The Last of Us is an exhilarating father-daughter dystopian epic, a genre unto its own

A still from The Last of Us.

We all know video game adaptations can be tricky, you have to constantly engage while doing justice to the already beloved characters. There is a fanbase to cater to, and a story to flesh out while filling the gaps that have been left by original makers. Many have entered this new arena and faced defeat, and in recent memory, only Netflix series Arcane comes to mind, which did a fantastic job of keeping things ‘real’ despite being presented in animation. But Craig Mazin’s issues were perhaps harder to solve. How do you make a series feel less like a cheap copy of the game, but its own thing when you are dealing with a whole new set, actors who are not recording things in a booth, but in real time on real ground?

Safe to say, Craig and Neil both passed with flying colours. In fact, Neil Druckmann, who had co-developed the game of The Last of Us, could have been more hesitant taking on the new job, having tasted failure in the form of Uncharted, starring Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg. For the unversed, that too was a video game adaptation, co-written and co-designed by Druckmann. The Last of Us is a perfect tribute to the video game, as it is its own beast. In nearly every episode, Craig and Neil have infused some new energy while maintaining their loyalty to the source material. The biggest example of this is episode three, featuring Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett where they play two survivalists at the end of the world who keep going for the sake of love. No doubt it is sensitive storytelling, abled by fantastic performances. But my personal favourites are episode fifth, and episode eighth.

But before we go into them, dissecting how they could be the cornerstones of the series, let us detour to where it all began. Pedro plays Joel Miller, a hardened survivor of a broken world, where he has lost his daughter Sarah. Yet, he goes on, because life goes on. Running through the beats of his remaining existence like a robot, until he crosses paths with Bella Ramsey’s 14-year-old feisty Ellie. One thing leads to another and Joel unwittingly finds himself in charge of Ellie, because she is invaluable; immune to the infection that turns humans into flesh-eating monsters with no control over themselves. Ellie is the one, or so a section of self-fashioned revolutionaries believe.

Before Joel actually manages to take Ellie to a place where she can be ‘tested’ for cure, they go through a series of rough encounters with various forms of undead, cannibals and pedophiles. Mazin wants us to know that this, the real world, even during a horrific outbreak, is worse than those who have been turned into zombies. We witness the craziness of this new disorder; but we also witness some hope, because it is the very thing that keeps pushing our leads forward in their miserable, traumatic journey.

The writing is neat, the dialogues so simple but cutting, that you are almost always left reeling post the conclusion of every succeeding episode. The production design, the sets, the painstaking details with which this universe has been built is remarkable. But it would all have been for nothing without Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey. In his parting note to his co-star, Pascal had penned a thoughtful message for her: ‘How interesting that something so huge and life-changing should happen so early in your life and so late in mine.’ And he is right, when you look at his work of over two decades, success has been slow but sweet for our new heartthrob. Bella, meanwhile, is sparkling, as Joel’s foster daughter. Together, they share a rare chemistry, which is palpable even in their interviews.

The father-daughter bond is sacred, and its sanctity is kept in the able hands of Pascal and Ramsey, who essay Joel and Ellie with deep friendship and kid gloves. While their relationship grows as the show progresses towards its doom, it is in episode fifth and eighth that we get to see the bigger arc it undergoes. In the former, titled Endure and Survive, Joel is shown reacting more favourably to Ellie’s jokes, growing somewhat vulnerable, and then finally protecting her protect others, all guns blazing. What an adrenaline-pumping, action-packed sight, concluded tragically with a couple of unfortunate deaths. As far as the penultimate episode goes, When We Are in Need, here too, we see that fierce bloodshed and paternal promise, more pronounced than it had been in the show until then.

“It’s okay baby girl, I got you.” That line is going down in television history for how much it managed to say with those seven words within seconds of Ellie and Joel embracing each other for the first time on show. It had to happen, it was a long time coming, and this delayed gratification was made sweeter because of us, the audience; we had been waiting and thank god, we were rewarded. But the cherished bit comes only after Ellie suffers a lasting mental wound. It comes at a great price. But in those aforecited episodes, The Last of Us comes across as a perfect blend of all things that it stands for — the love shared by Ellie-Joel, and the exciting pace that gamers would have expected from the adaptation.

Already, it has been renewed for a second season, with possibly more heartbreaks in store. Till then, it is endure and survive.

The Last of Us is available to stream on Disney Plus Hotstar.