Every zombie story has a gimmick. Why did people turn into monsters this time? Is it a virus? A spell? Was hell simply too full?
In The Last of Us on HBO, it’s a fungus. Specifically, it’s a mutation of the real-life Cordyceps fungus. It gets into people’s bodies and controls them from the inside. “Cordyceps is a fascinating concept, and it’s absolutely real,” showrunner Craig Mazin told Collider. “We wanted to push that a little further. We wanted to give us much reality as we could because the realer that is, the more we connect to the characters that are in that space playing around.”
The Last of Us is based on a video game of the same name that came out on the PlayStation 3 back in 2013. In that game, the life of lead character Joel is violently interrupted by the zombie apocalypse, but we never really learn how it began. The show will give us more information, some of which will feel eerily familiar given that we all just went through a worldwide pandemic.
“It was also important for us to acknowledge that the audience is smarter about pandemics than they were five years ago,” Mazin said. “We don’t wanna pretend that they don’t know things. And in fact, a lot of the reason this show begins the way it does, with that scene in the ’60s, is to say, ‘Look, the context is, there are viral pandemics and they are quite dangerous, but there’s something out there that’s worse. And it may sound funny to you, but let me explain why.’”
"And then, you start to realize, “Oh, that’s not good.” And also, it’s been there all along. So, when the outbreak happens, it’s not happening suddenly or capriciously. It’s finally happening. It was always gonna happen. We just happen to be there today to see it."
The “scene in the ’60s” he’s referring to comes right at the top of the opening episode, and sets up the idea of this kind of pandemic happening and being very dangerous. It’s a laid-back, chilling way to kick off the show.
We will see more about how the zombie apocalypse began in The Last of Us
In the game, the fungus spreads through spores in the air, which means that everyone has to wear gas masks when venturing into hostile territory. The show ditches that, possibly because it would require covering up the actors’ faces (star Pedro Pascal already gets enough of that on The Mandalorian, I guess).
Instead, the fungus spreads through these creepy little tendrils, which led to new ideas. “And then, just thinking about how there’s a passage that happens from one infected to another, and like fungus does, it could become a network that is interconnected,” said producer Neil Druckmann. “It became very scary to think that they’re all working against us in this unified way, which was a concept that I really liked, that got developed in the show.”
There were even ways for the writers to work this into the themes of the show. “I will say that there is a character from the game that has a very interesting point of view about the fungus and his observation of Cordyceps that ties into some of the larger themes about what the show is about, and strangely enough, that ties into the notion of the beauty and potential danger of love,” Mazin said. “And so, part of what Neil [Druckmann] and I wanted to do was just make sure that everything in our story that we built here, as it was inspired by and adapted from the work that he did on the game, ultimately feeds back into the thing that matters the most for us, and that is Joel and Ellie’s relationship.”
The Last of Us premieres on HBO and HBO Max this Sunday, January 15.
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