In “The Last of Us’ debut recap, a hardened survivor named Joel attempts to traverse a dystopian world where a fungal infection has transformed the majority of the population into rabid cannibals…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
Let’s get this out of the way to start — I’ve never played “The Last of Us” videogames.
While there are surely millions of players who are unbelievably excited that a prestige network like HBO decided to make a serious adaptation of the popular game, it’s not something I’ve personally taken the time to explore much less conquer. That said, the concept and the story behind “The Last of Us” has always been intriguing, especially after hearing so many reliable critics describe this as perhaps one of the greatest videogames in history.
So as we recap “The Last of Us” series, please understand that I’ll be detailing what actually happens in the show — not comparing this to the game much less trying to pick out every single Easter egg that might pop up from episode to episode. There are certainly going to be plenty of those breakdowns out there but in many ways, I’m excited to check out this series while knowing very little about it beyond the story that really starts to unravel in the debut episode.
The series actually opens and plays out over three separate time periods.
The first is back in 1968 during a television debate show where a pair of doctors are discussing a potential global pandemic that could serve as a serious danger to the human population. While one physician describes a typical viral infection that could eventually wipe out millions, the second scientist is much more concerned about another type of threat that’s rarely mentioned.
This scientist believes that a fungal infection might actually be the deadliest threat awaiting mankind, especially if the Earth suddenly starts to heat up and the fungi adapt to the surroundings. Under typical circumstances, a fungus can’t survive beyond 94 degrees, which means it can’t really grow or fester inside the human body.
But this doctor asks about what happens in the temperature on Earth continues to gradually tick upwards and the fungi adapt to the surroundings to survive longer and under harsher conditions. The doctor explains that a fungus won’t just infect the human body but it has the ability to completely alter thoughts and commands — potentially controlling a person like a puppet and the fungus is holding onto the strings.
That’s where we start.
Where we end up is more than 50 years later when that scientist’s worst nightmares come true and a fungal infection has wiped out the population by transforming people into mindless killing machines. Of course much like other apocalyptic series such as this one or say “The Walking Dead,” it only takes a little bit of time to realize that the thing you should fear even more than the deadly fungal infection taking over the planet are the people who will literally do anything to survive it.
With that said, let’s get to our full recap for “The Last of Us” recap for the debut episode titled “When You’re Lost in the Darkness”…
Happy Birthday to You
Following that harrowing warning from the scientist in 1968, we fast forward to Austin, Texas in 2003 where a military veteran turned contractor named Joel is waking up at home with his daughter Sarah as she prepares to celebrate his birthday. She makes him breakfast and he promises to return home with a cake later that night but for the time being, Joel has bigger issues with a problem at the construction site he’s overseeing alongside his brother Tommy.
After snatching her dad’s old watch and some money from his sock drawer, Sarah heads off to school where everything seems relatively normal — outside of one of the students in her class twitching while sitting in his seat. Sarah doesn’t think much of it as she leaves school and catches a bus to a different neighborhood in Austin where she’s gone to a watch shop to have her father’s time piece repaired.
But as she awaits her father’s watch returned to her, one of the owners of the business comes rushing out of the back to inform everybody that the store is closing. She’s panicking over some news she just received and Sarah is rushed out of the store — thankfully after she retrieves her father’s repaired watch.
Back at home, Sarah visits with her elderly neighbors, who seemingly adore her and she spends time with them often. After being force fed some cookies along with a living room sermon, Sarah notices that the wheelchair bound grandma is also twitching, similar to the boy in school.
After returning to her house, Sarah waits for her father to come home but Joel doesn’t arrive until 10 p.m. — an hour later than he promised and without the cake he said he would pick up. Still, Sarah is excited to give him the repaired military watch that had been sitting at the bottom of his junk drawer and she even confessed that he effectively paid for it after she stole the money from him.
Sarah also presented her father with a DVD to one of his favorite movies and so they sit down to watch it together. Before long, Sarah is asleep but Joel continues watching until he gets a frantic call from his brother Tommy.
It seems he was involved in a bar fight after a patron wigged out and started attacking a waitress. Tommy knocked the guy out cold but he ended up being arrested and now in jail, he’s noticing that things are getting even stranger with the behavior of the other prisoners.
So Joel puts Sarah in her bed and quietly slips out of the house to bail out his brother from jail.
A few hours later, Sarah wakes up to the noise of explosions, helicopters and lights flashing throughout her neighborhood. Her father is nowhere to be found.
She looks around the house and she’s understandably spooked by all the odd events happening around her neighborhood but then Sarah is startled after her next door neighbor’s dog comes jumping on her front window. Sarah has no idea how the dog got free but she attempts to return the pooch to its owners until it freaks out and runs away.
That’s when Sarah notices that her neighbor’s front door is ajar.
She heads inside calling out to the people who live there but no one answers. Sarah gets deeper into the house and she then notices one of the people is laying on the ground, bleeding out and near death. She gasps for air but then turns her head to notice the elderly grandmother is munching on her own daughter — with a crazed look in her eyes and strange mushroom like tentacles growing from her mouth.
When the grandmother decides to come after Sarah, she runs out of the house and directly into the arms of her father as he arrives back at home with Tommy, except they are just as frantic. Joel ends up killing the grandma with a wrench and he takes Sarah into the truck as they prepare to make a quick getaway.
Driving through the neighborhood, Sarah sees the world is falling apart — houses are on fire, people are attacking other people and police cars are flying down the street. Joel and Tommy are desperate to escape Austin before things get even worse but every turn leads them to a dead end.
When they finally think there’s an avenue to escape, Tommy’s truck gets hit and overturned, which leaves everybody vulnerable inside. Joel awakens to discover that he’s all right, Tommy is just fine as well but Sarah has an injured ankle and can’t walk on her own.
An ambulance then crashes into the truck, cutting off Joel and Sarah from Tommy but they all decide to meet near the river so they can figure out where to go from here. As Joel picks up Sarah to begin running away, they soon run into a group of infected people munching down on human dinner but the scent of prey alerts at least one of the mushroom headed crazies to come after them.
Joel and Sarah rush through stores and down alleyways attempting to escape but the crazed cannibal continues chasing after them. It’s only thanks to a bullet from out of nowhere does the infected person stop chasing them and that’s when Joel realizes that their savior was a soldier that just arrived in town.
Unfortunately the soldier isn’t there to save them because after talking to a superior officer, the gun turns towards Joel and Sarah because they might be infected. The soldier opens fire as Joel and Sarah fall down a hill behind them trying to escape.
The soldier follows and he’s about to put a bullet in Joel when his helmet explodes and blood goes flying. Tommy caught up to them just in the nick of time to stop the soldier but it turns out he wasn’t quite quick enough because Sarah took a bullet in the stomach.
Joel attempts to save his daughter but the damage is already done. Sarah dies in his arms.
A Fungus Among Us
Another time jump — this time 20 years into the future and we’re in 2023.
The location is the Boston quarantine zone, which is now under military rule thanks to FEDRA — the Federal Disaster Response Agency — and the restrictions are put in place to keep people inside and prevent the infected getting anywhere near them. In fact when a young child approaches one of the outer gates, he’s welcomed inside and told that he’s safe now — only until a soldier tests him and the result is positive for the Cordyceps virus — the fungal infection that has essentially wiped out the majority of the population on Earth.
We then discover the boy is dead and his body is being burned along with anybody else who’s infected, which is where we’re reunited with Joel. He spends his days loading bodies into the burn pile, which earns him credits that the people living in the quarantine zone can then exchange for food and other supplies.
After losing his daughter under such tragic circumstances, Joel is a much different person than the one we met back in 2003. He’s a hardened man, left nearly broken by the world around him yet Joel is a survivor and that comes in handy in this post-apocalyptic hellscape.
When he’s not shoveling bodies into the fire, Joel doubles as a smuggler — getting necessary items in or out of the quarantine zone including drugs — which helps him maintain his cost of living. He’s also quietly working towards an escape from the Boston quarantine zone because the military presence there is only getting worse and the conditions in the camp are following along.
Joel has partnered with a new girlfriend named Tess, who is just as capable and perhaps even a little slicker with how she deals with people. We meet Tess as she’s working to secure a car battery that will eventually go inside a truck that will allow her and Joel to escape this place once and for all.
The urgency of leaving the Boston quarantine zone is made even greater after Joel discovers that his brother hasn’t contacted him by radio for the better part of the past three weeks. It seems Tommy took a job out west in Wyoming and he’s supposed to check in with Joel but now he’s gone missing and there’s no clue where he’s gone or if he’s even still alive.
Desperate for answers, Joel decides he needs to get out of the Boston quarantine zone now if he’s ever going to see his brother alive again. He gathers up his belongings and along with Tess, they plan to break into a building to steal the car battery that they were originally supposed to buy until the dealer screwed them both other.
After traveling through a subway tunnel to gain entrance to the building, we get our first real look at the aftermath of somebody who’s been completely infected and overrun by the Cordyceps virus and it’s not pretty.
Joel and Tess finally make it upstairs only to discover their contact and all of his men have been killed. A little girl spills out of a nearby room trying to stab at Joel with a switchblade knife but he quickly subdues her until two more people arrive with guns pointed at them.
One of them is Marlene — she’s the leader of the Fireflies resistance group that is constantly fighting back against FEDRA and apparently the person responsible for sending Tommy across the country and away from his brother. Based on Marlene and Joel’s exchange, Tommy joined the resistance and that’s what took him to Wyoming.
Marlene then explains that she came here to take the same car battery that was originally meant for Joel and Tess except all of them discover that the crook ultimately planned to dupe them both. The car battery never worked so neither group were going to drive out of the Boston quarantine zone.
To make matters worse, Marlene and her partner both took bullets during the fire fight, which means they aren’t capable of traveling right now on foot. With FEDRA agents undoubtedly on their way to the building after so many gunshots erupted, Marlene knows that she’s out of options.
That’s when she offers Joel a bargain he can’t refuse — he leaves the camp and takes this young girl with him — he’s tasked with protecting her safety and ensuring she makes it to a separate Firefly camp where she’ll stay. In return, Joel and Tess will get a car along with all the supplies they could possibly need to make it to Wyoming to find Tommy.
Joel reluctantly agrees and he’s officially introduced to Ellie — a girl who we meet chained to a wall for several days until Marlene finally sets her free while explaining why she’s been taken.
It seems Ellie was bitten by one of the infected Cordyceps zombies except she never turned — she never transformed into a mindless, flesh-eating ghoul yet she still tests positive for the fungal infection.
With time running out, Joel grabs Ellie and Tess and they prepare to escape the camp.
On the way out of the quarantine zone, the group encounters a soldier patrolling the area — it’s the same one who bought drugs from Joel earlier in the episode. The soldier seems none too amused that Joel, Tess and this random girl are trying to escape so he’s forced to place them all under arrest.
He begins testing each one for the Cordyceps infection but before he can get to Ellie, she stabs him in the leg, which only infuriates the soldier even more.
The soldier points his rifle towards Joel and Ellie — and thanks to the spotlights flashing all around them, it looks eerily similar to that fateful night in Austin all those years ago when Sarah was killed. The trauma from that tragedy flashes in Joel’s head as he charges the soldier, slams him to the ground and proceeds to beat him to a bloody pulp.
He snatche the soldier’s weapon and prepares to grab Ellie and Tess when he notices that the testing device showed that one of them was positive. It only takes a second for him to realize that Ellie is carrying the Cordyceps virus yet the bite mark on her arm is completely healed and the infection never spread.
It seems that’s the secret that Marlene passed to Ellie after unlocking her shackles and setting her free earlier in the episode. Marlene discovered that Ellie didn’t get sick even after she was infected and now she might just be the most valuable asset on Earth.
There’s not nearly enough time for Joel to understand how Ellie is immune to the deadliest infection ever known to mankind so Joel quickly scoops her up along with Tess and they escape out of the final fence separating the Boston quarantine zone from the rest of the world.
Joel now has his mission to get Ellie to the next checkpoint where the Fireflies will provide him with necessary supplies to reach his brother but little does he know he may actually be protecting the very key to the survival of the human race.
As they exit the Boston quarantine zone, we return to Joel’s old apartment where his radio lights up to start playing a Depeche Mode song called “Never Let Me Down Again,” which was originally released in 1987. In the episode, Ellie discovered a code that Joel used to communicate with people outside the quarantine zone with music from different decades.
The only problem is 1980s music means trouble is coming — and that’s bad for everybody wandering out into the wilderness including Joel, Tess and Ellie.
“The Last of Us” returns with a new episode next Sunday night at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.
