5 best moments from HBO’s The Last of Us (and the 5 most devastating)
By Daniel Roman
Best moment in The Last of Us season 1: The cul de sac battle sequence
We arrive, finally, at the cream of the crop. The Last of Us season 1 had no shortage of great moments, but the one I’d personally pick as the high point is the cul de sac battle on the outskirts of Kansas City.
After sneaking out of the city, Joel, Ellie, Sam, and Henry find themselves in the sights of a sniper. This leads into a multi-stage action set piece, with Joel taking out the sniper only to find out that they had already called in Kathleen and her cronies for backup. Once the infected arrive, things get even dicier.
A huge part of the reason that I put the cul de sac at the top of this list is because it has all the elements that make The Last of Us so good, crammed into what is by far the best action sequence of the season. We have human conflict, as Kathleen and Henry finally come face to face; we have an army of infected in the biggest, coolest battle of the show (The bloater! The child clicker!); and we have a huge moment for Joel and Ellie’s relationship as he snipes infected and soldiers alike to try and keep her alive amidst the onslaught.
The Last of Us proved many times over that it can tell the deeply human stories, but with the cul de sac battle, it also proved that it could pull off an enormous, drama-driven action set piece of the kind that Game of Thrones did so well. It was unpredictable and exciting, and I wish I could forget ever having seen it just so I could experience it for the first time again.
Most devastating moment in The Last of Us: Joel’s final lie
We end with Joel and Ellie’s final conversation. While there are tons of traumatizing moments in The Last of Us, the most haunting is the slow burn realization that Joel and Ellie’s relationship is severely damaged, possibly beyond repair.
Part of the brilliance of The Last of Us is how its ending totally re-contextualizes the story. From the outset, we’re led to believe the show is about this hardened survivor who learns to open his heart again after being forced to go on a journey with a precocious teenage girl. Joel had lost his daughter; with Ellie, he gets a chance to give someone else that same sort of paternal love.
But the ending mixes things up. Joel learns to love again, but Ellie becomes traumatized and withdrawn. The flip in their personalities by the end of the series is so devastating that it’s painful to even think about how outgoing Ellie was at the outset.
This taints even things that should be happy moments, like Joel telling Ellie that he thinks she and his daughter would have gotten along. That’s the kind of thing viewers wanted so bad early in the show, but by the time we finally get it, it feels awful and wrong. Joel robbed Ellie of the choice to decide her own fate, lied to her by saying there are other immune kids and the cure was a bust (which equates to telling Ellie “you’re not special like we thought”), and then essentially brings her back to Jackson to live as his daughter. It smacks of a possessiveness that’s more than a little disconcerting.
Making it all worse is the final lie, which serves as the capstone to the season. Convinced something isn’t right, Ellie demands that Joel swears he was telling her the truth about the Fireflies. And he does, even though it’s as bald-faced a lie as he’s told in the entire show. Ellie’s final look and muttered “okay” speaks volumes. Something is broken between them, and out of all the awful things that have happened during their journey, the schism in their relationship hurts more than anything.
Honorable mention: Anna gives birth to baby Ellie
A final honorable mention for the road. The Last of Us expanded on the story of the game with a scene where we see Ellie’s mother Anna give birth to her. As she struggles through labor, she’s attacked by an infected and bitten. She swiftly cuts baby Ellie’s umbilical cord, but not before a trace amount of the cordyceps gets into Ellie’s system, which is why she’s immune. We then find out how Marlene took in Ellie as a child, killing her longtime friend Anna to prevent her from becoming an infected.
It’s a powerful moment, made all the more so because Anna is played by Ashley Johnson, the very same actor who portrayed Ellie in the video games. This sequence was a wonderful, meta way to have Johnson pass the torch to Bella Ramsey.
And thus concludes our rankings for the five best and five most devastating moments in The Last of Us season 1. Did we miss any of your favorites? Would you rank anything differently? Let us know in the comments!
Next. Every actor from The Last of Us games who appeared on the show (and who they played). dark
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