Spoiler Alert: Spoilers follow for The Last of Us Season 2, Episode 5There are only a handful of episodes left in its second season, butThe Last of Usjust keeps upping the brutality with each passing week. For a series that began as a character-driven slow burn, it’s admittedly surprising how action-packed its sophomore outing has been. Yet it feels appropriate to the story, asEllie’s quest for revenge over Joel’s murderhas forced her to get her hands dirty in a way the show hadn’t permitted previously.
It goes without saying that “Through the Valley” will probably not be topped, as it deftly balanced a massive action set piece with intimate emotional devastation in a way that felt like a miracle. But a sequence halfway through Season 2, Episode 5, certainly puts up a good fight, delivering perhaps the show’s most purely terrifying infected attack yet. It’s even more impressive considering it was written specifically for the series.
The Last Of Us
The Last of Us is a post-apocalyptic drama series set two decades after a global catastrophe. It follows Joel, a seasoned survivor, who is tasked with escorting Ellie, a teenage girl, across a desolated United States, transforming into a harrowing journey of survival and companionship.
‘The Last of Us’ Uses the Stalker To Terrifying Effect
The Last of Usintroduced us toa horrifying new infected variant, the Stalker, in its second season premiere. As their name suggests, they’re much smarter and faster than their compatriots, spending time specifically planning their attacks and surprising their victims. As we saw previously, they’re much harder to kill, as Ellie was bitten in her first encounter.
In the newest installment, Ellie and Dina finally begin making their moves against the WLF, specifically targeting Nora, who works in the local hospital.As they hide out in an abandoned warehouse, they suddenly notice a stalker trapped inside with them. But as they make plans to trap and kill it, several more appear, and to make matters even worse, any potential gunfire runs the risk of drawing the attention of WLF soldiers.
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Jeffrey Wright reprises his role as one of the most vicious villains from the video game in ‘The Last of Us’ Season 2.
With increasingly limited options, Ellie decides to use her immunity to her advantage and orders Dina to run inside a fenced-off area for safety, so both can individually shoot down the stalkers. But even this proves easier said than done, asa particularly strong infected comes close to killing Ellie, while several other stalkers corner the protected Dina and start breaking through the fencing.
However, when it seems like the end for both of them, a mysterious figure appears and kills the infected surrounding them. Their rescuer is revealed to be Jesse, having traveled to Seattle with Tommy (going back on what seemed a major change) to give them extra protection. But more stalkers come their way, so the trio makes a rapid escape from the area, knowing that the mass gunfire will attract WLF members, and they ultimately take cover amid a particularly gruesome Seraphite ritual.
‘The Last of Us’ Keeps Delivering Fantastic Original Material
As previously mentioned, this sequence was written specifically for the show. In the video gameThe Last of Us Part II, the lead-up to finding Nora includes an encounter with several stalkers. However, it plays out much more like a traditional enemy encounter, and the player isn’t allowed to progress without killing all the infected. Additionally, the level takes place well after Ellie has already reunited with Jesse, so he never has to come to her rescue.
However,the biggest difference in how the show frames the encounter comes from how it directly involves Dina. In the game, Dina stays at the hideout and rarely becomes involved in any of the Seattle actions due to her pregnancy. However, the series has already significantly expanded uponher romance with Ellie(arguably improving upon it in many ways), so she’s now a fully willing participant even as her partner regrets involving her.
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Internet trolls are in a predictable uproar over the love scene between Ellie and Dina in ‘The Last of Us’ Season 2.
Thus,the stalker encounter is significantly more emotionally involving, partly because we know that, for Ellie, Dina represents a light at the end of the tunnel, and raising a child together seems a more fulfilling prospect than her revenge quest. Bringing Dina in on the action thus gives Ellie more to lose, especially knowing that only one of them can survive the infected bites. As a result, the sequence is less about fighting off a horde of undead than maybe the series’ core thematic conceit: how far we go to protect the ones we love.
This is all before getting to how well-crafted the set piece is on a technical level; it slowly builds the suspense to a breaking point before unleashing chaos in almost impossibly quick bursts. Shots are rapidly cut together, sometimes to the point where it’s hard to see what’s happening, but this is the rare instance in which that works, as it serves the overwhelming feeling of the encounterfor the characters. It’s yet another prime example of how the show keeps upping its game in the action department, and how its changes to the source material are arguably enhancing the story.The Last of UsSeason 2 is streaming onMax, with new episodes every Sunday.
