The Last of Us endingthat we saw in the 9th episode of the HBO series is almost identical to the one known from the game. However, not everything turned out as expected here. Of course, I have to warn you that the text contains spoilers, so before reading it, it’s better to watch the series, which is already available in its entirety on HBO Max platform.
The ending of The Last of Us – the final does not give satisfaction
I had the pleasure of watching the entire HBO series before the official premiere and my review of The Last of Us was extremely positive. I still stand by my opinion, because I believe that this is one of the best series of recent months, and maybe even years. Which does not change the fact that the ending of The Last of US does not give the same as the finale of Naughty Dog. This can be quite strange, especially since the final scenes are almost 1:1 carried over from the game. So why didn’t I feel the same after watching the whole thing as when I was playing? There are several reasons, and I would consider the main one to be that the series deprived me of the opportunity to influence the development of events. Although The Last of Us is linear and you can’t influence its finale, it is several hours of sneaking around, collecting leftovers and finally fighting the infected does its job.
The player gets to know the characters in a completely different way and there is immersion. It’s a process that allows you to “dive” into the virtual world and almost enter it in a way that movies and series will never offer. They lack decisiveness, even the apparent one. Yes, there were attempts, and they were quite successful, for viewers to have an impact on the plot (e.g. Black Mirror and Bandersnatch episode), but it’s still not the same as the game. Hence, after several hours in The Last of Us and doing everything to deliver Ellie safely to her destination, the finale had a completely different effect on a person than in the series. The last episode also seemed to be strongly … sped up. The scenes in the hospital, although they reflected the spirit of the game, lacked this emotional charge and, above all, they were conducted too quickly. A whole episode just for that.
The ending of The Last of Us is strong, even very strong. Joel kills the Fireflies only to save Ellie, and thus doom humanity to suffer further. It’s obvious that Joel sees Ellie as his daughter, and just as Ellie is aware that she’s been lied to by the man. In the game it worked perfectly, and in the series this emotional load was a bit lacking.
Danger? What threat?
Another thing that I didn’t necessarily like about the show was the fact that there were extremely few infected. Those who were one of the biggest threats in the game have been pushed to the margins here. I understand that the creators wanted to show and make the audience aware that the greatest threat is the other person, but I still lacked more emphasis on the infected. After all, it was them who were fighting. Ellie was supposed to be a cure, and meanwhile the danger caused by the disease was marginalized. Anyway, the 3rd episode of The Last of Us showed it very clearly, where for several years it was possible to avoid being infected, and it was people who led to the sad finale.
So it’s worth asking yourself – was the vaccine and Ellie’s sacrifice really necessary? The series shows that not necessarily. The game already gave the feeling that the threat is constant and very real, and the infected actually lurked for the heroes very often. You always felt like nowhere was safe. The series put a lot of emphasis on building relationships between the characters, which of course was a good script decision, but it doesn’t necessarily give you a “kick in the gut” at the very end, which is the case with the game.
The Last of Us series is a very good thing, although I’m unlikely to return to it as I do in the case of the game. I felt more emotions there, and although HBO rose to the occasion, creating the best adaptation of the game in history, I will stick with Naught Dog’s work anyway. The ending of The Last of Us in this version just speaks more to me.
