If you haven’t caught up on HBO’s The Last of Us, there’s spoiler-free content ahead, but still… you definitely should. Episode six, titled “Kin,” saw the Miller brothers reunite after Joel tracks Tommy down to a settlement out in Jackson, Wyoming.
In the community, all resources are shared and individuals are appointed as members of a democracy in order to maintain a diplomatic lifestyle. While Maria shows them around, Ellie remarks that there’s essentially “collective ownership” of all the property, livestock, etc. She proceeds to label the state of affairs as “communism.”
Tommy’s immediately in denial, saying “it ain’t like that,” but in a rather hilarious interjection, Maria corrects him by putting things into perspective. She says: “This is a commune. We’re communists.” As comical as it was, Maria and Tommy actually touch on some significant social and political comparisons. Tommy, who’s only ever experienced a dictatorship, has become so comfortable in a communist setting that he doesn’t even see the irony of the situation when Maria points it out.
One Redditor even went so far as to call the scene “groundbreaking.” The OP wrote: “This show continues to break barriers and being actively anti-racist and anti-fascist and I’m always excited to see what comes next.” When highlighting the major wins for the episode, they describe how HBO “[shows] a settlement that is democratic, holds its resources in common, allows for multi-faith worship, has an interracial couple front and center in it and to top it all off openly acknowledges that it is communist and it not being a bad thing.”
There are others, however, who seems to think OP’s view of communism doesn’t translate to real-world problems, wherein these kinds of communities would never survive on a larger scale.
There’s also the matter of right-leaning political views having major issues with a TV series depicting a peaceful, thriving commune. Some users prepared for the impending barrage of verbal assault from right-wing views. And, like clockwork, Reddit was flooded with comments of that likeness. We’ll save those for any curious parties to peruse through at their own leisure. Still, it did spark some light-hearted humor among the commenters.
The majority of comments, however, generally went against OP’s thoughts and contradicted the fact that the scene was described as “groundbreaking.” A lot of them mention how the showrunners likely added that scene for comic relief on Tommy’s part and to showcase his relationship with the level-headed Maria, thus it wasn’t ever intended to be some next-level political statement.
Regardless of how it’s perceived, it’s an entertaining scene, so if that’s all it was ever intended to be — we’ll take it.