The promise that the last shall be first may only be made by a divine-faced Nepo baby or a madman, which can be the same. But in the case of The Last of Us (HBO Max), it’s an empirical reality. Lost on their way and in the mud, Joel and Ellie (Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey) have gathered a community of followers that has made the series the big phenomenon of the season.
Fiction works on two levels: the bombastic action level that gives the characters a goal to save the world. And another more pedestrian one, in which two people go for a walk, read bad jokes and have endless conversations, thanks to which they build an intimacy that makes them family. This is the roundest part of The Last of Us. And the one who allows to forgive his irregularity. It’s also the least watched because we’ve had zombies galore (11 seasons of The Walking Dead, among others), delusional dystopias (The Handmaid’s Tale continues), and other high-sounding concepts mixed with cheap philosophy that forgets the gist have: either you go with the characters or everything else doesn’t matter.
In The Last of Us God lives we walk with the father devastated by the death of his daughter and the orphaned teenager who grew up without a sense of belonging. The great love story of the series is this, not the third chapter. Loving someone in a way (brief gutting) that leads to lying, killing, counting the sands of the sea, giving up to save the world if it means losing it. If they give me the choice between you and humanity, I’ll stick with you. Is there a better declaration of love?
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