I know the finale of The Last of Us was last week, and I dropped the ball on writing the review. I was busy getting beaten by Irish Car Bombs and trying to get work done before The Camp took on Chi-Town. But, better late than never I guess.
There will be spoilers for this review. I am sure everyone who reads this has seen the finale by now but in case you haven’t, read with caution.
For starters, FUCK YES! This finale was phenomenal and was everything I could have hoped for to pay homage to the end of the first installment of the video game. Everything about it was almost frame-for-frame to how the game ends.
I think this was Pedro Pascal’s best acting performance of the entire season. I loved the scene of him going through the hospital and taking out all the Fireflies to save Ellie. The raw emotion he portrayed as Joel is also a testament to the father-daughter chemistry that he and Bella Ramsey have off screen.
The best part of the episode to me was the scene with him and Marlene in the parking garage as he was escaping with Ellie. The suspense created with what Joel is going to do had me on the edge of my seat.
And, I do have to give props to the final scene of the show where Joel lies to Ellie about what happened. The dialogue was exactly from the game and was somehow more intense to me than it was in the game. Obviously, this is a huge plot point in The Last of Us Part II, so we will have to wait until season two to see the aftermath.
My only gripe was that I would have liked to see a couple more of the infected scenes that occur later in the game. Some of those scenes are super important to further building the relationship between Joel and Ellie, but the show leaves them out. Plus, they are fun as hell and super sick to play. I just thought it would have been cool to see in live action.
But, they at least did the giraffe cutscene from the game, which is beautiful and innocent in this vicious world they live in.
No matter what, I could not have been more happy with how this season went. There were obviously highs and lows, but the highs completely outweighed any of the issues with the season. It sucks that we will have to wait a couple years for season two, but I highly recommend playing the games if you need your The Last of Us fix.
Rating: 96/100 – Inferno
