The Final of Us exploded onto HBO with a large sequence premiere, scoring 4.7 million viewers for its opening installment. It’s HBO’s second-biggest premiere since 2010’s Boardwalk Empire, surpassed solely by a sure dragon present. With its second episode, The Final of Us explodes in a literal approach, because the present’s fungal foes lastly arrive in earnest, and one occasion member exits the stage in tragically early and fiery trend.
Directed by Neil Druckmann, co-creator of the Final of Us online game and present alike, episode two, “Contaminated,” lives as much as its title, taking us all the way in which again to the origin level of the extinction-level occasion: Jakarta, Indonesia, briefly referenced within the sequence premiere. If John Hannah’s Physician Neuman referred to as the mushroom apocalypse again in 1968, then College of Indonesia mycology professor Ibu Ratna verifies it right here in 2003. The scientist (performed by Indonesian appearing icon Christine Hakim) spends the final day of her life earlier than the autumn of civilization a lot the identical as Pedro Pascal’s Joel: consuming a meal, maybe not considering a lot of the day forward. Then, a pair of troopers seem within the restaurant she’s eating in, unannounced. They escort Professor Ratna to a facility to assist them verify the federal government’s worst fears: a human host contaminated by a deadly fungal pressure, one that ought to not exist in people in any respect.
“Cordyceps can’t survive in people,” says Ratna, leaning on her years of experience, denying the reality on the microscope slide proper in entrance of her. However there’s no room for denial when she sees the an infection thriving in a human physique, chilly and bare on an post-mortem desk, a white internet of tendrils sprouting beneath the floor of the pores and skin, extra embedded within the throat. An empathetic, however visibly terrified army official (Yaya A.W. Unru) sits down with the horrified Ratna, to inform her how they got here throughout this Cordyceps-infected corpse. (Corpse-dyceps? No? Hear, I’m simply making an attempt to lighten the temper right here. It’s the tip occasions!)
Successfully, the lady violently attacked a variety of colleagues at her place of business, a flour and grain facility. (Not a joke: a widespread variety of followers left the Final of Us sequence premiere pointing at bread because the supply of the apocalypse, with Joel’s half-assed Atkins Weight loss program, or possibly simply his incapability to make a grocery run, actually saving his life. It sounded pretty ridiculous within the second, however who’s laughing now?) Whereas the oldsters the lady attacked have all been dealt with—as in, executed “based on process”—there’s no accounting for the one who bit the contaminated girl, and no accounting for fourteen lacking coworkers both. The army official begs Ratna for steering on what to do subsequent.
“I’ve spent my life finding out this stuff, so please pay attention rigorously: there isn’t any medication, there isn’t any vaccine,” Ratna tells the officer. When pressed on what they will do to cease the thread, Ratna’s reply is a single, horrible phrase, spoken in English: “Bomb.”
Twenty years later, we see the outcomes of Professor Ratna’s scientific steering, as distant from Jakarta as a bombed-out New England. Joel and his associate Tess (Anna Torv) proceed their mission to securely escort a youngster named Ellie (Bella Ramsey) to what’s left of the Massachusetts State Home in Boston. However very like Ratna, Joel, and Tess are having bother believing what they’re seeing: Ellie has examined optimistic for Cordyceps, and but, she’s not a monster. Simply as Cordyceps rising inside people was as soon as thought an impossibility, Ellie’s obvious immunity swings issues again within the different course. Towards all recommendation from Firefly chief Marlene (Merle Dandrige), Ellie tells Joel and Tess all about her chew, and her resistance to the reason for mankind’s near-extinction.
“There’s a Firefly base camp out west, with medical doctors engaged on the treatment,” says Ellie. “No matter occurred to me, is the important thing to–”
“–discovering the vaccine,” says Joel, ending the sentence, incredulous about what he’s listening to. “That’s what that is? We’ve heard this one million occasions … this isn’t going to finish properly, Tess. We have to return.”
In one other universe, in one other present totally, Anna Torv as soon as embodied a soldier who encountered stranger conditions than fungal zombies; maybe some measure of that acceptance has leaked over from Fringe to The Final of Us, as Torv’s Tess shuts down Joel’s pitch to show again round to the quarantine zone, and as an alternative decides to complete the mission of delivering Ellie to the Fireflies. By the tip of the episode, you may think about Joel’s plea ringing via no matter’s left of Tess’s ears.
