The Last of Us

Ellie and Joel live in 2023 America, 20 years after the Cordyceps brain infection — a fungal virus that essentially turns humans into zombies — takes over.

The show delicately and impactfully handles themes of isolation, the need for connection, and the impact of familial loss. The Last of Us is [rave](https://www.metacritic.com/tv/the-last-of-us) [reviews](https://www.theringer.com/tv/2023/1/13/23552715/the-last-of-us-hbo-prestige-tv-video-game-adaptation-curse-lifted)from critics (and a [97% score on Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/the_last_of_us)!), and many are saying the show is paving the way and making an argument for more video game adaptations on the silver screen ( [a contentious subject](https://www.cbr.com/video-game-movies-tv-disappoint/)). Outside of the main cast, the series also boasts a ton of familiar faces, who’ll pop up among the rubble and zombies as Joel, Tara, and Ellie trek across the United States. [based off a 2013 video game](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ3k1V8WN6Q)series of the same name. Coined as a “post-apocalyptic drama,” The Last of Us follows Joe — a smuggler — as he tries to escort Ellie (Bella Ramsey) across the country from Boston to Colorado. Fans of Game of Thrones will recognise this show alum as the outspoken and beloved Lady Lyanna Mormont. By the end of the day, the world as Joel — and everyone else — knows it is gone. With HBO at the helm, and an all-star cast, this series is going to be *the* show of 2023 to watch. [Game of](https://www.refinery29.com/en-ca/2019/05/233361/game-of-thrones-finale-unanswered-questions)Thrones, is relative newcomer Bella Ramsey. Alongside Pedro Pascal, who’s known for The Mandalorian, Narcos and Created by developer Naughty Dog and released by Sony Entertainment, the has become well known, and popular, among gamers for its complex storytelling and narrative framework, as well as its ability to [convey a very human story of loss and hope](https://levvvel.com/the-last-of-us-statistics/).

HBO is now developing the popular gaming franchise into a TV series starring Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian) and Bella Ramsey (Game of Thrones) that's set for ...

Joel's death is a powerful and emotional moment that leaves a significant impact on the game and the characters, making it a defining moment in The Last of Us Part II. Joel's death in The Last of Us: Part II is a pivotal moment and one that has a profound impact on the storyline and the characters. It also serves to deepen the players' understanding of the game's themes of revenge, forgiveness, and the cost of survival. The guitar performance also serves to highlight the game's emphasis on music and its role in storytelling, making it a standout moment in The Last of Us Part II. The Winter Chapter is a memorable and impactful moment that is sure to leave a lasting impression on players. The performance takes place in the game's third act, in a moment of respite for Ellie and her companion Dina. [The Last of Us: Part II](https://www.sportskeeda.com/esports/why-the-last-us-part-ii-one-perfect-sequels-history-games) is a powerful and emotional moment that showcases the character's growth and development. [The Last of Us](https://www.sportskeeda.com/esports/5-things-might-missed-the-last-us-part-1) is a significant moment in the game, for both the characters and players. This revelation sets in motion the events of the game's third act, where Joel and Ellie set out on a journey to deliver Ellie to the Fireflies, despite the fact that it will mean their separation. However, as she searches for Riley, she finds herself facing a group of infected, and in the ensuing fight, she is bitten. Serving as a prequel to the events of the first title, it follows Ellie and her best friend Riley as they navigate the post-apocalyptic world and face the harsh realities of survival. He serves as the primary antagonist of the second act, and his ultimate confrontation with Joel and Ellie is a tense and emotional climax.

Pedro Pascal as Joel; Bella Ramsey as Ellie; Gabriel Luna as Tommy; Merle Dandridge as Marlene; Anna Torv as Tess; Nick Offerman as Bill; Ashley Johnson as Anna ...

Here is the cast of The Last of Us series: Then I’d get to the end of a 10-minute scrolling session, put my phone down and realize: Maybe that was a bad idea.” Ramsey said that she was upset by the backlash, but now she has accepted her role as Ellie. “In the game, you need a healing mechanic; you get shot a lot, you have to heal. The Last of is directed by Neil Druckmann, who is the co-president of Naughty Dog. The Last of Us can be streamed exclusively on Disney+ Hotstar.

Why is Ellie so important in The Last of Us? In Episode 1, Joel agrees to help smuggle her out of the Boston quarantine zone – but what's going on with her ...

[Cordyceps disease](https://www.dexerto.com/tv-movies/the-last-of-us-hbo-what-caused-the-outbreak-cordyceps-explained-2024146/), and the Fireflies believe she’s the key to finding a cure and ending the pandemic. [The Last of Us](https://www.dexerto.com/tag/the-last-of-us/) Episode 1 is available to stream now. [At the end of Episode 1](https://www.dexerto.com/tv-movies/the-last-of-us-episode-1-ending-explained-2027949/), Joel and Tess (Anna Torv) agree to transport her to a rebel base outside the quarantine zone. Why is Ellie so important in The Last of Us? You can check out the rest of our coverage Tess is panicked by this, but knows they need to move before they’re swarmed by other FEDRA troops, so they head off on their journey.

For RTÉ Arena, David Hanratty has been watching the new TV series, The Last of Us, which screens this week on Sky Atlantic and NOW TV - listen to his review ...

Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Listen to RTÉ Arena live nightly from Mon-Fri on RTÉ Radio 1 from 7pm - or listen back For RTÉ Arena, David Hanratty has been watching the new TV series, The Last of Us, which screens this week on Sky Atlantic and NOW TV - listen to his review above.

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.

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.

As performers, Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey breathe new life into known quantities. So, too, does their show.

To be clear, The Last of Us has its share of effects-laden flexes. The structure of The Last of Us keeps Joel and Ellie the only constants. The more intimately The Last of Us can render the aftermath of the world’s end, the better. (Even flashbacks allow for some inspired casting, like Silicon Valley’s Josh Brener as a riff on Dick Cavett.) All are chances for The Last of Us to explore its true interests, many of which have little to do with flesh-eating monsters. Because The Last of Us largely sticks to the blueprint laid out by the game, casting is one of the show’s main opportunities to make its own impression. The Last of Us may resemble The Mandalorian, but both take after Cormac McCarthy’s The Road or the classic manga Lone Wolf and Cub. Such characters are another opportunity for this take on The Last of Us to leave its mark. In The Last of Us, zombies are the least terrifying part of the zombie apocalypse. (Also like House of the Dragon, The Last of Us is an obvious—if less direct—attempt to rival Game of Thrones, which proved genre IP could have blockbuster scope and highbrow appeal.) For the show, Druckmann shares writing, directing, producing, and showrunning duties with Mazin, who may be better known for his role as Ted Cruz’s To facilitate tighter control of its narrative, The Last of Us game cut down on popular mechanics like player choice, instead focusing on the streamlined story of black market smuggler—Joel—taking on his most precious cargo yet: a teenage girl named Ellie who’s mysteriously immune to Cordyceps infection. Together, the two partners arrive at a shared sensibility: rigorous fidelity to the source, augmented by perspectives outside the game’s largely fixed point of view. Most of the

HBO's 'The Last of Us' is a faithful adaptation of the hit video game, but there are some key differences. Here's how they compare. Travis Clark.

Ellie explains to Joel and Ellie that her bite is weeks old. Like in the game, Joel is now in Boston, doing what he can to survive with his partner Tess, played by Anna Torv. She promises to give Joel and Tess their supplies back, including a truck for them to escape, if they can smuggle a girl named Ellie, played by Bella Ramsey, out of the quarantine zone. The first episode of the HBO series then jumps to 2003 — and the watch scene — next. The player wanders the house as Sarah and can look at things like newspapers that foreshadow some sort of outbreak. The biggest difference from the beginning of the game and the HBO series' first episode is at the very beginning.

TLOU has become a cult video game because of its deep narrative in which post-apocalyptic environments play a key role. In the TV series, they have been ...

Lastly, the environments play an important role even in The Last Of Us’ reflection on humanity and the difficulty of drawing a clear line between good people and bad people. Anyone, even those unfamiliar with any notions of architecture, understand the gap between the original use and what it became of it, and consequently putting the pieces together to understand everything that must have occurred in between. Then, while looking for a way out in the underground of a city, the characters run into an abandoned underground kindergarten, full of toys and drawings on the walls. The light is what guides the eye of the viewer and, to some extent, shapes the places and connects specific sensations to the environments. However, to these series production rules, The Last Of Us adds its particular use of the indoor and outdoor spaces to tell the heart of the story as seen in the video game – they are not a mere support to the plot but the description of how we live together but then die alone. So, for the first time, someone had to wonder where to start to recreate the feeling of playing a video game in a tv show.

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.

"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.

Somebody once rightly pointed out that often, it is fact that is stranger than fiction. Human imagination may be unlimited, but it still pales in ...

The fungus is obviously not as evolved as humans, who have thousands of years of history behind them and the social intelligence that they have built, which allows them to act as a community. There is a fifth stage, and this is the one that convinced us that something like the Cordyceps could become a reality. Is it really so far-fetched that fungi evolve to withstand the increasingly harsher climate of the planet? However, the saddest part of the ordeal is that we don’t seem to have learned anything. Everything in nature is designed to co-exist, and any disturbance of the balance has devastating consequences. Human imagination may be unlimited, but it still pales in comparison to the elaborate interplay of nature, sentient life, and the social psychology which creates a rich and confusing tapestry that is life as we know it.

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 Last of Us Episode 1 finally premiered on HBO Max, bringing the adventures of Joel Miller (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie Williams (Bella Ramsey) into ...

Meanwhile, in the game, Joel and Tess take on the game’s first major antagonist, Robert, before meeting Ellie. In the series, Joel and Tess (Anna Torv) find Ellie in the Fireflies’ hideout, where Ellie fails to attack Joel with her switchblade. In both the game and the series, Joel keeps the watch to honor his daughter’s memory. No, Ellie is not Joel’s daughter, who didn’t survive the pandemic outbreak as seen in The Last of Us Episode 1. In the game, Sarah buys his father a watch for his birthday. Unlike the video game, where the story starts in 2013, The Last of Us series opens with a talk show featuring scientists discussing the threat of a brain-munching fungal plague.