot because you broke the truce because you broke the truce. Establish that the truce was broken. And so there is like that existing fact and then evolution and change inside of it, which tells us, as we clearly see right across these couple episodes, war has unfolded and it is escalating. Yeah.

And, you know, we can talk about this a little bit more now, I think, because outside of the spoiler section, because we have confirmation that Tommy is in Seattle. But like in the game. Can we take a moment, Joanna? I mean, of course, at the beginning of the season, the biggest, oh my God, what if we fuck this up is like Joel's death. That's the scariest thing for anyone covering Last of Us.

fair to say though that the thing we have agonized over most every week is when are we going to be able to talk about what Tommy does in the game? When will we know in the show if he's actually going? Because it is such a big change. I feel so

I know. This was the week that the show said Tommy is here. Tommy is here. And we can talk about the fact that in the game he was there. Yeah. In the game, it's a huge change from the game in that in the game he leaves first. Yes. And Ellie and Dina essentially follow him. And they're following in the wake of like bodies that he's leaving behind and stuff like that. And so something, you mentioned this to me, but something that Ben and Daniel talked about on Button Mash is how much the havoc that Tommy is wreaking on Seattle is...

turning up the heat on the Seraphite WLF war. So like, though we see these acts of aggression on either side, the hanging bodies in the TV station, the pile of Seraphite bodies next to the wall, like all of that,

what Dina and Ellie and Jesse and Tommy are up to in terms of like running back and forth across borders, shots being fired here, there, and everywhere is, you know, helping to escalate something that was already on the brink of explosion. So, yeah. Okay. So Elise mentions the B levels and the fact that the old timers are,

know that this was where they took the first cordyceps patients in 2003. And this idea of old timers and the mushroom apocalypse is just like,

Because that's like at most, you know, it's like 20 years ago. Like, you know what I mean? Like old timers makes me, you know, life expectancy is shorter in the mushroom apocalypse. No question. The whole floor is empty, Mallory. Not even the rats. Not even the rats. Not even the rats. This was great. The stretch. The looking at the blueprints, which sterols are blocked off. B.

B1, B2, B3, this whole rundown, not even the rats. When Nora falls into the elevator shaft and looks up and sees the B2, you just, you know what it means. You have gotten all of the information, you know what it means, you know where they are, you know what away. It's very tidy. For me, so this is another big change from the game in that this idea of the spores, which we are introduced to here, is like a game-long game

And as Neil and Craig talked about on the official pod this weekend, have talked about before, the reason that they didn't want to do, hey, you can just get cordyceps from the air, is that they didn't want to have all of their characters in gas masks all the time. Unlike the Mandalorian, they were not interested in obscuring Pedro Pascal's face. Yeah.

They're like, the people deserve to see Pedro Pascal's face at all times. And we thank them. And thank you for that. And we thank them. But in the encounter between Nora and Ellie in the game that is replicated here, Nora needs to know instantaneously that Ellie is a mutant. And so they were like, well, we got to do the spores then. And then, so how do we do the spores first?

Okay, we'll introduce this sort of evolution. The cordyceps are evolving. Or this was like a particular strain of cordyceps in 03 that never broke out of containment inside of these levels of the hospital. So for me, actually, there's so much we learn inside of this juicy little scene. But for me...

Hannah Han's face absorbing this idea of the cordyceps evolving. Like we're barely holding on and functioning inside of this. We've still got fricking stalkers and clickers, you know, all across Seattle. We're fending off the seraphites and now I don't worry about it's in the air. Right. You know, and I, I, I think that is a terrifying thing to think about inside of like similar to when Ellie's like,

at the beginning of the season, this one's fast and smart. Exactly. Fuck! You know? Yeah. Oh my God, you know? Yeah, I really, obviously the discussion among the gamers for years now has been when will the spores come into the show? And I think that this was a really smart time, place, and way to do it. You know, that idea of the old timers, like an area where the infection has been the longest, had been waiting and...

building and blooming and I mean, frankly, creating some like lovely wall art. The longest. Gorgeous. It's gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. And it's beautiful. That love is beautiful. Horrifying, but beautiful. Life is full of these contradictions. I was thinking back to the opening scene of the entire show. The news, the little, the news program, right? Yeah.

What if that were to change, this idea that the fungus can't survive over 94 degrees? But what if that were to change? What if, for instance, the world were to get slightly warmer? Well, now there is reason to evolve. One gene mutates, dot, dot, dot, doom, doom, doom. So like the show opens with the idea of change.

evolution and mutation and the risk of complacency. Like this is the, this is the note that takes us into the story and TV land. I will never perfect. I will never forget the last of us for giving me like a shuddering chilling association with John Hanna. One of my like all time dream boats. Like how dare you rope John Hanna into this. Okay. So I also love, so in this scene, I love,

That they're both smoking and the sort of visual connection between their exhalation of smoke and watching Leon then later puff the spore clouds into the hallway. Yeah. Absolutely gorgeous and upsetting, as are all things. And then you have to wonder, what if somebody had Eugene's bong mask? You know? It could be helpful, I think. You know? Craig and Neil talk about...

Like, so no spores in the vents, right? That makes no sense to me, but listen, it's not my show and it doesn't matter. It's a mushroom apocalypse, who can say? But they talk about these scenes as like, we need to have this. This is one critique I have this episode, actually. An episode I really liked. Yeah. And it's the way in which they talk about certain scenes and

as having it as an almost like preemptive explanation for what they imagine the conversation will be of like, well, if you know there's spores in the hospital, why would you stay in the hospital? Or if Dina knows she's pregnant, why would she stay on this journey? And, um, so they have these moments of explanation, right. Of like, well, it's not an events. We sealed everything off and we need the hospital. It's like a, a thing we can't, uh,

you know, abandoned. So we have to stay despite the fact that there are spores down there. All of that is fine. It makes sense to me. I like even better the connection to Kathleen and Kansas City and this idea of like a threat that's lurking down below that you just didn't bother to deal with. And you just sort of let denial is how Craig typifies it, but you just sort of let it

and bubble down there below. And I like that, but I just think, and maybe this is on me for like analyzing every single word they say on the official pod, but it just like made me feel like they were just like a little overly concerned about like what the chatter would be. And I never want to hear a show run, like be the Tony Gilroy you wish to see in the world. Tony Gilroy was like, I don't care. Do we have to use that fucking speech? I don't care.

Oh, man. On the... A couple things. On the does it make sense that it would not be in events? I am not a scientist. I'm not sure if I've said it. Or an HVAC expert. I'm not sure if I've said it on the pod before. It's a fair note from you, certainly. My thing with this in Last of Us or any genre story is...

Not always. Often I will just ask a million questions about the logic behind a thing, but often, typically, I can hang with whatever the rules of the universe are as long as that universe is consistent inside of itself. The spores are heavy. They're heavy spores. They go up out into the air, but then they just sort of settle down. They don't travel, keep traveling. That's fine. Yeah.

Kathleen was incredibly top of mind for me here as well in the I'll only inform the people who absolutely need to know and no one else. I, like you, was really struck by Hanrahan's face in the sequence, seeing the weight of this realization, like dawning. What does this mean that this mutation has occurred, that this thing has shifted literally beneath our feet? How will that change the way we live and operate and work and fight? Yeah.

Why worry about any of that at all? It reminded me not only of Kathleen, but of the Jackson Council. Of course. And they heard about the smart one, the stalker, and they were like, what if we went and partied? Now, we did hear from Jesse the next morning that everyone was actually quite anxious about this. Yeah, they're prepping. But this – and I think what's interesting then is, like, we have in those three different examples, like, different realities inside of them. Mm-hmm.

It's not all the same. It's not apples to apples, but it's all like very human beings not taking some aspect of the infected threat seriously. To borrow the phraseology from last week, like the third army, right? But really the first? It just doesn't feel like that all the time when these other human threats are so pressing in front of you. Allowing that to be backburnered because of another person or other people is so interesting. And I think Hanrahan is a leader, right?

Not wanting to incite panic? Okay. But I think assuming that this is isolated, that this thing they discovered here is maybe only there, or that just because it hasn't moved through the vents yet, it wouldn't, and that this is anything other than a matter of urgent peril is unforgivable. And like in Kansas City...

But don't worry, it's need to know. It's need to know, Molly. Check it with a couple people. Maybe I'll tell Burton. He's very focused. Very mission-oriented. Burton, get the duct tape and start taking up the bed. The economic in his phrases.

Why are we not taping up the vents? Like that's a great question. It is. It is a great question. Station 11 heads would be taping up the vents for sure. You know, I think with Kathleen, that complacency and that hubris was born out of like a blinding rage. That's not what's happening with Hannah and here. So that kind of, as far as we know, as far as we know. Yeah. So that kind of like distinction is really interesting that people can make the same mistakes for different reasons. I like the show, uh,

illustrating that for us as you mentioned sorry about your son is a really sick uh button on this scene dude i was demented i love it demented is what i was gonna use um but in terms of like the times in which we like to track like what is the last of us the last of us for various characters is the last of the parks right elise and leon as far as she knows

he's dead actually his fate is worse but she doesn't know that but like you know uh as far as you know her son is gone and she sent him to his death and that's something she's always going to have to think about and this choice that uh you know craig hammered a lot on the official pod is this idea that like she chose her community she chose the wider world and so did leon and i think this is a really interesting idea of like um

She made that choice. So Joel faced with a choice of Ellie or the world chose Ellie. And Elise faced with a choice of Leon or the world chose the world, but also chose to listen to Leon's wishes because Leon's the one who says, see, listen.

And so she did what she felt to be right and what he felt to be right, which is seal us in. And Joel did not care about what Ellie wanted in that moment at the end of season one, which I think is really interesting to think about. I really love this. And it reminds me of the conversation that we were having.

I have cordyceps in my brain and can barely think straight today, so I can't remember what week it was. But a couple weeks ago where we were responding to some emails from the bad babies and having a discussion about how comparisons are still valid even when there are distinctions. That's what makes them interesting, right? So this is, I think, a really great example of that because I think that Joel – I mean, the differences are very apparent, right? Joel, Ellie is –

healthy and well on the operating table, but healthy and well. And so Joel is doing what he does and justifying it to himself because he can save her. Right. I saved her. Yeah. Leon's,

True. And so that is different, but I still think the overall like question of if you were a parent, I still feel like you heard that on the walk. Would you believe it? Would you accept it? You would say, I still feel like Joel would be like, probably start up the vents. We'll get you. We'll pump the spores out of there and clear them out of there so you can breathe. That's what Joel would do. Have we tried a neti pot? Like,

Like, let's exhaust all options, you know? Oh my God, netty potting at the sport. I mean, has anyone thought to try it? I don't know. Oh.

Oh my God. Nora, you're a medical professional. Why didn't you say fetch me some saline? I'll be fine. Have I mentioned I'm not a doctor? It hasn't come up on any podcast recently. But so like that, again, that distinction, all it does is make the actual parallels like Richard parsed me. I think what you were citing about Leon and Elise having a conversation together and Leon being a participant in that decision is the most interesting part of this, certainly. Yeah.

And also just more broadly, even outside of the Ellie Joel, Elise Leon, two parents, two children, two paths to peril, two choices to make about your us and then them, there's just this larger reminder that we can never stop thinking about. I mean, we talked about this last week that like people in this universe are forced constantly to confront the fact that they might have to be the one to damn or doom a loved one. And, um,

I agree with you. Like, this is just, I mean, obviously, if you're Ellie and you have to shoot Riley, that's horrifying. If you're Dina and you have to confront maybe needing to shoot Ellie, that is horrific. Not to, like, diminish having to stare a loved one in the face and kill them. Awful, of course.

But the unknown quality of this and like the fact that even though the spores are new, it is kind of like people do know what happens when you get infected. So locking your son in knowing that he is infected and will spend now however long roaming as an infected person is just like to have to do that unimaginable, genuinely unimaginable. And then to have to sit there and like calmly explain it to your boss. Holy fuck. Yeah.

Over a hand-rolled cigarette. Oh, man. The other thing that I was thinking about in terms of this idea of the evolution, be it the spores or the stalkers, is like...

is there to remind us as if we need reminding of the consequences of Joel's actions. It's not just Joel. Like we're in a bad place, but somewhat stasis with where, where the mushroom apocalypse is. We know where to avoid, or we've, we've gotten good at defending ourselves or whatever it is. It's, it's gonna get worse. It's in the air. Like, you know, it's a question and we don't know because again, because this,

show mechanic is so different than the game mechanic, we don't know if the spores are going to leave. In the game, the spores are all over the place. You're constantly confronting spores. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Ellie is still all alone in the opening credits, despite her newfound us status with Ellie. Did you think maybe we would see a little Isabella Merced mushroom sprout up at the end of any of these opening credits? I did think it was possible. I wonder if they thought it was possible

too cruel to then have Ellie in such a lonely place at the end of this episode and such a solitary place. So it's like... Ellie all alone. Ellie all alone. A very disturbing thing. And that is what we're going to talk about today. Okay. Seattle Day 2. Here we go. Let's do it. After the cold open...

The first image we get is the marquee reflected in the water here. And I just want to talk about Stephen Williams a little bit more as I kind of will constantly, but I just found the visuals of this very disturbing episode were extremely scary. Like the stalker sequence is so scary. When I watched it the second time, I was like, how did you get through this the first time? Like it was still so scary. And then the third time I basically watched it with my eyes closed. Like it doesn't get easier even when you know the outcome of what's happening in that sequence. So like,

Um, but there's just this like incredible beauty to the way in which Stephen Williams, uh, shoots his episodes and this reflection in the water. There's a lot of golden light closeups, roving handheld camera work. There's just like a lot of like really beautiful touches inside of a frankly, incredibly disturbing, uh, 45 minutes of television. Anything you want to say about the visuals here or do you, or just roll forward? Um,

I think it's a great observation. Great. Okay. Dina's here. She's doing map stuff. Yes. Photography, perhaps. And the detail we get here, thanks to a close-up from the camera, is that she's using her gun clip to sort of chart the path on the map. And I just think, especially in conjunction with the school talk we get,

She's talking to Ellie about not being very school-oriented and stuff like that. Tough one, yeah. It's a reminder, like, these are school kids. Be they 19 college age, college is still school. These are school kids who should be learning geometry and are instead charting a course through a war zone using a gun clip as a protractor. And that is just, like, incredible. And also a reminder of the...

one sequence where we see Joel sort of bent over maps showing Benji sort of, this is a map. Who is on the outside? Who is on the inside? Sort of thing. So how much did Dina learn triangulation and map reading in whatever passes her school in Jackson? And how much did she learn it from Joel? We already saw Joel teach her something. So I don't know if this is like a guitar moment for Dina and she's thinking about Joel teaching her how to read a map.

You have to learn how to read a map before you can graduate to not licking the wires. I don't know what the exact syllabus looks like.

at the Joel school in Jackson, but I assume that that's the progression. Where do you think hair care of beautiful waves comes in? Because both Dina and Joel have that on lockdown, you know? It's true. I feel like this is for Joel and Dina. Like, if Gail were here, she'd say they've just been walking side by side, you know? Like, I think they just both had this innately, this skill from the jump. I really love this observation that you're making, Joe, about the gun clip and just the conversation about a protractor and how, really,

this is like a very charming sequence before we get to the really dark stuff. But the fact that like a tool of war is how you talk about this and plot your course disturbing. The fact that when you're invoking a school supply, something you would put in a school box and buy at the school store, it's because you're trying to chart your path to go exact your vengeance. Like this is just also disturbing. And even like, you know,

We'll obviously get to the discussion of the hubris of the WLF in terms of like how Dina is able to gain all of this intel so easily because they are so cocky and reckless. But like, you know, then we can just think back to how we started to see some of the way that they talk and communicate about their positions and their patrols, which was when we saw Manny. And it was like a very quick conversation at the time at the end of episode three, but it's like,

Oh, we're just taking like one of the most beautiful, notable tourist spots that we would associate with like a lovely day out with the friends and the fam. And it's like, no, right. That's how we can tell where our militia is going. Like everything that, and obviously that's part of, you know, we're going to get to this just in this, like when Ellie walks into the theater and like what that is.

the preserved state she finds that and evokes and then where we shift to like it's just one of the real genius elements of the the show and you know this is like part and parcel for apocalypse storytelling and dystopian storytelling in some ways but i think it is one of the things inside of the last of us that is just consistently expert like what does it mean if when you talk about a protractor you're doing it in this way you know i love that part of the show um

And also this idea, we always love to come back to this idea of like, what did you choose to carry? Like, no, I didn't pack a protractor, but like I didn't pack as many guns as I could find. Don't worry about it.

Um, Ellie. Three cans, three cans of food. Let's always remember the three cans of food. Just right though. Uh, was it like beans, beans and beans? Do you think that's what it was? Okay. Probably. Yeah. Well, I mean, maybe I'd have to go back and look, but given the, the real bonding moment over the chef boy RD that Ellie and Joel had, I'd like to think that,

If she could find any Chef Boyardee, that was one of the... How long does canned food last? Was this one of the things? I mean, you know. I'm upset. I would be toast. I'm upset. Okay. Ellie gets lights on in the theater. She's so proud. It's very, like, provider Joel energy, right? Yeah. But...

I also thought this was like reckless and kind of weird. Oh, it's terrible. No, no, they're hiding. And Ellie turns on the lights on the theaters. There's glass windows everywhere. People can see the lights from the outside. Also just take a beat and go outside Ellie and make sure you didn't accidentally turn on the giant sick habit. Marky Marky. Like this was very on the, they talk about being reckless and this is, this is certainly reckless for belly. They make a lot of dumb moves. And I have to say that like, you know, some of the gamers are like, Hey man,

They're not this dumb in the cave. I don't wholly disagree with that. Okay. I think it's interesting...

When Craig and Neil were talking about on the official blog, talking about later when we get to the pile of the verified bodies and this idea of like, they're leaving messages for each other. And this idea of communication being a theme of this episode, how do we communicate with each other? So thinking about that, I love to apply that to this sequence and other sequences with Dean and Ellie. And what is, what is conveyed non-verbally between them? Like,

Ellie's like, you'll find a safe way to get us to the hospital, right? And Dina just sort of like smile grimaces at her instead of responding. And then when Dina, when Ellie calls Dina smart as fuck and figuring it out and they just, and then Dina's like, Ellie, and then they just smile at each other in like a pre I love you, I love you moment. I thought that was great. And it's like, it's incredibly beautiful. And just when we think about Ellie and Dina as an us, as Dina as sort of like

Joel Methadone to a certain degree. Like, what are the ways in which you just have complete understanding of a person? And there are times in this episode where that is true and times in which it's definitely not true. Yeah. Yeah. I really, I love that in general in terms of their...

You know, obviously it was very specific and distinct with Henry and Sam in episode five in terms of what the sign language meant for them in terms of their particular world of communication. But I think really since then, this has been on the minds of Last of Us viewers. I love you drawing attention to it here. And yeah, it's just like, it's such an effective way to show us the depth of understanding between two people. I think in particularly interesting contrast to what we are going to get to in a couple scenes, which is like,

There's actually a lot that these two don't know about each other. Oh, absolutely. Which is a fascinating contradiction to carry in one direction. I would say, yeah, in one direction. A lot that Ellie hasn't asked Dina about herself. Ellie hasn't fucking bothered to ask Dina about herself. Yeah. Yeah. And so, like, it's an interesting contradiction, I think, that you can build this level of I can just look at you and you know how I feel with somebody while...

maybe having not actually like expressed enough interest in their life kind of, kind of rings true to me actually about how people can be simultaneously like so self-interested and also so deeply connected to other people around them. And I thought in particular that Ellie, Ellie stops and looks back and they just smile at each other was such a, in general, but especially on the precipice of what we are about to watch, like,

beautiful encapsulation of young love and joy and like what it feels like to be happy with somebody for a minute and what...

what you might want to fight for and stay inside of and hold on and hold on to. And then what does it mean if Jesse and Dina are going back to the theater and you make a plan to meet them there and then you go somewhere else, you know? And then you're like, Oh, but vengeance. Yeah. Hmm. Okay. Listen, uh, something I want to say here is I really enjoyed this moment. I have this mark to talk about a little bit later and I think we can sort of deepen the conversation later, but I do want to address right here, uh,

a trend that I've seen on, on like the various message boards and stuff like that. And a question we got asked a couple of different times in emails, which is like,

This accusation that the show has become sort of quote-unquote YA. And so this idea that a moment like this between Ellie and Dina, where they're just smiling at each other, I see CW thrown around or whatever. And I just, in this post-Barbie movie era's tour world, I would just really like us to stop dismissing

uh stories about young women as being like not as important i think to to say that season one of the last of us wasn't a story about wasn't a love story wasn't a story about um

A man who was a father finding someone who could fill that role in his life in Ellie. And there's dark tones to it, just the way there are dark tones to this story. But that was a story about falling in love with each other. It's a paternalistic version of it, but it is a love story. No question. But that story is...

isn't trivial because like an adult male is, I don't want to accuse every accusation of this, but I do, there is that flavor in the water to me of the fact that these are two 19 year old girls. So these strong feelings that they're feeling are somehow,

not as interesting or not as mature or not as deep as the, a similar story. I would say that we found between Joel and Ellie in season one, um, that bothers me. It bothers me. And I, and I think there is a tremendous amount of profundity in what we find here, especially because it is inside of this episode. So short lived, um,

It's something that is, like, fragile and fleeting. And this darker element of Ellie is sort of drowning out her ability to make this connection, to return to the theater instead of go to the hospital. So, again, I don't like to spend too much time entertaining sort of bad faith arguments, but that's one that I'm just sort of like, I can't in good conscience let that sort of float around. Yeah.

Like spores in the air. Dude, preach, co-assign. Very well put. Let me say, this is not a YA show, but also, of course, I as a YA enthusiast feel compelled to just also say that the implication that YA stories are somehow not emotionally rich is also insulting. Yep. For a number of different reasons that does not feel...

Valid. We don't love it. Okay, so future days. What do you want to say about walking into this theater and what we see here? Oh my God, I just loved this little sequence so much. Gorgeous set. Obviously, this is a key set. It's beautiful. I thought that Ellie going into, Ellie alone going into the actual theater space, walking among all of those empty seats,

toward the stage. One of those great moments in the show where you as the viewer and the character inside of the scene thinks about what civilization was like before. And like,

There are movie nights in Jackson, right? We've seen them. We got to rock out with like Britney and the Jug Boys on New Year's. There's music. Obviously, music plays a very central role in many ways. But this idea of like being in a place this grand and thinking about how many people would have been there together, this idea, like the way I love that moment when Ellie looks up at the painting. That made me think of...

The opera house in Battlestar.

What would it be like even for a knight to have an us that big? Hundreds of people around you sharing a thing that you love and they love too. Like how awe-inspiring would it be to confront that? And in a world, in a city like this, but just a world full of cities like this,

where these places are crumbling and the decay has set in and there's a threat around every corner. Like, the little miracle of finding a cathedral to music, of all things, so well intact. Yeah. Just really, really, really cool. And that's all before Ellie picks up the guitar and sings the line of Future Days. Which...

So beautifully put. Thank you so much. I love that you bring that up because I, it does give me a thinly thin excuse. And I will take any talk about station 11. Let's do it. Station 11. A story that starts with a,

a production of a Shakespeare play and everyone's at the theater together. And then there's this outbreak, this pandemic. And then later in this post-apocalyptic, you know, disease ravage United States, we get a theater troupe going around and performing Shakespeare to the various towns. And we get gathering, we get,

bonding over story, the power of story, all that sort of stuff, but it's on such a smaller, raggedier scale than the grandness of this production of Lear that we see at the beginning of the book and of Station 11, the TV show. And so, yeah, to your point, thinking about this sick habit show. And also, I was actually talking to my best friend about this yesterday about, like... Weird, I don't remember talking to you about this yesterday. You and I were talking about...

It's a tough way. Diana and I were talking about that. Talking about confronting painful truths. Something that I talk to my sister a lot about because my sister works in, you know, in the opera, this idea that like live theater and the opera and the ballet and the symphony and all these, all these like,

cathedrals of culture have not recovered from the pandemic. Like we are not, you know, we talk about this, you know, Sean and Amanda talk about this all the time in the big pig context of like, people aren't going to the movie theater anymore. And that was already a problem pre pandemic, but even more of a problem post pandemic, because like people got used to being in their homes. There's a number of different reasons. I could talk about this forever, but like, there's also this idea of like being in a room with that many people after you've gone through a contagion and

That just feels scarier than it did before. You know how long it took me to go back to the movie theater? And even now, like, you know...

I've gone to the movies with you. Like we'll go to the movies, but there's a difference between that. And like when I, when it, like the, the rare cases, like if it's a dune or a sinners where I will go to the IMAX in San Francisco, that is sold out. And it is so many people in one room and I'm still just a little like, yeah, let's not be wearing a mask. So all of that's, all of that's on my mind. I love that you pointed this out about the, about the theater. Future days, just a few chords. Yeah.

It sounds like there was a version of this that was longer and I feel we were robbed, but thanks so much, Neil and Craig. Your restraint is admirable. If I ever were to lose you is what we hear from Ellie. And the next lyric is, I'd surely lose myself. And we get this sound design moment that Craig talks about on the official podcast as being this sort of like,

Kismet moment in the edit where sound bleed from an edit of episode seven down the hall came into their editing bay when they were working on episode five. And so the sound you hear here is actually like a louder sound that we will hear again in episode seven. So it's almost this like preview, a pre echo of what's to come. And I think that's incredible. We got this.

Fastening email from our listener, Lauren, about this Judith Butler text called Violence, Mourning and Politics that I think really feeds into this idea of like, you know, what is me without you sort of idea.

james butler wrote when we lose certain people or when we are dispossessed from a place or a community we may simply feel that we are undergoing something temporary that morning will be over and some restoration of prior order will be achieved but maybe when we undergo what we do something about who we are is revealed something that delineates the ties we have to others that shows us that these ties constitute what we are ties or bonds that compose us it's not as if an

I exist independently over here and then simply loses a you over there, especially if the attachment to you is part of what composes who I am. If I lose you under these conditions, then I not only mourn the loss, but I become inscrutable to myself, whoever

am I without you? When we lose some of these ties by which we are constituted, we do not know who we are or what to do. On one level, I think I have lost you, only to discover that I have gone missing as well. Which is a profound and beautifully deep way of echoing this lyric, if I were to lose you, I'd surely lose myself. Who am I without you? And this idea that like,

Again, this very important song, which gave the title to the first episode of the season, which plays an important role in the game. This concept of love that is, you know, perhaps unhealthily codependent. But like, what does this then reveal about you when that part of you dies?

who is another person is ripped away. And this idea that the way the camera handheld camera moves around Bella Ramsey in this space and that Ellie left alone for just a few minutes. Yeah. Ina has been by her side and just a few minutes alone with this sort of like winter soldier esque musical trigger. Yeah.

And then the way that Craig described on the official podcast, Ellie is turning into her dark Avenger self, not to be confused with the Avengers with a Z. Molly, what do you want to say about this? Boy, what a great email from Lauren. I love that so much because it makes me think about...

I love this scene already. It makes me... That email from Lauren makes me love it even more. And it makes me think just... You know, honestly, like, about the power of genre stories and why we love them and what they can do, right? Because...

You don't need to be telling a story about the zombie mushroom apocalypse in order to understand what a parent and a child mean to each other or what it feels like to lose the defining person in your life. Obviously, when you lose somebody who means that much to you, it is deeply destabilizing. It can be a deeply destabilizing thing to confront. What a story like The Last of Us does...

And what genre stories can do is heighten that circumstance to allow us to explore something that is fundamental to human nature and our lives already. So if that relationship happened to be one of the only ones you had had,

And thought you would have because the single rarest currency in the world is a person who stays around because the threats are everywhere. I thought it was what you share with someone else when you're uncool, but sorry. Also bad. Hold on to that.

up the tat. That's just an almost famous reference. But anyway, go ahead. Also that. And like, that's just beautiful, right? To take this more extreme circumstance and allow us to then reflect on something that is just true about like the human experience. That's why we love genre stories. Hearing Ellie, seeing Ellie pick up the guitar and hearing Ellie just sing that half of a line, boy, was it magical and meaningful. Just a thrill to get even that. And

I thought the soundscape thing, it was incredible to hear them talk about that. Happy accident, as Craig put it. And I thought that that sound treatment, the way that that rumble entered and paired with Ellie's face setting, setting into a state of just sheer determination...

was in a show with like outright horror and death and injury and torment in some ways, one of the most disturbing things that we have seen. Right. And it is like the settling in of, okay, I'm happy. I have this good thing. I have enjoyed the prior night. I have enjoyed taking the next step with this person I love. And now I have reminded myself why I'm here because

And it was so chilling to watch. And I thought also in terms of tracking, like triggers and reminders, the different, obviously again, Ellie is in a very unique circumstance in an extreme situation. But like we talked a lot about in episode three, what it meant for Ellie to confront and see Joel's jacket, right? And that that was really about like just despair, just despair washing over Ellie. And then in episode four, after Ellie,

take on me when Ellie is talking with Dina about like what Joel taught her, it was, there was a moment for gratitude, for that memory to be a portal to gratitude and happiness and reflection. And this was different. This was something immediately like calcified and concretized in this like unflinching state. And I just thought it's like, I just thought it was incredible and incredible performance and just an incredible like, uh,

structure in the scene to give us that and to have Dina walk in and then for Ellie to just say like that flat good. Good. Told us everything we needed to know about where Ellie was in that moment. Really good. I love that. That's such a good, it's so good to think, good. It's so smart to think about comparing this to the take on me moment, which was a shared communal celebration of Joel. And then here's Ellie processing it by herself. And like,

I had this mark to talk about a little bit later, but I think it's good to talk about it here. This idea of like the way that Craig and Neil talk about Ellie and violence and have always talked about Ellie and violence in this context of sort of addiction, this high, this rush and this, and this addictive nature to it and sort of, yeah.

if violence is her addiction, then like, you know, what we see at the end of this episode is just like, is an indulgence is a, is, you know, is taking a hit after not, et cetera, uh, restraining yourself, um, all this sort of stuff like that. And, and giving in and giving over and part of something that can come with, um, addiction and a number of other, um,

Behaviors is this idea of masking and this idea that like Ellie has psychologically been masking her darkness. Yeah.

after Joel's desk death. And we saw it most starkly when she's talking to Gail and she's putting on this little show, a pretty shitty little show about how she's fine. And then we see her walk down the hallway and her face just drops. Yeah. She's putting on less of a show for Dina and less of a show for Jesse. If she puts on a show for the, for the town council, you know what I mean? Like, so this idea that she's been like sort of,

smoothing over, rounding off the edges of her darkness, of her anger, of her vengeance, of her violence to as part of denial, right?

which is a strong part of grief, obviously is a strong part of addiction. And, and so, you know, this question that a lot of people have had of like, is Ellie too bubbly, too happy. She's not single-mindedly focused on her vengeance, which is what I, a gamer want to see from Ellie. I really like this other depiction of an Ellie who has been, who is trying to,

Yeah.

interesting and attractive and want to be around. And, and I don't feel like I can show her the darkness inside of me. Joel and Ellie had that as like a baseline understanding of each other. Like she didn't need to hide that part of her from Joel because she saw it reflected back.

Yeah. Which is not to say that Dina is not capable of defending herself, but it's a different, you know, it's like Dina can have a casual joint and Ellie and Joel are on like black tar heroin. And like they can, they can talk about it. They know what it's like. And it's not like they have to, you know, sneak off and do massive violence. You know, when we see Ellie at the end of this episode with Joel, um,

in her bed several years ago, just being happy and a child and safe, so safe to wake up in just like safety and security and,

It's the safety also of... It's the safety of the walls of Jackson. It's the safety of being understood and being able to be yourself around someone. And she lost that. And she doesn't feel like she can show who she is. And so, like, in this side of this episode, when Dina's like, hey, you want to hear the fucked up thing that I had to do when I was an eight-year-old? Like, that's Dina being like, hey, man, I got some darkness in me. Like, show me some of the darkness in you, you know? And, like...

Ellie told her a lie when she told her what happened with Brian and she hasn't told her what happened with David and not that she has to. She isn't like, oh, anyone that, but like, she's not, Joel already knows that about her. Right. And she's unwilling right now to show that part of herself to Dina. Cause I think she's afraid that it's too dark. And, but like,

again, mere minutes after leaving Dina's side inside of this theater or being alone in the hospital, this other side of Ellie, she does not have to mask at all. And it just comes, if Dina's there in the hospital, it does not go down that way. No, absolutely not. So no chance. It's, and which is not to say that, like, again, I'm not advocating for like codependent relation. You know what I mean? Like you shouldn't have to like have someone there all the time in order to be right with yourself. But,

if you can let someone else see you really, that gives you that stability to not ebb so high and low inside of your own self. So I think that's something that the show is doing that I think is really smart. Yeah. And...

I can understand why some people play the game. We're like, Hey man, this isn't the Ellie I'm used to, but I really love the way that it plays out inside of this episode. I think it's really brilliant to show that dimension of it. I love that. I really agree. That was brilliant. I think that one of the core questions that the story overall in any form is

is interested in exploring is like, can you make room for more than one thing in your heart? You know, like can joy and rage coexist? How, what does it look like? And what does it look like when you show that to other people? And I think that like, you know, even Ellie and Joel, I mean,

Think of like the moments where they were, you know, the diarrhea runs in your genes. Like, yeah, there was joy and light. Like it's, that's what it means to know another person is to make room for all of it. And so like, I love what you're, I really love what you're citing about the fear that Ellie would have about like showing that to somebody else. Especially because one of the things that makes me think of is like,

Not to jump ahead, we'll save our conversation about the implications of this for the end of the episode and the Nora-Ellie scene, but I know. We get confirmation of a season-long question. We don't know the particulars of what it means and how Ellie came to know, but we know now that Ellie knows. That's confirmed in this episode. That's massive. It's huge.

What does that remind us of? That even Ellie and Joel, who are those mirrors to each other and share that unvarnished truth with each other and can be themselves with each other, that even then Joel did a thing that he was afraid to tell her. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And so Ellie has actually directly confronted, you did this thing and you kept it from me. Yeah. Yeah. So then if Ellie does that to other people...

Like, this is just like, this is, whether it looks like this for any of us, probably not. But like, this is what people do, right? Other people hurt them and then they do that to other people. They make the same mistakes that they hold against other people. That is just like 101 being alive. Yeah. So I really love what you're identifying here. And I love the way that the show explores those ripples across relationships and across time. Let's, I love you. I love podcasting with you. You're the best. Yeah.

All right. Come and see. We get a little Amish lesson. Ellie's never heard of the Amish. Okay. Ellie, I would love to recommend a film to you. It's one of our shared favorites. It's called Witness. And nobody has ever looked hotter than Harrison Ford singing Sam Cooke banging on the roof of a car in a barn. Just recommend it.

Movie night. Next movie night at Jackson. Okay. Sounds good. We get an explanation for why Dina knows where Nora will be. The WLF are super chatty on the radio because they think no one's listening. Yep. Okay.

The two of them discuss the no good, very bad idea of what they're about to do to go into this building. They do it anyway. And this is what Stephen Williams calls the beginnings of Ellie's revenge quest. You thought 45 days on horseback from Jackson to Seattle was it? No, that was the prequel. That was the preamble. Here we are. Now it's time for the long ass building. Yeah.

Alright, so Ellie and Dina are talking baby names. They're talking about their shared future together when we get this startling death tableau of the piled bodies in front of this wall. Feel Her Love, the title of the episode, this writing that we've seen on the mural that we'll hear later from the Seraphites, and then the alternative title of the episode, Feel This Bitch, written underneath. It's WLF. Um...

So let's take you behind the curtain of making this podcast. This

this is unusual turnaround for house of R in that this is a Sunday night show. And we talk about it on Monday mornings. And usually we take a little bit more time to do this because we like to like listen to the official podcast and do this, that, and the other thing. Last night, Craig was like, Hey man, guess what? An inspiration for this scene was this 1985 war Russian war film called come and see. And it's the best warming of all time. And I thought about it a lot when I made Chernobyl, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I was like, well, guess what? I have to watch.

Last night, it's just on YouTube. Last night, I was like, I'll try to find the scene. The scene happens to be at the end of the movie, so I watched the whole movie. But yeah, I watched Come and See, which is a very disturbing, very beautifully disturbing Russian anti-war movie about a young boy who sort of finds himself drawn into the Russian army

during World War II. And, um, and it was a young boy often accompanied by a young woman, um,

And the absolute horrors that were... By the end of the movie, he is prematurely aged. He's got wrinkles on his face and stuff like that. One of the visual elements that I thought was interesting... The tableau is very clear, what he's talking about. When you see it, you're like, I understand you posed the bodies to look almost identical to this pile of bodies that we get at the end of the movie. But the...

We then get this close-up on Ellie's face, on Bella's face. And there's a couple of those inside of this episode of Ellie registering the horror. Seeing the Seraphites in the forest. There's a couple close-up registering horror moments for Ellie. And that seems to me to be taken directly out of this movie, which is like... Interesting. Yeah.

I don't know. A huge percentage of it is just this kid's face as he absorbs the horror of war.

uh i don't want to get into all of the details of this movie you can watch on youtube or not if you want to but it comes down at the end to this like very esoterically presented idea of like would you kill baby hitler to stop world war ii um aka a nazi themed uh trolley problem essentially and um again i

That feeds right back into the way in which Craig and Neil are thinking about this story, which is like, who would you, what would you risk or what would you, who would you save? Could you kill something innocent like a baby Hitler in order to stop all of these atrocities, et cetera, et cetera. Um,

I can, I recommend this movie. Um, yeah, I just, it's a very specific mood, uh, is what I would say for this movie. And, um, I will say Mozart's Lacrimosa, which is like a very iconic Mozart piece that has gone viral on TikTok a couple of times the last couple of years. Um,

plays over the end of this movie in a way that like makes me never want to listen to it again uh and i mean that is like a compliment to like how how powerful it is anyway no interesting uh the horrors of war the horrors of violence and what it does to uh you know a young person is of course exactly what we are dealing with here right what did you make of the the app the way in which ellie absorbs this and then the conversation that ellie and dina have after it

Yeah, I thought this was like, this was a really interesting stretch. You know, we go from the, first of all, thank you for that. I, like Troy Baker, have not seen this film, so...

Put it on the list, Troy. That was a great, great part of the pod. This is the best war movie ever made. I haven't seen it. That's just basically the, you know, same conversation we just had. You really have a Troy Baker energy sometimes, too. That's like the nicest thing you've ever said to me. Is that true? Yeah. I don't think I'm worthy of that compliment, but I'll take it. Just like a cool, extremely thoughtful...

That's me, cool and calm. Definitely when the bad babies send us cartoons of us as cats, I'm the one who's presented as cool and calm and not the one chewing my own foot. Okay. Let me try this again. Effortlessly thoughtful is what I will say. Remember that cartoon? That was fucking great. Oh, the one where I looked deeply stoned slash asleep? I do remember. Yeah. Wonderful stuff.

But we build from this conversation about the hubris of the wolves and the arrogance, right? This idea of complacency, arrogance, very present across many of the scenes. This made me think a little bit of the discussion we had last week about the hubris we were hearing from Isaac and describing his enemy. Yeah.

And then we build into the, like you said, like, baby names. Even that, though, on the one hand, there's, like, a, you know, Dina's kind of like, yeah, it'll be fine. Let's, like, just distract ourselves so we don't have to think about how anxious we are and how, like, crazy it is that we're doing this thing. This very stupid thing, yeah. Yeah, which was, I thought, actually, like, kind of an interesting way to imbue the scene with a little bit of the... I mean, because we should just say, like...

This stretch of the game, you know, or really any stretch of, like, these Seattle days, like, there's just, it's unrelenting. Like, it's challenge after challenge after challenge. So the show is, you know, for various reasons and out of necessity, condensing that and compressing it into a couple moments and a couple confrontations that are going to convey, like,

Something that maybe you are absorbing at volume and scale in the game. And so what they confront here is one of those ways. I thought that the conversation about the baby names, even just, I don't know, something about Ellie saying, what are you going to name? It just felt really different to me than I'm going to be a dad at the end of last episode. And I thought even though it was a conversation about

uh, the future and a shared future and a future that, um, they had just very recently, like spent a very jubilant, uh, evening into morning fantasizing about together, that there was a different energy to this for sure. Um,

You know, your point from earlier in the episode about the nature of communication inside of groups and across groups, like the idea of taking the message of the prophet, this mural, we see these murals all across Seattle. Obviously, we saw Feel Her Love, that tag in blood at the TV station last week, and then to see it here in this artistic fashion, and then the wolves replying with Feel This Bitch, and then a collection of

the bullet riddled dead was, and those flies are swarming around the bodies. And like, you know, when Ellie and Dina came across the massacred Seraphites in the, on the, on the forest path a couple episodes ago, like we have to understand, first of all, it's two things. One that you never become, um,

immune to seeing something like this. Like, this should not be normal to come across a pile of freshly dead people who have clearly just been brutally murdered. And then... And people versus infected. Not to be, like, you know, too crass about it, but, like,

This distinction that they've been drawing for the last couple episodes of like, yes, we've killed a lot of infected in and around Jackson. We love doing it, but it's not the same as killing a person. Yes. Yeah. And like people did this to each other and in the TV station last episode, the Seraphites attacked.

hung and displayed, and as you noted, bathed in light their victims. And here the wolves presented under a mural, like an art installation, the people who they had massacred. Like, this is just horrific. And

For that to be the thing that pushes Ellie into, you know, what we would, I think, describe as, like, Joel Protector mode, right? I have to get you out of here. Mm-hmm. Like...

Last episode, they were in the TV station. They each had to kill somebody in order to get out of there. Then they went into the light rail station and had to escape legions of infected. It's not like it's been a chill visit to Seattle so far. So the thing that incites Ellie saying to Dina, like, what is wrong with me? I should not have brought you here, has to be undeniable.

Yeah. Well, it's this and and with the added layer of and you're pregnant, right? There's a dead child here and you're and you're pregnant. Like that's I love that. Thank you. I love that. I love the point that Craig and Neil made about this idea that Ellie's like, I'll take you home. Not we'll go home. We'll go home and start our family with our baby together. I'll take you home.

Then I'm going to hop back on shimmer, spend another 45 days on shimmer all alone and come back here. And dear God, poor shimmer. Just let shimmer spin some records, please. Okay. Then we get this Dina backstory. Yeah. Which is different than it is in the game. Yes. What do you make of the differences here, Mallory? And how did this story play for you? I thought this was a chilling and incredibly performed scene yet again. Yeah.

you

Now you already know how the story ends because I don't live in a cabin north of Santa Fe anymore and I don't have a mom or sister anymore. But since everyone's past is fucked and we've all heard everyone's fucked stories, how do you think this one goes? I thought that in particular, that pairing of this very specific and personal reveal with the recognition that everybody has their version of this almost too, honestly, too depressing and upsetting to properly articulate. It was just...

so dark and the fact that the like path to understanding with another person and the thing that you share with them is that you've both surely suffered through some life-altering loss is just like brutal so really good and effective scene for reminding us of that just what world do these people live in and then in terms of dina in particular um

Jesus, like an eight-year-old kid who just wants to go outside and play in the yard, and then hears the screams of a raider killing her mother and sister. I thought the part of this about how startled he looked and then looked startled when I shot him too was like, holy shit stuff. Yeah.

Coming to terms with being feared as an eight-year-old, you know what I mean? There's so many layers to this disturbing take, but that's one that I really, really gloved onto. He was startled to see me with the gun and then I killed him and then

Also, the self-recrimination of I was too slow. Yes, that part was... Yes. Great call on the startle front. What can people take away from you, but also what can you take away from them? And like...

The two, the I was eight years old and I was too slow thing, like, it really made me think of, I know you had this elsewhere in the outline today, I hope you'll forgive me for mentioning it here, but this was where I thought of it, like Joel saying to Tommy in episode six last season because I was too slow and too fucking deaf to hear him coming and what it means for the world to be a place where everybody feels like they're not good enough for one reason or another. Either you're too young and you weren't ready or you feel like you're too old or something that has changed about your body or your circumstances makes it harder for, and like,

you talked beautifully in the last couple episodes about how one of the really heartening things that we saw about Jackson was like, it was a community that embraced everybody and like actually tried to remind you that you didn't need to feel that way, but that this would be human nature, like to wonder for any number of reasons, if you were going to be enough in the moment of your trial, like,

And, like, you know, I also just thought in terms of a canon update or tweak from on the adaptation front that this was really interesting. Like, there's little things, like Dina being eight in the show versus ten in the game. But the big one is that in the game, when we're learning about Dina's past, like, it's clear that her sister lives...

past them losing their mother and that her sister basically like raises her. Raises her, yeah. So this is, now her sister Talia is like not around in the events of The Last of Us Part II, but like. She's all these stories about her sister. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they had this whole experience after. So that's a big change that Dina as an eight-year-old was like completely alone. Yeah. And this idea, we alluded to this earlier, but Ellie having no fucking clue about this

And then just saying, like, I always thought, like, how did you get to Jackson? Like, the assumption that Ellie made that Dina was sort of, like, born and raised in Jackson, or at least nearby, you know, like, and never just bothered to ask, like, where does Dina live in Jackson? Like, you know, who is she bunking with? Like, you know, if she doesn't have any family, like, and Dina never asked. This is her, I mean, Ellie never asked. This is her best friend. This is the person she's in love with, and she never asked about this.

just I think really reveals how much Ellie was caught however much she was asserting her independence in those in that time that we saw her at the beginning of this episode wrapped up in the Joel and Ellie show and

Anyway. And, you know, and just a reminder that Dina is someone who was, who like Ellie has gone through tremendously traumatic things and processed it differently, you know? And that's fun. That's not, I'm not putting a judgment on like how you process trauma, but it's like, it's just to reveal that there isn't just one way, simply one way in order to process this, you know? So. Yeah. That's really interesting. And I thought on that front too, in terms of like us having a better understanding of Dina's, uh,

uh, relationship to trauma. You know, we had talked about earlier in the season, the adaptive change to have Dina in the room when Joel dies and to give us just more of a Joel Dina relationship period. And that like what that gives us is like, Dina is not just here for Ellie to support Ellie. Not that that wouldn't be a meaningful thing, you know, on its own. Um,

But that Dina is also here because she loved Joel and she lost Joel and she was there when this happened. And so then this is, like, a deeper understanding behind that still. I have lost... I have suffered through a horror before. And, like, it brought... What just happened here brought all of this up for me. I thought, like, the...

What if that motherfucker made me watch as he did it? Would it make a difference if my family had heard his people first? No. No. And if I hadn't killed him, if he had gotten away, I promise you, I would have hunted him down forever. Forever. Forever.

Giving us – we've invoked in recent episodes a couple key core Pantheon Thrones lines for Abby or Ellie. Giving us a Dina version of there's no justice in the world, not unless we make it, or nothing's more hateful than failing to protect the one you love feels really crucial. Yeah.

Even though inside of this episode, right, Dina is confronting shifting circumstances in a way that Ellie is not. Like, not to jump ahead, but the moment when after Jesse arrives and they're going through the woods and, like, Jesse's like, let's fucking go. And Ellie's like, no. Dina's response to that is, Ellie!

Not like, yeah, Jessie, no. Which is interesting, you know? And so, like, obviously there's a lot to track here, but to help us understand why Dina is there in the first place and her relationship to what has happened and, like, to loss and to pursuing some sort of

revenge exacted in the face of it is like a really important thing for us to understand about Dina individually, not just through the ends of Ellie's loss. I love that. Very effective. I love that. And I think, you know, Ellie says to Dina, or no, Ellie cups Dina's cheek and Dina says, if you, I'll go back if you want and I'll keep going if you want. If I die, it's on me. It won't be your fault. Right. Right.

And Ellie says, sadly, like, keep going. Like, I want to keep going, right? And in the game, and we already mentioned this because it happens back in Jackson, but in the game, Dina says to Ellie, you go, I go, end of story. It didn't happen in the show, but that's a game phrase. And one of our listeners, Nicole, picked up on the biblical allusion of you go, I go, which is from the Book of Ruth. And...

I'm going to read some scripture to you in a...

I'm not a religious person kind of way. Okay. But Ruth said, do not press me to leave you to turn back from following you. Where you go, I will go. Where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people should be my people and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die. And there I will be buried. May the Lord do thus to me and more as well. Even death parts me from you. And when Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more to her.

Then Nicole writes,

It's honestly a miracle it's in the canon, given that it centers women, which most of the rest of the biblical canon does not.

Though the time in which these stories take place are very different, some basics are the same. These pairs of women are chosen family for one another, and their love pushes them to defy social convention and enter into a pretty dangerous situation, even if it means dying. At least they will die together and not alone. And this line happens in the game, and it is an intentional biblical reference. I think it really highlights something even more remarkable and special about the Dina and Ellie relationship. I can't wait to learn more.

So thank you to Nicole, who has been a long-standing listener who often will email in references that I missed. So I appreciate Nicole for that. But I wanted to let Nicole know that I do know this quote from Book of Ruth, but I know it from the film Fried Green Tomatoes and the book Fried Green Tomatoes, which is, of course...

queer canon but where thou lodgest I will lodge thy people shall be my people is a message from the character Ruth to Iggy to be like come get me for my abusive husband I'm gonna live with you instead um Fried Green Tomatoes classic great movie um okay incredible

So we go from here. Dina Bolt cuts the gate open, which felt like a fun little game moment. Did you feel seen as a gamer in this moment? No, I actually was like, why are they risking detection by cutting a bolt? They should just climb the fence and then paused and saw that there was barbed wire on the top of the fence and then forgave them. Like, can't leave a trail. Come on.

To your point earlier, we walked into a theater that was incredibly preserved, but here we walk into an office building where like, you know, the phones are off the hook and just like absolutely abandoned, dusty debacle disaster, haunted, but empty, just like us. Just like us. It was great stuff. Really good. Yeah.

Um, we've clocked before the way in which people try to talk to Ellie, um, when they know she's not going to do what they ask inside of a situation. Dina did it before when they were in the, in the market at the beginning and Ellie fell down and he was like, stay there. Okay. And Ellie's like, yep. And she's like,

But for real, stay there. And then Jesse with Ellie when they go out to look for Dina and Joel. And of course, Ellie does whatever Ellie wants to do. And I love this because Ellie will not listen.

Ellie will do whatever what Ellie wants to do. But I like that Dina says, you're a little crazy and that's exciting. It's one of the reasons I love you, but I did want to make it out of here. So like, this is the, I love you. You love me. I, oh, I know. Okay. Crazy. Here we go. It's a great Han Solo, Leia, I love you. I know sort of moment. Okay. We love that. That communication, right? Dina's like, you don't have to say it. I know that you love me. Like, it's fine. But also that idea of like, hey, I know this.

frustrating thing about you. Yeah. And I see it and I love it. It's part of why I love you. Yes. Is this thing that a lot of other people would see as a flaw. It is a flaw, but I love it. Yes. Yeah, but there's a time and a place. Yeah, I thought that was great. I really liked that as well. And I liked you like earlier, you know, when they're talking about the walkie-talkie insights and stuff and like the long-ass building and Ellie is the one who's like, why aren't they patrolling that building? And we do get to see Ellie walking

puzzle things out alongside Dina earlier in the episode. So then it's like, we've seen some progress and some of the effect of Dina's tutelage, like pause, take a minute, think rationally. And so then to just still like give us the reminder, dude, you're going to be guns a blazing for sure. Um,

Obviously, when they actually are forced to use the guns and, you know, stalkers are terrifying. We'll talk about that in a second. It was necessary and required. But even then, I'm like, dude, Ellie, you fired a shot at the stalker who's like right in front of Dina. It was an absolute shit show. Panic at the disco. Oh, man. I simply would have let the stalkers take me because, listen, I'm just like...

I'm not making it out of there. So like, why even, why even worry about it? Why fight? You want to go out just like quietly letting them consume you? Test style. Let's just go. Anyway. Some yearning tendrils? Yeah. That's nice. Do you think that Dina trying to listen for infected in the warehouse and not hearing anything is a nod to not being able to see soccer silhouettes in the game? You can't see a stalker coming. No.

This is like the worst part of confronting the stalkers. Like the radar that you can use to

enhance. You know, it's one of the, like, the things that you can upgrade as you go. It's basically useless when it's stalker time. So even as you, like, master the technique of, you know, crouching before entering a room and who's waiting for me around the other end and, okay, I can tell from the shape that this is going to be, like, a bloater or a shambler or whatever. Fucking useless. You walk into a space and you don't know if you're about to get ambushed. That's why they're so terrifying. And then, like, all of the

tactics that go into making your way like is this am I going to be guns a blazing am I going to try to use stealth mode here you don't have the stalkers do not give you the opportunity to plan and so weirdly in a way they're actually like an ideal foe for Ellie because it's like that's how she likes to operate yeah um

But they're so fucking scary. Yeah. Terrifying. They're scary here. We get, like, a horror movie score. Oh my god. The walking down the hallway. For me, as you know, I can't handle horror, so that was actually the scariest thing in the episode, more so than the actual confrontation with the stalkers. I'm just like, a dark hallway with dripping water and a scary score is not something I can personally handle. When the fucking light lights up a corner and it's just, like, not one but four stalkers waiting for you. Also not ideal. Okay. Yeah.

Not ideal. Yeah. Craig says there's like 11 of them. I love the Craig Mason. I feel like Craig, he uses like a Californian one in conversation and I love it. It's like, it's not one, it's not four, it's like 11 of them. Anyway.

Okay, I just want to say, okay, so horrifying. Craig and Neil talked about the way the lights reflect off of their eyeballs and how long it took for them to calibrate the exact reflection off of eyeballs to make them look scary but not, like, silly. Yeah. Our listener Jamie wrote in to ask, did you... This is a no. This is an absolute no for me. It's the hardest possible pass is on Jamie's email.

Did you guys know that there's a fungus called dead man's fingers, Xylaria polymorpha. And then Jamie sent over a photo that I put into our doc. But why? The reason I put it in is it reminds me of the little crown fungus on the stalkers, but it does look like dead zombie fingers coming up from the, it's horrifying. Ugh.

We don't have an I eat mushrooms story this week and I blame Jamie for that. Okay. Yeah. Could it be that you had a debilitating flu that you managed to podcast through anyway last week? Or could it be this photo from Jamie? Really tough. Okay. So too many stalkers. We're not going to make it out.

Ellie makes a plan. You run to that cage. I can get bit. I'll be fine. As Craig and Neil made clear in the podcast, Ellie is lying her face off to Dina in this moment. She's like, we're not making out of it. Perhaps one of us will make it out of it. And that better be Dina. And so Ellie flips into full Joel mode is like, go, I will take on all of this. And as Tess says,

Let us know in season one, Ellie is immune to biting, but not being immune, not immune to being ripped apart. Yeah. So, uh, and last episode we got to hear when Ellie was trying to convince Dina of her immunity, you know, she said like, please listen to me. I would die for you. I would. Yeah. But that's not what just happened. That's what's happening here. Yeah. Um,

Again, I was maybe sometimes closing my eyes in this sequence, so who's to say? But I believe the stalker is Jurassic Park clever girl Ellie by, like, flanking her as she said they would and distracting her and she's looking one direction and then she gets dive-bombed from the other direction. It's all very tough. Peeling the... Peeling the lid of the mesh cage that Dina is in, like, it's the lid of, like, a tuna fish. It's just...

Yeah. You mentioned before this idea of like failure and Joel, this idea. So two things, two things to note here. One, Neil Druckmann wants to point out this idea of like,

When you're a teenager, you're like, I'm invincible. And this is like a real reckoning moment for Ellie of like, she doesn't get to get out of everything. I mean, she does because Jesse shows up, but she doesn't get to like get out of every like little scrape. She, she wanders her way into. Yeah. So I would say, I feel like Ellie has had a few of those moments in season one. I don't think she's like been cocksure in everything she's done in her life. And then number two is,

Here she is on the ground again, held down, pinned down like she was in episode two, forced to watch as she expects the person who's the most important to her in her life is about to die. I failed to protect Dina, and now I have to watch it while being held down again again.

and and here is this so like this idea of like failure as it marks Joel and now marks Ellie of I couldn't protect her I failed her um all I this is what he says to Tommy in season one after that too slow too fucking deaf thing that you mentioned all I've ever done is fail her again again he's talking about Sarah and dreaming about failing Sarah again again yeah failing to my sleep um so here's Ellie um

being the Joel and failing. Deeply painful. Deeply painful. There's like, if you, to have to confront what it would mean if you oriented your entire existence around a rage quest, maybe, but also protecting one other person. The Bill and Frank edict, right? Yeah. Yeah. And,

Really what a rare thing their end was then in that respect, like how for most people who lived their life this way, the end would be either watching that person be taken from you and feeling like you had failed or feeling like you had failed because you were the one who was taken and then you left them alone. Oh my God. Here comes Jesse.

Craig calls him Han Solo. Great stuff. Yeah. How does that compare to the other nicknames? Reddit has called him Apocalypse Himbo. I have zero notes. And of course, Dina called him Captain Miami. That's still my favorite. Yeah, it's still my favorite.

America's ass. Captain Wyoming. Jesse's here. Great stuff. Because of the trauma, the lens blur happens. And I went back and watched, great stuff to watch, the scene where Ellie kills David to sort of see if there was a similar sort of trauma blur there. And there is. It's not exactly the same, but there's like a somewhat similar one. And Ellie is so disoriented. When Ellie kills David and emerges, and then Joel reaches out and she's just like...

She doesn't know where she is, what's going on, but it's Joel there with a coat. You're okay, baby girl. It's okay. All this other stuff like that, I've got you. So here comes Jessie, and because of the lens blur and Ellie's traumatized state, she thinks it's Joel. Yeah.

which is a moment that happens in the game with different set of characters, but like this idea of like wishful thinking that it's Joel come to rescue, but it's through the haze, like the, the, but it's apocalypse. Rifle out and boots. Yeah. Heavy boots, backpack jacket. Yeah.

Man, yeah. I like, too, this show appearance for Jesse and the changes. Like, we'll talk about the kind of mood distinction in a second. But even just, like, you know, in the game, when Jesse arrives in a sequence that I...

had a really hard time getting through just because of my skill level. Like it took me so long to get through this dilapidated residential, um, this area of houses and, and because I didn't want to hurt the dogs and there are so many dogs. It was just so hard to smell you and they're pursuing you. Um,

You know, the fact that, like, in that stretch of the game, we were going to talk about this elsewhere, but, like, Dina is... The arrow that hits Dina in this episode hits Ellie, Dina, and so, like, Jesse taking Dina because she's injured, it's a tweak and a distinction because the thing that has Dina back at the theater in this stretch of the game is that she's, like, incredibly sick from her pregnancy. Yeah. And so when Jesse arrives, Dina's not there. Right.

in the game it's just jesse and ellie and so this extra dimension of ellie having to confront like i couldn't save dina but you could yeah complex complex i love how belly described it as they threaten each other's masculinity right but um and each other's protector instinct um i like i also really like this moment where ellie and dina have to convince jesse that

Ellie didn't get bit. Yeah. She was like, I saw, I was watching. She didn't get bit. It's fine. Like another version of telling the council, yeah, everything that Ellie said about the smart one is true. And then Marie's just like, hmm. Tina didn't see any of that.

They run from the WLF, who cannot hit them despite the fact that there is shining bright light on them. And this is, I think, my last and favorite Reddit comment. Everyone has Stormtrooper ass aim in this episode except Jessie. Jessie, it should be said, comes through with a much more significant gun than anything that Ellie and Dina are rocking. And I hate guns in general, and I'm anti-gun, but...

That looked very handy in this particular moment. Maybe if we talked about gun control in the Mushroom Apocalypse, my stance would change, but here we are. A Walk in the Park. This is a game sequence. This is another location that they found, like the theater, that is stunningly evocative of the game setting, Stanley Park. And it is completely beautiful in the way in which they staged it, where the nature is swallowing...

street lights, street lamps and stuff like that is incredible. I love how Young Mazino described this fairytale environment with something really, really

deeply dark and scary as is often the case in a fairy tale woods there's usually something very scary lurking inside of it for you the wlf will not follow them in there and i just gotta say always a bad sign but the bad guys won't follow you never good there's the worst guy coming that's what's happening so yeah what do you want to say about jesse's attitude here like how he's like don't want to fucking do i look like i want to fucking talk to you and and his idea what we learn about

the reason why he and Tommy came. Yeah, so I thought that Jesse's, um...

like withering judgment here was really keen and notable. And obviously it's something that Ellie feels. I liked the way that Druckmann described it as like, you know, Ellie's starting to feel ashamed basically of like the situation that she has brought all of these people now that she cares about into obviously Dina and now having to confront like Jesse and Tommy came after

Because Ellie initially is like, I can't believe they sent you after us to fetch us and bring us back. And Jesse's like, no, no.

They didn't want us to come. We had to sneak out to make sure you guys didn't die. Yeah. And now look where we are. And Ellie being like, we were handling it fine. He's like, oh, Jill. That was a great moment, right? Like a great moment because it's like, it isn't fine. And of course, part of it is like, how could it be fine? It was never going to be fine. Yeah. But to have to really stare that truth in the face for a second, like it's only, you know, literally like,

Well, 45 days, you know, pre-shimmer and then also a couple days when they first looked out from the overpass. It's like, this will be fine. How many could there possibly be? So the circumstances and their clarity has evolved rapidly. But like in the game, you know, when Jesse first appears and then they have this like to pick up truck escape and Ellie's like, what are you doing here? And remember, as you as you explained earlier, like Tommy was.

went first because he didn't want Ellie to go do this. Like he wants to spare Ellie from this danger and this pursuit. And then in the game, Ellie and Dina, who had decided already before their conversation with Maria, but then Maria's like, please bring her back, go. And they're kind of like haunting Tommy's footsteps and following this like trail. And then Jesse comes. And when Ellie's like, what are you doing here? He says, do you think I'd let you do this on your own? Yeah.

Hey, pal. Much more chipper. Very different energy. Hey, bud. Very different energy. And of course, Jesse doesn't know yet about the pregnancy. Like this is just look at

Look at the imminent peril around you right now. Like, how could you think that this was the thing to do? And, you know, we love, like, we've talked about this season, like, Jesse being, you know, established as a rule follower. And so we know what it means for him to be here. Like, it tells us something about the extremity of the circumstance. What Tommy had to leave behind, which is different from Tommy leaving Maria behind.

behind in the game versus Tommy leaving his kid behind. Yes. So different, different stakes here. Very, very much so. And like we have heard it, we have heard in this episode, like Ellie and Dina say, like it's reckless. The thing we're doing is reckless. So it kind of like evens it out. Like they know it's not like they can argue the point, but still there's something different between trying to argue, not arguing the point and really staring at the truth of it in the face that this, I thought very succinctly conveyed to us.

We get whistling in the dark. PTSD. Very scary sound for game players. Torches also in the dark. Very scary. We hear drums. Drums in the deep is what I thought, of course. And I was just really glad that we got the cold up, not the cold up, the sequence that we got in a previous episode where we saw this different aspect of the Seraphites before the

We see this version of the sacrifice, but we're in the ferns. There's torches and trees and these scary people dressed in rags hoisting someone up by the neck. And this is just a very, this is just like clear lost territory for our guy, Stephen Williams. Um,

um yeah minor season one spoiler i was thinking about our guy charlie who gets hoisted up by the neck in the woods in lost in what episode all the best cowboys have daddy issues one of the best episodes of television by who stephen williams so um here we are yeah i mean it's an excellent episode of television um

And so then we watch this horrifying ritual, right? So disturbing. Where we get this religious dialogue. The corrupted soul knows only lies. May she guide us. He is nested in sin. Free him so he may know her love.

And then quite casually, now he is free. So this is... Maurice Dinwent is playing this character who doesn't get a... I think it's like Seraphite Priest or something like that in the closing credits. Doesn't get like a name. Isn't like a game character necessarily. But Maurice...

I know from Hedwig and the Angry Inch, who plays Sergeant Luther Robinson, no relation to me, a very sexy soldier in Hedwig. And I was like, hey! Very different vibe here. Very scary. But Maurice is just, you know, a hardworking Canadian actor, which of the type that you see show up in The Last of Us again and again and again. But I thought he did a really good job here with, like, scaring the shit out of me with what...

I think his calm Mallory Rubin-esque demeanor. Yeah, exactly. Just so. And he pops the buttons off the shirt with a sigh before he eviscerated this person was just really, really, really disturbing stuff. And a really cool way to get this. This is classic gameplay where it's like you have to observe a thing versus like,

torturing the Seraphite was like an unobserved act, but this is like a, we have caught them in progress of this ritual in the forest here. Yes. Yeah. And the distinction between in the game, Ellie being alone in this sequence coming upon this ritual and,

And the terror, because Ellie is alone, but then there's, like, a different kind of terror here when this is a shared experience of, like, what have we all wandered into together? Like, what might happen now to the people I love? A threat that is, of course, literalized mere moments later when an arrow pierces Dina's leg. But there's also just, like, as we now, like, move forward in the story, like, Ellie's not the only one who has seen this thing. Ellie's not the only one who has the depth of this understanding about...

And there is something that feels different about stumbling upon the aftermath, as horrific as that is, and watching the thing itself, that the casual silence

celebration of this type of destruction. And watching this guy beg, watching this WLF member beg. Exactly. And there's no pity and there's no empathy in a story about those things. And there is like nothing but the certainty and the arrogance of that certainty that you know better than another person about the thing that they should do. Deeply disturbing.

Jesse sweeps up Dina very dashingly. He's like, I'm going to go back to the theater, right? And Ellie is supposed to just split up and meet back at the theater. Yeah. Instead, first she hides in a little tree. Later, she will smuggle herself in a little crevice into the hospital. I'm just saying. It's a no for you. No crevices. One thing I know about you is you have a little crevice. Not even once.

No, not even to escape certain doom? Maybe into that tree. I do like a hollowed out redwood tree. It's true. Very, very Armstrong redwoods. But like, okay, this is where Neil said Ellie's an addict. This is like a relapse, like an addict. She's neglecting the people who love her, right? So like Jesse and Dina, not only is like Dina's injured, Ellie's love is injured, right?

And Ellie is not rushing off to make sure that Dina's okay. And not only that, but as far as Jesse and Dina know, Ellie got got by the Sarah. Like if she goes off on this, like a side quest to the hospital, she's dead. They're going to assume she's done and be terribly worried about her. So that, but all of that fades in the background as soon as she sees the hospital, the distance and is like, here we go. Time, time to go. Go time. Dog alert.

Sweet Bonnie, just trying to do her job, gets gaslit by her owner. I hope this guy is properly punished for ignoring Bonnie. This is real, like, real, this is real ghost and storm of swords, like, always listen to your pet's people stuff to me. Bonnie knew. Yeah, Bonnie knew. And then we see Nora. Nora is there, pretty much right where Dina said she would be. And Nora...

is like bathed in this golden light and she's caretaking and she says you're all set very Mally Rubin as calmly quietly it's a good new bit of her it lasts exactly one episode you know my memory um soothingly calmly quietly as Mally Rubin would yeah

But this is a very different Nora than the one we saw hold Ellie down. And a glimpse of maybe what might have been for Nora if she never had to exist inside a mushroom apocalypse. Could she have just been a soothing, calm, quiet caretaker? Perhaps, perhaps.

Tati Gabriel. We see her bleaching a bunch of bloody rags. She looks very worn down and tired. Tati Gabriel, uh, who plays Nora, uh, who I know best from the chilling adventures of Sabrina, which season is always in session. Um,

She's incredible in that show. A show that is a whole mixed bag, but she is very, very good in that show. And she's going to be the lead of one of Naughty Dog's upcoming games, which looks fucking sick. I watched the trailer. It looks really cool. I will not be playing it, but... Maybe I will. Unlike...

Last of Us, this new Naughty Dog game, it's Tati Gabriel hunting Kumail Nanjiani, essentially, in space. And both her character and Kumail's character look exactly like them. Oh. Like, they have done just, like, completely faithful renditions of the actors, which I think is interesting. Am I last Jedi-pilled? Yes. But am I last Jedi-pilled, or did you think about Kylo Ren before?

Ellie says, you remember me? Yeah, you remember me. I'm always thinking about Kylo Ren and The Last Jedi. Oh, you do. Oh, man. We get the very first, where's Abby? Yes. Where's Gamora? Where's Walt? Okay. We also just get- Walt! Walt! Walt!

The way that Ellie emerges from the darkness into the light to confront a former firefly, you know, when you're lost in the darkness. Oh, nice. That was great. And also, like, how could we not think of the parallels of what Ellie is about to do and what is unfolding here happening in a hospital, given St. Mary's as the setting, just the parallelism there is...

What did you make of Nora's reaction here, right? She starts seemingly with empathy. I'm so sorry you saw it happened as if she wasn't the one holding Ellie down. No one should ever have to see something like that. Sometimes at night I still hear his screams. It's a terrible thing the way he died. Yeah, yeah. The little bitch got what he deserved. I don't know if that played for you.

So this is, like, very similar to the game, both this initial conversation and then the chase part is a little bit... So the two parts that are Ellie and Nora are very similar. The chase is very different because... The chase is if you lose Nora, like... You have to start over again. I'm not gonna...

tell you how many times it took me to do it. Just watching the gameplay because you're just like, you round the corner and you see like her little foot disappear behind her and you're like jumping. It was, I was just like, where did she go? She moves

Yeah, it's unbelievable. Okay, go ahead. But also, like, the pursuit from the wolves is different because the spores, as we noted, are just, like, an existing thing in the game canon, so they just, like, put their gas masks on and follow. Right. So then there's, like, a sequence where you're confronting the infected and the wolves. That part's all different. But most of the conversation between them with a couple distinctions are very similar, including...

That little bitch got what he deserved is like right from the game. I think in the show there was a amplification of the like false empathy, which felt to me like mostly a tactic to try to like disarm Ellie before tossing bleach at her. Yeah. So that she can escape. But what I really liked about this is that.

For a minute, it puts us back in that headspace where, okay, so now in the context of watching this scene, you go back and you remember that Nora is the one pinning Ellie down. And you have the reminders in our document, which we'll talk about, about just what we heard from Nora in the first episode about the idea of the immunity. So we have these insights from the past. But when we talked about what happened in episode two,

Something that we did a lot was talk about how Abby stands out in such stark contrast to the other members of the Salt Lake crew. And I think putting us back in a headspace for a second where we're like, right, only Abby thought it was okay to do this. And then it's like, actually, no. Like, Manny seemed pretty into the whole thing. There's like Mel on the front of the spectrum and then there's Owen and then there's like probably Nora and then Manny. Yeah.

Yeah. And so there's like variance, right? And I thought it was really interesting how Mazin talked on Inside the Episode and then on the official podcast about the moral certainty that Nora possesses here that like what they did to Joel was right and that he deserved it. And like what it ever means for a character in any story to think that they get to make that decision about another person. So like what I love most about this is that we are about to watch Ellie do something. Horrible. Appalling. Yeah.

The story makes us complicit because I mean, I won't speak for other people. When Nora says that, I'm like, how dare you talk about Joel that way? That's our Joel. What's interesting. For a minute, like you, you're with Ellie before she loses you. To skip ahead to that moment. Um,

Again, I'm watching a playthrough. It's not the same as playing the game. But I was watching, I was just like, oh, let me refresh myself on the, you know. So I looked up a video of just like Ellie and Nora in the hospital, just to sort of refresh myself on that moment in the game. And this person, like Ellie loops for a really long time before picking up

you know, the tool to bash onto Nora. And like, but you have to do it. Right. The person, the captions, like it's not a glitch. I was trying to figure out if there's anything I could do to not do that. Do it. Similar to how they talked about Joel's action at the end of the first game, the first season of just sort of like, yes, try as you might, you can't get out of the hospital without killing everyone. You have to. So, so,

So you're complicit in what Ellie does here. Ellie cheeses Nora through the hospital, Apex Predator style. I love when Nora's like, shoot her, what are we doing? Come on. Did you have a sense that Nora was in the need to know circle about the spores or did she go down there not knowing that they were down there? I can't say with certainty because of what we heard from Hanrahan earlier.

But like, I got the sense that Nora knew because first of all, the way that she's talking about spores, there just seemed to be an awareness of what was in the air. But also the moment where after the elevator crashes down and she looks up and sees the B2 and it's like, I guess that could just be there for us. But it felt also like she was like, oh, oh boy.

There we go. Yeah, boy. I mean, I simply would not go into the hallway. I know. I'm like, I guess at this point just stay there and like Ellie, come shoot me. Seems better. Come fight with me. Okay.

Ellie enters the hallway, and it is one of the sickest shit you've ever seen in genre storytelling. We got a lot of emails about this, but please trust me, my babies. I already had aliens written down in my notes. Because in Aliens, there are people sort of like up on the wall being like, hit me! Okay, so... Can we hear that again? Okay, so...

Oh, man. Annihilation was the big one for me. Annihilation, also in my notes, yeah. This beautiful horror. This absolutely dementedly gorgeous spectacle. Malorubin, walking through these spores, is this what allergy season feels like for you? Exactly. And if anyone had had a Claritin liquid gel down there on B2, who knows? Who knows what could have been different? Yeah.

Yeah, I really thought the visual rendering of just obviously like the sprawl of the wall art was astonishing and the emittance of the spores from that poor fucking doctor and then sweet Leon, incredible. But just the spores in the air, stunning. Just absolutely. Fairy tale, fairy tale, like fairy dust. Okay, here's a summation of what Neil and Craig said about like the way in which

This particular cordyceps situation, which again is a Craig Mason sort of this idea that like they're puffing out spores into the air is this Craig Mason invention. But Neil Druckmann describes it as symbiosis. The mushroom is fighting to stay alive. Death is not that scary, but this this has them capture you, put you here, put you to work.

Craig said, this is an animal thing. We exploit each other. We exploit other animals to survive. And then Neil said, in the privilege of civilization, we're protected from how cruel animals can be. And so that made me think again of like what we talked about in terms of the social contract. This is what the walls of Jackson protect you of. This idea that nature is red in tooth and claw, brutal, nasty, short. Mushrooms will hold you captive against the wall and make you puff out spores. To what end? Yeah.

If they can't get up the vents, I don't know. But it's just so disturbing. It reminds me of, there's this thing that happens in Independence Day, spoilers for Independence Day, where the alien takes Brett Spiner's scientist character hostage and is like playing his vocal cords in order to make him speak certain things. That's what I was thinking about when I was watching. Leon and the doctor sort of puff stuff out of here.

Great callback. Deeply disturbing. This is so upsetting, but also so cool. Very good. It did make me think again of that just opening to the entire series because like...

you know, this is a different version of this thing, but we like, we're trained to understand what the infection really is from the beginning. The fungus needs food to live. So it begins to devour its host from within replacing the flesh with its own, but it doesn't let its victim die. No, it keeps it alive. It keeps pumping alive. I mean, that's what we see here. Oh my God. That just made me so ill. Okay. Um,

So Craig is like, these people have been alive for years, decades. Very tough fate. Okay. I'm so upset by all of this. It's so beautiful. Shout out to Barry Gower and the prosthetics team who have just been doing an incredible job on the show from the start. But this is like a masterpiece. And Barry Gower, a name I know well from Game of Thrones. So just like absolutely crushing it on Sunday night genre television for a long time. Anyway, yeah.

There's an electrical room. Ellie turns on the red light, just like Roxanne. Just like the subway car sequence. Just like Darth Vader in Rogue One. And as Craig points out, and we already mentioned this, Bella's eyes turn black in the red light and look inhuman. Yes. Yeah. Nora's like, you killed us both. Ellie's like, you sure about that? You sure about that? Did I?

That was, I think, the single most disturbing thing to me of all. The quiet, composed... Molly Rubinette. Yeah, exactly. Just the relish of, did I? Did I? Like, knowing you have... And Ellie knows what is happening. Is that... That is more chilling to you than the I know that we get later? All of it. Just everything in this sequence. I mean, the state of...

that we see Ellie in is, I think, much more upsetting than Ellie running down the hallway shrieking, Nora, I'm going to kill you. Yeah. Like, this is actually a deeper disconnect from Ellie's humanity. I really agree. And kudos to everybody involved with the decision to have the pipe curve like a golf club. Oh,

Oh my God. Because what is Ellie doing? She is doing, she is on this quest because of what Abby did to Joel, which is not just killing him, but torturing him. And that is what Ellie is doing here. The curve pipe, the curve pipe. And as they pointed out in the game, you don't have to like watch this happen, but here we watch her go right for the leg, which is right where Abby hit Joel. So yeah, like they're like,

Did you notice the parallels? We can think you're her, then you and girl, you're real. And as you teased, like Nora in the first episode, when the Fireflies are gathered around the graves in the very beginning of the season, Nora says, I heard some rumors it was some kid he took that was supposedly, Mel's like, that's not true.

Something not true because it is impossible. And Nora's like, no, probably not. And even if it were, it wouldn't fucking matter anyway. And Mel says, not without, essentially, not without Abby's dad who's dead. And then Owen cuts in and he says, if you're going to worry, worry about us. And this is the formation of the SLC crew as an us. And this is the us that is top of mind for Nora as Ellie comes at her curve pipe or no and says, where's Abby?

where's Abby? Swear to me, like Batman, like very scared. And Nora says, no, Nora's dying. And she's just like, no, because that's her us, right? That's her, that's her found family. And, and this idea of seeing Ellie after only hearing rumors of Ellie, the way that Craig Mason described it as it's sort of like, if you were raised a Christian and you see an angel or you see God, this thing you had faith in is real. Yeah.

Not that it matters at all. And then, yeah, we get the don't you know what he did description. A few of our listeners said, hey, well, actually, Nora, he didn't kill everyone in the hospital. He let the nurses live.

Nurse Dana in the pit would be very pleased with that. I can't wait for you to get all my nurse Dana references. I can't wait either. I can't wait either. This was great. Like I thought the, the you're her part, like already it is clear in this sequence that Nora believes that what they did to Joel was justified, but there's like extra validation and vindication here because it is like a reminder of what Joel took away. Right. And yeah,

So even when confronted with the fact that her last moments are going to be full of torment and pain and anguish, she still refuses to give Abby up because of the us that you're citing and because she believes genuinely that what they did was right and what Joel did was wrong. And that rigidity in that stance is such a dangerous thing, as is, of course, the rigidity of Ellie's quest here and the...

The place that we see Ellie descend to, fitting that this takes place in a basement, right? Because that's what this is. It is a descent into hell and into a different version of and detachment from humanity and morality. Like, we love Ellie, just as we love Joel. This is such a horrible thing to see a character we are invested in and care so deeply about prove capable of doing this to another person. And...

It's not hard. It's not a hard thing for Ellie to do. Right? Again, you mentioned the word relish. There just seems to be like a, she's dead-eyed to a certain degree in a way that Joel was when he sort of goes into his fugue state and shoots his way through the hospital. But there's also like a gleam there as well. And I don't know if you can be dead-eyed and have a gleam in your eye at the same time, but if you can, that's what Bella Ramsey achieved inside of this sequence. Bathed in red light. Yeah.

It's incredible. It's so upsetting, but incredibly good. I thought, too, before the I Know, the I Don't Care was so important because, like...

We know that that's not true, actually. That is a lie Ellie is telling herself. And when you lie to yourself, it's worse than lying to other people because that's when you really lose your way. Like, we've talked a lot about this over many pods, so I won't rehash it all here, but, like, something we talked about a lot at the end of season one and the beginning of season two when we found Joel and Ellie in this place of, like, this...

this rupture between them was like the fact that Ellie needed to believe that she had a purpose and this sense. And now we have the, I know. So again, we know there is actually clarity of what Joel did, like that Ellie would not have wanted him to do that. And then the question becomes, could there ever be a way to understand it? And like, I think that,

And reminding everybody where we found Ellie the morning after New Year's in that conversation with Jessie when she basically was like, I know my shit with Joel is complicated, right? I know that from the outside, it probably looks really bad. It has been really bad, but I'm still me. He's still Joel. And we...

nothing's ever going to change that. That at the end of the day, life is full of complexities and competing truths, but that's the truth for Ellie. That, right? Nothing's ever going to change that. You took Joel away from me. Nothing is ever going to change that. I love that you used a Thrones quote earlier, and I will drop one here.

And say, an Ellie alone in the world is a dangerous thing, right? A Targaryen alone in the world. And Ellie's... Ellie all alone, which is her number one fear. And, like, learning in season one that being alone is Ellie's number one fear has one cast to it. Because you're like, of course, she's a young woman...

has experienced so much loss lost her mother lost Riley lost all this stuff being alone is so terrifying to her but it takes on a different cast here where it's just sort of like when I'm alone I do this I crouch down and get on Nora's level coldly calmly where's Abby and it's just upsetting okay then we cut to

Ellie makes that cool breeze. Bird song. Golden, gentle, golden light. And as Craig Mason says on the podcast, just a few years earlier, Ellie was just a little girl. And then here is our reward for making it through the hospital. Here's Pedro Pascal. Here's Joel. Hey, kiddo. Smile from him. Serene, happy smile from her. And she's in her bedroom, not living out in the garage. She's in that room that we saw her look at in an earlier episode. Oh, Mallory.

So worried for you for next week. Okay. I don't know how I'm going to survive it. And then Pearl Jam plays. Oh my God, dude. This like shook me to my core. Just, I mean, first of all, just as soon as she wakes up and you hear the door, you know, but then like you get the back shoulder and the little sliver of head. It's like when we finally see Joel, I was just like a wreck. And you know, one of the things that I was thinking about was like in that conversation earlier in the episode out on the street between Dina and

And Ellie, one of the things that Dina says when she's making this comparison is like, he didn't deserve that. And then Ellie does a version of that to another person. And like, she has just had the person who is now closest to her in the world basically say, nothing forgives that. Kind of to invoke Abby. Like, there are just some things you don't do, even though Abby did it. And for that to be the thing that sparks that,

this trip back into the past for Ellie to have taken a step completely beyond herself. Yeah, this is what... I think what I said when Rob and I were talking about this in the spoiler section is, like, a crossing the Rubicon for Ellie of just sort of, like, this is just brand new territory for her. And, uh...

An upsetting place to be. Okay. So the Pearl Jam song that plays present tense 1996. So not violating any bending anything about the time space continuity. The lyrics we get. Do you see the way the tree bends? Does it inspire leading out to catch the sun's ray? A lesson to be applied. Are you getting something out of all this encompassing trip? We got this really powerful email from Kevin. I won't read the whole thing, but Kevin was talking about why the song is so important to him.

And he says, listening to it, he says, imagine my surprise when right as it builds to the chorus, the song cuts out and the credits continue. One verse questioning the state of your journey through this world and taking lessons from your experience, then silence and the literal things left unsaid about your way forward and where these lessons have taken you. It was the perfect encapsulation of Ellie's trip so far and also where she must head to come out on the other side. Also, of course,

Present tense, future days, Pearl Jam songs, you know, bookends and duos and pairs and anything like that. Great stuff. Anything else you want to say before we get to our real spoiler section? I want to just do a spoiler warning based on the trailer. So this is like an interstitial spoiler section just for people who watch the trailer for next time on.

Are you ready? Are you still here? Did you dry off your hands and press pause? Did you stop the treadmill and press pause? What are you doing? Are you still here? Okay. So I think the trailer for next week makes it pretty clear that this is like

this is a Joel episode of the last of us. And those of us who know that there are flashbacks in the game have been wondering, when are we doing the flashbacks? How are we parceling out our Petra Pascal in the season, blah, blah, blah. And so to this question of like this idea of the YA accusations or the, the Ellie who was too bubbly and, and chipper and bright on this road trip, um,

I guess I would say I think what the game does is it the mechanic of the game uses is to use the flashback to give us a contrast between sort of like Terminator Ellie in Seattle with, you know, earlier with Joel happier Ellie in the past. And so this reminder of what is lost in a sense lost is.

is present in mind because we get flashbacks sort of sprinkled throughout. In the show, since they decide to hold the flashbacks until this episode, I think that contrast is then brought forward by this masking Ellie with Dina versus what we get in the hospital. And so I think that...

I think it is important for us to remember lighter, happier Ellie so that when we see her flip, we're like, ah! You know, like, what is lost inside of that? So that's sort of my theory for why... Another theory for why I think her demeanor has been a bit different throughout this. I like it. Anything you want to say about the trailer at all that you can say in the spoiler-free section? Just completely overwhelmed. Okay.

Let's go to our for realsie reels. We freaking mean it. Spoiler section. Are they gone? Did you go? Did you go? You've been warned. Okay. Mallory, not only do we know that it's like a flashback episode, but we get like ripped from the sequence that you texted me, like made you a wreck, which is astronaut Ellie. How did it, how did it feel to see Pedro Pascal in, in that like space capsule? Oh my God.

I just, I mean, you know, haven't seen the next episode, so, you know, I don't know, like, what level of faithful adaptation this will be. Like, will it be each of the memories from the game just sequentially? Will we expand beyond them? Will we change? We have other things from...

The past that we still have not learned, like what the fuck happened with Eugene. So my assumption now, again, I have not seen this episode. I don't know. My assumption is like, that will also probably be answered in this next episode. You don't think the finale is just a Eugene episode? I really hope not. I really hope not. Eugene, you're not welcome in my finale aquarium. Sorry. I, I sort of like,

I won't waste time talking about something that I haven't seen yet, so we'll see how I feel about this when we get there. I'm kind of predicting a competing reaction where I have no doubt this episode will be extraordinary and that I will love it. And I do still wonder structurally if this is the right choice to compact it all into one episode. So I'll

reserve judgment until I see it. But for me in the game, I would just say like having these sprinkled throughout was necessary. So I, I'll be really interested like to see how that feels as a adaptive contrast. And I will remain open-minded about it certainly. And then I look forward to talking about, to talk about that next week. I think I'm worried about, this is just like, as I'm worried people are going to be like, see the show needs more

Pedro Pascal in it or whatever. And I'm just like, that's kind of my theory for honestly why they decided not to sprinkle them. Because like, then you're almost like, would it feel on the show? Like we're like, we can't do an episode without Pedro. Right.

And to me, it's not about we can't do an episode without Pedro. But I will say that, like, in the game, what having the flashbacks sprinkled and distributed more evenly, like, does is it's this simultaneous, like, the... All the stuff we already talked about, the gut punch of losing Joel is completely intact. But, like, you get these life rafts, you know, of, like, a return. Yeah. So, yeah. I don't know.

I don't know. I'm so curious to see. I think in general, like, obviously, you know, it varies, but like, I think in general, the adaptive changes that they make tend to be very smart for this version of a story. So again, I'm confident it will be really great, but curious to see how it feels. Yeah. One thing I love about

both Craig Mason and Neil Druckmann, but chiefly Craig, is like how sometimes how little chill he has about certain things. And so on the official pod, all the like rat king teasers that he put in the podcast. I loved it. If you're listening to this and you have not played the game, what game players know is that we are on B2 in this level. On B3, one level below, is this horrible homunculus of a like...

conjoined, uh, horrible final boss sort of creature called the rat King. That is like a cordyceps of like a stalker on a clicker on a, with a bunch of rats that you have, that is very hard to kill and very scary. And I should say, I want to say really quickly on the playthrough that I watched, uh, it was a playthrough where like, I never had to watch myself die, but I was rewatching, um, someone else play the rat sequence with Abby. And,

And I just watched her die. Broken neck, torn in half. I died so many times before I beat the Rat King. So many times. Yeah, this was great. The teases for the Rat King were really great and really fun. I'm excited. Do you like the idea in three years when we get season three, do you like the idea of like,

If this is happening simultaneously, if Abby is just, like, downstairs while Nora and, like... I don't know about simultaneously, especially, I think, because I have some questions now about how Ellie's getting out of here without, like, bringing spores into the wider world. That would be a responsibility I'm not sure I want Ellie to carry. But...

You know, Abby, one of the things that we learn in the Abby stretch is that before Nora has this encounter with Ellie, she's with Abby. And Abby has also snuck in and had this, like, final, they don't know it's final, but, like, final conversation with Nora. So the idea that this is all happening in a very tight time. Do you think Bonnie was also like, hey, man, Abby's here? I mean, Abby sneaks in differently in terms of, like, I'm supposed to be here. I'm just getting supplies for Isaac. Don't worry about it. Then a few people are like, uh, are you supposed to be here? Okay.

Did Bonnie make you think of Alice? Yeah, of course. I mean, I guess my new theory actually for why it seems like Shimmer is going to live is to make what happens with Alice like really stand on its own as a horrible thing.

Jesse using the map to find Dina and Ellie previewing how Abby will find the theater at the end of the season, next season. Just don't leave that map around is what I would say. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, these are the people who are just leaving the lights on with the windows. Like, there are people in there. How much guiltier will Ellie feel that both Tommy and Jesse came because of her? Yeah, I mean, obviously, like...

I think that Ellie is going to carry what happens to Jesse in a pretty heavy way. Um,

You know, and Jesse, just like, I think, honestly, I think that's part of why we got Dina saying to Ellie, like, if I die, it's because, like, I chose to be here, you know? Because... Jesse didn't say that. No, but, like, he is an adult who made his own decision and decided to come here. And, like, you can't control what other people do, but also they followed you there. So that's tough. It's tough. You know, the Tommy thing is so much more tangled because, obviously, we have the differences that we've already outlined of, like, Tommy having a kid now, but then there's just also, like...

you know, when Tommy goes later to the farm and like makes the pitch and is so entwined with Ellie's inability to like move on. Um, I'm curious to see like what that journey is like in the show. Yeah. I feel like this point has been really distinct. I think, um, I'll be curious about like how much the injury. Yeah. Lays into all of that. Um, okay. Um,

Last but not least, I guess I'll ask, we got an email about this, but I'll just summarize and say, given that next week is a flashback, a lot of flashbacks, who's to say? Then we get finale, presumably Aquarium, Owen and Mel. Where do you think this season is ending? My assumption is this season ends with Abby showing up.

To confront. Does Jesse make it out of the season or does Jesse die in the finale? Jesse dies in the finale. Right? I feel like that. Does Tommy get shot in the finale? Yeah. Yes. I think that sequence plays out. Door opens, Jesse walks out, shot. I mean, I guess the huge difference, of course, would be like Lev's presence because Lev's not a character in the show, but we don't have the full clarity that Lev is there until later, until we come back to that scene from the Abby perspective. So yeah, my assumption is that that will be where the season concludes for

I'm, I'm really fascinated to revisit our earlier conversations. We, we, we won't do this now, but like at the end of the season, if that is in fact where we end to then look back in the earlier choices about like, if we are broadly following the same structure of the game and it's like season two is Ellie and season three is Abby, um,

Does that change anything about how we feel about some of the adaptive changes to like move on? The reveals. Yeah, Abby's clarity or not. But that'll be an interesting thing to kind of circle back to if that is where the season ends. So yeah, that's my assumption is that'll be the final thing. Something to look forward to. Captain Wyoming getting killed. I'm not excited about that. Young Mazino has been great. He's very fantastic in this episode. Okay, we did it.

I love the show. I'm really sad that we only have two left. Me too. Like despondent. I know. I don't want to attend. Also sad that Andor's ending. It's just a tough time to be watching incredible television with you, Mallory Rubin. Calm, cool, quiet, collected Mallory Rubin.

We'll be back. Oh, last thing. Sorry. Just very quickly in the spoiler section, we have to circle back to the forever. I mean, Oh yeah. Like Dina says forever. Like she's seen the Sandlot at movie night. Like, you know, this is obviously not going to be how she feels about it. So having doesn't have all the information. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah. And just like having her say it and then, you know, it's not just that she doesn't feel the same about the right, like, is this the right way for us to live? Shouldn't we choose to be happy? It's like,

actually confronting something yet caused a change. Painful. Very painful. All right. We will be back later this week with Andor. Thank you to Stephen Allman, John Richter, Carla Shiroboga, Arjuna Rangopal, and Jomia Deneron. Our little shroomy network of the best people. Our favorite triangulators. Oh, love you.

My little ribbon. I love you, my darling. And remember, the fungus loves, too. We'll see you soon. Bye!