The Last of Us has given us decades worth of trauma in just a few episodes, and this next episode isn’t going to prove an exception either. Video game fans are now giving other viewers a fair warning because we’re slowly approaching one of the most emotional scenes in the entire story.
Joel and Ellie are making their way toward Tommy, officially going into the game’s autumn section. This is where we hopefully enter the town of Jackson and meet a few key allies, but Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin are also going to ask Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey to give their most emotionally taxing performance yet.
What fans are referring to in this Reddit thread is a scene that asks Joel and Ellie to reflect on their journey together and become vulnerable. Without going into spoilers, this is the moment that determines their future together as a duo, and perhaps sets up the paternal relationship sitting at the heart of it.
It’s definitely among some of the best scenes in Part I, so fans can’t wait to see it in live-action after more than a decade.
The scene is really well-written, so that only leaves Pascal and Ramsey to act the living Clicker out of it. Knowing them, they probably have.
We’re probably sure it’s going to imitate the video game sequence to a T, as Druckmann has already assured The Last of Us enthusiasts the show is only going to deviate when there’s actually a better idea, and it doesn’t get much better than the video game scene.
Will it land, though? It feels as though we haven’t spent enough time with Joel and Ellie for it to work as well as it does in the video game.
It’s entirely possible that Druckmann and Mazin have incorporated that scene at a further junction in the story, but we’d be surprised if the protagonists reach Jackson and it doesn’t play out.
I guess we’ll see when episode 6, “Kin,” premieres this Sunday at 9 pm ET on HBO.