I want to state up front that I haven't played either of the "Last of Us" games. Spoilers for the first season, but not the second ahead.
"The Last of Us" is one of the HBO shows that has been the most affected by the WGA and SAG strikes, and the behind-the-scenes turmoil going on at Warners. The second season is only seven episodes, down from nine in the first season. It's based on "The Last of Us 2," but apparently covers less than half of the story from that game. I suspect that these issues would have already been testing the patience of the audience, even before we got into the various adaptation decisions that irrevocably changed the nature of the show. In short, this is a risky and difficult season of television, but it's not without some rewards.
Without getting into too many details. Season two of "The Last of Us" is a transitional year, where Ellie eventually emerges as the main character of the series, and a lot of new characters are introduced. We open on Ellie and Joel living in Jackson, Wyoming with Joel's brother Tommy (Gabriel), in relative safety. Other members of the community include Ellie's love interest Dina (Isabela Merced), her ex Jesse (Young Manzino), Tommy's wife Maria (Rutina Wesley), a therapist named Gail (Catherine O'Hara), and her husband Eugene (Joe Pantoliano). New villains include Isaac (Jeffrey Wright) and Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), members of a paramilitary group based out of Seattle. There are still plenty of the Infected around, and they're as significant a threat as ever, but the major antagonists this year are all human.
There's a time skip between the seasons so Joel and Ellie aren't quite the same as when we last left them. Their relationship has become much more complicated, as Ellie is now an adult who is doing her best to distance herself from Joel for a variety of reasons. The events of the season one finale are a major component of the rift, and both of them are still dealing with a lot of guilt and trust issues. Revenge is another major theme for several different characters, but most prominently Abby, who has connections to last season's Fireflies. I understand that she's supposed to be one of our new POV characters, but she doesn't get as much screen time this year as I was expecting. Neither does Pedro Pascal as Joel, which really leaves a void. Bella Ramsey is a solid performer, but she's better when she's playing off of Pascal, and pairing her up with newcomer Isabela Merced for so much of the season instead is a significant downgrade.
Still, there are a lot of great moments this season. I love that there's room for some of our veteran character actors like Wright, O'Hara, and Pantoliano to have some extremely affecting moments. Nothing is quite on the level of Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett's episode from the first season, but the potential is certainly there. "The Last of Us" has an extremely deep bench of talent, and I kept spotting familiar actors like Hetienne Park, Ariela Barer, and Danny Ramirez in minor roles. It's impossible to predict where any episode is going to go, and even who's going to survive the next five minutes. The shrinking episode numbers aside, "The Last of Us" still boasts a large budget and prestige television production values. A massive scale Infected siege on Jackson is one of the major highlights of the year. And yet it's nowhere near as impressive as an episode later in the season, made up almost entirely of intimate dialogue scenes.
However, there's no getting around that the season ends prematurely, and it feels like the show has turned a corner into much dicier territory. Like "House of the Dragon" last year, the lower episode count is definitely a problem, but I suspect the real issue is that both series are trying to stretch out the life of their available source material. "The Last of Us" could make it work with the talent that it has, but it'll be an awfully long time before we find out - maybe too long for some fans. Season Three won't be here until 2027 at the earliest.
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