Every zombie story has to have a gimmick. In The Last of Us on HBO, the zombies are a result of a fungus that gets inside the human brain and stays there, compelling the host to focus only on spreading it further. As time passes, the fungus eats the host from the inside and starts changing their appearance, until they look like this:
That is a clicker, a zombie that has lived for the fungus for so long that it’s now blind, and can only sense potential victims through sound. Our heroes Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) encountered their first clickers in the second episode of the show, which aired the other night. “What you saw (on screen) is what we were looking at,” Pascal told USA Today, underlining how many practical effects go into creating these creatures. “It was terrifying.”
“I find them fascinating,” Ramsey said about the clickers. “I guess it’s scientifically plausible that these creatures could exist. I like how smart they are and how connected they are to each other; it’s very familial. I’m probably loving on the Clickers a bit too much – every time I eat a mushroom now, I can’t help but think about them.”
That’s an interesting perspective: Ramsey’s character battles these monsters, but she still sympathizes with them to the point she feels bad when she eats mushrooms. “How you feel about the Clickers and eating mushrooms is how I feel about [Finding Nemo] and eating fish,” Pascal quipped.
Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey were “shy” around each other at first
As cool as the zombies are, The Last of Us is really about the relationship between Ellie and Joel first and foremost, something creator Craig Mazin always tries to keep in mind. “It always needs to come back to Joel and Ellie because they are the core of this journey.”
Both of the actors were immediately interested in their characters. “I don’t identify as a tough guy, but I loved the idea of grief existing within such a tough exterior, and the impossible way of burying it,” Pascal said of Joel. “The map of that character’s emotional journey is so beautifully drawn.”
Likewise, Ramsey immediately sparked to Ellie. “She can be so childish and immature, and then suddenly the most adult person in the room,” she said. “I never got bored playing her, because there’s always so many layers.”
That said, this bond didn’t form immediately. Like Joel and Ellie, Pascal and Ramsey had to warm to each other over time. “Only in looking back do we realize how parallel the experiences were, in terms of Joel and Ellie,” Pascal said. “We didn’t have that reluctance with each other, but we were definitely shy. I was born in the ’70s and have seen every terrible movie from (that era), and Bella was like, ‘Um, do you like musicals?’ We’re, like, two people from completely different planets, but it didn’t matter in terms of how our hearts were looking at each other.”
Will The Last of Us adapt Part II?
The first season of The Last of Us adapts the first Last of Us video game in its entirety; by the end of this season, we’ll be at the end of the game. They’re not stretching it out.
But there is another Last of Us game out there: Part II came out for the PlayStation 4 in 2020. If HBO wants more of the show — and given how successful it’s been, you’d figure they would — The Last of Us Part II seems like the obvious next step, right?
Well, we haven’t heard anything about a renewal yet, but The Last of Us creator Neil Druckmann definitely has ideas. “Our plan is to only adapt the games and not go beyond that,” he said. “Craig and I have talked quite a bit about the second game and how that might be adapted, but we don’t know quite how big that might be.”
The second game is more narratively complex than the first, and I could see how it might require more than one season. But until we get official word, that’s all just conjecture.
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