The Last of Us recap episode seven: the most painful farewell of all | Television

This article contains spoilers for the television series The Last of Us. Don’t read unless you’ve seen episodes one through seven…

I can’t help but feel torn after this seventh episode. It has nothing to do with my enjoyment or the quality, but rather what it means for the rest of the series.

We pick up almost exactly where we left off, after Joel (Pedro Pascal) is stabbed, and end (a giant flashback in the middle) just a few minutes later with Ellie (Bella Ramsey) sewing him up, discovering a needle and thread.

While I’m pleased that even post-apocalyptic kitchens have a messy drawer, what’s next? Joel is still on the verge of death, they are miles from anything that comes close to safety and over 500 miles from the Fireflies hospital in Salt Lake City. Winter is coming and we only have two episodes left to wrap up.

I have full faith in this series, in my opinion it has barely made a misstep, so the showrunners should have earned our trust. But, with episodes eight and nine rumored to be only 51 and 43 minutes long respectively, I can’t see how it will all fit together.

three weeks before

The flashback sequence began with Ellie, Walkman, jogging in gym class before fighting with Bethany (Ruby Lybbert) and being dragged off in front of a sympathetic Captain Kwong (Terry Chen).

Then we saw Riley (Storm Reid) return. As inadvisable entries go, sneaking out a window and putting your hand over someone’s mouth while they’re sleeping would be there at best. During the apocalypse? It’s a miracle Riley made it out of that alive.

Thereafter, as they came across the dead body in the hallway, drank alcohol, played with Riley’s gun, and explored the abandoned mall, the tension rose. It wasn’t so much a question of if some of the infected were going to show up, but when and how many.

The dialogue along the way was sharp and funny, showing that even when the world has gone to hell and your best friend leaves you to join the revolutionaries, there’s still time to laugh. And crush.

Just as last week’s episode offered spectacular cinematography, this week was no less beautiful, despite being set in the confines of a dilapidated strip mall. The shot of Ellie looking out the balcony while Riley turned on the electricity was impressive.

After navigating “escalators”, we receive a lesson in the logic of looting. Footwear was highly desirable, soap and lingerie not so much. I can understand why no one was thinking of sexy panties while cordyceps were taking over the planet, but a few bars of soap probably wouldn’t have gone amiss.

If nothing else, the fully stocked Victoria’s Secret window allowed Ellie to think about wishing for a moment and wonder if Riley could ever see her like that. For the first and only time so far, we got a moment of vanity as Ellie stared at her hair in the reflection of the store window.

Next, the carousel, more alcohol, the photo booth, and then some on the Mortal Kombat II arcade machine that she and Joel found in episode three.

Of course, such bliss cannot last. We soon found out that Ellie and Riley’s glorious evening was also meant to be a painful farewell, just as we were given our first glimpse of an infected. From then on, it was merely a matter of time before they were attacked, not even the beautiful scene of them dancing with Etta James and the eventual kiss from her could delay their inevitable demise.

When it finally arrived, the attack was unbelievably violent, Ellie and Riley easily subdued, the frantic camerawork emphasizing the horror. The verification of their bites was heartbreaking, despite having been marked from the beginning.

We briefly flash back to the present, following Ellie’s search for medical supplies, before heading back to the mall, where Riley gave Ellie two choices: the second time this episode: finish it now, or continue to make the most of the time she has. they fit together. . “We can all be poetic and shit and lose our minds together.”

Whats Next?

We left Riley and Ellie crying at the mall. We know that Ellie is still with us, this was of course the moment that she found out that she was immune, and Riley is not. The assumption here is that Riley will change and Ellie will be forced to kill her best friend, no doubt using the gun Riley carries on her belt. By doing so, she will answer the question from episode four about Joel’s attacker not being the first person she shot. He has already lost the person he loved the most in the world. She’s not about to let the second one slip through her fingers.

I don’t expect us to see what happened at the mall, so unless next week’s episode features nothing more than Ellie sitting next to Joel, wiping her forehead and heading out to catch the occasional rabbit, expect a big jump. .

We have two episodes left, and as I said before, I’m a little worried about how much ground we have left to cover, but my hopes are still high.

Notes and observations

• I made a mistake in last week’s recap when I said that Ellie’s sip from Joel’s flask might have been her first taste of alcohol. She said “still gross”, not “so gross”. As we saw here, she had definitely taken a drop before. Apologies.

• Is it possible that the drink and bills the man had been consuming before his death in the hallway had been bought from Joel and Tess?

• The episode pretty closely followed the story of The Last of Us: Left Behind, the 2014 expansion to the main game. It’s a game of two halves, one about Ellie’s adventures with Riley, complete with Etta James dancing and kissing her. The other sees Ellie scouring an abandoned mall in Colorado for medical supplies to treat the injured Joel before moving him to a hideout to heal and wait out the oncoming heavy winter.

• Good music in this episode. We begin during Ellie’s gym session with All or Nothing by Pearl Jam (“It’s a desperate situation / And I’m beginning to believe / That this desperate situation / Is what I’m trying to achieve”), then moved on to Aha’s Take on Me (a giant nod to The Last of Us Pt II), a lullaby version of Just Like Heaven by The Cure which played on the carousel and ended with I got you baby by Etta James for Ellie and Riley’s mall dance.

• Kudos to Storm Reid for that performance as Riley, the epitome of exciting, cool, heady best friend.

• That Savage Starlight comic Ellie was reading in her room was similar to the one she and Sam discovered in the tunnel under Kansas City in episode five.

What did you think of episode seven? If you and your best friend were (almost) alone in a mall, what would you do? What’s next for Ellie and Joel? Give us your opinion below…