After the exceptional broadcast of episode 5 on the night of Friday to Saturday because of the Super Bowl, The Last of Us resumes its normal rhythm with a broadcast on the night of Sunday to Monday to either end the week in style or get it off to a flying start. After an emotional episode 5 with the characters of Henry and Sam, Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann decided to continue with the setting up of Winter, another important moment in video games.
Small aside before starting the complete decryption and the comparison with the video game, know that this episode 6 has a duration of 59 min, which is as much as the previous episode, and was directed by Jasmila Žbanić, a 48-year-old Bosnian filmmaker who made a name for himself with the film Sarajevo mon amour in 2006. This will be his only participation in the series by the way. We also take this opportunity to remind you that we had the opportunity to discover the 9 episodes of the series about 2 months ago and that we gave you our opinion on the entire season in a video still accessible on our channel. Youtube. For this episode 6, a question arises: “How to do better than episode 5 which had been very emotional, with in particular the chained deaths of Henry and Sam, a sequence more powerful than that of the video game? The answer is simple: by immediately switching to winter, a season particularly awaited by all video game fans, and for good reason, it allows us to take a new step in the story and the rise to power of the character of Ellie. .
Moreover, this is a first in the series, this episode 6 starts with a reminder of the most striking scene of the previous episode, that is to say the suicide of Henry, which allows to recontextualize things , and to integrate a temporal ellipsis to switch to winter, and thus make the story pass 3 months. And inevitably, people who know the video game by heart know that winter is an important chapter, because it allows you to take control of Ellie for the very first time. But here, we’re in a TV series, so we’re just a spectator, we don’t have the controller in our hands, so the impact is necessarily less powerful, which doesn’t mean it’s less interesting.. Important detail if not when we evoke winter in the video game: this iconic scene where a rabbit comes out of its burrow and is immediately planted by the arrow of Ellie who has gone hunting. The series has decided to break away from the original model to offer us something else: we see a warmly dressed man returning to his habitat with two freshly captured rabbits. The series makes us believe that it is Joel who has returned from the hunt, whereas it is Marlon, the character played by actor Graham Greene, whom you necessarily know if you have seen the film Dances with the Wolves, where he plays Leaping Bird, the chief of the Indians who sympathizes with the character of Kevin Costner. We also saw him again in 2017 in Wind River in Chief of the Local Police, two films that you absolutely must see.
We really liked this scene where Joel and Ellie take refuge in these two people of Native American origin, who sweat confidence and sympathy, something absolutely rare in the ravaged world of The Last of Us. Especially the woman I found very funny, showing her husband the complete opposite of what he would have done. In any case, the beginning of this episode 6 allows us to see the evolution of the relationship between Joel and Ellie, now more attached to each other, but also to discover sublime panoramas with these snowy environments and pretty plans. wide, very wide, aerial too. It is very pretty and very successful. Where the series will again detach itself from the video game to better surprise us is that Joel will find Tommy not in a kind of reinforced hangar, but in Jacksonville directly. Moreover, to get there, Ellie and Joel are stopped by a group of people on horseback who immediately think of David and his henchmen, especially since one of them looks strangely like the actor Troy Baker, whoever plays Joel in the video game. I’ve watched the episode at least 4 times since I got the full series and physically it looks a lot like it. But it’s not his voice and above all, the character played by Troy Baker appears later.
Anyway, as soon as you enter Jacksonville, you are literally propelled into The Last of Us 2, since you find the same video game fortress. Everything is there, the wooden buildings, the greenhouses, the stables, the large driveway with the Christmas tree in the middle, the large room that will serve as a party where Ellie will get to know Dina. Dina that we also see in this episode 6, and which proves that the series was made with the intention of doing the sequel from the start. And in truth, the announcement of Season 2 was already recorded I think… Especially since there is something quite obvious in the last episode, episode 9, but I won’t say more about it. Despite this rather clever freedom to reduce the story of the series to 9 episodes, we will find the tension between Joel and his brother Tommy whom he finds and whom we had not seen since the first episode. The actor Gabriel Luna is also very convincing in this role, with a more calm game, but also capable of banging his fist on the table and recalling the atrocious things they did together. And the more it goes, the more we are convinced that Naughty Dog will give us the pleasure of making a complete play on Joel, between the start of the Cordyceps pandemic and his meeting with Ellie. These 20 years where he did atrocious things, murder people without an ounce of regret, we want to know this Joel.
The character of Maria has also been modified compared to the video game, not in her behavior, but in the choice of the actress, African-American, interpreted by Rutina Wesley. The series will also develop a small relationship with her, especially when she cuts her hair and that’s when Ellie will learn that Joel has lost Sarah. These are things that the video game has not explored, like the relationship between Joel and Tommy, much more touching in the series than the video game, with this scene where Joel tries to convince his brother to replace him, melting in tears in front of him. We feel that Joel is tired, tired of having spent the last 4 months outside, eating badly, sleeping badly. It’s totally selfish on his part, especially when we know that Tommy is going to be a dad soon, Joel puts his brother in mortal danger, but he’s exhausted… The point is the same in the video game, but the series will devote a deeper and more emotionally touching scene. Even when Joel changes his mind and decides not to let Ellie down. By the way, the scene where the two are arguing in the bedroom is totally video game accurate, from the plans to the dialogues, through the outfits, it’s the same thing. Only Ellie’s pumps change and the fact that the scene takes place during the day in the video game, and at night in the series.
With this episode 6, Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann prove once again that they have perfectly understood the very essence of what The Last of Us represents, namely human relationships, choices to be made, however difficult they may be, emotions, whether touching or hateful. They also figured out how to divert from the source material, to strengthen the narrative as a TV series, but also surprise fans who already know the video game by heart. By the way, on this subject, Joel’s injury has also been modified. It’s the same in the sense that he gets his abdomen punctured in the same place, except this time it’s not by falling from the first floor following a fight, but by taking the point of a broken baseball bat. Sure the impact is less impactful in the series than the video game, because I remember at one point the player had to help Joel up, but see Joel fall off his horse because he’s at bout de force also has its small effect. One thing is certain, this series knows how to advance its narrative intelligently, with an almost perfect rhythm. Yes, it lacks infected, yes it also lacks action, but the human relations are so well told that we manage to ignore it!
