Every episode of The Last of Us, ranked worst to best

8. Episode 1, “When You’re Lost in the Darkness”

The premiere episode of The Last of Us contains some of the show’s most powerful scenes. In particular, the frantic chase through the streets of Austin is a thrilling action set piece, throwing us into the confusion of a world gone mad after the sudden, unexpected outbreak of a zombie contagion. Joel, his brother Tommy and daughter Sarah are all sympathetic characters we want to root for, which makes it all the more heartbreaking when the story takes a hard left turn into tragedy. Even if you’ve played Naughty Dog’s 2013 The Last of Us video game, the sight of Joel cradling his dead daughter in his arms is a brutal punch to the gut.

The story then skips forward a couple of decades to pick up with Joel going about his lonely life under fascistic rule in the Boston quarantine zone. We meet his new partner Tess, learn about the Fireflies, and are introduced to a young spitfire named Ellie.

This part works, but the energy comes way down from the gritty splendor of the 2003 section, to the point where I wondered if the show had given us all of its best stuff right at the top. We since learned that this premiere was supposed to be two separate episodes, but HBO wanted the producers to mash them together. I can understand why — ending the premiere with Sarah’s death would have been a major downer, and HBO wanted Joel and Ellie to meet before the first episode was over — but I think going with the original plan would have been better.

For my money, I I would have ended the premiere with the image of Joel, 20 years in the future, still wearing the broken watch his daughter gave him, and saved Ellie’s entrance for Episode 2. Here, she feels tacked on to Joel’s story, and she’s too important a character for that. The episode blasts through bits of setup involving Joel and Tess escorting Ellie to a Firefly enclave beyond the walls of the QZ; all of that could use more buildup.

So the premiere has some spectacular scenes, but it encountered some tricky hurdles behind the camera and feels like it.