Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to Stepan
Never Told You, a production of iHeartRadio. And welcome to
another sub sub sub segment of fictional women around the world.
(00:25):
We are continuing with our Last of Us content. This
will have spoilers for the most recent final finale episode
of the HBO show The Last of Us, which yes
it's not a sponsor, but just a heads up on
that there will be spoilers, some brief mention of the
second game, but not much. No spoilers, no spoilers. I
(00:49):
would also suggest listening to our Riley episode for more
on the interaction between Riley and Marlene. Marlene is who
we're talking about. I realized I didn't say, yes, we
were talking about Marlene, So let's get right into it.
Marlene is played by Merle Dandridge in both the twenty
thirteen game, the twenty twenty sequel game, and the HBO show.
(01:11):
She was the only one who was a voice actor
and motion capture of her character in the game and
played her the same character in the show, so it's
very very cool. You can see her get emotional about
it in the behind the show bit after the most
recent episode, and also a little bit in the kind
of making of the Last of Us. The characters also
(01:32):
featured in the comic American Dreams, as discussed in Our
Riley episode. She is the leader of the Boston Quarantine
Zone Fireflies are QZ Fireflies. She was a good friend
of Ellie's mother Anna. She was Ellie's protector from Afar
and the final quote antagonist I saw her described of
the game Slash movie. I have my beef with that,
(01:53):
but whatever. There are some key differences between her background
in the game and show, and I'll go over them.
But let's start with the game Slash comic. Marlene is, yes,
the leader of the Fireflies in Boston, and the Fireflies
are this organization or some call them a terrorist group,
depending on who you ask, in the world of the
Last of Us that are fighting against what they view
(02:16):
is this totalitarian fascist rule and control of this government
organization called PEDRO and some places across the country. The
Fireflies have succeeded in taking over the QUZI, but they
are being cracked down on and killed in most places.
Boston in particular, has suffered a lot of recent losses
at the stories beginning, and on top of leading this organization. Yes,
(02:40):
she watches over Ellie because of this promise that she
made to Ellie's mom Anna, who had been her friend
since before they outbreak, since they've known each other, like
what did they say, We've known each other forever essentially.
At one point, Marlene was close with Joel's brother Tommy
when he was a member of the Fireflies, and when
(03:02):
Tommy left the organization, he told Marlene she could go
to Joel if she was ever desperate. During the events
of American Dreams, Marlene saved Ellie and Riley from and
infected and denied Riley's request to join the Fireflies. After
a confrontation with smugglers and this like intense exchange between
the trio, Marlene gives Ellie her mother's switchblade and a
(03:24):
letter from her mom. Eventually, Marlene does allow Riley to
join the Fireflies, but oh if she promises to never
see Ellie again, because Marley wants Ellie to be safe
at this military school and even goes as far to
decide to send Riley to another QUSI. But Riley is
desperate to see Ellie one last time, so the pair
sneak out to the mall and Ellie convinces Riley to
(03:46):
leave the Fireflies and stay with her, but unfortunately they
get bitten and Riley dies and somehow Ellie doesn't turn
and this is when Marlene realizes Ellie is a mune.
So Marlene makes a deal with a smuggler named Robert
to get enough weapons to smuggle Ellie out of the QZ,
but the military attacks her in her squad, killing everyone
(04:08):
but Marlene, who sustains a shot to her side. And yes,
that's slightly different than what happens in the show, but
essentially the basics are there. Meanwhile, Marlene finds out that
it was Tess and Joel who have killed Robert. And
by the way, Marlene and Tess knew each other before
the outbreak as well, and they were like, weren't friends,
but they weren't enemies. So Marlene's out of options and
(04:31):
she offers these weapons that she was supposed to get
to transport Ellie across the country to Tess and Joel
in exchange for them getting Ellie out of the city
and to a rendezvous point where they'll meet up with
other Fireflies who will take her the rest of the
way to their final location, which you don't know what
it is. At this point, Ellie doesn't like this plan
(04:54):
wants to stay with Marlene, but Marlene tells her this
is the only chance that they have, and so Ellie
does go the smugglers. Marlene recovers and she and the
rest of the remaining Fireflies make the check across the
country to Salt Lake City, where the Fireflies have successfully
taken over the Quz, but they suffer a lot of
(05:14):
losses along the way, her and her group and it
really demoralizes them, and so their spirits kind arise when
they join the Salt Lake City Fireflies, but it doesn't
last long when they learned that the group that was
supposed to transport Ellie died at the rendezvous point and
they have no idea where she is if she survived,
and Marlene in particular goes really depressed and starts questioning
(05:35):
her leadership skills to the point she stops eating. She
thinks about running away from the Fireflies, and that's where
we see some big differences between the show and the game.
All Right, So her patrol reports spatting a man in
a little girl in the city and they bring them in.
At first, Marlene is thrilled that Ellie is survived, but
(05:55):
then she is informed that while they can reverse engineer
vaccine from Ellie's unique mutation, the procedure will kill her.
They asked for Marlene's permission, which she thought was kind
of a formality. They were going to do it no
matter what, so she does give them permission, but it
greatly pains her, and she records two messages to Ellie's
mother apologizing. And here's a quote I wanted to include.
(06:17):
Apparently there's no way to extricate the parasite without eliminating
the host. Fancy way of saying, we got to kill
the kid. And now they're asking for my go ahead.
The test just keep getting harder and harder, don't they.
I'm so tired, I'm exhausted, and I just want this
to end. So be it. Oh, I miss you, Anna,
Your daughter will be with you soon. Pretty intense. Marlene
(06:38):
insists that they tell Joel, that they tell him because
they owe him the truth because he got her here.
The others disagree. Some even tried to persuade her to
kill Joel, or that they should kill Joel, but she replaces,
I need to go back. Where did do was this
in the game? Where she's recording these messages that missed this. Yeah, yeah,
(07:00):
you find them. You find them throughout like the it's
the way you pick up. You pick up like these
like hand recorders and you listen to these messages. Wow,
I definitely play dad, don't you thought? Gameplay? Well, it's
kind of it's in the in PlayStation five. It comes
through your controller, so it sounds different, so it's kind
of hard to hear. In the first one, it's kind
(07:21):
of like one of the most annoying mechanics, which they
fixed in the second one. But when you're playing it,
you can't move and something could attack you. You're like
listening to it like or don't attack on attack. Oh yeah,
I completely didn't know. Okay, keep going, that was new. Yeah.
So they're trying to convince her to kill Joel, but
she refused to kill the one person who might understand
(07:44):
how she felt. So in the show they have this
line and the game they have this line where she's like, oh,
you were you got her across the country and it's
sort of realizing like, oh, he actually cares about her
now because he did notch at the beginning. So she
thanks Joel for transporting Ellie and tells him about the
vaccine and how it will kill her, and Joel of
course objects, but she tells him that this is bigger
(08:04):
than either of their feelings for Ellie. She tells her
squad to give Joel back his supplies and lead him out,
instructing them to shoot him if he tries to intervene
with the operation, and of course, Joel escapes, kills everyone
stops operation. Marlene follows Joel to the parking deck and
tries to stop him from taking Ellie at gunpoint, asking
how long before Ellie faces something horrible in the future,
(08:26):
how long before she dies, and tells them it's what
Ellie would want and he knows it. In a show
of peace, she lowers her gun, but Joel shoots her.
Marlene survives at first shot and begs him to let
her go, and he says, you'll just come after her
and shoots her again, killing her, which, interestingly enough, I've
seen a lot of arguments about whether or not Marlene
(08:47):
is dead. Yeah, she is dead. Everyone she did die.
I mean, it's one of those things like when people
were fighting about Riley, I was like, well they yeah,
they do feel like if I had and watched you
play through and knew what was going on. It would
feel like, did they just leave that up for maybe
something to come about later. No, So Jill lies to
(09:17):
Ellie about Marlene's death, about the fireflies, about the vaccine,
saying that they have given up on finding a care
and you do that is not the end of Marlene.
Just because of flashbacks, I wanted to include some quotes
(09:47):
from Dangers to close this up about this character. She
did say that Marlene has a heavier stillness in the
show because they wanted to be more quote realistic about
the weight of the apocalypse or something. That's not a
direct quote. I don't know why I did that. That's
basically what they were saying, a paraphrasing quote, I guess, okay,
(10:11):
But here is an actual quote from an interview with
her about the differences, because this is part of the
big the Big Fight. If you want to learn more
about the cr most recent last of his episode about
the finale between Joel and Marlene, So Danger said, well,
I would say there might be a question mark around that.
I know that Marlene didn't explicitly offer that information to
(10:33):
Ellie because she didn't want to alarm her but I
do think that they have a more pragmatic relationship. She
might have even alluded to it, which gives Ellie even
more conflict and not having had the agency that Joel
has taken away from her. Ultimately black and white, Yes,
they are both taking this choice from her, But I
do think that Marlene has given her a little bit
more information. I don't think she's explicitly lied to her.
(10:54):
She may be omitted some truth, but she would not
explicitly lie to her. Also, in the midst of this,
the relationship between Marlene Angel is fraught with a lot
of history between them. As Marlene put it, they're both
capable of so much, and they have abided with each
other in parallel lines. But there's a chasm and animosity
between them because of Marlene's relationship with his brother Tommy
as a firefly caused a physical and emotional rift between them.
(11:18):
So there's another element of him not giving any two
f's about what Marlene wants him this situation, even though
she's throwing out every argument in the kitchen sink at him,
trying to negotiate with him. Oh, I love it. You
can tell she put so much thought into this character. Yeah,
this is a character. Yeah, I think that's the thing.
(11:40):
It's like when you see the behind the scenes and
when you have each of the different actors who portray
someone else obviously but part of the show. They all
love this entire story and they feel like they are
a part of it, and I think because they are included,
they love it a little more. But they do get
to have a big say, and then the show and
the writers acknowledged them in the aftermath to able to
(12:03):
like process not only what they did in the game,
but also what they did in the show. So it
was lovely. But yeah, having her play this character was
so on point. She did an amazing job because it
was I don't know, I don't think anyone else could
have done that character the way she did it, and
she did She's already practiced it through like she's a pro,
So this probably only came like, other than a few
(12:24):
changes that they made, this was just like an old
hat for her. Yeah. Yeah, And she's such a great
complex character because she is the leader of this organization.
She has this connection to Ellie, she has this connection
to Joel, and yeah, I'll have a lot more to
(12:45):
say about it. In the most recent Yeah, I do
wish that they had played up their relationship, Marlene and
Ellie's relationship rather than just being like, oh I knew
your mother. Like I really wish they were like where
she was kind of a caretaker, you know, whether it's
like in sequence or whatnot, because she wasn't a show
in the game, right, So I kind of wish they
(13:07):
were able to play that up because that distance makes
it seem like she is an antagonist instead of being
a complex character. Yeah. I mean she's got a lot
going on, which we yeah, we did talk about. We'll
talk about. But they did. They certainly like as as
the character said, as the actor said, they made her.
There's more of a harsher kind of stillness with her
(13:28):
in the in the show. And I mean to say,
it's a painful thing of like her promising Anna, I
will take care of Ellie and then being the one
that's kind of like, I gotta make this decision because
she's got this like leadership thing going on. It's stuff. Yes, yes,
(13:48):
well I do love this character. Yeah, we had a
plenty to say in our most recent last first episode,
So go check that out if you haven't already. This
will be the end of last of us content from
now for now for now, but in the meantime we
are moving into Star Wars territory. But if you have
any suggestions please it's always let us know. You can
(14:09):
email us at stuff Adia mom Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com.
You can find us on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast,
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and also check us out on YouTube. Thanks as always
to our super producer Christina, our executive producer Maya, and
our contributor Joey. Thank you so much, Yes, and thanks
to you for listening Stuff and Never Told You his
(14:30):
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