The Last of Us – Convergence Review

A bit of housecleaning before we dive into the review. I have not played The Last of Us and have (miraculously) managed to remain completely in the dark about the contents of the second game – upon which this and the remaining seasons of the series will be based. So, these reviews will not call out events to come in the story but will treat the series as a TV series and not an adaptation (even though it is absolutely an adaptation). If you’re looking for a review that will call out Easter eggs and hints of what is to come, this isn’t it. But if you’re looking to remain spoiler-free, well, I’m your gal. Also, don’t be a dick and spoil things in the comments.

If there’s one thing The Last of Us does extremely well it is its continued insistence that death is death. Characters we care about get killed and that’s that. They don’t tend to get miraculous reprieves at the last second (that weird interlude with Ellie and the Scars notwithstanding). They run through a door without thinking? They get shot in the head. They trust the wrong person? They get beaten with a golf club. They try to pull one over on Ellie? They get shot – and so does their girlfriend (?). And that’s the way it is. Craig Mazin and his writers have been pretty darn good about not steering away from this universal rule. This world is dangerous and if you put yourself at risk by trusting strangers, well, you might have to pay the price for that.

And that’s what happened to poor, soothsaying Jesse. The one character on the series who was able to tell it like it is to Ellie and get away with it. Until he didn’t. I mean, it was pretty clear he was toast as soon as he decided to 1) Not go along with Ellie’s increasingly unhinged revenge plan and 2) Realized Dina was pregnant and decided that as the dad, he needed to keep her and the baby safe. You can’t do either of those things in this story and come out alive. But you know what? I was really happy to have someone on this show willing to tell Ellie just how ridiculous she’s being. Yes, his whole “not my community” speech was shortsighted – more on that a minute – but he wasn’t wrong. Of course Jackson voted against starting a war with Abby. Yes, the loss of Joel was awful, but you know what? There’s an entire town of people to think of. Revenge for Joel may be something that some folks wanted, but what Ellie can’t grasp is the concept of community itself (and who can blame her, since she was a lone wolf for so long).

We’ve seen a couple versions of what community – or, in some instances, family – looks like in this universe. We’ve seen how a pair can team up to become a family, through Frank and Bill in season one and, of course, Ellie and Joel throughout the series. And we’ve seen how strong, principled leadership can create a larger community where everyone looks out for each other to build a better society in Jackson. And this season, we’ve seen the uglier side of the concept of community. How fear, distrust, and an unwillingness to understand one another can lead to war, death, and revenge. The Seraphites, from what I can tell, are guided by a religious fervor that distrusts outsiders – a community that protects its own at the expense of others. The Wolves are a military family that is determined to destroy the Seraphites – a backstory I assume we’re getting next season – while also being territorial and not trusting outsiders. And then there’s Abby’s crew, her family, who followed her to their deaths (or at least most of their deaths – I think some might still be alive?*) on her mission of revenge.

*While I’ll get into my continued annoyance at the lack of Abby’s story this season, it says something that while I know there must still be alive members of that crew – I think at least one of the guys is alive? – I genuinely don’t remember their names or who they were at this point because the only time they’ve popped up since episode two was to die. A waste of characters the series could have built out more before their deaths to make us grasp who they were. Instead, we’ll find out in a couple of years in season three, when we’ve all forgotten all about them once more. Another example of how the structure of the season was a hindrance to building toward the future of the story.

Community, when wielded as a means to isolate and other, becomes not a source of protection and hope but a tool to punish. While Ellie saw Jesse’s comments as an attack on her actions – which they were as Jesse was petty as all get out that Ellie has taken his girlfriend and also put her and their unborn child in peril – he wasn’t wrong. But here’s the rub: Ellie wasn’t wrong either. No, Jackson shouldn’t have set out a search party alongside her since it wasn’t in the best interests of the community. But Ellie and Dina had every right to go off on their own mission. Jesse’s anger wasn’t about their choice, it was about who they are in relation to him and how their actions impacted him and his life. Which adds some interesting layers to the series that, well, I guess don’t matter much with Jesse dead and Tommy and Dina wounded – and someone taking a shot at someone else (my money is on Dina shooting Abby) to leave us with a cliffhanger that won’t matter because of what we know about the next season of the series.

And now we’ve come to the part of my review where I get annoyed at the series as a whole. Because here’s the deal. I get that the game doesn’t explain everything about Abby until later (at least that’s what multiple people have told me, without telling me anything about what we learn about Abby, thankfully). And I get that if the series wants to do an Abby-centric story – much like the game switches POV characters to her as well – in season three, they wanted to withhold a lot about what’s happening in Seattle until then. But here’s the problem: It doesn’t work for those of us who don’t know the game. We’ve spent weeks with hints of what is happening in Seattle but no concrete evidence. We’ve spent weeks with an angry Ellie, hell bent on revenge – who was all too happy to beat Nora to death but suddenly grows a conscious with the murder of Mel and the other guy because . . . Mel was pregnant and she could see her as Dina and understand the gravity of her actions? Okay. Sure. Why not give that revelation time to breathe?

That’s the brilliant thing about TV when compared to other mediums: You get the chance to let characters grow and change over time. You are given the gift of getting to see how a character reacts to something, realizes something, and changes who they are over time thanks to that revelation. Here, in the span of ten minutes, Ellie went from being convinced of her righteousness to wavering. Yes, she still wants to kill Abby, but she had come around to accepting that perhaps she wouldn’t get that chance. I wanted more time to watch her come to the realization that she might not be in the right in killing Abby’s gang – despite Tommy telling her she was – and that maybe this revenge tour was more dangerous that she initially believed it to be. And it’s not like we don’t have the time for that. For a scene with Tommy, where she talks about whether it was right. Where she says she’s put Dina in harm’s way and could have gotten her killed – even though it was Dina’s choice. Maybe a discussion about the nature of choice – we saw in episode two that Mel didn’t want to be there when Joel was killed. Did she deserve to die for that? Those are the kinds of questions I want this series to be looking into, discussing, exploring.

And it could be. If Mazin and the team opted to make a TV show based on this story and not try to hew to what I assume is an incredibly close retelling of the game. TV is a different medium than a video game, even if The Last of Us is the richest, most cinematic video game ever made by all accounts. Use the tools available. Put character first, dare to tell us a story that resonates instead of one that leaves non-gamers (from the anecdotal evidence I have from those around me) far more confused this season and much less likely to tune in for season three. Because that’s the problem this structure has created.

With a third season centered on Abby, the series is banking that its audience is going to want to tune in for that. They’ve already lost Joel – a reason a subset of the non-gamer fanbase has sworn of the series. Season two had little in the way of a coherent arc and left us with far more questions than answers. And we had to deal with a surly Ellie whose quest for revenge was a horrible plan from the start and yet somehow didn’t end with her death – and appears to have been called off (although she did find Abby at the end after all)? And all we know about Abby is that she was on a quest to avenge her father that led to Joel’s murder and she’s been . . . hanging out in the aquarium and not doing her job in the Wolves ever since? That’s very little to entice folks already on the fence to check out a third season. And I know gamers will say Abby’s story is rich and dark and worth exploring. Great. But I, someone who knows her from 1.5 episodes of television don’t care all that much. It’s my job to watch, so I will, but season two has done next to nothing to compel me to want to, independent of that. I’m not intrigued to see her backstory. I love Kaitlyn Dever, but that alone doesn’t make this cypher of a character interesting enough to have me on the edge of my seat for another two years.

It says a lot that when the episode cut to black with that gunshot, my first response was “Well, I guess one of them is about to get what they want. I don’t much care which it is, though.” Because I don’t. And that sums up my overall thoughts on this season. In season one, I was devastated at the prospect of Ellie dying. I cheered Joel for saving her – selfish or not. And I understand Abby’s despair and drive for revenge. But what we needed was more understanding of the humanity within all of these characters. I needed to know more about Abby outside of her drive for revenge. I wanted to see Ellie grapple with her actions and how they fly in the face of all of Joel’s teaching – she’s put herself and Dina in danger over and over this season to avenge Joel. He wouldn’t want that. And I wanted to see that Joel and Ellie five-year montage earlier to fully understand what Ellie lost. I’m constantly told how brilliant this story will be. Season one worked because we got to see what made our characters tick. Season two didn’t because we lacked that same insight.

A great revenge tragedy makes sure we understand just why people are acting the way they are as the pressure, pain, and loss ratchet up and up until it reaches a breaking point. It appears we’ve reached that point and yet we’re still largely in the dark about Abby, Ellie’s seeming change of heart, and just what is happening in Seattle that allowed Abby to gain the skills she needed to enact her revenge. I really wish we’d had a more coherent narrative arc this season. I wish we’d had stronger world and character building. I wish this season had been what it could have been.