After a harrowing journey across the post-apocalyptic ruins of the United States, the end has finally arrived for Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) on The Last of Us. “Look For The Light” is an intense finale sure to leave a weird, bad taste in many people’s mouths. But hey, it’s The Last of Us; emotional devastation is the name of the game.
As always, there will be SPOILERS in this review for the latest episode of The Last of Us as well as the video game.
The Last of Us Episode 9 review: “Look For The Light”
At only 44 minutes long, “Look For The Light” is a compact finale that nonetheless manages to deliver a good dose of the series’ trademark dark storytelling and moral ambiguity. Everything has led to this moment, as Joel and Ellie finally complete the journey they embarked on in the season premiere and find the Fireflies in Salt Lake City.
Before we get there, however, we’ve got one last cold open for the road, and this one’s a doozy. In a flashback scene invented for the series, we’re introduced to Ellie’s mother Anna, played in the TV show by Ashley Johnson, the same actor who portrayed Ellie in the games. Anna is in labor with Ellie, and over the course of a few frantic minutes she barricades herself in a house, fights off an infected, and gives birth in the middle of the struggle without even realizing. Is that realistic? I have no idea but I couldn’t look away.
It’s here that the show drops the equivalent of an atom bomb on longtime fans and newcomers alike by actually explaining the origin of Ellie’s immunity. Anna was bitten in the final seconds before giving birth. She quickly severs baby Ellie’s umbilical cord, and we assume everything is fine…until Marlene (Merle Dandridge) comes in, and Anna puts special emphasis on the fact that she cut the umbilical cord before she was bitten, something we know is a lie. Marlene accepts it, reluctantly taking in Ellie and killing Anna before she can turn into a zombie.
This cold open is one of my favorite bits from the episode. It’s s a strong start that expands the universe of this story in a meaningful way.
Ellie and Joel go to the zoo
From there we head to Salt Lake City. From the first moment we see Ellie and Joel, two things are immediately apparent. The first is that a significant amount of time has passed since Episode 8, which took place in the dead of winter. It’s now spring, and Salt Lake City is in full bloom.
The second is that Ellie and Joel are not the same people we knew even a few episodes ago. Their dire experiences during the winter have changed them, and not necessarily for the better. Ellie is withdrawn and quiet, a stark change from the motor-mouthed kid who trolled Joel halfway across the country. Joel is outgoing and talkative, trying to cheer her up and dreaming about what the two of them will do after they finally accomplish their mission and find the Fireflies.
The flip in their personalities gives the entire episode an uneasy feel, and that’s before things take a turn for the worst. How like this show to give us something we’ve wanted all season (Joel actually treating Ellie like a daughter) but makes it feel profoundly wrong.
Joel and Ellie’s journey into the city is a wonderfully crafted sequence. The dialogue is great, the setting is stunning, and the acting from Pascal and Ramsey is as good as ever. A particular nod needs to be given to the giraffe sequence, which the show copies pretty much exactly from the game, from Joel giving Ellie a boost to get a ladder, to her running after the giraffe and subsequently warning him not to scare it off, to their conversation about potentially turning back while they watch the herd. This giraffe scene also deserves kudos because the show used an actual giraffe instead of just creating one with VFX. I’m a sucker for good (ethical) animal effects.
Alas, that brief moment of joy can’t last. It’s not long after that Joel and Ellie are knocked unconscious by the Fireflies and we move into the bloody climax of the episode.
Joel faces an impossible dilemma, and chooses violence
Despite seemingly achieving their objective, Joel wakes up to find himself in a whole new nightmare. Marlene has arrived in Salt Lake City and reveals the awful truth: Ellie’s dormant infection can be used to create a cure, but the surgery to extract the infected part of her brain would kill her. That’s right, this entire series has been one huge setup to force Joel into the ultimate Trolly Problem scenario: let the girl he’d come to think of as a daughter die, or create a vaccine to potentially save the human race.
The Last of Us is all about messy, relatable human choices, and in that moment Joel makes one that is sure to prove as controversial with viewers as it was with gamers all the way back in 2013. He chooses Ellie, his new “daughter,” over the rest of humanity.
The show makes an interesting choice here, portraying Joel’s subsequent killing spree through the Firefly base as an almost tragic fever dream rather than a visceral fight scene. It’s awful and sad…but if I’m being totally honest, I don’t think it quite pulled me in the same way the sequence did in the game, where you become an unwilling participant to Joel’s bloodiest acts.
In the game, when Joel finds out that Ellie will be killed for a cure, it’s so easy to fall into an almost physical reaction to go save her. After all, that’s what he (and you, who’s been controlling him) have been doing all along, and here at the finish line he has to do it one more time, except he’s fighting allies instead of enemies. Changes have to be made to bring this story onto the television medium, but for whatever reason this one just didn’t quite land as well as I wished, which is a shame considering that this beat is one of the most crucial in the entire story.
Joel ends The Last of Us with murders and lies
That brings us to the final sequence, which crosscuts between Joel killing Marlene and him lying to Ellie about what happened as they leave Salt Lake City. This part, the show completely nailed. The slow realization that Joel killed Marlene in cold blood, which is only revealed after he and Ellie have already left the city, is brutally well delivered.
The Last of Us season 1 ends with Joel and Ellie hiking through the wilderness toward Jackson to begin their new life. As with the beginning of the episode, we finally get something we’ve wanted, which is Joel openly confiding in Ellie about his daughter Sarah, and once again it feels so wrong. Joel’s possessiveness of Ellie as a daughter comes off as all the more eerie after David’s speech about whether or not she needs a father in the preceding episode. Joel isn’t harming her in the same way, but it still feels terrible that he made such big choices about her future while she was unconscious, lied and basically told her she’s not special in the way they thought because there are “dozens” of other people who are immune. He did what he did from the selfish place of not wanting to let her go in spite of the fact that he knows it’s probably what she would want.
Topping it all off is the final stinger. As the pair stands on a bluff overlooking Jackson, Ellie gives Joel a chance to come clean. She asks him to swear that everything he’s told her is true…and he does. The episode ends with Ellie’s blunt “okay,” as she gives him a look that makes it clear she knows on some level she’s being lied to. And so concludes what has been a fantastic season of television.
As a whole, the finale of The Last of Us is yet another excellent episode. At the same time, I wasn’t quite as blown away as I expected. My biggest gripe is that it feels like the show rushed its big finish. “Look For The Light” is the shortest episode in the entire season, and I can’t help but wonder why the production made that choice.
In the game, Joel and Ellie have a significant journey through the tunnels beneath Salt Lake City, evading infected before Ellie is forced to dive into a raging river to try and save Joel from drowning in spite of the fact that she can’t swim. This only makes it hit harder when Joel finds out the Fireflies plan to kill her mere hours after she nearly sacrificed her own life for his, and considering that we haven’t seen an infected outside of flashbacks since Episode 5, having that extra layer of danger would have been nice moment to adapt as our heroes neared their final destination.
Instead, it felt a little bit like “Look For The Light” skipped from beat to beat in the most expedient way it could without allowing those moments much time to breathe. I enjoyed it immensely, but in many ways I feel as torn about the episode as I do about Joel’s choices.
The Last of Bullet Points
- The episode title “Look For The Light” is the back half of the Firefly mantra, “When you’re lost in the darkness, look for the light.” It creates a nice mirror effect with the premiere (“When You’re Lost In The Darkness”), which also featured the Fireflies at the start of Ellie and Joel’s journey. Ah, symmetry.
- The show made a small but very important change during Joel and Ellie’s final conversation, which is that it revealed that Ellie was the one who killed Riley after she turned. The games never confirmed that.
Verdict
The season finale of The Last of Us was another fantastic episode that is sure to have people talking, albeit one not without some minor issues. It brought the season to a close in an explosive, complicated fashion that will have major ramifications moving forward. This show is easily one of the best video game adaptations ever made for television, as well as just an incredible series overall. It’s been a hell of a ride, and we’ll be eagerly waiting for season 2 to see how the truth will come out…and what Ellie will do when she discovers it.
Episode Grade: A-
To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.
Get HBO, Starz, Showtime and MORE for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels