We’re onto the second episode of HBO’s The Last of Us. Based on the best-selling video games by Naughty Dog, The Last of Us tells the story of Joel (Pedro Pascal), a hardened survivor of the zombie apocalypse who must escort a teenage girl named Ellie (Bella Ramsey) across what remains of the United States.
The latest episode, “Infected,” followed up on Joel’s bloody run-in with a FEDRA soldier at the end of the premiere. Ellie, Joel and his partner Tess (Anna Torv) set out into the ruins of Boston in the hopes of delivering Ellie to the Fireflies. But things quickly go south; by the end of the hour, Joel and Ellie continue on their way, while Tess stays behind to buy them time at the cost of her life.
“Infected” was another episode of The Last of Us that went the extra mile to try and honor the beloved 2013 video game. From exact lines of dialogue to the meticulously designed clickers, there was an awful lot of good stuff for fans of the games to geek out over.
We’re going to break down how The Last of Us Episode 2 compares to the video game. There will be SPOILERS below for this episode of the show as well as the corresponding section of the game.
Fleeing FEDRA into downtown Boston
Over, “Infected” stays very close to the video game, but there are additions. For instance, the prologue sequence set in Jakarta is brand new for TV. The show is exploring the inception of the cordyceps outbreak in more detail than the games did.
From there we go skip back to 2023. In the game, FEDRA soldiers pursue Joel, Ellie, and Tess out into the ruins of Boston, whereas on TV the trio are left alone, at least by the living. Remember that scene in the premiere where Joel punched a soldier to death? In the game, other soldiers contact their superiors before Tess and Joel kill them. And then the chase is on.
In this game, this stretch of story feels rushed and desperate; the whole reason the group encounters the clickers is because they flee into a dilapidated highrise in hopes of losing FEDRA. The timescale is also more condensed; Joel, Ellie, and Tess’ entire flight through the city happens over the course of that same night, with them reaching the capital building where they’re supposed to rendezvous with the Fireflies by sunrise.
By contrast, the show slows things down and allows our characters more freedom to explore. Many of the early scenes, such as Ellie waking up and having to convince Tess and Joel of her immunity, or the group debating whether to go the long way around or the short “real f**kin’ dead way” through town, are new.
But some scenes still hearken back to the game, most notably the one in the hotel lobby where Ellie rings the bell before accidentally knocking over a skeleton. The bit where Ellie rings the bell and pantomimes ordering a room is identical to the game (albeit a later section of it). The show also combines another detail from a different game scene into this section by having Ellie explain that she can’t swim.
Then there’s the part where Joel has to give Tess a boost so she can climb over debris to unlock a door from the other side while he stays and waits with Ellie. This scene is lifted directly from the game, including some of the dialogue. Boosting people up ledges is something Joel does often in the game.
And speaking of game mechanics turning up on TV, consider the moment the group sees the Boston capital building in the distance. In the game, Joel often points out his destination as it appears on the horizon, giving him and Ellie something to work toward. The show lifts some of the scenery from the game as well, such as the two collapsed skyscrapers leaning against one another.
Tendrils, spores, and cordyceps zombie hordes
The show has changed the nature of the infected. To start, it’s done away with the notion of deadly cordyceps “spores” polluting the air, which would force Joel to wear a gas mask when they were detected. On the show, the zombie infection instead spreads through tentrils that come out of the zombies’ mouths.
Also, the cordyceps zombies now function like a hive mind, a new twist for the show. As showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann explained in the Inside the Episode featurette, they drew inspiration from the way some real-world fungi can communicate with miles-long fibers underground, imagining that cordyceps on the show can similarly awaken infected halfway across the city if you, say, kill one in the wrong place or step on a bit of the fungus.
We see this in action in a new scene where Ellie, Tess, and Joel observe a horde of zombies from the safety of a rooftop. But when Joel later kills a zombie connected to this hivemind, he inadvertently causes a mob of them to attack.
The anatomy of a clicker
There’s one more big scene to cover before the zombie horde comes into play: the clicker attack in the abandoned museum. The show combines elements from two different sections of the game: the first appearance of the clickers, which happens in the abandoned highrise I mentioned earlier; and Tess getting bitten during a scuffle with the infected at the museum and then hiding it.
Rather than having these variant zombies appear multiple times throughout the episode, “Infected” distills the terror into one edge-of-your-seat sequence at the museum. The clickers themselves are very game-accurate; they’re even voiced by Misty Lee and Phillip Kovats, the same actors who voiced them in the games.
There are lots of nods to the games in this sequence; notice how the clickers ignore Joel’s flashlight or how he crouch-walks over to Ellie and then has her sneak after him around an exhibit. Joel alerts the clicker by stepping on broken glass, and Tess embeds a hatchet in one of the clicker’s heads; all of this is taken from the games, since broken glass would alert clickers if you stepped on it and you could eventually wield axes against the zombie hordes.
Of everything in the show so far, the clicker attack is probably the single most faithful scene yet. Even if you haven’t played the game, if you watched that scene, you know how scary the clickers were in the game. The Last of Us creator Neil Druckmann directed this episode, so it makes sense that he would get the details just right.
Tess’ last stand
After the clicker attack, we get another scene that’s straight from the game where Joel and Ellie walk across a board bridging two buildings and then take in the view of the city. Then we’re off to the state house and the explosive finish.
The reveal that all the Fireflies are dead and that Tess has been infected is another scene taken from the game. The show takes its time a bit more, explaining how the Fireflies were killed when one of their number was bitten and turned on the rest, but many of Tess, Joel, and Ellie’s lines in this scene are lifted directly from the video game. Even the set is similar.
However, we get a big change when Joel kills an infected and we see that small filaments attached to it alert the horde we saw earlier. After Tess admits she’s infected, they rush into the building. Tess stays behind, blowing up the building as a zombie puts its gross tendrils into her mouth.
In the game, it’s FEDRA that shows up at the state house, once more back on our heroes’ trail. Tess’ last stand is far less helpful; after Joel and Ellie flee, Tess is gunned down by FEDRA. Joel can catch a glimpse of her body in the foyer below as he and Ellie sneak out of the state house’s upper levels with FEDRA still in hot pursuit. In the show, by contrast, Tess causes an explosion that wipes out all pursuers, giving Joel and Ellie time to get away.
“Infected” may not have been an exact carbon copy of this section of The Last of Us video game, but it was so close that nitpicking feels almost redundant. It’s another solid episode that makes it clear the people making this show love and respect the source material.
Will that continue to be the case? We’ll find out when The Last of Us premieres its third episode this Sunday on HBO and HBO Max.
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