'The Last of Us' Season 2 review: Survival is not just about staying alive

If the archetypal play of “The Last of Us” is astir survival, the 2nd is fueled by revenge.

Or, if you privation to get each existential astir it, consequences.

For those who cognize thing astir the video crippled connected which the bid is based, this volition travel arsenic nary surprise. For those who don’t, well, aboriginal moments of the Season 2 premiere (Sunday connected HBO) marque it wide that the sins of the fathers will, successful 1 mode oregon another, specify the futures of the daughters.

The amusement opens with a little flashback to a country from the Season 1 finale, successful which Ellie (Bella Ramsey) asks Joel (Pedro Pascal) to curse that what helium has told her astir their flight from the Firefly office successful Salt Lake City is true. We cognize it is not. Season 1 chronicled Joel and Ellie’s perilous travel crossed a state ravaged by a cordyceps pandemic to a infirmary tally by a militia group, wherever Ellie’s unsocial immunity to the corruption could beryllium utilized to make a cure.

Once there, however, Joel learns that Ellie, whom helium has travel to emotion arsenic a daughter, volition beryllium sacrificed successful the process. In rescuing her from the operating table, helium kills beauteous overmuch everyone successful the place, including the doc who claims to person devised said cure. When Ellie wakes from the anesthesia, they are headed backmost to the comparative information of a burgeoning colony successful Jackson, Wyo. Joel tells her that she is not the lone 1 who is immune, that the Fireflies had tried and failed to find a cure and that a murderous onslaught by raiders forced Joel to instrumentality Ellie and flee.

The country reminds america that Ellie ne'er truly bought the tale, but erstwhile Joel swears it is true, she chooses to judge him and truthful they transportation that small clip weaponry of a prevarication with them into Jackson.

Back successful Salt Lake City, different weaponry is ticking. As the Firefly survivors stitchery astir the graves of their dead, the doctor’s daughter, Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) vows to find the antheral who murdered her father, for reasons she claims not to understand, and termination him. Slowly.

Flash guardant 5 years and Jackson has grown into a engaged and well-fortified refuge overseen by Joel’s younger brother, Tommy (Gabriel Luna), and his wife, Maria (Rutina Wesley). Life has normalized capable to see assemblage dances and comfy homes. Ellie adjacent has an age-appropriate bestie named Dina (Isabela Merced) and a martial arts trainer — Jesse (Young Manzino), Dina’s on-again, off-again beau and Jackson’s up-and-coming leader.

Isabela Merced, who joins the show’s 2nd play arsenic Dina, with Pedro Pascal arsenic Joel.

(Liane Hentscher / HBO)

At 19, Ellie is successful afloat young-gun mode, demanding the close to marque her ain choices and pushing backmost against authorization figures, peculiarly Joel; the 2 are hardly speaking. “Why is she truthful huffy astatine you?” asks Dina. “I fig it’s normal,” Joel says. “Her being 19 and maine being … what I am. No 1 likes their parents astatine that age.”

Um, OK.

If Ellie has grown much cocky, Joel has go careworn; he’s adjacent seeing a shrink, paying section psychotherapist Gail (Catherine O’Hara, marvelous arsenic ever) successful weed. (“Shake and stems? What americium I, successful precocious school?”) As Gail’s literal timer ticks, Joel kvetches astir however Ellie treats him similar a alien until Gail snaps astir his boring parental issues. She has her ain beef with Joel and she knows helium is lying astir something: “Say the happening you’re acrophobic to say,” she demands.

But of people helium cannot. Neither, it seems, tin Ellie. Out connected patrol with Dina, for whom she has feelings that are intelligibly much than friendship, she behaves with a reckless swagger that younker and her still-hidden immunity lone partially explain.

Still Ellie and Dina stock a teen-spirit vigor that establishes the returning normalcy of beingness successful Jackson adjacent much than the therapy sessions oregon the shots of bustling streets and softly smoking chimneys.

But the simmering hostility betwixt Joel and Ellie is not the lone reminder that the horrors of the past are inactive present. Jackson is experiencing increasing pains arsenic refugees proceed to determination in; the infected stay a changeless threat, and it becomes wide that the passing of clip has done thing to quench Abby’s tendency to nonstop revenge.

Creator Craig Mazin has compared this play to “The Empire Strikes Back.” That lone works thematically if 1 views Joel’s actions successful Salt Lake City arsenic heroic, which galore bash not. (Though wherefore immoderate random doc was acceptable to termination the lone known immune idiosyncratic due to the fact that helium theorized that helium would request to chopped up her encephalon alternatively of archetypal trying to marque a vaccine from, say, humor oregon insubstantial samples, remains mystifying. As does the determination to archer Joel the program beforehand. What did they deliberation he’d do? Grab a fewer snacks and beryllium connected his way?).

Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) is different ticking clip weaponry this season.

(Liane Hentscher / HBO)

Still, the logistical parallels — successful a satellite beset by evil, bid exists to beryllium shattered — holds good enough. “The Last of Us” is based, aft all, connected a crippled successful which characters are inevitably acceptable connected quests, and, without attempting to spoil however the bid hews to the communicative twists of the game, neither Ellie nor Abby are contented to fto their resentments go.

As Joel and Ellie made their travel crossed galore of these United States, viewers were treated to near-empty cities and towns being reclaimed by quality (game creator Neil Druckmann based his vision, successful part, connected Alan Weisman’s publication “The World Without Us.”) The terrible, hypnotic quality of soundless streets, giraffes grazing amid ruined skyscrapers and abandoned cars covered with moss and flowering vines was underscored not truthful overmuch by the horrors of the infected — runners, clickers and bloaters — but by the violent, warring factions of the survivors. No 1 is uninfected by this peculiar plague; monsters besides lurk successful militias, cults and FEDRA, the tyrannical authorities bureau assembled successful the aboriginal days of the pandemic.

The 2nd play adds the Washington Liberation Front, oregon the Wolves, a paramilitary radical that fights some FEDRA and a medieval cult called the Seraphites (referred to arsenic “scars”), each of whom Ellie, Dina and different members of the Jackson assemblage brushwood arsenic they effort to equilibrium the needs of assemblage with the much idiosyncratic drives of the individual.

Like immoderate continuation of a fantasy/sci-fi franchise, the 2nd play cannot lucifer the world-building revelations of the first. There is inactive plentifulness to spot and larn successful a scenery being devoured by primal forces, and galore battles to beryllium fought, whether with assassin stealth oregon full-blown epic intensity. It is an oddly constructed play of tv — immoderate questions are answered astir immediately, portion others are near to linger for an antithetic fig of beats.

But arsenic antecedently noted, the existent communicative of this play is astir consequences, and by extension, choices, which makes it acold much inward-focused than the first. The unspeakable prime Joel faced successful Salt Lake City is echoed again and again arsenic Ellie struggles to go the leader of her ain journey.

Though 2 years older than the quality she plays, Ramsey has a babe face, and determination has been immoderate ailment that they person not visibly aged capable to play the older Ellie. But successful galore ways, their quality works to the character’s advantage. Despite her experiences, Ellie is inactive emotionally immature, seeing independency arsenic its ain authority. But arsenic “The Last of Us” reminds america again and again, with authorization comes power, which tin beryllium a corruptive unit erstwhile wielded with excessively overmuch self-righteousness.

In the hostile onshore of “The Last of Us,” endurance is not conscionable astir staying alive, but making choices astir what that beingness volition look like, and mean, successful the end.