The last zombie show we covered on this blog was Brain Dead. Something tells me this will be a bit less whimsical…
cw: violence, blood, gore, body horror, death of a child, death of a loved one, war themes, pandemics
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When You’re Lost in the Darkness
Marines: I have not played this video game so I guess that makes me a Snow. Truly, all I know is that Pedro Pascal is in this, and he’s on the run with my forever queen, the Bear Boss. I’m a little hesitant because I’m a big scaredy cat, but I’m hoping this will mostly be zombie gore and tension and nothing that will make me pee my pants.
Catherine: I feel like I should say that I have played the games, they are my favorite games of all time, and I am very VERY excited for this (but trying to be cool about it).
Mari: This is perfect. One of us should know what’s going on.
Here we go:
A title-screen informs us that the year is 1968. Three men are on a stage in front of a live studio audience. The Slightly Aggressive Interviewer is asking one of his guests about his theories on global pandemics and their transmissions helped along by air travel. We are all disgustingly familiar with what the scientist replies. The Slightly Aggressive Interviewer turns to his second guest, a Dr. Neuman, who is also an epidemiologist, and asks if he’s being kept up at night by the thought of viruses. Dr. Neuman says nah, he’s fine with the thought of millions dying via virus, because mankind always survives in the end. No, what he’s worried about is fungi. You see, fungi can infect the brain and take over the body and will of animals, then eating the animal from within. The other doctor groans aloud because fungus infection of this kind is real, but not in humans. Dr. Neuman agrees that fungi can’t survive in conditions over 94 degrees, and there are no reasons why the fungus might evolve. Unless of course… the world were to get slightly warmer… A little global warming here, a little evolution there, and ta-da! We’ve got fungus that burrows into human brains.
The title sequence is a bunch of cool looking and ominous fungal growth. (C: And the music from the game. I am already crying. The being cool thing is going bad.)
2003. A girl wakes up and sees the time. She runs across the hall to her dad’s (Pedro Pascal’s) room to wake him as well.
The girl heads downstairs to make breakfast, and her dad of course, forgot to buy pancake mix. The ignored alarm was the first clue, the forgotten pancake mix was the second and we’ll get many more I’m sure: this is a daughter who parents her father a bit. Also, everything looks so warm in these scenes and this girl (Nico Parker) is decidedly not the Bear Boss so I’m immediately sad that she’s going to die. This is based on a video game too, so is there a tragic hero without the woman in his life being killed off? I guess we’ll find out.
It’s Joel’s birthday. He’s turning 36. Uncle Tommy (Gabriel Luna) walks in and talk turns to their construction job. It looks like they are going to have to work late, but Joel promises Sarah to be done by 9 and to bring home a cake. On the radio, they hear a news bulletin about some continued disturbances in Jakarta. We don’t hear more than that, but it can’t be good. They finish up breakfast time with a bit more family banter.
Outside, their neighbor says that Connie has missed Sarah. Joel whispers to Sarah to make them happy, so Sarah agrees to come over after school for a little while. What a nice kid. She’s so dead.
After a bit more banter with the neighbors, everyone hops into Uncle Tommy’s truck and the Zoomy Camera Man zooms into the Combat Veteran bumper sticker on Tommy’s truck. Got it, thanks for your service Tommy and also Zoomy Camera Man. As they drive away, an additional title card tells us that this is Austin, TX on September 26th, making Joel a Libra. Yes, that is the first thing I thought when the date popped up, okay?
We cut to Sarah in class. She’s briefly distracted by the glint off a classmate’s watch, and I think we are supposed to be noticing that he’s twitching his hand in an odd way. The bell rings and Sarah leaves in a hurry to catch the bus. She heads over to a watch repair shop so she can have her father’s watch fixed. While Sarah waits, the phone rings in the shop. Outside, police and ambulance speed by. This is doing a very good job of building tension towards what we already know will happen. It’s not particularly subtle, but it’s measured. And putting sweet, definitely dead Sarah at the foreground here makes it even more sad.
Catherine: I completely agree, and although none of this is in the game, it’s still very reflective of the opening sequence in the game where you play as Sarah. So, the fact they decided to keep that spirit alive, and the tension of seeing this all happening through the perspective of a vulnerable pre-teen girl, is pretty cool.
Mari: A woman walks out from the back of the store as the Strings of Tension start up in the background. She announces that the store is closing. She grabs the watch and hands it back to Sarah, telling her that she should go home before all but pushing her out.
Sarah heads over to her neighbor’s house. She greets the dog, Mercy, and then asks Mrs. Adler if everything is okay on the news because there are a ton of police on the road. Mrs. Adler says that’s true every day and that people out there need to get right with Jesus. “Three nails plus one cross equals four-given,” she says and suddenly I am transported to every youth service I ever attended. (C: *VIOLENT FLASHBACKS ENSUE*)
Mrs. Adler says she was thinking they could make some cookies. “Chocolate chip?” Sarah asks, hopefully. “Raisin,” Mrs. Adler says with a genuine smile. Sarah’s pasted on and pained smile in answer is perfection. It’s almost the apocalypse, get this girl some chocolate.
We cut to later. Sarah is working on her homework while Mrs. Adler feeds her elderly mother-in-law in the background. The timer goes off, so Mrs. Adler gets up to grab the cookies. Sarah looks over the Adler’s movie collection. In the background, Old Lady Adler starts twitching, and her mouth opens in a silent scream. Sarah doesn’t notice.
Later that night, Sarah is on the couch waiting for her dad to get home. The TV is on and the news report in the background says that the police department has no comment on the rash of violent incidents, but some people are saying it’s due to a new street drug. That takes me aaalll the way back to gangs on PCP.
Joel finally gets home from work, but it’s 10:00pm, and he’s got no cake. Sarah makes him swear that they’ll get a cake tomorrow or else he doesn’t get his present. He swears on his life. It’s so ominous that I’m getting up to grab my own slice of cake. For comfort.
Sarah gives Joel his gift– his fixed watch. He asks how she got the money to do this and she confesses to having stolen the money from him, but she did bring back his change and she knew he would never get it done himself. Joel is very touched. And then he’s very excited when she hands over the bad action movie she borrowed from the Adlers.
We cut to Sarah having fallen asleep as the movie still plays. Joel gets a call from Tommy, who is in jail and needs to be bailed out. Tommy says it wasn’t his fault “this time” because some guy went crazy and started swinging at a waiters. Tommy stepped in and when the cops showed up, he got arrested. It’s Friday night, though, so if Joel doesn’t bail him out now, he’s stuck in there all weekend and the jail is a madhouse.
Joel puts Sarah to bed and heads off to collect his little brother.
Three hours later, Sarah wakes up to the sounds of helicopters flying overhead, signal flares, and car alarms. She gets up to find her dad, but he isn’t back home yet. Sarah turns on the TV and finds an emergency signal playing, telling everyone to stay indoors. Something thuds against the window and startles Sarah. It’s Mercy, the dog. He’s not looking very zombie dog right now, so maybe Mercy is just Alert Dog. He’s been trying to tell us this whole time that something is wrong with grandma.
Instead of grabbing the Goodest Alert Dog and taking him inside, Sarah heads out to investigate. Then she tries to take Mercy back home even though that dog is like digging his feet in. He wants no part of home. Poor, sweet, super dead Sarah is not getting it, though, and lets herself into the creepy neighbor’s home, even after she steps in a TRAIL OF BLOOD. Of course, she finds Old Lady Adler fully eating her daughter. Old Lady Adler stands up and starts coming for Sarah, who finally gets some sense of self-preservation and runs out of the neighbor’s house she should’ve never been in.
Outside, Tommy’s truck comes squealing up to the sidewalk outside of the Adler’s. Joel jumps out and yells at Sarah to get in the truck. Old Lady Adler comes running out, and it isn’t entirely clear to me what happens to her on the way out. Maybe she like trips down the stairs? There is this tense moment where everyone is just watching Zombie Old Lady, right up until she gets back up and starts running toward Joel. He whacks her across the head with a monkey wrench.
Sarah looks very shocked that her dad killed their elderly next door neighbor, but even in the middle of all this horror, I must point out that she’s focusing on the wrong thing. Girlie pop, of course he killed her.
Catherine: Yeah, she was a zombie. IDK if you noticed, SARAH.
Mari: Joel quickly explains to Sarah that whatever is happening is wide-spread, but they are going to be brave and they are going to get out of this. They all get back in the truck and drive out of their neighborhood, running over some zombie neighbors as they go.
The whole entire next sequence is a collection of heartbreaks and miseries: Sarah wondering if they also are sick; driving past the burning house of someone they knew; a couple stranded on the side of the road with a small child and Joel telling Tommy to keep driving; gridlock on the highway; blockades all over the city; people flooding the streets as they run from the infected; and finally, an airplane crash landing on the street they are driving on, the explosion and debris causing them to crash.
Catherine: This, btw was pretty much a shot-for-shot remake of this sequence in the game and SO well done I was freaking out. Down to the dialogue, the framing and body movements of the family on the side of the road. Right up until the plane crash (in the game it is simply a car crash that stops them) it was like watching the game in live action. Am I annoying everyone with this nerd shit yet?
Mari: Definitely not. I love it.
To be honest, I thought this would be where Sarah died, but she makes it because apparently a car crash death is not going to be sad enough. Wow, can’t wait to see what’s ahead.
Sarah does have an injured ankle though, meaning that Joel is going to have to carry her out of the Zombie Apocalypse. Rough.
A police car crashes into their wrecked truck and blocks Tommy off from Joel and Sarah. He yells that he’ll head to the river and find them there.
Joel walks straight into a feeding frenzy. He’s frozen for a bit until one of the zombies focuses on him. Joel runs and now that we are seeing a zombie that isn’t also an elderly woman, we can really tell that these vampires are fast. Okay, but also, they are just kind of flinging themselves around a bit, which makes me think that’s why Old Lady Adler just flung herself down the stairs.
As the vampire closes in on Joel and Sarah, someone shoots him dead. “Don’t move,” they call and we see it’s a soldier. Joel tries to explain that his daughter’s got an ankle injury, but the soldier is clearly not buying this story. The soldier calls in this spotting of the civilians, one with an injured ankle, and receives some instructions that have him raising his gun. Joel tells him repeatedly that they aren’t sick, but the soldier shoots anyway. Joel goes down and Sarah tumbles away from him. The soldier comes closer and before he can finish Joel off, the soldier is shot in the head. It’s Tommy.
And then, both Tommy and Joel realize that Sarah has been shot in the stomach. Joel tries to staunch the bleeding, to get Sarah up, but she’s gasping out her final breaths. Sarah dies in Joel’s arms.
Mari: From what I hear about the budget for this show, HBO can definitely afford to send you.
A title card tells us we jump to 20 years later. The whole 2003 in Austin thing should’ve tipped me, but I was still a little surprised to jump ahead 20 years. I think more than anything, it feels purposefully abrupt on the heels of Sarah’s death, especially as we spent about 30 minutes in this prologue. It’s a neat way to structure this episode. And while it’s easy to predict Sarah’s death early on (if you too are a Snow), I really appreciated how much time they gave us with her and how this prologue was firmly seated in her POV. Joel goes off to work, he goes off to bail out Tommy, but we stay with Sarah. We see a before world through her lens and her father isn’t romanticized for us. His devastation is real for the viewer not because we’ve gotten to know Joel, but because we got to know Sarah.
Present. A young child is staggering through some wilderness, though old street signs give us a hint that maybe this wasn’t always a wilderness. And indeed, a few steps further, and a title card tells us that we are looking at a hollowed out Boston in 2023. The child makes it to a quarantine zone and some soldiers run out to grab them.
The child is wheeled into the quarantine zone, strapped into a wheelchair. We focus in on a poster that tells us the various times to full infection after a bite, according to the location of the bite. A soldier asks the child a few questions, but they are non-responsive. The soldier asks the child how they got an injury on their knee (12-24 hours to full infection), but still no response. A second soldier uses a machine to get a reading from the child, and the screen on the machine glows bright red. The first soldier promises the child that after they give them some medicine, they’ll get them all their favorite foods and as many toys as they can play with. And a beach side property in Kansas, I’m sure. The Soldier with No Lines administers a shot…
And we immediately cut to mass pyres. One of the workers gives a big sigh as another truck with more dead bodies pulls up. She starts to grab a body, but stops. She taps on the man working next to her, and it’s Joel, with a lot more salt in his salt and pepper hair. She simply tells him that she can’t, and Joel looks. It’s the body of a child. It’s the child we just saw getting euthanized. The Zoomy Camera Man focuses in on their shoes, the same ones we saw in focus as they shambled into Boston, as Joel carries the body to the pyre and tosses it in.
Catherine: This was wild for me as an introduction to the world they now live in, because I’ve played the games. I know what FEDRA is like. And yet I still honestly thought they were gonna get that baby some ice cream for a minute there.
Mari: Same. I was like, “cool, a little medicine!” until the pyres.
We cut to the end of shift. As Joel leaves, we really get a sense of the military state this quarantine zone has become under FEDRA: soldier snipers on roof tops, work paid in food ration cards, and even a public executions for people breaking laws like the unauthorized leaving and entering of quarantine zones. Joel spots a soldier at the hanging who gives him a nod and heads off. Joel follows and basically deals him some pills, collecting ration cards and cigarettes in payment. Joel also asks about a car this soldier is looking into for him, but it’s going to cost him. Plus, he needs a battery for the car. The interaction ends with the soldier telling Joel to do himself a favor and stay off the streets for the next few nights as the Fireflies have been super active, which means that FEDRA soldiers are working doubles and everyone is jumpy and tired. “It’s easy to make a mistake in the dark.”
As Joel exits the scene, we get this hopeful little message:
Tess is okay, but it doesn’t look like all her captors are going to be walking way from this. Tess stumbles out of the wreckage, but unfortunately, walks straight into a fire fight between FEDRA and the Fireflies. (Listen, every time they are mentioned, I am absolutely singing I DON’T CARE, I’M STILL FREE, YOU CAN’T TAKE THE SKY FROM MEEEE.) (C: Fair.) Tess is arrested.
Bella Ramsey is chained up in a room. A woman with a clipboard walks in and Bella very sassily kicks over the remains of her food tray. Clipboard Woman tells her to count slowly and clearly from 1 to 10. Bella Ramsey mostly complies, but she finishes her count with “7, 8, fuck you.” She goes through the rest of the exercises, holding her arm steady, stating her name as Veronica. They leave Veronica still shouting that she isn’t supposed to be here. She stars at a wall that says only “if you are lost in the darkness.”
Joel visits a man running underground communications. Turns out that Joel has sent a message to Tommy that hasn’t been answered for 3 weeks. It’s never taken him more than one day to respond in the past. Joel takes out a map and asks Radio Guy to point out where the tower closest to Tommy is. Radio Guy warns Joel that there are worse things than the Infected out there (other humans…) but Joel is not dissuaded.
Back at his apartment, Joel grabs some maps out of a secret hiding place. He goes over some routes to Wyoming while pounding back drinks and taking a handful of pills. As we see him self-medicating this way, the Zoomy Camera Man focuses in on the broken watch he’s still wearing, all “remember his pain and tragedy?” We do remember, Zoomy. Thank you.
Joel passes out in his bed.
Tess arrives later that night and climbs into bed with him, making him the little spoon. I feel like that was an important detail to share.
The next morning, Joel gets his first look at Tess’s face and immediately reacts like he’s ready to absolutely wreck whoever did this to her. Tess sticks to the story that she got jumped and also glosses over the fact that she was arrested by FEDRA, and heads straight into bad news time: Robert sold their car battery to someone else. Joel is super upset, but Tess tells him to take a breath or else he’ll spook Robert. They need to find out where Robert and their battery are, quietly. Then, maybe Joel can hurt Robert and then they’ll go get Tommy.
Merle Dandridge walks into a room with three other people who are planning Firefly attacks. One of them, we’ll call her Questions, has some questions about what they are even doing with these random attacks. Merle’s Dandridge, seemingly the Firefly In Charge [FIC], tells her to follow fucking orders. Questions asks why they have some girl locked up in a room. Other Fireflies are asking her what’s going on and she doesn’t know what to say. Firefly in Charge tells Questions to tell everyone to follow fucking orders. FIC sends away the other people in the room and tells Questions (Kim) that they are in a war against a military dictatorship for democracy and freedom, but they’ve been fighting for 20 years and getting nowhere.
Catherine: We shoulda called her Expositions.
Mari: I gave her too much credit.
FIC (Marlene) explains to Kim that they’ve been causing disturbances all over the QZ to pull FEDRA troops away from the Firefly HQ, as they are going to leave tonight with the random girl locked up in that room, and they are heading west. Marlene shows Kim a message from their contact in Salem. We don’t see what it says, but Kim is surprised and Marlene is hopeful. Kim is bought in on the plan.
Marlene visits Veronica, still chained up to a radiator. She gives Veronica back her backpack, and Veronica quickly pulls out her pocket knife from inside. Marlene isn’t scared, though, and ultimately unchains Veronica. She asks if “it’s going to happen.” Marlene says no. Veronica asks if she can leave then. Marlene says no again. Besides, where would Veronica go? Back to FEDRA military school? Veronica says she didn’t choose to be there. She was placed there because she was an orphan. Marlene says she was in fact the one who put Veronica there, and reveals she knows Veronica’s real name: Ellie. Marlene placed her there so she’d be safe, and she was safe, until Ellie decided to sneak out.
Catherine: This is SUCH a great first look at Ellie’s character for something that is not in the game. She’s tough, she’s feisty, she’s smart enough to attempt to use an alias but not smart enough to figure out that Marlene already knows who she is. She swears like a sailor. She has a knife. She stabs things. The pieces are all there.
Mari: Ellie asks why Marlene won’t let her go home. Marlene tells her that she has a greater purpose than any of them could’ve imagined. They are leaving tonight and taking Ellie with them. Marlene tells Ellie a secret that cannot be repeated to anyone, but we still don’t get to hear it.
Joel and Tess have managed to track Robert down. They take some abandoned subway tunnels to get where they are going and come across an Infected who has been completed eaten from the inside out. The visual is very reminiscent of the fungal growth we saw in the title sequence.
Catherine: I have answers to this! So basically, in the game the infection spreads via spores and there are some areas that the player has to use a gas mask in order to traverse without getting infected. However, according to what I’ve read, for the T.V. show they felt that they couldn’t make that seem realistic. Because, like you said, why are the spores not everywhere? Why has the virus not completely polluted the air by now? So they took out the spores and added a thing called ‘tendrils,’ which are apparently an original discarded concept from the game and the thing that was coming out of the Old Lady Adler’s mouth at the beginning.
Initially, I was hesitant about this change more so than any other, because the spores are well utilized in the games. BUT I can see how it does make more sense, realistically, and how the spores were more for the atmosphere of cutting down on the players visibility in the game, which isn’t as effective of a tool in this circumstance.
Mari: Don’t give HBO any ideas about cutting visibility down. We saw (or didn’t see…) some of those later seasons of Game of Thrones.
When they get to where they are going, they find Robert and his men are already dead and the battery he tried to sell was no good anyway. Tess and Joel have unwittingly walked right into Firefly HQ.
Joel investigates some and sees Marlene and Kim hunched over and struggling in the hallway. As he slowly walks toward them, Ellie rushes out of the room she’s in, wielding her knife. Joel very easily knocks her aside. Tess and Joel can’t believe that Marlene was dealing with scum like Robert, but Marlene says she needs the car battery for more important reasons that Joel. “Tommy is just one man.” Joel doesn’t take kindly to this, especially since he blames Marlene for turning Tommy against him.
Regardless, Marlene says that now that she and Kim are both injured, it looks like Joel and Tess are now going to be the ones taking Ellie out of QZ. Marlene says that if Tess and Joel get Ellie to the State House and the Fireflies who are waiting for her there, she’ll give them a fueled up car, guns, ammo, everything they need. Joel and Tess confer briefly, but ultimately agree. Ellie leaves with them. Marlene leaves Joel with a “don’t fuck this up,” and a very earnest “please.”
Joel and Tess take Ellie back to their apartment. Ellie explores a bit while Tess and Joel confer some more. By the time Joel comes back in, she’s snooped in one of his books, The Billboard Book of Number One Hits, and has figured out the radio code he uses for smuggling: 60’s song, there’s nothing new; 70’s song, they got new stuff; 80’s just has a red x next to it. She asks what 80’s means, and he just grabs the book away from her and settles down for a nap to kill time. The last thing Ellie says to him is “your watch is broken.”
And then, the first thing he hears when he wakes up is Ellie saying “you mumble in your sleep.” Like, kid, okay, keep your observations to yourself. (C: Oh, she is straight up incapable of that.) Ellie starts asking questions about going on the other side of the wall. Joel’s a little short with her until he realizes that she’s just trying to make sure they are going to be okay. Joel asks her if she’s some bigwig’s daughter or something. Ellie gives a non-committal “something like that.” Then, she says that the radio came on while Joel was sleeping and the song kept saying something like “wake me up before you go-go.” Joel hangs his head and gives a defeated little “shit.” Ellie smiles and says “gotcha!” 80’s obviously means trouble. Code broken. Joel does not look happy about getting got. He doesn’t have time to say anything more, though, because Tess is back. It’s time to go.
We watch Joel, Tess and Ellie sneak out to the other side of the wall. Unfortunately, they are caught pretty quickly and by Barter Soldier who Joel bartered with earlier in the episode. Joel and Tess try to talk it out with Barter Soldier, promising all their ration cards, half off pills, but Barter Soldier isn’t haven’t it. He starts scanning them for infection in order to process and arrest them. Tess’s scan is green. Joel’s scan is green. When Barter Soldier reaches Ellie, he scans her and she promptly stabs her knife into his thigh.
Barter Soldier points his gun at Ellie, but Joel stands between them. And in facing down this soldier, gun raised, light shining in his face, Joel flashes back to 20 years ago, another soldier, another child. He heads into a rage, barrels into Barter Solder, and repeatedly punches him in the face. Ellie looks on horrified but also kind of fascinated and impressed. Joel is a little bit in shock.
Meanwhile, Tess notices that Ellie’s scan turned red. Tess starts freaking out, but Ellie promises that she’s not sick. She shows Tess her bite which happened 3 weeks ago, and nobody survives longer than a day after infection. There’s no time for this, or anything, as they have to keep running before they are captured. We watch them run and then suddenly cut to Joel’s apartment where Depeche Mode’s “Never Let Me Down Again” starts playing. Trouble.
No kidding.
The end credits play as we hear the lyrics, “I’m taking a ride with my best friend. I hope he never lets me down again.”
I really enjoyed this as a pilot! For entering a story we pretty much know the direction of, whether because you played the game or because the ground here is well trodden, it still managed to give us a lot of tension and investment in these characters. I enjoyed the look and feel of the show, both the big ariels of the hollowed out city, and the way the camera focuses in little details, from a broken watch, to an Infected child’s shoes, Joel’s bloody hands, the construction tools he used in another life to build things and in this life to kill things. While, as I mentioned, I was a little afraid of how scary this would be, I found it mostly to be tension and some of that fungal gore. I survived!
Catherine: You did it! Also, I completely agree. Being such a fan of the games (and generally being pretty forgiving of adaptations) I was probably always going to enjoy this, but they really knocked it out of the park in a lot of ways.
All of the important elements were there and the spirit of the game is very much intact so far. As I said, there were whole chunks of the episode that were just wholesale lifted from the game and watching them come to life was glorious.
Also, can Pedro Pascal do wrong? I have yet to ever see him do wrong.
Next time on The Last of Us: The journey gets started and we get a closer look at the zombies in S01 E02 – Infected.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
I am a 30-something year-old human woman who lives in Maine. I'm a freelance writer who mostly spends time that I should be doing that, watching T.V. I also love reading and comic books way too much.
