'The Last of Us' season two is compelling but frustrating

There's a lot to love in TLOU's latest outing, but it's heavily constrained by the split-season format.

Kaitlyn Dever and Bella Ramsey in The Last of Us season 2 (HBO)

I love The Last of Us. True for both video games and the ongoing television series, few properties use fantastical backdrops (such as a mushroom-fungi-zombie apocalypse) to tell stories that are so deeply rooted in the complexity of human relationships and emotions. You might show up for the zombies, but you stay for the people – a claim that should ring true for any high-concept series but rarely does. It’s also a story that holds you accountable for those feelings; actions have consequences in this world, as do where we, the viewers, choose to place our allegiance.

But that emotional depth was more muted and isolated than I would have hoped in the show's recently concluded second season. Despite some standout moments and episodes, The Last of Us strays away from its semi-episodic format in favor of something much more serialized and sprawling. That isn't necessarily a problem, but we're only getting half the story here, not a full adaptation, and I have a hard time cutting it a lot of slack when we have to wait two, maybe three years for the rest. I don't have an inherent issue with splitting a single story across two seasons of television, but you have to factor in audience retention and investment. The second season of Squid Game, for example, is structurally similar to TLOU in that it only tells one half of its final story. But Squid Game shot both halves back to back, and season three will air just six months after the second. That isn't the case for The Last of Us.

Don't get me wrong, I understand why it takes so long to produce. There isn't a show on television that looks this damn good. But when your story hinges on the extremes of human emotion rather than Thrones-esque battle sequences, it's simply not good enough to put a pin in the middle and circle back in several years. It doesn't help that my favorite stuff this season was, somewhat unfortunately, everything that felt like a postscript to the first season as opposed to a genuine continuation. In other words, everything with Joel and Ellie.

The porch scene in episode six, when Ellie finally learns the truth from Joel, was beautifully written and performed and made me cry like a baby. It was also an emotional crescendo that consequently made me less interested in everything that comes after. That scene takes place at the end of the video game, providing a moment of closure between Joel and Ellie and forcing the player to recontextualize all of the violence they've partaken in up to that point. But when we get that closure in the show with so much of the overall story left to be told, it nullifies the emotional thru-line and makes everything less compelling moving forward.

Stacking the Joel flashbacks into one episode makes for a tremendous and gripping hour of television, but it only really works in a vacuum. The story – this specific story that they're trying to tell – needs the emotional spine of Joel's memory to keep Ellie's motivation in perspective. To add some depth and humanity to the otherwise brutal path that she travels down. I totally understand Druckmann and Mazin wanting to include the porch scene in season two, as it probably wouldn't resonate the same a few years from now. But putting it here does a disservice to the story as a whole, and gets back to my original complaint of splitting one game into two seasons. This shouldn't have been a problem in the first place!

I'm telling myself to chalk this issue up to the technical constraints of prestige television. It was probably unfeasible to make a single season that was twice the length of what we got without compromising the quality in one way or another. I understand all of that. It's just frustrating that the audience has to pay the price.

I've spent most of this article complaining, and will continue to do so in a moment, but I want to stop and convey just how much love and respect I still have for this show and everyone involved. The Last of Us distinguished itself from the beginning on the strength of its ensemble cast and the genuinely top-tier production value, and all of that is still present. This show is a visual marvel and I only feel comfortable criticizing it harshly because of how much love I ultimately have for it. I also respect the courage it takes to bring the second game to television knowing full well you'll be subjected to the same legions of misogynistic, bad-faith criticism that plagued the release of The Last of Us Part II. Everyone involved in this show rocks, plain and simple.

But that's also what makes me so frustrated. They're all so damn talented, how could these problems not have been ironed out?

I was surprised at how little change was implemented to the divisive Ellie/Abby structure that results in a three-day time jump halfway through the story. It makes sense in a video game to separate their parallel storylines, as it would be jarring for a player to constantly switch back and forth between two very distinct characters and situations. But that's not a constraint you face on television, where you can bounce from perspective to perspective with ease, and leaves me questioning why they wouldn't combine the two stories into a sequential chain of events. What are we really gaining from this format, especially when the show already has to go out of its way not to dip into Abby's perspective? The sequence of Ellie being captured by Seraphites in the finale only to be miraculously saved by an act of god would resonate more if we knew what was happening on the other side of the equation. As it stands, that scene lacks any real tension and feels unnecessary without the rest of the context.

One of the most impressive elements of the show's first season is the way in which it seamlessly adapts itself from the video game world to the small screen. You never feel like you're watching a video game, thanks in large part to the expanded roles that much of the supporting cast takes on. Characters like Bill, Frank, and Kathleen are given complete character arcs that make the story feel much less like an A-to-B video game and more like a "proper televisual experience," for lack of a better phrase. Season two still has dynamite guest performances across the board, but with the exception of Catherine O'Hara and Joey Pants, none of them are given enough focus to tell the sort of micro-stories that truly elevated the first season.

Season two, and especially the finale, may have tempered my enthusiasm a bit going forward, but I'm still intrigued as to how this will all play out. My faith remains behind Druckmann and Mazin, even if I'm less than excited at the prospect of the show being stretched into a third season, let alone a fourth. It's possible this will end up being a Feast for Crows / Dance with Dragons situation, where we need both halves of the story to truly appreciate either. But that's a scary precedent to consider.

Despite my fondness for the second game (and the second season, to an extent), I wonder if the first installment is simply too perfect for a sequel. The (first) Last of Us is a generational piece of storytelling with one of the greatest endings in all of fiction. Should Joel's lie have been where we said goodbye?