If The Final of Us has taught us something, to this point, it’s this: love can conquer something within the mushroom apocalypse, besides the mushroom monsters themselves. Joel realized this lesson the laborious method, first together with his daughter Sarah’s loss of life on Day Zero, and most just lately with Tess’s explosive exit in Boston. Now, it’s Ellie’s flip to be taught the lesson.
Enter: “Left Behind,” spherical seven of HBO’s The Final of Us, creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann’s riveting adaptation of the long-lasting online game. We beforehand heard the story of how Bella Ramsey’s Ellie sustained the chunk wound that ought to have killed her, however as a substitute recognized her as mankind’s greatest hope in opposition to the fungal apocalypse. Now, we’ve seen that second for ourselves, the tragic climax of a superbly tragic episode of tv.
Earlier than dipping into the previous, The Final of Us kicks proper again into the place we left off. An injured Joel has fallen off his horse and onto his again, seemingly misplaced to the world.
However regardless of the episode’s title, there’s no method Ellie is leaving Joel behind. She Ellie lugs her rugged companion to a close-by home. He’s acutely aware, however nonetheless badly wounded; even in his current state, Joel is aware of can be higher off racing again to Tommy and discovering security in Jackson. Along with his close-to-dying breaths, Joel tries to save lots of Ellie’s life. As an alternative, he solely reminds her of the final time a liked one left her behind.
The remainder of the episode flashes again to some weeks earlier than we first met Ellie within the confines of a Firefly protected home. Earlier than encountering Marlene and the opposite rebels, Ellie was a scholar enrolled in a FEDRA boarding college, studying the dictatorship playbook straight from the supply. As anticipated, Ellie doesn’t precisely slot in. She’s moving into fights together with her fellow college students, and receiving disciplinary motion after disciplinary motion because of this. After Ellie will get into one more blowup, a higher-up on the college named Kwong (Terry Chen) tries a distinct tactic: interesting to her inside fascist straight.
“It doesn’t matter what anybody on the market says or thinks, we’re the one ones holding this factor collectively,” says Kwong, with none trace of irony. “There’s a frontrunner in you, and someday, it may very well be your flip.”
Bella Ramsey.By Liane Hentscher/HBO.
Ellie takes the phrases to coronary heart, however just for just a few hours. Late within the evening, she’s woke up by a well-known face: her greatest good friend, Riley (performed by one other HBO repertory participant, Euphoria’s Storm Reid). Lacking for a number of weeks now, Riley reemerges with some information: she’s residing out her and Ellie’s teenage insurgent goals of working with the Fireflies, and she or he has a gun to show it. She additionally has a proposal for Ellie: “Include me for just a few hours, and have the very best evening of your life.”
Riley and Ellie sneak their method into an deserted constructing, discovering a lifeless physique and a few leftover booze. As they buzz previous the corpse and thru the rooftops, Riley tells Ellie all about Marlene and the opposite Fireflies. Ellie tells Riley that FEDRA will not be so unhealthy in any case; Riley shoots that rhetoric down swiftly, and it doesn’t come up once more.
There’s no sense in debating politics when the very best date evening ever is on the road. Riley takes Ellie to a shopping mall referred to as the Liberty Gardens mall, broadly considered sealed off by FEDRA, however really nonetheless operational if solely the place to look. Riley lights the place up, and the entire institution roars to life, the 2 teenagers together with it.
