The Last of Us is a show about a fungus that mutates and turns a huge chunk of the world’s population into zombies, which results in societal collapse. Can a fungus really do that? I don’t know, but it makes for a good story, so we’re willing to go with it.
But there are other parts of the story that some people are finding harder to swallow. For instance, in the latest episode of the show, “Long, Long Time,” lead characters Ellie and Joel escape the ruined city of Boston and meet up with a friend who lives in the small town of Lincoln, Massachusetts. On their way, they traverse a mountainous landscape we are told is “10 miles west of Boston.”
I’ve visited the Boston area, but I don’t live there, so I’m not really qualified to say whether that’s accurate or not. But if you ask locals on Twitter, it’s very much…not.
Stephen King is not impressed with how The Last of Us depicts the northeast
While this part of The Last of Us is set in the northeast, most of the show was filmed in Canada, with Alberta as a base of operations. People from the northeast United States were quick to point that the area Ellie and Joel were traversing looks nothing like what’s actually 10 miles west of Boston.
The problem, of course, is that 10 miles west of Boston there has to be at least one Dunkin' Donuts visible in this much terrain https://t.co/y9is76teHh
— David Burbach (also @dburbach Bluesky) (@dburbach) January 30, 2023
The most famous northeasterner to weigh in was author Stephen King, who famously lives in Maine and sets many of his stories there. “Do you really want to tell me that’s 10 miles west of Boston?” he asked.
THE LAST OF US. Episode 3: Do you really want to tell me that’s 10 miles west of Boston?
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) January 31, 2023
At the end of the day, not much harm is done by the show’s fanciful depiction of the Massachusetts wilderness. It’s interesting how with shows like The Last of Us, people are willing to accept ideas like a fungus that corrupts and controls the human brain, but get thrown off by an inaccurate location shoot. It’s probably because none of us have any conception of what an actual zombie apocalypse would look like, so who are we to say this one is inaccurate? But what the country looks like 10 miles west of Boston? We know that.
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h/t Boston.com