The Last of Us

The zombie apocalypse depicted in the popular video game series and newly adapted HBO series “The Last of Us” derives from a mutation to a type of fungus ...

The zombie apocalypse depicted in the popular video game series and newly adapted HBO series “The Last of Us” derives from a mutation to a type of fungus called cordyceps. This should probably come as no surprise, though: Unlike in the games and show, cordyceps, as we currently know it, will not turn you into a zombie. Cordyceps is real, and some

While The Last of Us is deservingly praised for its human drama, the cordyceps help the franchise to also stand above other horror zombie productions.

In The Last of Us, human neurology is also altered to make the host more aggressive and more likely to bite and spread the fungi to new victims. While The Last of Us is deservingly praised for its human drama, the cordyceps help the franchise to also stand above other horror productions focused on zombies. But in the case of cordyceps, the result is terrifying. Since the planet's average temperature is rising, mutations that turn species more resistant to heat become more adapted to the environment. All the stories you heard about zombie ants eaten from the inside out by fungi are true, and the cordyceps are to blame. But there’s another reason why The Last of Us is such an exciting show.

HBO's super-sized series premiere saw Joel (Pedro Pascal) navigate trauma and find new purpose in Ellie (Bella Ramsey), plus some video-game callbacks.

People don’t love that sequence because it’s two minutes of CGI forming different shapes; they love it because it’s two minutes of CGI telling a story of sorts by establishing the geography of the series as a whole and of individual episodes, changing periodically to introduce new spots on the map or prepare us to return to little-visited places like The Pyke. While the idea of the spores rising into something resembling a city — i.e., a metaphor for how the world as we know it has been consumed by the mushrooms — is clever, it’s still ultimately just a bunch of shapes, and not interesting enough to go on for as long as it does. And we discover that Marlene needs Ellie to get to her other Fireflies out west because Ellie is somehow immune to the infection. Ellie is not as in command of the situation as Tess was, but we also quickly see that she is not afraid of being shackled to a wall by armed people who won’t explain why they want her. Then purpose arrives in the form of Ellie, a girl close in age to Sarah who needs passage out of the city. He is emotionally closed-off and efficiently brutal, and when his new charge Ellie is threatened by a soldier late in the episode, he has a PTSD flashback to Sarah’s death and turns absolutely savage in the way he beats on this man. [zombies](https://www.rollingstone.com/t/zombies/), though we do get the disgusting imagery of a dead body absorbed into a wall of fungus when Joel and the others traverse an underground tunnel late in the hour. (We are introduced to her surrounded by armed men after a beating, yet it is clear that she is in command of the room the entire time, and would likely have found a way out of her predicament even if a conveniently-timed Firefly bomb hadn’t given her an escape route.) He is existing rather than living, haunted by the loss of his daughter even more than the loss of everything else he knew, with few goals beyond getting through the next day. Before we get to that violent escape from Boston, we first have to establish the state of America 20 years after the zombie uprising. So I’ll be discussing this episode, and all the ones to come, solely on the basis of how it works as a television show. But before that, we have to watch civilization fall in the way it tends to in so many dystopian shows and movies. Instead, creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann are using those scenes to establish emotional stakes for Joel, and to make us deeply feel at least some of the pain he experiences when Sarah is shot by a panicked soldier on the night the world is wrecked.

The laughter from the studio audience dissipates as the epidemiologist gravely explains how a parasitic fungus can do more than simply kill its host. As science ...

The sight of a gun pointed at a young girl reminds Joel of the soldier that killed Sarah, and in a rage he rushes the soldier and beats him senseless. Marlene promises that if Ellie is delivered safely to the State House, the Fireflies there will provide him and Tess with everything they need to track down Tommy. Tommy, we learn, is a Firefly, too, and this was a major cause of tension between the brothers. Robert, apparently, was going to sell the battery to the Fireflies instead of Tess. The Fireflies detonated a car bomb and are trading bullets with the gathering FEDRA forces. But Marlene ( [Merle Dandridge](https://ew.com/person/merle-dandridge/)), the leader of this area's Firefly faction, appears confident that she's healthy. A filthy child wanders through an empty park overgrown with weeds, staring down the blasted ruins of Boston, where slumping highrises and the vestiges of infrastructure are choked with suffocating vines and wads of dirt-crusted stone. The trio's offroading leads them to a downtown in disarray. Ambulances and police cars blare in the streets, jets carve the clouds, and the radio reports of unrest in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta. [Pedro Pascal](https://ew.com/person/pedro-pascal/)) is the single father of Sarah (Nico Parker). A smirking host speaks with a pair of epidemiologists about the possibility of a pandemic. Joel and Sarah's quiet night celebrating his birthday is disrupted when Tommy calls to ask his brother to bail him out of jail.

The pilot episode of "TLOU" strongly mirrors the beginning of the video game from which its adapted. There's one big change from the start of the game.

Viewers should hone in on the different reactions both Sarah and Ellie have to witnessing Joel kill someone in front of them. In the game, a truck slams into the side of Tommy and Joel's vehicle. Sarah forgets to give her dad the card in the video game. An injury on the neck, face, or head takes five to 15 minutes. "I suggested this change because it would allow the show's main timeline to be now, in 2023," Mazin continued. The front also shows an artist in a different pose. "I just had this thing where if I'm watching a show and it takes place 20 years in the future from my time now, it just seems less real," Mazin told Insider with a laugh. "The fungus begins to devour its host from within, replacing the ant's flesh with its own." The show introduces us to Joel Miller, who Pedro Pascal plays, in 2003. "The fungus needs food to live," Dr. The fungus then controls the "zombified" ants until they reach an area where the fungus can grow before killing it. He discusses how this fungus, cordyceps, travels through an ant's circulatory system to its brain, flooding it with hallucinogens, "thus bending the ant's mind to its will.

Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey lead this white-knuckle adaptation of the survival-horror gaming classic. Plus: Maternal is a fast-paced and stressful new ...

The scheming mayor’s young ward, Atari, flies to the island in search of his pet, and falls in with a canine pack voiced by the likes of Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton and Bill Murray. The second of three shaming films by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein reaches the outbreak of war and unambiguous news of Nazi atrocities against European Jews. This new series of the compelling documentary strand was filmed last spring but even then – as paramedics respond to cardiac arrests, epileptic seizures and nasty falls – waiting times were stretching out alarmingly. This catchup revisits the venue a year later to see how Covid affected its attempt to attract a new clientele and balance the books. Last February, the BBC aired a charming documentary about a struggling Clacton working men’s club, which was attempting to modernise thanks to the proprietor’s daughters. It’s essentially a post-apocalyptic drama, but thanks to its origins, the story has real white-knuckle jeopardy.

We zip forward to 2003, ten years before the opening of the game, and get a really nice sequence with Joel (Pedro Pascal), his brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna) and ...

In this case, the writers and producers had to condense a 15-hour game into a 10-hour season of television. It doesn’t always work out (many movie adaptations of video games aren’t exactly great), but things can’t stay always precisely the same as they were in the source. Deviating from Joel and Ellie’s story to tell another one in this universe — something that wouldn’t be possible for the game to do — is an exciting change. I enjoyed the first Sonic the Hedgehog movie, which is nothing like any of the games, and I’m interested to see how the Gran Turismo film shakes out, given that it’s about someone who’s very skilled at those games becoming a real-life racing driver. In the same way, a movie that adapted any of the core Mario games exactly would quickly fall flat. We get to see some of what Sarah’s day-to-day existence is like in the hours before the outbreak occurs. Changing how the infection spreads from spores to fungus, for instance, means that the actors don’t have to wear masks in some scenes. They hit the story beats they needed to while changing things up enough to surprise fans of the game and, at least in some places, make the narrative work better in another medium. Things that work in a novel may not in a film, and retelling a game beat-for-beat in a TV show doesn’t make a lot of sense. The cold open is a scene from a ‘60s talk show, which is immediately a new twist. Thanks in part to some of the different paths it takes, HBO’s adaptation of the 2013 game is off to a stellar start. Even when it’s a game that’s as cinematic as The Last of Us.

It has been described as "comfortably the best adaptation of a video game ever made" that has been able to "break the curse" on gaming-TV crossovers.

"Through Ellie, we see its wonder. "Through Joel, we feel the heartbreak of this world," its chief television critic said. "The design is stunning: vistas of deserted, bombed out metropolises are matched by sprawling, Western inflected, shots of rural America." All this to an audience who may not traditionally engage with games. [there's some stand out acting in the series](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/jan/11/the-last-of-us-tv-finally-has-the-perfect-video-game-adaptation) acknowledging "it's a bold statement to make" but episode three "might well be one of the TV episodes of 2023". [gave it four stars, saying](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/reviews/the-last-of-us-review-pedro-pascal-hbo-b2258847.html) it's "undoubtedly a new landmark in the seemingly impossible task of adapting video games".

To badly bastardise the words of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Spores, spores everywhere and not a drop of a vaccine. That's the main issue facing the human race ...

[Comicbook.com](https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/news/the-last-of-us-spores-changed-games-tv-show-adaptation/): “In the game, there are these [parts] where you encounter spores and you need to put a gas mask on. [Collider](https://collider.com/the-last-of-us-craig-mazin-neil-druckmann-interview/): “The game had spores in the air and people had to wear gas masks, and we decided, early on, that we didn’t wanna do that for the show. [The Last Of Us](https://www.reddit.com/r/thelastofus/comments/105251c/hbo_series_will_not_include_spores/) Reddit page (this very subject kicked off a 1,200+ post discussion about it) one person commented: “I did find the spores to be a really unique aspect of the cordyceps fungi, and the overall infected in the universe. The writer and creative direction for The Last Of Us game, Neil Druckmann, told To badly bastardise the words of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Spores, spores everywhere and not a drop of a vaccine. If you breathed in infected air of those suffering, there’s a good chance you would catch it too.

HBO's apocalyptic blockbuster debuts with an explosive, exposition-heavy episode.

The confrontation is tense (Tess calls Marlene the “Che Guevara of Boston”), but they eventually make a deal: if the pair get Ellie out of the quarantine zone, they’ll be rewarded with all the equipment they need. During the showdown, the soldier tests Ellie (she scans red, which means she’s infected), but Joel and Tess take her through the zone anyway. There’s plenty of murky sub-plot about underground dealings, but the short of it is that they’re looking for a car battery. Joel and Tommy (who sound like a pair of English builders) turn up just in time, killing the neighbour, and taking Sarah away in the truck. Their relationship, which hints at a past potentially unrequited love, is the best part of this new world. Tommy is clearly no good, but Joel can’t resist his brother, a quality I am sure will come to bite him in the ass later. The purplish hues, Noughties music (and warnings from Jakarta about the virus) on the radio, jokes about the Atkins diet: there’s a sense of humour and lived-in texture that’s missing elsewhere. She ventures next door, and we get our first glimpse of the infected. Anyway, for Joel’s birthday, Sarah gets his watch fixed (using his money: it’s the thought that counts!), but when she’s at the repair shop, she is booted out. The writing in this scene, funny and a little menacing, is the best of the episode. Later, to celebrate Joel’s birthday, she borrows a DVD from her elderly neighbour and they watch it on the sofa. Dr Newman (an exquisitely dour John Hannah) believes that fungi will most likely be the end of us, once they learn how to live inside humans.

That's the setup in the prologue to the video game, which puts you at the wheel of Sarah, Joel's aforementioned daughter, portrayed in the adaptation by Nico ...

The brilliance of the prologue in the game is that it dunks you in icy water from the off. Spending more time with Sarah, it's clearer to see why Joel, in the throes of grief even tweo decades later, so soon embraces this uncanny stand-in. Parker is brilliant, too: she imbues Sarah with the sure-mindedness of someone double her age, in friction with her innate, big-eyed innocence. What happens when the thing you love the most — in the case of Joel, played in the series by [Pedro Pascal](https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/pedro-pascal-interview-2022), his daughter — is snatched away from you by the cosmos, by circumstance, by something so insane as an overnight pandemic that renders its victims blood-thirsty, parasitic puppets? A family friend's farmstead burns in the night. He comes home, they watch a movie together, she falls asleep on his shoulder; it's the daddy-daughter relationship of a guy who simply does his best and a kid who, wise beyond her years, appreciates it nevertheless.

"The Last of Us" showrunner Craig Mazin said it's based on real science and there are "documentaries that you can watch that are quite terrifying."

He explained: "Which means that right now, there's something that's just waiting to blow up — you just don't know about it. On the other hand, he's right — LSD and psilocybin do come from fungus." — from a purely scientific point of view, would they do exactly to us what they do to ants? The showrunner said: "Now his warning — what if they evolve and get into us? "And they currently do it and have been doing it forever. [The show's premiere](https://www.insider.com/the-last-of-us-season-one-recap-details-you-missed) opens with a brief prologue in 1968, in which Dr.

The "zombie virus" introduced in HBO's The Last of Us is unlike any you've ever seen before...

What’s so terrifying about this infection is that while we typically think of zombies as reanimated corpses that have been killed and then brought back to life by some sort of virus, the Cordyceps fungus technically keeps the host alive through this entire process, even though they aren’t conscious or in control. This stage of Cordyceps can occur anywhere between two weeks to a year after infection as the fungus takes further control over the host’s body. The next stage of infection is the Stalker, categorized by fungal plates that have begun to grow over the eyes. With that said, let’s dive into the different stages of infection we could see in this season of The Last of Us. Even though a newspaper found in the prologue of the game shows that the FDA tried to slow the spread by issuing food recalls, the incubation rate is so fast that hospitals quickly became overwhelmed at the onset of the outbreak. In this world, the Cordyceps fungus has mutated to infect the brains of humans, turning them into violent and bloodthirsty creatures intent on spreading the fungus as widely as possible.

Naughty Dog's Neil Druckmann was working on it to make sure it was faithful to the game. Chernobyl's Craig Mazin was writing it. It was on HBO. And when early ...

Fanboys made a big deal out of a quote where she said she was told not to play the game, implying that would make her performance unfaithful. While everyone remembers the breakout performance she gave in a few scenes as young Lyanna Mormont in Game of Thrones, she was a somewhat unknown quantity here. Hell, even one of the same actresses shows up to play the same role she had a decade ago (Marlene). HBO, even going through massive cutbacks in the David Zaslav era, has clearly unleashed the floodgates to give The Last of Us whatever budget it needs. Even getting my hopes way, way up ahead of the premiere of The Last of Us last night, even counting the series as one of my favorites in video game history, it actually exceeded my expectations. Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann was working on it to make sure it was faithful to the game.

We get to know Sarah (and the pandemic) a bit more in episode 1 of the show than we do in the game.

That turns out to not be the case, but Joel absent-mindedly tossing the kid’s body into a fire shows how inured he is to the violence and chaos of his world, and how much growth he’ll have to do to become the man players know he becomes by the end of the game (and this first season). I knew that Bella Ramsey had been cast to play Ellie, but when I saw the little girl at the start of the flash forward — wearing a maroon shirt not dissimilar from the one Ellie is often pictured in — I thought maybe we were seeing a younger Ellie. - The game left it ambiguous, but strongly hinted that Joel and Tess used to be romantically involved. But the soldier isn’t so charitable to his dealer, and is determined to turn the three in. Joel snaps and beats the soldier to death with his bare hands. The Fireflies are a resistance group against the militarization of quarantine zones. The child is infected, and the militarized police force opts for euthanization. That scene is mirrored in the show, but even before that, Joel talks about how he barely wants to share a construction job with Tommy, and isn’t interested in anyone else’s help. All the while, Sarah attends school, and later seeks out a watch repair shop; she wants to fix an old watch as a gift for her dad. The brothers return right on time to whisk Sarah to safety after she wakes up in the night to find nobody home and the neighbors’ place in disarray. In the game, the original performance of this scene by Troy Baker laid the groundwork for the game’s tone. But first, we get to learn about the nature of the pandemic.

In its first 25 minutes, the HBO adaptation of 'The Last of Us' achieves an energy the game longed to emulate.

For those with a strong attachment to the original work, the last decade was essentially building up to this moment, and what transpires in the TV adaptation is something close to a (The remake with more modern tech, released last fall, is only somewhat better.) Since this is a game, it’s also a sequence with a fail state. It’s really something to see a prestige TV show literally translate a scene from a game that was, in its own way, already emulating a prestige TV show. The plane crash, for example, is an invention for the show; in the video game, Sarah and Joel are knocked out when another car slams into theirs. The HBO remake of the outbreak sequence is striking in how it fully realizes what the original work was simulating. Playing the game, you can feel The Last of Us strain to use its elemental tools to achieve the kind of cinematic storytelling it’s going for, even as it’s ultimately successful. The camera assumes a view from the back seat, mimicking Sarah’s perspective as the family tries to get out of Dodge. (Though one could possibly argue Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men, which does a ton of world-building through background elements that the camera often glides by, came quite close.) The very first character you control is Sarah, whom you guide through a splendid sequence that evokes the feeling of being a child alone at home. John Hannah plays the more portentous of the duo, laying out the mechanics of what will eventually drive the apocalypse in this universe: mind-controlling fungus, previously a phenomenon contained to the insect world, pushed by climate change to evolve such that it makes the jump into human beings. As someone long familiar with the source material, the choice is exciting: the HBO version places a premium on leaving room to breathe. This wasn’t necessarily the case in the source material. However, back in 2013, the game was still doing its best with the tools it had within the context of its medium.

The zombifying fungal infection that wiped out humanity in The Last of Us is based on a very real set of parasitic fungi that hijack insects and compel them ...

Though not confirmed, fans widely [expect](https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/01/14/will-naughty-dogs-next-game-be-the-last-of-us-part-3/?sh=3d9fa9907d0f) Naughty Dog will announce a third title in the game’s main series in the future and Druckmann has openly stated he feels there is “more story to tell.” [said](https://collider.com/the-last-of-us-cordyceps-infection-explained-neil-druckmann-craig-mazin-comments/) was taken to avoid actors having to wear obstructive gas masks for large portions of the show. This is a major departure from what happens in nature, where zombie fungi actually steer well clear of the brain and manipulate behavior with chemical signals, Hughes said. This discovery was made fairly recently and after the first game had been released. Presently, details are scarce, though a small amount of Araújo said it was a “shame” fungal spores have been removed from the show, a decision showmakers Since its release it has been remastered, remade and spawned a sequel, The Last of Us Part II. Though based on a game, viewers don’t need to have [played the game](https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/01/15/do-you-need-to-have-played-the-last-of-us-to-watch-the-hbo-show/?sh=3fba09355f95) in order to follow or appreciate the show and it [is](https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2023/01/10/hbos-the-last-of-us-review/) reportedly a [faithful adaptation](https://www.theverge.com/23550842/hbo-the-last-of-us-neil-druckmann-craig-mazin-interview), albeit with some significant differences. [concept art](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-last-of-us-factions-multiplayer-gets-new-concept-art/1100-6510286/) has been released. The first episode of HBO’s The Last of Us was released on Sunday. The first game, released in 2013 by studio Naughty Dog, is one of the most De Bekker said it was great the infected are shown as living beings—rather than the less natural “undead” commonly deployed in the zombie genre—but that their aggressive behavior is not in line with what infected insects do.

"The Last of Us" showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann explained the opening scene on the official HBO podcast.

"One of the things that the opening does is place everything also within the context of a longer time span," said Mazin. This is part of the natural cycle of the planet. "I thought it was important to say to people, we are not a show that's asking you to share some of your own personal horror about the viral pandemic with us. "There was also a chance to address the elephant in the global room, which is we all just went through a viral pandemic," said Mazin. Starting the series this way has the simultaneous effect of keeping fans of the game on their toes and giving important context to newcomers to The Last of Us. [The Dick Cavett Show](https://www.youtube.com/@TheDickCavettShow), which is the scene that ends up in the series. It's a scene that's not present [in the game](https://mashable.com/article/the-last-of-us-hbo-game-vs-show); the cause of the Infected is explained through the game's opening credits news coverage montage and through various dialogue in cutscenes. The idea of this foreboding interview came from director Mazin, who spoke about the scene on Speaking with host and original Joel Miller voice actor Troy Baker, Mazin unpacked the cold open and how he had pitched two ideas for it to his fellow showrunner, The Last of Us creator Druckmann. Schoenheiss (played by Christopher Heyerdahl), who explains that fungal infection of this kind, though real, is not present in humans. And in the [HBO](https://mashable.com/category/hbo) adaptation, showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann kick off the anticipated series with an extra introduction to the game's context to really hammer this mushroom foe home alongside the idea that disasters don't just happen overnight, somebody always sees them coming. Neuman (played by John Hannah) speaks on an interview show about the prospect of a viral pandemic.

The trailer also spotlights Anna Torv, Nick Offerman, Storm Reid, and more. Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey as Joel and Ellie in The Last of Us ...

Merle Dandridge’s Marlene had previously teased Ellie’s relationship with Riley (Storm Reid) and the character appears in the trailer as well. Some of them include characters teased by the codes from Joel’s radio like Henry (Lamar Johnson), Sam (Keivonn Woodard), Bill (Nick Offerman), and Frank (Murray Bartlett). As we look forward to the next episode, HBO has released a trailer teasing what comes next for the trio, and how Joel and Ellie’s relationship will develop.

As with Tess and Robert, we meet both Ellie and the leader of the Fireflies (Marlene, played wonderfully by Merle Dandridge who also played Marlene in the game) ...

Ellie and Joel are soon left alone by Tess, as happens in the game, and the scene in Joel's apartment with Ellie will be familiar to those who have played the game already. All in all, this first episode is a confident start for The Last of Us' TV debut. Joel proceeds to fall asleep on the sofa, while Ellie is left to amuse herself in the apartment. While Ellie mentions Marlene knew her mother in the game, it is said in an off-hand way and this relationship is one featured in passing mentions and collectables. At this point, we are brought back to Joel and Tess on their endeavour to settle the score with Robert and his men. Bella Ramsey is Ellie, with a balance of innocence and a toughness that those who are familiar with the games will immediately recognise. This is one example of how TV can immerse its viewers in a character and their individual ordeals in a way the game didn't. The Fireflies are holding Ellie in a room, chained to a radiator against her will. This is shown in how easily he can pick up and dispose of the body of a child that has been euthanised after becoming infected. This version of The Last of Us is not going to be a scene-by-scene reenactment of the game, so it will be accessible to those who do not know the story already. Next, the camera gets close to Sarah as she, along with her father and her Uncle Tommy, attempt to flee in their truck. Her once harmless neighbour is lying dead on the ground in front of her, with her father the murderer.

“I was looking an up-tempo 80s song that had a darkness to it lyrically.” Pedro Pascal as Joel and Bella Ramsey as Ellie in a promo image ...

Joel's about to take a ride with his best friend, he doesn't know she's his best friend yet. Well, Ellie's about to take a ride with her best friend, and Joel is a dangerous man. And the reception it has gotten was certainly foretold by the [reviews](https://collider.com/the-last-of-us-hbo-review/) it had garnered prior to its release.

The episode ended with one elongated dolly shot, showing a radio in Joel and Tess' empty apartment in the Boston Quarantine Zone (QZ) playing Depeche Mode's ...

At the close of the episode after the three have escaped the QZ, the radio begins playing Depeche Mode's 1987 track in Joel and Tess' empty apartment, which means trouble is afoot. As Bill and Frank can't rely on Joel and Tess to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of music, especially release dates, and Shazaming a song on a smartphone isn't an option, the code relies on Joel and Tess being able to look up the track in The Billboard Book. As Ellie correctly guesses, anything played over the radio released in the '60s means Bill and Frank have no new stock, the '70s means new stock, and anything from the '80s means trouble. As Joel and Tess have a private conversation in the hallway about stopping by to see their pals Bill and Frank (yet to feature in the series but they'll be played by Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett) and stock up on supplies, Ellie investigates her new surroundings, finding a radio and a copy of The Billboard Book of Number 1 Hits. The clue to this final moment emerges when Ellie is first brought to Joel's apartment after being handed over by Marlene (Merle Dandridge) and the Fireflies. The emotional, intense debut episode introduced viewers to America in 2023 (eep), hurtled into an apocalypse with the global outbreak of the Cordyceps fungus.

Pedro Pascal is Joel<p> Game of Thrones/The Mandalorian's Pedro Pascal stars. 20 Images. Bella Ramsey as Ellie<p> Game of Thrones' Bella Ramsey plays Ellie ...

And in the game, while we may have seen her give the fixed watch to Joel, we didn’t see the thought that went into heading to the city to get it repaired. And it also gives Druckmann, the writer behind all of this, the chance to improve upon his own work from a decade ago, an opportunity many writers would kill for. But that question perhaps hangs heavier over this adaptation than others, as The Last of Us’ story is one that could very easily be transferred to television without many tweaks and still be riveting. As Sarah, she’s constantly relatable and charming, and the tear that escapes from her eye as she struggles to remain calm while Tommy and Joel rush them out of town is a brilliant little touch. As with any adaptation, one of the main questions facing HBO’s The Last of Us has been how much it will deviate from the source material. And that shot of the elderly Adler, Connie, subtly showing symptoms in the background while Sarah reads a DVD box? From there, we see her going through the day-to-day motions – attending school, heading into the city to get Joel’s watch fixed, reluctantly spending time with the neighbors, and watching in horror as the pandemic begins to unfold. Of those 34 minutes, only about 10 are spent directly adapting scenes from the game – specifically, when Joel, Sarah, and Tommy (Gabriel Luna) are booking it out of town, and staying true to its source to the point of showing Joel electing to keep driving past a family begging for help. Firstly, some context for the virus that the characters are about to face, with a talk show clip from 1968 that has doctors explaining the threat that a certain type of fungus could pose to the human race (interestingly enough, the game saved its snippets of panicked news reports for after the initial intro, placing them over the opening credits that follow the title card). The end result – Sarah dying in Joel’s (Pedro Pascal) arms – is the same, but the journey to get there is a key example of how adaptations can build upon their predecessors while staying loyal to them. It’s one of the things that made The Last of Us the touchstone that it is, establishing an integral part of our protagonist’s motivations and setting the stage for one emotionally grueling game. In fact, it quite literally doubles the runtime of the intro;

Creators Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin say the new scenes with Marlene and Ellie in the premiere will bring "a greater payoff" by the end of the show.

That was an opportunity to start showing more of that relationship with Marlene, which then has a greater payoff later because we've established the relationship more explicitly here." Baker will appear later in The Last of Us as James, a minor character from the games that has been expanded on for the show. Scenes between her character and Ramsey's Ellie confirm that Marlene is somehow linked to the girl's origin story. The BAFTA Award winner is the only legacy actor from the original video games to play the same role in the live-action series adaptation, that of Marlene, the leader of the rebel group known as the Fireflies. "Don't ever stand next to her in a picture," warns Neil Druckmann, who created the games and now heads the show with Mazin. She was a little more weathered and [had] a little more grey in her hair."

The Last of Us's Fireflies, led by Marlene, are freedom fighters and one of the main political players in HBO's post-apocalyptic drama.

The Fireflies also partner with smugglers and criminals to get the supplies they need to fight their war, ultimately putting innocent lives at risk. What makes The Last of Us such an exciting story is that, so far, there’s no absolute good or evil in the show. While the Fireflies fight for democracy, they don’t refrain from playing dirty to get what they want. This military organization is more concerned with the ends than with the means, leading them to crush the survivors and impose brutal restrictions on individual freedom. Episode 1 introduces us to Joel ( [Pedro Pascal](https://collider.com/tag/pedro-pascal/)), Ellie (Bella Ramsey), and Tess (Anna Torv), teasing their journey across a destroyed version of the U.S. [The Last of Us](https://collider.com/tag/the-last-of-us/) justifies all the hype surrounding HBO’s highly-anticipated zombie apocalypse drama.

In this zombie-plagued wasteland, different groups of survivors are vying for supremacy.

Neil Druckmann, The Last Of Us co-director told It also resonates with the name behind the group, fireflies, who are, of course, flies drawn to light. And as anybody launching a campaign or movement knows: you need a good catchphrase, and the Fireflies’ is, “When you’re lost in the darkness, look for the light.” It suggests there is always hope within desperate situations with the Fireflies setting themselves out as the “light” in this dark time. This, it turns out, is the mark of the resistance. But this isn't the work of a group of toxic positivity Instagram influencers.

The post-apocalyptic American drama is here. Created by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, the efforts have already paid off as the series currently boasts a ...

The Last of Us season 1 has nine episodes in total. [HBO](/topic/hbo)’s The Last of Us. And it looks to have paid off, since the first season of the programme presently boasts a 97% critic score on [Rotten Tomatoes](/topic/rotten-tomatoes).

This desperately moving drama set in a zombie-ravaged US is a phenomenal blend of horror and heart, with a cast that could not be more perfect.

Yet it manages to find humanity in the ruins – and that makes it worth the hardship. It is a gorgeous detour into the wider world; as many critics have said already, it might be one of the finest episodes of TV you will see this year. The fact that it manages to resist a sentimental approach and yet still finds such soul is a real achievement. What is left of society is in the hands of an authoritarian military regime fighting rebel groups classed as terrorists and it is bleak as hell. The Last of Us is violent and maudlin. That is the terrifying premise of The Last of Us (Sky Atlantic), another post-apocalyptic prestige drama in a TV landscape that, for understandable reasons, is stuffed with game-over scenarios.

It's early days, but this video-game adaptation about the world being overrun by fungal zombies is expertly done. Newcomers and original gamers will be ...

I want to try to keep comparisons and mentions of the video game to a minimum and treat this as a separate entity – it has to work as a standalone, not just for fans of the game who know what’s coming – but so far, this series has done an amazing job of transporting the characters to screen. They accepted the mission, only to encounter the Fedra soldier Joel had sold pills to earlier in the episode. After Joel smashed their neighbour Mrs Adler’s head in with a spanner, he, Sarah and Tommy tried to escape the area in their pickup truck as all hell broke loose around them. Boston, 2023, and the world is wrecked. We heard about a disturbance in Jakarta on radio – ominous – and learned Joel works in construction – handy. Hello and welcome to The Last of Us episode recaps.

It's been a long old wait, but HBO's live-action TV adaptation of Naughty Dog's The Last of Us is finally here - and, f…

And HBO has now offered a small tease of the events still to come in its Eurogamer's The Last of Us super-fan Victoria Kennedy will be sharing her thoughts on each episode as the series progresses. HBO's The Last of Us teases horrors to come in new The Weeks Ahead trailer

One of the main political players in HBO's The Last of Us series is FEDRA, the Federal Disaster Response Administration.

That’s the beauty of The Last of Us setting so far. Fear is a powerful incentive when it comes to disrespecting basic human rights, and under FEDRA’s authoritarian surveillance, the surviving humans can’t hope to have a fulfilling life. [The Last of Us](https://collider.com/tag/the-last-of-us/) does an excellent job introducing its cast of main characters and setting the rules for the show’s post-apocalyptic world. When cordyceps fungi start to infect humans, turning them into beast-like creatures, the US military is charged with stopping the infection from spreading at all costs. 20 years later, what’s left of humanity lives in walled cities controlled by FEDRA, a military agency that’s responsible for keeping survivors alive. Set 20 years after a cordyceps fungi outbreak, The Last Us follows Joel ( [Pedro Pascal](https://collider.com/tag/pedro-pascal/)), Tess (Anna Torv), and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) as they cross a destroyed version of the United States.

From 1993's Super Mario Bros film which regularly features on lists of the worst films of all time, to the three Lara Croft Tomb Raider films released from 2001 ...

When a video game adaption is trading on the brand and reputation of its source material, not winning over the original fans and players can leave them with few other audiences. The characters and overall narrative were deemed too dissimilar to their original video game sources, leaving viewers frustrated. When the game was released in 2013 for the PlayStation 3, it received unanimous critical and popular acclaim and is considered one of the greatest video games of all time. Human civilisation has collapsed and is contained in quarantined zones after the spread of a highly contagious fungal infection that transforms victims into mindless and aggressive monsters. However, HBO did a lot of things right. A film was announced in 2014 before falling through. All the ingredients, you would think, needed for a television or film hit. When HBO announced in 2020 a television series was in the planning stages, this was met with some scepticism. It’s a long running joke just how terrible film and television series based on video games inevitably are. IGN – the list goes on. Frustratingly, there is no reason for this terrible track record. However, to say video game adaptations are often awful is an understatement.

Trouble never sounded so awesome. Pedro Pascal in The Last of Us Episode 1 Image via HBO. Editor's note: The below ...

The objective of the whole operation is to take Ellie to the State House, located outside the QZ. We soon find out what that means when Ellie tells Joel the radio came on while he was asleep, playing "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" by Wham, and he reacts with concern. So Ellie will be safe, as long as she remembers that they are the ones in charge and that she must obey and follow their lead. "I'm taking a ride with my best friend / I hope he never lets me down again / Promises me I'm safe as houses / As long as I remember who's wearing the trousers / I hope he never lets me down again" "We're flying high / We're watching the world pass us by / Never want to come down / Never want to put my feet back down on the ground" In the first part, the song tells of two people going on a journey together, the singer hopeful that this time will be better than the last: "I'm taking a ride with my best friend / I hope he never lets me down again / He knows where he's taking me / Taking me where I want to be / I'm taking a ride with my best friend"

Pedro Pascal stars as Joel Miller, a rugged black market smuggler who is tasked to transport precocious 14-year-old orphan, Ellie (Bella Ramsey), across a post- ...

[IGN](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Me0EadJQPvQ) recently created a comparison video that highlights the similarities between [The Last of Us episode 1](https://screenrant.com/last-of-us-sarah-miller-episode-1/) and original scenes from the video game. As The Last of Us continues on HBO, audiences can see how the show honors the beloved video game. Although the show's creators promised a faithful adaptation, trailers have shown new story elements not originally in the iconic video game. Even specific lines of dialogue are pulled directly from the video game. IGN's video uses side-by-side comparisons to showcase how faithful The Last of Us' premiere episode was to the original game. [The Last of Us](https://screenrant.com/tag/the-last-of-us/) television series, a comparison video shows just how game-accurate episode 1 truly is.

Succeeding where so many have failed, Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin prove great video games can translate over to screen.

The opening line “I’m taking a ride/With my best friend” feels like a nod to the road trip that awaits Joel and Ellie. No spoilers here, but episode three, for example, flashes back to 2007 (four years after the outbreak) to sidestep into the story of survivor Bill, played by Nick Offerman, a relatively minor character in the game. Better still, the production team — including Druckmann, who even directs on the show — have captured the atmosphere of the game in spades. [Hollywood](https://www.thenationalnews.com/tags/hollywood/) seemed unable to capitalise. [Tom Holland](https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts-culture/2021/12/16/is-tom-holland-the-best-spider-man-yet/), albeit a profitable one, taking $401 million worldwide. Hollywood’s track record with console titles is notoriously poor, right back to the days of Street Fighter and [Super Mario Bros.](https://www.thenationalnews.com/tags/super-mario-bros/) (with Bob Hoskins, appallingly cast as the dungaree-wearing plumber Mario). But while The Last of Us came late to the party, it injected new life into the living dead, finding a story that concentrated on a surrogate parent-child relationship. With the benchmark now massively raised, Hollywood should take note. The Evil Dead’s Sam Raimi was initially attached to direct, but Druckmann struggled to compress the game’s storyline into a workable feature film script. Pascal excels as the taciturn protector, haunted by his own losses. English youngster Bella Ramsey, who made her screen debut as Lyanna Mormont in the series, took on Joel’s spiky young charge. The same fate could so easily have befallen The Last of Us.

The final scene in The Last of Us' first episode draws closer ties between Ellie and Sarah and their relationship with Joel.

It’s been known, as it has been said in many interviews by primarily Mazin and Druckmann, that the show will expand and alter the story in certain ways, and it’s clear from this scene alone that those changes are also going to be happening early on between This makes the scene even more intense, as we see Joel try and calm him down and barter with him in hopes of him letting them go. [the FEDRA soldier](https://collider.com/the-last-of-us-fedra-explained/) that Joel sells drugs to earlier in the episode. One of the more important additions is the connection that’s drawn between the FEDRA soldier that points the gun at Ellie and the one that ends up shooting Sarah. Most importantly is that this comparison can’t be drawn when talking about the original game, as there’s never really meant to be a line that could be drawn between that moment and Sarah’s death. While some of the changes in the premiere were more overt, there are a handful that many can point to as thoughtful expansions on the already great narrative.

Phillip Kovats, who voices the male Clickers, is the Director of Sound at PlayStation, so it is no surprise that he was able to create the horrifying noise.

Now, it seems like the pair have reprised their role to voice the Clickers for the HBO adaption of The Last of Us. This includes Ellie’s voice actor, Ashley Johnson, taking on the role of Ellie’s mother, Troy Baker, the voice of Joel, becoming a member of David’s group and finally Merle Dandridge, who has reprised herself as the Firefly leader, Marlene. It is no easy task to find voice actors who can match their voices to the horrific appearance of the Clickers – but it appears as though these two nailed it.

Pedro Pascal plays Joel, a construction contractor turned hardened survivor, when a zombie apocalypse shatters the world. He winds up escorting Ellie, played by ...

But the real secret sauce of "The Last Of Us" is its storytelling style. Part of the reason is 19-year-old English actress Bella Ramsey, best known as Lady Mormont on "Game Of Thrones," who gives a star-making performance as Ellie. It's the best adaptation of a video game I have seen yet. The fungus starts to direct the ant's behavior, telling it where to go and what to do like a puppeteer with a marionette. A popular video game about surviving an apocalypse has been adapted into HBO's newest adventure series, "The Last Of Us." The zombies aren't created by a virus or pathogen but by a fungus.

The Last of Us has premiered and the first episode features a reference to Riley, but while game fans might know, here's why Riley is so important to Ellie.

We don't see Riley die in Left Behind, but we already knew her fate from a conversation in The Last of Us. As mentioned before, we don't know if this is exactly how this will play out in the TV show and Riley's fate could well be different. (The injury is in the same place as the scar we see in the first episode.) Ellie begs her not to leave and Riley agrees, which leads to a kiss between the two. In The Last of Us: Left Behind, a DLC add-on story released after the first game, we were taken back to three weeks before Ellie met Joel. During the heated conversation, Marlene reveals to Ellie that it was actually her who placed her at the FEDRA military school.

The Last Of Us drew a healthy number for HBO on Sunday night. The videogame adaptation, starring Pedro Pascal, drew 4.7M viewers across linear and HBO Max.

“Our focus was simply to make the best possible adaptation of this beloved story for as big an audience as we could,” said Mazin and Druckmann. We look forward to fans around the world enjoying the rest of the season.” The Last Of Us is written and executive produced by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann. It is a co-production with Sony Pictures Television along with PlayStation Productions, Word Games, The Mighty Mint, and Naughty Dog. What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal journey as they both must traverse the US and depend on each other for survival. That series went on to average 19.5M viewers per episode in the U.S.

HBO's series adaptation of PlayStation's "The Last of Us" premiered Sunday, drawing HBO's second-biggest debut of the last 13 years.

Sony Pictures Television produces alongside PlayStation Productions, Word Games, The Mighty Mint and “Last of Us” video game studio Naughty Dog. “Our focus was simply to make the best possible adaptation of this beloved story for as big an audience as we could,” executive producers Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann added. We look forward to fans around the world enjoying the rest of the season.”

The 4.7 million viewers encompasses the on-air premiere on HBO, replays later in the night and streaming on HBO Max. A more detailed breakdown of the audience ...

A more detailed breakdown of the audience will be available when Nielsen releases final ratings for Sunday; on House of the Dragon’s premiere night, Other than the Game of Thrones prequel, the last HBO show with a larger opening-night audience for its debut was Boardwalk Empire (4.81 million) in 2010 — several years before HBO had any serious streaming presence. We look forward to fans around the world enjoying the rest of the season.” Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey star. That figure trails only House of the Dragon’s nearly [more than half](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/house-of-the-dragon-streaming-rankings-aug-15-21-2022-1235221779/) of the cross-platform audience came via streaming. [fungal pandemic](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/the-last-of-us-can-mushrooms-fungus-infect-humans-1235299195/) has killed much of humanity and turned others into monsters. [Subscribe Sign Up](https://cloud.email.hollywoodreporter.com/signup/) [10 million](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/house-of-the-dragon-tv-ratings-sunday-aug-21-2022-1235203367/) among HBO series premieres in the past decade-plus. The 4.7 million viewers encompasses the on-air premiere on HBO, replays later in the night and streaming on HBO Max. [Share this article on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/tv-ratings-sunday-jan-15-2023-1235300975/&title=TV%20Ratings:%20‘The%20Last%20of%20Us’%20Scares%20Up%20Big%20Premiere&sdk=joey&display=popup&ref=plugin&src=share_button&app_id=1153511048447777) [Share this article on Twitter](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/tv-ratings-sunday-jan-15-2023-1235300975/&text=TV%20Ratings%3A%20%E2%80%98The%20Last%20of%20Us%E2%80%99%20Scares%20Up%20Big%20Premiere&via=thr) [Share this article on Email](mailto:?subject=thr%20:%20TV%20Ratings:%20‘The%20Last%20of%20Us’%20Scares%20Up%20Big%20Premiere&body=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/tv-ratings-sunday-jan-15-2023-1235300975/%20-%20TV%20Ratings:%20‘The%20Last%20of%20Us’%20Scares%20Up%20Big%20Premiere) [Show additional share options](#) [Share this article on Print]() [Share this article on Comment](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/tv-ratings-sunday-jan-15-2023-1235300975/#respond) [Share this article on Whatsapp](whatsapp://send?text=TV%20Ratings:%20‘The%20Last%20of%20Us’%20Scares%20Up%20Big%20Premiere%20-%20https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/tv-ratings-sunday-jan-15-2023-1235300975/) [Share this article on Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=1&url=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/tv-ratings-sunday-jan-15-2023-1235300975/&title=TV%20Ratings:%20‘The%20Last%20of%20Us’%20Scares%20Up%20Big%20Premiere&summary&source=thr) [Share this article on Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/submit?url=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/tv-ratings-sunday-jan-15-2023-1235300975/&title=TV%20Ratings:%20‘The%20Last%20of%20Us’%20Scares%20Up%20Big%20Premiere) [Share this article on Pinit](https://pinterest.com/pin/create/link/?url=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/tv-ratings-sunday-jan-15-2023-1235300975/&description=TV%20Ratings:%20‘The%20Last%20of%20Us’%20Scares%20Up%20Big%20Premiere) [Share this article on Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/widgets/share/tool/preview?shareSource=legacy&canonicalUrl&url=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/tv-ratings-sunday-jan-15-2023-1235300975/&posttype=link&title=TV%20Ratings:%20‘The%20Last%20of%20Us’%20Scares%20Up%20Big%20Premiere) [HBO](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/t/hbo/)’s [The Last of Us](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/t/the-last-of-us/) got off to a strong start with viewers. “We are thrilled to see fans of the series and game alike experience this iconic story in a new way, and we extend our gratitude to them for helping to make it a success,” said Casey Bloys, chairman and CEO of HBO and HBO Max Content.

The Last of Us is a smash hit in every way possible on HBO, scoring sky-high reviews from both professional critics and hard-to-please gamer fans.

I’ve seen some hopes among fans that Halo writers will take lessons from The Last of Us to heart and stick closer to the source material in the future. And yet this is a bad example in this case, given that Halo fans can point to the 2012 live action miniseries Forward Unto Dawn as a successful way to tell a Halo story with an even smaller budget, mainly because it was well-written and stayed true to what we knew about the Halo universe. Given that Halo season 1 ended with Cortana effectively remote-piloting Master Chief’s corpse, I do not have a lot of faith that’s going to happen in season 2. One consistent bit of praise the show is getting is the fact that it’s sticking incredibly close to the source material, which at times means shot-for-shot remakes of scenes from the games, exact lines from the script, and in one case, even the same actor reprising a decade-old role. The one good thing about the Halo show so far is probably Cortana, and surprise, it’s because they used the original actress from the games. Then there’s the show’s odd obsession with nudity, including seeing Master Chief himself naked at one point.

This car sequence follows the trajectory of its analog in the video game but adds little moments of terror that accrue into something even stronger.

This car sequence follows the trajectory of its analog in the video game but adds in so many little moments of terror that accrue into something altogether more terrifying. A swarm of infected and panicked people burst through the window of a nearby movie theater (one whose marquee reads "Midnight Madness" in a bit of dark comedy). This prompts Sarah to suggest that there might not be anywhere safe, and that the infections could be happening everywhere. Viewers are not provided that level of certainty in the show, and that only adds to the suspense. Mazin's knack for heightening the uncertainty of the situation and peppering each moment with disorienting, chaotic violence makes this sequence all the more harrowing. Joel urges Tommy to drive south, the only direction without a clear obstacle, and he begins to plot aloud that they might be able to cross the border and find safety in Mexico. Joel concurs and suggests that this is probably why they got infected, implying that the Millers are likely safe, as they have not spent much time in the city. After a moment of consideration, Sarah recalls that their neighbors, the Adlers, would take Nana into the city so that she could go to the hospital. Just like in the game, Tommy wants to stop and help some stranded pedestrians, but Joel tells him to keep driving. This is not the case in the HBO version. [The Last of Us](https://collider.com/tag/the-last-of-us/) video game's prologue is the getaway drive during the initial outbreak of [the cordyceps fungus](https://collider.com/the-last-of-us-cordyceps-infection-explained/). Joel takes her by the shoulders and informs her that, "It's not just the Adlers," suggesting that whatever's happening is widespread.