I’m beginning to wonder if HBO‘s The Last of Us, for all its glorious cinematography, heart-wrenching performances, and epic action, quite simply is not “for me.” Besides being one of those sad people who has never experienced the rush of playing the original video games*, I also struggle with one of the show’s central conceits. That is, I don’t hate the zombies (or, er, I mean “Infected”). In fact, I find myself more and more feeling bad for these hoards of undead people, infected by a mushroom plague, and reduced to cannon fodder in a show that really doesn’t actually care about them in any meaningful way.
Yeah, that’s right: I feel bad for the zombies on The Last of Us.
My strange strain of empathy for these monsters-formerly-known-as-human-beings has created a barrier for my enjoyment of the show as a whole. I find myself wondering if I should be cheering for The Last of Us‘s heroes as they make hunting the Infected a game. Worse yet, Season 2’s introduction of the “Stalkers,” a new type of Infected that can think, strategize, and work together in pursuit of a common goal has made my feelings all the more muddy!
Why can’t I stop feeling sorry for the zombies in HBO’s The Last of Us!?!?
In case you’ve been living off-grid in an abandoned New England town during a zombie apocalypse and you haven’t heard about the HBO hit show, The Last of Us is an adaptation of Naughty Dog’s critically-acclaimed video game series of the same name. The Last of Us opens with pandemic sparked by the Cordyceps fungus leveling most of humanity in hours. The disease spread through contaminated flour, infecting hosts and transforming them into brainless husks set on one task, to bite and infect anyone left alive.
The Last of Us Season 1 followed jaded smuggler Joel (Pedro Pascal) as he guides 14-year-old Ellie (Bella Ramsey) across a post-apocalyptic America. Ellie’s mother was bitten during childbirth, rendering the girl miraculously immune. After the two bond on their journey, Joel refuses to let the revolutionaries in Salt Lake City operate on Ellie in hopes of creating a cure. He massacres an entire hospital to save his adopted daughter’s life. Season 2 deals with the fallout of that decision.
The Last of Us Season 1 didn’t crescendo with an epic battle between Joel, Ellie, and the Infected. Instead, Joel decided to basically go on a mass casualty spree, killing without abandon, so that he wouldn’t have to grieve the loss of Ellie. It’s a deeply amoral choice. Ellie wanted to volunteer herself to this cause and her sacrifice could have saved humanity. Heck, a cure could have saved the millions of Infected. Instead, Joel has the blood of dozens on his hands.
Fans of The Last of Us say these impossible moral choices are what makes the show so compelling. It’s about how love for one another can force us to ignore what’s right and wrong. Joel is noble, actually, because he loves Ellie that much. Me? I’m left wondering why if we can find compassion for Joel, why not the Cordyceps monsters?
Do I get why we should be afraid of the Infected? Absolutely. One bite and we become one of them, another flesh-starved mushroom monster in the hoard. Do I think the Infected should be hated? Absolutely not. They didn’t have a choice to become Infected. Furthermore, whether they are Clickers or Bloaters or newfangled Stalkers, they don’t hurt humans out of hatred. It’s a biological imperative. No more, no less.
In fact, the addition of the Stalkers in The Last of Us Season 2 only seems to underline that the Infected have some human still in them under that fungal mold. Watching the Stalker carefully hunt Ellie in the abandoned grocery store humanized the Infected like never before. In the same episode that Ellie laughs about taking out an Infected with a new sniper scope, this desperate female zombie is just trying to get around the intruder to her habitat. (At least, that’s how I read it.)
The more and more The Last of Us humanizes the Infected with their behavior and the more and more the HBO show pushes its human characters to acts of pure savagery, the more I feel like I’m not sure who I’m supposed to be rooting for to come out swinging. I care about the human characters, their journeys and their struggles. However, I also wonder if the end game shouldn’t just be the Infected victorious. At least they’re starting to work together well, you know?
The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 2 premieres tonight on HBO and MAX at 9 PM ET.
*I’m more of a Legend of Zelda and Stardew Valley on Nintendo Switch kind of gamer. We exist.
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