“When you are feeling lost in the darkness, look for the light. Believe in the Fireflies.” 

One day, the world collapsed in on itself. People were infected with a disease that caused them to seek others to infect, leading to worldwide devastation. Joel Miller, a simple handyman from Texas, lost his daughter to a military commander seeking to eliminate the disease at all costs. For twenty years, Joel and his brother pillaged, smuggled, and killed their way to survival, until Joel was tasked with a simple job: deliver a young girl with a strange immunity to the disease to the Fireflies, a paramilitary group with the power to synthesize a cure for humanity… all they needed was her. 

Maybe someone in the world circa 2023 was wondering if HBO would have another earth-shattering television series on the same level as Game of Thrones, which ran eight seasons over nine years and broke viewership records with every consecutive season. Perhaps another person thought, “Surely they can’t recapture that, it was lightning in a bottle, GOT can never be beaten.” 

Two years later, a similar question replaced it. It is no longer a matter of beating Game of Thrones, it is now a question of if HBO can make part 2 of the best video game adaptation to date. 

The first season of The Last of Us was a stunning achievement. Boasting an impressive cast and great visual effects, it took one of the finest narratives in video games and modified it to work as a TV show, without sacrificing the core of what made the game so special. (This is partially because the game it is based on has an emphasis on character development.) It successfully recaptured the game; with the environments, the pacing, the characters, the balance of horror and beauty, while also ushering in a new generation of fans who were too young to experience the game at its release, and allowed non-gamers to experience the story. It boosted sales in the video games, both Part l and Part ll, and retook pop culture by storm. 

It did not go without criticism. Due to the progressive nature of the franchise, additional emphasis on inclusivity such as the story of Nick Offerman’s Bill received negative feedback from some parties who complained that the series is pushing an agenda. Significant changes turn the show into more drama-horror than the game’s horror-action set pieces, which does alter the pacing of the story. 

These common critiques of the first season are more of a proof that the writers (namely Craig Mazin of Chernobyl fame and franchise creator Neil Druckmann) understand their medium. Sure, coming off of an action game where you as the player are frequently forced to fight your way through waves of enemies to an episodic series where the action is quick, streamlined, and focuses primarily on character drama is a rude awakening — but one that proves that the writers are doing their jobs. 

For example, a major gameplay mechanic would be “listen mode”, which allows the player to “hear” through walls in order to detect enemies and other threats (like proximity bombs in the online multiplayer). Episode four of the show makes a point to highlight Joel’s deafness in one ear due to years of shootouts (among other things), which is a fun poke at players of the game. 

The third episode, “Long, Long Time”, is simultaneously the most critically acclaimed of the series thus far as well as the most divisive, due to its exploration of the love between two men. In the game, the Bill’s Town segment is one of the most formative for players, pitting them against tons of enemies, including the game’s first Bloater, with little breathing time between each encounter. The Bill’s Town segment of the show removes the ‘haunted house’ aspect of the game and instead relegates Joel and Ellie’s roles to smaller appearances at the start and end of the episode, focusing the story on Bill and Frank, the latter of whom is never seen in the game (save as a hanging corpse). It is an equally formative experience for people who have never played the game, telling them that this is what the rest of the show is going to be. Beautiful, tragic, and bittersweet. 

To say that Mazin and Druckmann “understand their medium” means that they understand the inherent difference between video games and television. Previous video game adaptations (like 2022’s Uncharted, another Naughty Dog game-based film) often devolve themselves into large CGI fight scenes and feature little in the way of characters. The same cannot be said for The Last of Us. It’s a vastly different experience to play a game and to watch a show. (it’s a vastly different experience to play a game versus watching someone play a game, though that’s a different story.) Although it would be cool to see Pedro Pascal fight hordes of fungal zombies with an assault rifle and molotov cocktails, it would lose its impact on television. As a player of the game, you feel a certain sense of success after overcoming the latest challenge the story puts you through, but without the controller, it lacks the same feeling, no matter how invested the audience member is in the characters. 

If anything, the season as a whole struggles with its pacing. For lack of a better example, the Rotten Tomatoes critics’ consensus for the season finale reads: ‘Swiftly paced to the point of feeling needlessly abbreviated…’ While it is certainly the most noticeable aspect of the finale, it is also an issue that befalls the second half of the season. The first five episodes maintain a great pace (two episodes for the story’s opening and the Boston arc, an extended episode for Bill’s Town, and two episodes for the Pittsburgh/Kansas City arc, all of which adapt the ‘summer’ chapter of the game) but after Joel and Ellie leave Kansas City, each of the subsequent chapters are merely single episode. For players of the game, episodes seven, eight, and nine feel especially shortened due to the removal of many of the infected featured in the game’s sequences, and the streamlined nature of the combative encounters. Episode seven, which adapts the DLC chapter, Left Behind, strips the story of its cross-cutting between the past and present, providing a feeling akin to only watching the flashback scenes in The Godfather Part ll.  Episode eight, which depicts Ellie’s struggle too survive through winter and conflicts with David, feels like a recreation of the game’s cutscenes edited together without the actual gameplay in between. 

Despite this criticism, the series’ premiere season is without a doubt one of the most important moments in horror and video game adaptations. The show is not a one-to-one comparison with the show, not better, not worse, just different. It honors the storytelling of its original medium while altering it to be a new experience for those who know the franchise, and vice versa. Whether or not Neil Druckmann’s claims of a third game not happening are true, the show is enough to be excited about and keep everyone busy for a while. 

The premiere episode of The Last of Us, season two, will air on April 13, on Max and HBO channels.