We start with Ellie pointing her newly acquired pistol at herself in a mirror. Sporting a inexperienced jacket, it strongly echoes the well-known scene from Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver,” with Robert De Niro’s well-known “You speaking to me?” speech. Not like Travis Bickle from that movie, Ellie admires her gun with child-like curiosity, making pew pew noises and inspecting each side of her weapon. Ellie is a younger woman born right into a violent world, and it’s clear that a few of it fascinates and excites her.
Joel is outdoors siphoning gas for his or her truck, acquired from the property of Invoice and Frank. A really bored Ellie decides to bombard Joel with a ebook of puns, which additionally featured prominently within the online game. The way in which Ellie stares at Pedro Pascal’s exasperated Joel in between punchlines is an ideal show of how Ramsey captures Ellie’s insistence on being aggravating, but additionally very humorous. Ellie’s eyes widen, and her mouth and jawline tighten with anticipation as she unleashes one dangerous pun after one other. Up to now, Ellie is the closest factor this present has to comedian aid, and this episode is Ramsey’s time to flex these muscular tissues.
The pair drive via numerous scenes of destroyed Americana, together with this present’s second point out of Arby’s in a second consecutive episode. Tenting out for the evening, Ellie lets out yet another pun, and Joel solutions again with the punchline with a smile unseen by Ellie. In distinction to the sport, it appears this Joel is warming as much as Ellie a bit faster. That is portrayed once more as Ellie expresses worry of what may occur at evening. As an alternative of sleeping, we see Joel standing watch along with his rifle.
Because the pair drive additional west to Wyoming, the final identified location of Joel’s brother, Ellie asks Joel why he break up up along with his brother. It’s a protracted story, Joel says, to which Ellie responds, “Is it longer than 25 hours as a result of that’s what we acquired.” Ellie seems at Joel; her eyes flit to the street and again to Joel. She’s not letting this go. Joel relinquishes his robust man self as soon as once more, and explains that Tommy has at all times had a heroic but silly streak, searching for objective in causes. First, it was the Iraq warfare of the Nineties. Subsequent it was the Fireflies and the seek for a treatment. That idealism created the rift between the brothers.
Up to now we’ve spent an excellent quarter-hour with Joel and Ellie in conversations that weren’t within the recreation. After cementing their relationship, the present lastly returns to the sport’s story, besides as a substitute of Pittsburgh, the pair arrive in Kansas Metropolis, Mo., a extra wise, on-the-way location to Wyoming. In a scene ripped straight from the sport, the pair encounter a person pretending to be harm, and are jumped by the residents of Kansas Metropolis, now free of federal army rule. They crash the truck, and a firefight inside a laundromat is lifted straight from the sport. Joel shoots one of many attackers, which angers the remainder of the pack. This echoes how enemy combatants from the second recreation react, calling out their fallen comrade’s identify in an try to humanize the “villains” of Joel and Ellie as different individuals making an attempt to outlive.
This firefight ends very in a different way from the sport, with Ellie taking pictures an attacker off Joel. The militia that now guidelines Kansas Metropolis discovers the dying left within the wake of Joel and Ellie’s arrival, and report back to Kathleen, performed by a chilling Melanie Lynskey. Kathleen is the chief of the Kansas Metropolis resistance that efficiently upended and dismantled federal army rule. Now she’s hellbent on discovering “collaborators” who snitched to the army. She’s significantly focused on a person named Henry, who’s answerable for the dying of her brother. With out mercy or hesitation, Kathleen interrogates then kills her family physician in her seek for Henry.
Ellie taking pictures one other man is definitely a scene lifted from the sport in one other sequence. However the present merges her two character moments. It’s a skillful, sensible implementation too, because it helps set up a rising guilt inside Joel about his skill to guard Ellie not simply from harmful components, however from the trauma of the violence round her. Joel tries to speak Ellie via her emotions, however admits he’s not superb at this. “Yeah, you’re actually not,” Ellie responds in one other hilarious line.
Kathleen and her right-hand mercenary Perry (performed by Jeffrey Pierce, who performed Tommy within the recreation) discover one among Henry’s hideouts, and we be taught that he’s caring for somebody named Sam. Perry additionally factors out one thing else: Kansas Metropolis’s underground has some rising exercise that’s regarding. Kathleen is unbothered, as she is useless set on her revenge in opposition to Henry.
Joel and Ellie enter and climb up a taller constructing to discover a route out of town, and determine to camp inside for the evening. This episode is bookended by the 2 bonding as soon as once more. Ellie tells a joke about diarrhea, and Joel can’t assist himself–he laughs, and Ellie lastly will get the win she’s looked for a whole lot of miles. She’s getting underneath his pores and skin, and into his coronary heart. Instantly, the pair are awoken with weapons to their faces. Joel, Ellie and the viewers now get to satisfy Henry and Sam.
Some notes and observations:
- Kathleen’s resistance is an all-new aspect to the present. Within the recreation’s Pittsburgh, we knew nothing of the people organized in that metropolis, aside from that they efficiently overthrew the federal army. Right here, we see their plight and wrestle via Kathleen’s eyes, as she suffered significantly underneath army rule. This feels much like the characterization of the Wolves army from the second recreation, and provides some early welcome depth to how people in different cities reply to army rule.
- Henry and Sam are additionally launched another way. Within the recreation, Henry assaults Joel, mistaking him for one of many violent resistance members. Seeing Ellie makes him understand he’s not one of many “dangerous guys.” Right here, the 2 brothers get the leap on each Joel and Ellie, and we’ve but to know something about their intentions of doing this. That is most likely the weakest closing shot of the season up to now, however at the very least the viewers is rewarded with hotter, relaxed moments between our two protagonists.
- There’s a way of marvel in how Ellie discovers components of the previous world. She scarfs down canned ravioli and remarks how Chef Boyardee “was good.” When Joel grows annoyed together with her incapability to learn a roadmap, she snaps again that it’s her second day in a automobile. Joel could also be our driving protagonist, fairly actually for the primary a part of the episode, however Ellie is the viewers surrogate in understanding this world.
