Jackson Under Siege and A Shocking End

This post contains spoilers for this week's episode of The Last of UsWhich is now streaming on max.

Hurt People Hurt People.

It's a Vicious Cycle. Much As the Law of Conservation of Mass Says That Matter Can In the Be Created Nor Destroyed, Once Pain Exist in the World, It Has a Tendency to Stick Around, Passing from one Victim to the Next.

Joel's Daughter Sarah Dies. Joel Internalizes That Pain for the Next 20 Years. He resists Making Connections with People, Because he can't survive that level of loss a second time. Then This Other Girl Gets Placed in His Care. She is not Sarah, but there is something in Her Playfulness and OpeniSss that He Can't Resist, Try As He Might. And Soon Joel Begins to love Her As Much for the Second Chance Ellie is Giving Him As for the Sweet, Endearing Kid That She is. He has goten past the pain, seemingly. He is living again. And then he drawers that in Order to save the world, he has to let aother daughter die. Joel Will Not Accept That. He couuldn't save save from catching a stray bullet, but he will do anything to protect elie. Even if it means kiling lots of people who are just trying to help. Even if it means Damning the world Entire.

Hurt People Hurt People. Because Joel Couuldn'T Bear to Letther Daughter Be Killed, Another Girl's Father Diaed. Abby Hates Joel for Murdering So Many Fireflies, and From Ruing Any Hope of A Cure For Cordyceps, butly Mostly She Just Hates Him Because the Doctor Who Was Trying To Synthesize The Cure was Her Dad. Joel Responded to the loss of sarah by sealing off his altogether for two decades. Abby Responds to the loss of her father by turn Her Heart Into a White-How Furnace Fueling a Revenge She Knows She Will Get One Day.

A Revenge that She Gets Today, here, in This Shocking, Stomach-Churning, Seemingly Unthinkable Episode. Joel Dies Because Abby's Father Died, Because Sarah Daed, Because the World Diad. Hurt People Hurt People.

And and The Last of Us Won't be the same. Can't be the same. Because Joel Is Gone.

This episode, Written by Craig Mazin, was direct by Mark Mylod, Who Spent the Last Few Years As the Chief Director of Successionand has some experience being behind the room for an episode of television featuring a death no one Saw Coming – At Least, Not at that particle Moment. HBO HAS A Long History of Character Deaths That Are As Shocking For Their Timing As For The Fact That Blue Happened At All: Logan Roy, Wild Bill Hickok On DeadwoodRalpie Citaretto on The Sopranosand, of course, Ned Stark Not Even Making It to the End of the First game of Thrones Season. And Now Joel.

In some cases, like this one, the timing is from the source material: Ned Lost His Head in the First A Song of Ice and Fire Book, The Real Wild Bill Was Only in Deadwood for a few days before he was shot from Behind, and Joel Dies Relatively Early in The Last of Us Part II. Mazin and Neil Druckmann Could Have Deviated From The Game. They couuld have strained Things Out So That Joel was Alive for Most or All of this Season, I know that Abby's Savage Torture and Murder of Him Came in the final. They couuld have decion that Pedro Pascal's Chemistry with Bella Ramsey is Just So Valuable to the Series That These Tore Up The Game's Script and Told A different Story. They couuld have done a Lot of Things.

Instead, they stuck to the plan. Joel Killed Abby's Father, SO Abby Stalked and Killed Joel. Hurt People Hurt People. Earlier in the Hour, Ellie Acknowledges The Rift Bethaeen Her and Her Surrogate Father, But Insists, “I'm Still Me, He's Still Joel, and Nothing's Ever Going To Change That, Ever.” But Now Something Very Much Has Changed That. Soon We will see this Particular Hurt Person Responds to Being Forced to Watch Her Favorite Person Be Murded in Front of Her. And we'll get to see what The Last of Us Becomes when it's not built Around Ellie and Joel's Relationship.

But that's Something We Can Reckon With After We've Spent The Next Week Absorbing This Devastating Plot Twist, and Consider How It and Everything Else in the Episode Played Out.

It's a Memorable Hour of TV, but one that Also Attempts A Bit of Misdirection On A Massive Scale, by Devolars a Good Chunk of Its Running Time to Jackson Coming Under Siege From Acture of Hundreds of Infected. That Story and the One About Abby's Group Are Tied Together in Various Ways, Not Least of WHHICH is that Abby is the One Who accidentally causes the Sound When Shenps and Falls Down in Cliff and Disturbs The Infected Horde's Frozen Slumber. But for a While, it Almamt Feels As If Mazin, Mylod, and Company Are Trying to District the Audience from the possibility that Joel Coul Die, and Soon, by Staging Their Own Version of the Battle of Helm's Deep – Now you prefer, Given That Mylod Directed a Half-dazen game of Thrones episodes

Their Version of the Night King's Assault On Winterfell.

None of which featured any action on this scale. We Know That This Series Can Do Big Action, Like the Rampage of Infected at the end of Last Season's Kansas City Two-Parter-Which, Like This One, Featured One of Those Giant Mushroom Monsters Known As Bloaers. But

Last of us

AS A Tv Show at Times Does Itself a disservice when it tries to too hard to three sequences as levels of a video game. Its Greatest Strength is in Its Characters, How They Interact, and the Terrible Choices They Are Sometimes Forced To Make. While there are a few People like Tommy and Maria Whom We care About Inside The Walls of Jackson When the Attack Happens, Everything and Everyone That Really Matters is Elsewhere in the Straitity. It's Exciting on Some Level To See Tommy's Well-Trained Troops Finding Different Ways To Round The Horde, From Firebombs

To Attack Dogs, but lastly That Stuff Largely Plays Asmpety Thrills – OR, Worse, Like Poochie Trying to Distances Us All From The Fireworks Factory that is Abby's Showdown with Joel. That Said, When Your Primary Method of Defense is made of Wood, It Doesn'T Seem Like The Best Idea To Light Your Your Attackers – Attackers Who are Biologically Program to ignore Pain and Keep On Coming Until they are Dead – On Fire, Does It?

It's clear That While All the Ex-Fireflies-Who Are Now Working With A Militia Based in Seattle, A City That She Tells Joel Is Not Particularly Safe To Visit-Want Joel Dead, Abby

REALLY Wants Him Dead. Like Her Prey Acted On That Terrible Day in Salt Lake City, She Doesn'T Even Seem To Care Much About Other People Getting Injured, or Worse, in the Process of Getting What She Wants. Things Are Too Hectic and Scary After She Unleashes The Sound For Abbies To Even Think About the Implications of What She Did. But ifi'd a Moment to Breathe, She Seems Likely to Have Thought That She was fine with it, Given That It Preventd Anyone else from Jackson from Intercepting Her, and provident the Stroke of Luck That Made Joel the One To Rescue Her. And when an incredulous Joel Points Out that She's Attacking Him After He Saved Her Life, She Snarls, “What life?” and begins to brutally beat on him with a golf club.Trending Stories The Show Doesn't Wallow in the Worst of the Torture, Cutting Away to Ellie and Jesse Being Forced to Choose Bethaneen Checking in Joel and Dina, or Going Back to Help Out The Town Once They See That's Under Siege. This is not a Choice for Ellie, Who of Course Steers Hers Horse Shimmer in Joel's Direction. (It's Also Not a Choice for the Show, Which is Why the siege is less compelling than it Should be; we're not remotely as investd in jackson as we are in Joel.) All the Fight Training She's Done With Jesse Doesn'T Amount to Wise Against a Larger Force That's Also Well-Trained, and Ellie Winds Up Pinned to the Floor, Forced to Watch As This Stranger Murders the Only Parental Figure She's Ever Known. It's Horrifying for Her to Watch, and for us to Watch Her, Because Bella Ramsey Once Again Holds Nothing Back. When Last We Saw the Two of Them Together in the Premiere, Ellie was giving Joel The Silent Treatment. So it's not just that he dies, but that he dies when they were sexingly on terrible terrible. Like Abby After She Sna Saw Her Father's Brains On The Floor, The Image of Joel Being Fatally Speared by The Wrecked Golf Club Will Never Leave Ellie's Memory. Hurt People Hurt People, and Ellie Knows the fact of the person WHO Hurt Her and Her Dad. No good can as of this from her. We have a Ways to Go to See How Much Narrative Good Will as of this for