April 19, 2025 • 45 mins
Future Days. We return with our Last of Us reaction miniseries for season two! New characters, new enemies, more trauma, more drama and a rift between Ellie and Joel.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha for Stuff I've Never
told you production of My Heart Radio, and welcome back
to the return of our Last of Us special. This
(00:25):
is a thing we do where we react to the
Last of Us TV show, currently in season two. It's
two years later. Here we are again not a sponsor,
but they should really get on it. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
You know they have their own podcast, right, I know they.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Have their own podcast, but this is still good.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
We're doing it too, I'm just saying.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
But also, so these are coming out on Saturdays the
week about a week after the original episode that we're
talking about airs. There will be spoilers, but only for
that episode and the previous season and also the video game,
but not plot specific spoilers from the video game. We
(01:14):
have a lot of We're trying to protect a lot
of people from being spoiled, which just a quick warning
from me, if you don't want to be spoiled, do
not go well, actually, I don't even care. If you
want to be spoiled, don't go anywhere near the Last
of Us to read it. It's a very toxic place.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Oh really, just from the old stuff or yeah, two, okay, okay, well,
so we talked about the old stuff before the game stuff, and.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
We will talk about that. We will talk about that
as we get to the where that is really relevant.
But I just know I have a friend who after
who'd never played the game, and he would after the
episode had aired, he'd go and Reddit, and I was like,
don't do not do that for the second season. Just
don't do it. You're gonna be disappointed. It's not good. Yeah,
(02:11):
but we've been talking about it. I've been so excited.
A Samantha and I are getting to hang out while
we're doing it and having food and drinks and it's
so fun. So thank you as always Samantha for letting
me do that and letting me geek out about all
of this.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Next time, I'm going to keep account of how many
times you say oh no, because I'm pretty sure we
had least like double digits on this first round.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
It's yeah, because there's a lot there's a lot of
moving pieces in this. If you don't know, this is
based on the twenty twenty game. The last of most
part two. This is half of a season, is what
I'll say, and it actually might be one third of
a season of that. It is much The game is
much longer. It's double the length of the first game.
(03:05):
It is much more complicated. They've already been greenlit for
season three. I think they're going to do a season four.
Personally it's going to be much shorter, but I think
they're going to do a season for but just to
say it is much longer, and it's kind of a
half season. Also, you know, I was doing my rewatches
(03:26):
to prepare for this, and I accidentally watched one of
the ones that feature ASL, which.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
I need to watch that version, okay, yes.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
And it was you know, I unfortunately don't under UNDERSTANDSL
but it looked really cool. So listeners, if anyone was like,
oh this was a good, good or bad, let us know.
But that was neat all. Right, So, the way these
usually work is Samantha gives a recap of the episode
and then I just talk about all of these things
(03:56):
that I have have to talk about. But since that
we were talking about the first episode of the season,
I was going to give a really brief recap of
last season wherein we meet Joel and his daughter Sarah.
There is an outbreak, a fungus outbreak of corgeous steps
that turns people into effected. It spreads really quickly. The
(04:20):
army steps in, there's bombings, and Sarah is killed, and
Joel becomes very angry and shut off. We jump ahead
several years and he's a smuggler and he's tasked with
smuggling this young girl, Ellie, who it turns out she
is immune to the infection, and they travel across the
(04:46):
United States to find the Fireflies who are working on
a cure, and she is the key to that cure
because she's immune. They lose a lot of people along
the way, and eventually Joel warms up to Ellie and
sees her as a daughter like figure in his life.
(05:07):
But then it turns out an order to make a vaccine,
the Fireflies are going to have to Ellie will die
in the surgery, and so Joel kills a lot of people,
murders a lot of people, and takes Ellie, who is
sedated and unconscious, and when she wakes up, tells her
(05:31):
there is no cure they've been trying. There's a bunch
of other immune people can't do it. We're going to
go back to Jackson, Wyoming, which is where his brother lives.
His brother used to be a firefly, and she asks him, like,
I need you to swear to me. Is this true?
Is everything you said about the Fireflies show? And he said,
I swear, And that's where it ended. And that's right
(05:53):
where it picks back up.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Yes, as an FYI, again, the show's different from the games,
a little bit of variation, and we love that. Any
christ a lot and screams a lot, I do not.
And therefore, because I have not played the game as
much as Annie, I give the recaps so I can
stick with the show and hopefully not just spoilers. Annie
would be good about this, but we don't know. She
(06:15):
gets too excited about future thoughts. Yes, so we are
back with season one, and we start with an opening
scene of gravesite or in a group of people sitting
there at this grave site, and we discover and meet
Abby and her crew. Abby is a very important character.
She's very upset, she's very mad. She wants revenge. She
(06:37):
wants them to help her with their revenge, her being
her crew they're fireflies, and they all say, yes, we will,
but we first we have to find another crew of
fireflies or something or anyone mention enough Isaac at this point, okay,
where I go? And then after that, yes, they were
bound together to make sure that they find Joel or Joe.
They don't know with a girl that may or may
(06:59):
not be immune. That's a rumor, they say, and they
agree that thees first are going to go do this thing,
and then they're going to go find Joel or Joe.
And of course, in that moment, she says slowly and
they're like, what he's like, he has to die slowly,
So anger pulsating anger, we are introduced to Abby. Moving along,
(07:19):
we come back to five years later. We are now
in Jacksonville and we see people trying to work on
things on pipes because you know, things are happening. They
need to fix things. New people are trying to come
in a lot of conversation and we find out yes
they are taking a lot of refugees, but they don't
have a lot of space. We have the pragmatists, Joel
(07:40):
being like, you need to stop letting everybody come in.
We can't provide for everyone. He's also working with a
transmitter at the same time that he's supposed to be
the foreman. Then we are soon introduced to a new
Kido Dina Dina walks in and obviously they have good rapport,
and Dina asks, what did you do? Why are you saying?
Why Ellie so bad? Essentially and what did you do?
(08:03):
And they kind of have a small conversation about like, oh,
you know, she's a teenager or whatever, whatnot.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
And then here he.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Kind of lets his slip that he's working on his
life with a therapist. Hello, a therapist. We move on
and we see Ellie. Oh, she has grown up. She
is now nineteen and she is sparring with a very
big boy, big boy. At this point, we also meet Jesse,
very excited played by young Mazino. If you don't know,
(08:30):
he's a cool actor coming in as well, and we
had this exchange. Obviously there's some hostilities still because Ellie
does not like being checked by Joel, being protected by Joel.
Things are being said, all those things. We move on
to finding Joel having a conversation with Maria, who is
again talking about the issue about too many people coming in,
(08:51):
trying to work on everything. She needs him to get
things done faster, all of these things, so back and forth,
and then reminding him he was a refugee one time.
Do we also didn't get to meet his nephew, who
comes in all excited talking about shooting zombies. Wonderful, wonderful,
and then but we also figured out that Ellie and
(09:13):
Tommy have been hanging and he's been shot, helping her
to learn to shoot, and they've been sniping some zombies
out there. A little bit of conversation again, we find
out that Joel is overstepping trying to protect her, telling
her him to keep her at gay duty, but she's
not having that. She wants to go on patrol. And
so of course, after being very obnoxious and spoiled and stubborn,
she's screaming I'm immune, trying to get her way, and
(09:36):
she does. She gets to go patrol. Moving on, we
see Joel going into a therapy session and we meet
a new character, Gil. She is the town therapist and
he brings in bad weed as payment, and she's like,
my husband was better at this, he grew it, he
knew how to cultivate it, he was good at it.
(09:56):
Whatever went on. So we know that she was married
to a man named Jean who is significant to the game,
but we don't know much about him. And now we're
going to Dot dot Dot In this therapy section, we
find out that he is trying to fix his problems
with Ellie, but he's not being honest about what's going down,
and Gil being a good therapist, she's not. She's like, yeah,
(10:20):
you're bullsh me. And she reveals that Joel had killed
her husband. He shot and killed him, and then we
don't exactly know why. There's a lot of assumptions that happening,
and she says, I do resent you, I do hate you,
but I'm working on that and I know you had
to do what you had to do, but I have
to be honest all the while. We find out he's
pretty drunk. Who isn't at this point, and so a
(10:41):
lot of truth come out. She's like, now you're turn
tell your truth and he never says anything except for
I saved her, so that's what we know. Moving on,
we have Ellie and Dina having these flirty chats talking
teasing each other about their exes. Essentially, so Dina used
to state Jesse, Ellie used to date Cat. They're going
(11:02):
on patrol. Cat is the leader at this point, and
of course they Ellie and Diana are a little rebellious
and have to do their own thing, go on their
own thing to find the zombies or the clickers and
all the infected, and then they go kind of get
into trouble after having an exciting scene of watching Ellie
(11:23):
hack away at a clicker. At another point she falls
through the floor ends up in the other room. It
wasn't the basement. It looked like a store, like the
downstairs are part of a store. And we find these
new types of zombies are silent and very smart. I
think one of us said it was a cat. It
wasn't on the shoot, but one of us like, we're like,
(11:44):
is that a cat? Having But they were smart and
Ellie got bit again. But that's okay because Elli ended
up shooting it and now has to hide this new
scar because no one knows she is immune, slash, infected,
slash all the things. So all that has happens and
they get back. Of course they had to sit. They're
sitting in front of a council. So it was an
interesting scene and talking about this new discovery of this
(12:06):
new type of infected moving on. All this time, we're
talking about a dance that's happening. There's something happening, coming together,
having a good old time and celebrating everybody's telling her
to come, but we also see her in her garage.
She now lives in the garage behind Joel's house because
she doesn't want to live with Joel. Interaction between them
(12:27):
not so great. The writing that she has in her
general inclues, don't this up. I'm a sitting about Dina,
because Dina makes a really bad pun yeah baar bacue,
and she writes that down. You know, we have that
memory in the notebook and all the good stuff, so
obviously they're made for each other. Here we go on
(12:49):
to the dance scene, and in this dance scene, we
see Ellie and Jesse just chilling the back watching people,
and at this point Dina, pulled to the dance floor,
tells her to come to dance with her. They have
this intimate moment about how everybody's looking at them, and
then they're being jealous of Ellie, and then Dina, who's
kind of drunk, ends up kissing and they end up
(13:10):
making out in the middle of the floor. Then enters Seth,
the bigot, who comes in says some inappropriate things and
then gets tackled by Joel, which Ellie does not appreciate.
Putt puts a downer on the whole event. Don't on
the whole event, and that's kind of how it goes
into that. And then we look away. We see some
(13:31):
people come in through and uh oh, it's Abby and
crew en scene.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Yes, they are approaching. We also see that there's fungus, yes,
in the pipes.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
There's an implication that the fungus has made it into
this this protected village.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Yes, because the sparkler somebody drops a sparkler in front
of it, then of the broken pipe, and they're like, wooo.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
I do need to read this.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
So I was kind of doing a little bit readthrough
about like recaps and such, and then you know, it
talks about who Gail is. And this comment says from
entertainmentw dot com. I enjoyed season one and was looking
forward to season two. So far, I am disappointed. I
can see why they jumped ahead five years, but Ellie
and Joel are at odds and so far it's not explained.
(14:38):
Joel's therapist said it's normal for this to happened. This
to happen due to Ellie being nineteen and trying to
discover her which seems she's getting a bit of a
late start. I do hope Episode two has Joel and
Ellie ironing out their problems. I know Ellie doesn't believe
him when he took her away from the hospital, but
he did save her life and she is old enough
to appreciate that. I have my finger scrawled that it
(15:00):
gets better. I really like the actor and actress playing
Joel and Ellie the most innocent of comments. I needed
that to be read.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
I did tell Samantha I was getting a little bit
more of that shot in Furrido. When I was reading,
I was like, Oh, you don't know what's coming with friends.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
I just really love that they're already annoyed, like, why
are they not talking to each other? This seems silly.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
It seems silly, to be honest, the first time you
played the game, it's very jarring. You're like, what, yeah,
what has happened to you? And it's purposeful. It's it's
supposed to make you feel what have I missed over
these five years? And we are going to talk about
that in the context of this episode, because again we
(15:46):
are going to do our damnedest to avoid spoilers. But
that was an excellent recap, Samantha. Thank you. Okay, So
a couple of things I want to talk about in
this since we're in the first episode. I've hinted at
this before. But the way this is going to play
(16:10):
out and the show versus how it plays out and
the game is just going to be very different. And
it's already proven that. So for instance, the scene, the
beautiful scene between Dina and Ellie at the dance is
one of the very last scenes of the game. Because
the game is told through a series of flashbacks that
(16:35):
happen that are hinted at. So the first main playthrough
you start is the day after the party, and everybody's
talking about it. Everybody's like, Ellie, what happened? We heard
you got in a fight with Joel, and so as
the player, you're trying to figure it out. But they
went ahead and put that early. And by the way,
people are freaking out because they left out one of
(16:56):
the most key parts of that. But I think it's
going to come later. I don't think they would cut
that out, but anyway, But also there's a lot of
shifts of POV. So another thing is the introduction to
Abby happens early in the game, but you don't know
what she's about as early you kind of are like,
who's this? You have your suspicions, but that's a very
(17:20):
early reveal of what of who she is and what
she's about. And that is a big theme in the
game is perspectives. And one thing that stuck out to
me and I was rewatching it is Joel how he
(17:40):
reframes a lot of things when people say things to her,
so like with the therapist, is like, say the thing
out loud, you know, say it, and he's like, ah,
I saved her. But then he also said that he
has this line where Dina ask him why is she
angry at you? Why is Ellie angry at you? But
he rephrases that what's wrong with her? Like, so he's
(18:02):
already he's constantly restructuring this. And then I did like
this line. It's very funny. But he says because I'm
a good guy, which I am to the.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
Therapists like you felt my husband. Yeah, she gives him
the most like, but she has. Catherine O'Hara such a
great casting job.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Yes, yes, And I was reading an interview with her
today about it, because she doesn't normally do such emotional roles,
not that she doesn't have the capacity to. But she said, like,
I just that takes a lot out of me. But
she was convinced to do this one. But she was very,
very very good as Gale of the Therapist, and I'm
looking forward to seeing more of her. Also, just want
(18:45):
to shout out the set design is really amazing. If
you want to look up side by sides, it's pretty
stunning how accurate it is. And also just some of
the things like the game mechanics, so the whole scene
where Ellie is learning how to use the scope for
the sniper rifles in the game, and it's even got
(19:05):
some of the same dialogue. Ellie's knife that is how
she kills clickers, by the way, and she's the only
character that can do that, which is really cool. Using
the bottle to distract the clickers kind of. The weapons
update table is a big feature of the game. Okay,
but yes, this episode is called Future Days, and that
(19:28):
is a reference to a song that may or may
not be relevant in the show. I think it will be,
but it's a continuity error because technically it didn't exist
at the time, but it was a huge thing in
the game. It was like the song that plays the game.
It is a song by Pearl Jam, and Pearl Jam
loves it. They've like given their full you can use it.
(19:51):
It's like the perfect song for this. But that's where
the title comes from. And if you look in the
background of Ellie's room, you can see Pearl Jam poster. Also,
if you notice Ellie has a tattoo. Now, she has
a tattoo that covers what is a chemical burn. She
(20:12):
put over the bite on her arm to hide it.
By the way, Kat her ex designed, didn't design, but
put that tattoo on. Yes, Cat is only mentioned in
the game, so I was very surprised when Kat showed
up pleasantly. I was like, oh God. And there's also
(20:32):
the symbolism of the moth. The moth is pretty relevant
throughout the series in terms of, you know, the Firefly's
theme is look for the lights, and the moth does
that that the moth can never find the light, and
it's like just always constantly looking for it and never
can find it. And once we get further in, I'm
(20:53):
sure we'll talk about there are some other theories about
why the moth is so important to this, but the
moth is part of for tattoo and it's also on
the guitar.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
And also Gail already says the moth is about death.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Yes, man, Gail does not care she drunk.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
She's okay, she either drunk or high.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
He let her be. I read it. I read an
article today. It was like, let her have her vices.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
I don't get everything is worse. Let her be.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
It's her birthday, her birthday.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
She's doing someone else's therapy, the man who killed her husband.
I mean, in her mind.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
It is very funny. How well, this actually is a
good segue to the next thing. I want to talk
about how Joel is just sort of complaining about Ellie
not wanting to talk to him, which is a legitimate complaint,
but she's just listening to him, like.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
She also makes that face when he punches, and she's
like huh yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Well she's in the background, like sipping her drink. Oh
my gosh. But this was an interesting this is so
you have this five year jump, and it does it's
really clear and how we see Ellie and Joel, how
different they are now. So we have what I jokingly
refer to as old man Joel. I don't feel like
(22:13):
he was like this in the game. But in the
show he had a kind of old He's got his glasses,
he's got he's got his his hair is a bit
more gray than it is in the game. He's like
working on his he's tinkering, right, He's just he's got
kind of a he's complaining about things that feel very
(22:35):
kind of old man vibe, which is not present in
the game. And we have talked about that, and in
the show they I personally feel they made him a
much more sympathetic character, at least a bit softer. He's
not really like that in the game. He would not
(22:57):
go to therapy. In the game, I don't have that
for one single second. But they did introduce we talked
about this in one of our episodes. They did introduce
when they did one of the remasters. You can see
that he has medication for anxiety on his table before
the outbreak happens. So they were looking at that and
(23:20):
reintroducing that. And in the first season of the show
you do see him having like panic attacks, but he
again that's not in the game. That conversation he has
that's very moving with Tommy in the first season. He
did not have that in the game. I appreciate that
they're doing this, but it is a very, to me
stark difference in this character. You do also kind of
(23:46):
get these hints of him that we've already seen, but
when he's kind of leading the construction effort and when
all these refugees are coming in and Maria's asking him like,
we need to move faster, we don't have places for
these people, he's the one that says like, well, we
should turn them away because our life vote, we don't
(24:06):
have space for them. You should look after your own first,
which I think is telling based on the decision he made. Also,
this is gonna be a lot of discussion about fathers
in this season, a lot of different types of fathers.
But it was kind of fun to see him be like, well,
(24:29):
do you know likes me? She should be mine alder
she appreciates me, right, which is such a like that's
just not how it works.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Something hasn't lived with you.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Exactly. And then we have Ellie, who we are first
introduced to in this season, where she's fighting this guy
who is much bigger than her and she takes him down.
But I think there's a couple of points in here
that are also telling to her character arc that's coming.
One is she doesn't tap out. The guy taps out
(25:07):
twice and Jesse is saying, Okay, that's enough, that's enough,
and she doesn't stop, and she's like, oh, I've just
caught up in the moment. I just caught up in
the moment. And then she gets really really angry when
she finds out that Caleb, the person she was fighting,
pulled his punches. She does not like that, and that's
a part of her really shaving against Joel protecting her
(25:30):
because Jesse was like, well, I don't want to deal
with Joel if something, if you'd gotten knocked out or whatever,
and she just really did not like that. And I
think you can see through a couple of scenes the
toll of growing up in the Apocalypse, because it feels
much more And even when you play the game, it
(25:53):
does have this vibe it's like, oh, a clicker, I
can I've done it. I know how to do that,
whereas like the first time, it felt very much like,
oh god, a clicker, I'm dead for sure. So seeing
them kind of joke about it, you realize that they've
grown up with this stuff, and it's a little sobering,
(26:13):
but you have a couple of quotes around that where
Jesse asks like, can you take things a little more seriously?
And then when Ellie Dina's like, maybe we should. She's
thinking about going back when they hear two clickers, and
Ellie's like, if you'd rather let them in handle it.
So there's a there's a little bit of a rebelliousness
for sure happening and just I think chafing at the
(26:36):
over protectedness. Okay, but this does bring us to we've
got a whole cast of new characters, starting with Dina,
who's played by Isabella Murzad. She is Ellie's best friend
as we start out, and then becomes the two of
them become romantic with each other. Ellie is very interested
(26:59):
in her, doesn't think she can ever get her, thinks
that Dina is way too good for her. But then
you have the dancing scene and it's like really intimate,
which is unfortunately interrupted by Seth. The bigot which we
did talk about is it's very I don't think it's
(27:19):
inaccurate at all because this is twenty twenty nine when
it's happening, but it's very disheartening that there's still homophobia
in this world where they are Z obviously right, but
there is he's like, we're at a church. They're like
really okay, But yeah, there are a lot of queer
elements in the game, and Dina and Ellie's relationship is
(27:43):
one of the big ones. And I also noticed a
lot of times when Ellie kind of is like, let's
go scout aricon, Dina will follow her. It's usually Ellie's
idea and then Dina will be like yes, But I
think that dynamic will also be important in the future.
(28:04):
And then there's Jesse, yes, played by young Mazino, and
he's sort of the adult ish leader of their group,
but they're also friends. They're friends, but they have sort
of that awkward relationship of he's somebody who has authority
over you and you don't like it necessarily. But also again,
(28:25):
Jesse and Dina have an on again, off again relationship,
which complicates some things. But he's a big he's a
big character in this he'll be a big character in
the season. And then yes, we have Abby, Abby, Abby,
Oh my goodness, who's played by Caitlin Deaver, who was
(28:48):
a fan cast. By the way, that's not why she
got it. She auditioned for Ellie but she was a
fan cast outside of that, however, and we are going
to talk about this more because his character is extremely divisive.
I'm finding it really interesting some of the comments that
(29:09):
are coming out early about her where people are mad
about her body type because in the game, Abby was
very buff, very very buff, and it was for a
couple of reasons, gameplay reasons, and one I think was
just a necessary plot point. But obviously Caitlin de Ver
(29:32):
is not that. But that people people were mad at
her being buff too, right, They had all these hateful
comments about how buff she was.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
I think when you have like for me, they like
the game was just sexist, like over the top ridiculousness
the game for the show, I think it had maybe
for those who were fans of the game and like
it is that's not what you imagined. Like her facial structure, yes,
for sure, But like I said that too, I was like, oh,
(30:05):
she's a lot shorter and smaller than I thought she
would be. I thought like she would at least look
but to me, it's like she was similar to the
size of Ellie seemingly, which was not what I was
expecting because in the gameplay she is almost like five
inches taller than her and like a lot more muscular,
so was not quite especially when she was sitting next
(30:26):
to Owen, she looked really short compared to that character.
So I was like, oh uh oh, that's the thing
what shocked me the most, because she does look very,
very small, so that that threw me off. I didn't
say it was a bad thing. I was just like, ah,
that's not what I was expecting. So for maybe some
of those things, not the jerks who would like just
(30:49):
hate women in general, just in like because like we
saw the person who played helped make the game for Abby,
Like I've seen the you know, behind the scenes, she's big,
like she is a muscular woman and she exists.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Yes, yes, And I mean we're gonna have to we'll
talk about that when we get to whatever episode that
will be. But there was a lot of hateful rhetoric
around almost like anti trans transphobic, right, rhetoric around her
(31:25):
being so big and so now it's hard to tell.
I'm like, are you the same people who just pissed
now or are you whatever it is different people. I don't.
Most of it has just been mostly kind of kind
of like what you were talking about, I did read
that they purposely cast somebody who looked more like Ellie
(31:47):
and body type, so I think that will play out
more in the future. I can't stress this enough. They
did reveal Abby's dad died in that scene where they're
(32:13):
going over the graves in the beginning, And you know,
the drafts are the same drafts that gift Ellie and
Joel saw.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
They paid a lot of money for that. Those drafts.
We need to use them again, at least the same shots.
We need to use the same shots.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Yeah, which do not in the game. But that's pretty good.
But I can't stress enough that you do not know
that until.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Later, right, we don't know what's why, and everybody immediately
hates her.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. But I think that's point.
That's I have expressed my concern about this before because
just the way that the game versus the show will
play out, because in the game, you can keep playing.
But now we're going to have a wait of who
knows how long before the next season comes out, so
(33:01):
that weight I think could be pretty bad. Hopefully it
won't be that long because they're already in pre production.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
But I wonder if they know that and so they're no,
like we're gonna have to do it within the same
year or within the next year, or we're gonna be
in trouble and lose all interest.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
They have to know that, but I think that's the
reason they switch that around instead of having sort of
a mid game right reveal. Yeah, you also meet Abby's crew,
which is Owen, Nora, mel and Manny, and they will
all be I don't think they'll have two bigger role
(33:36):
in this season, but I could be wrong. I don't
know how they're splitting it, but they will have a
big role at some point. And then Eugene. Eugene is
a band of shocker because Eugene is in He's in Okay,
but he's a polar ooid picture, like his ghost is everywhere.
You kind of.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
Running memories of him.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, but you don't. So there's gonna
be a flashback episode with Eugene given to understand. But
this is Gail's husband, and Gail is a completely new character.
Like I said, she's there's no way you could convince
me that Joel video game Joel would get therapy.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
But we also like in the game, I feel like
Eugene is like just a perverted old man, A little
bit proverted old only man.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Yeah, but I didn't really like him. He's a guy
who kept to himself.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Right, but like you find all the porn that he said,
like all these things, like he is definite late.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
He grew a lot of weedy weed. But we'll see
how that plays out. Because they're doing that thing they
sort of did with Frank and Bill where this was
a mention or very brief moment in the game. So
I don't know if they've changed his character how it's
gonna pay it, but they made clear with the weed
that that's gonna be true.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Yes, they're going to keep hold of that for sure.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Yes. Uh, then we we do have a lot of
new enemies. One of the biggest complaints the show owners
have said that they got from the last season is
that there wasn't enough infected, So there's gonna be way more.
We'll see how that works out. But there are new
infected you get introduced to in the game. I don't
know how many of them they're going to include, but
(35:19):
they've already introduced stalkers, which also don't come in until
about halfway in the game. So stalkers are this new
type of infected that are smart. They can plan, they
can hide, they can run away, they can kind of
set traps. In the game. There's a function where you
(35:41):
can listen and like it's almost like sonar, like bat hearing,
and then you can hear like you can see sounds.
You know, you can't see stalkers. They're so annoying and
they can they come together in groups, so you be
fighting one and then want to tax you from behind.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
So I was at least twelve oh no's with that appearance.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Oh gosh, it's very raptor like, oh unmust they figure
out open doors? They figured out how to open the doors.
So frustrating, especially if there are clickers too, because then
you really have to strategize and runners. Anyway, one thing
I want to I just want to tease. I'm not
going to say anything more about it, but I'm incredibly
(36:24):
excited about the rat King, which I think will be
next season. But that's gonna be cool. That is like
the King of Infected. Yes exactly, I'm so excited. There's
a thing in the game where you can hear the
rat King, like long before you actually encounter it, and
I'm hoping they do that in the show. I think
(36:46):
that would be really cool. But all right, this brings
us to one of the biggest things, one of the
most jarring things of this episode and a game when
you first start, is the rift between Joel and Ellie.
So when we last saw them, they seem to be
in an okay place. They're you know, going back home,
(37:11):
as Joel called it. They seem to have this father
daughter relationship, they've bonded, and now something has gone wrong,
and it is very clear, it is very awkwardly pigfully clear,
and we don't know quite what it is. We have
the suspicions of what it is, but we don't know
for sure. And this has a lot to do with
(37:37):
Ellie's lack loss of trust in Joel and questioning what
he's telling her and just how he's kind of controlling
her narrative. She's he's the one telling her, you cannot
tell anybody about this immunity. You cannot do that, and
(37:57):
he to the point other people as mentioned, no, if
I do something wrong with Ellie, Joel's going to do
something possibly violent. So like Tommy lies to Joel about
hanging out with Ellie, Jesse says that thing where he's like,
I don't wanna, I don't need Joel bothering me, And
(38:18):
I really feel like there's this she's annoyed at both
the overprotectedness. She is convinced he's lying, but she's also
like having to deal with his anger violence overprotectedness when
it comes to other people. So like when he attacks Seth,
whether you think that's the right thing he should have
(38:40):
done or not, if you're looking at his past record
of how he's dealt with these threats, like she I
feel like she might think she has to stop him
from being violent. And also she definitely is annoyed at,
and I think rightfully so, at her agency being kind
(39:04):
of taken away. And there is a lot of like
questioning about the impacts and consequences of violence, which will
be confronted with his decision. But we also see things
like the guitar because in the first season he said
he would teach her to play the guitar. He did
(39:26):
clearly he did, and she has a guitar, but she's
not keeping up with it. It's kind of discarded and
she hasn't like the strings are bad, and he takes
it to fix it. So that's a clear sign something's wrong. Also,
she did move into the garage, and then you sort
of have this the therapist saying, it's such a normal problem,
(39:49):
like a nineteen year old. It's every daughter ever has
this problem. But you know, we as the viewers know, no,
it's not just that. I mean, so does Gail, and
that's why she as her like, no, I know you're
lying and you're hiding something. Yes, But one thing I
thought was interesting in sort of the when the show
owners were talking about it and the clip after was
(40:12):
they were talking about that scene in the party after
Joel attacks Seth, I just pushes him down, and they said, like,
she inadvertently embarrasses Joel Ellie and inadvertedly embarrasses Joel, which
is interesting because I played this game with my brothers
and I was like, I feel like he invertedly embarrassed her,
And so that's kind of going back to that perspectives
of who you think they I mean, honestly, it's probably
(40:34):
both both are true. But it was just so funny
because I remember look at my brothers to be like,
are you seriously look at this? Yeah? But then also
there are a lot of similarities that are going to
be explored. Tommy said, you know, you and my brother
(40:57):
the same person to Ellie. But also you can start
to see some similarities between Abby and Joel, and they
talk about that in the after show too, about you know,
if this kind of remind if Abby's lost kind of
reminds you of Joel's loss of Sarah, then that's not unintentional.
(41:20):
You see Abby houses watch. So there are these things
that are gonna come come out and be more obvious
as we go forward, which I'm very excited about. Very excited. Okay,
And this brings us to just some random shout outs
that I have. So one is the knife, Ellie's knife,
(41:42):
which her mom gave her. She still has, and that's
how you kill the clickers. Shimmer her horse, if you remember,
she meets Shimmer when she's much younger. The horse is
much younger. And the first season Cat, I just cat
Ellie's X did the tattoo. I was not expecting Kat
(42:02):
to show up.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
That was.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
A real shock. She did not want to be there.
I appreciate it. I wouldn't want to either. If you
look around Ellie's room, there are a ton of them.
Like the comic book posters. There's Also she has a
poster of space. She said she want to go to
the moon to be like Sally Ride. That's what she wanted.
Her journal is a game mechanic that you don't have
(42:29):
to actually engage with if you don't want to in
the game, but they like if you read it. A
lot of what she had written is what's from the game.
If you remember, after they kill the clickers, Den and
Ellie kill the clickers, there's a dog employee of the
month that is a clue to how to open a
safe in the game. Multiple Curtis and Viper mentions, we
(42:52):
must shout that out. This is also something you can
miss in the game. It's kind of a conversation you
can have if you choose to with Dina or she's
talking about how Joel loves Curtis and Viper and she
mentions like, hell, yeah, we should watch them with Joel
and I might watch them. And then just the line
because I love it, Oh, Ellie, I think they should
(43:13):
be terrified of you, because oh my, it's so good.
It's so good. That whole scene was beautiful. It's like
shot for shot, it's amazing. And that was the trailer
for the game was pretty much that scene Crooked Stills music,
same music them. Yeah, oh my gosh. Anyway, thank you
(43:39):
so much listeners and Samantha for coming along this journey.
Hopefully they're fun. Even if you don't watch the show
and you're not really interested, sort of like our Sex
and the City things are.
Speaker 2 (43:49):
Yes, please enjoy this with us. And yeah, just watching Annie,
I'm gonna keep a count. I'm like, keep a tally
of the oh.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Nos, some good some tallies the tears and yeah, we'll see. Yeah,
there are seven episodes in this season, so hopefully you
don't absolutely hate this, but if you do, there's always
said calm down before we start, before we start season three,
whenever that will be. But yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm very
very excited. I'm looking forward to it and there's so
many things I cannot wait to talk about. It's gonna
(44:20):
be great. But in the meantime, listeners, if you have
any thoughts, if you have any recipes, last of those
recipes are things that you think are good fits for
the last of us. We've cut kind of a rough menu,
but let us know. You can email us at Hello
at stuffanenever told you dot com. You can find us
(44:41):
on Blue Sky at Momsup podcast or in Instagram and
TikTok at Stuff I Never Told You. We're also on YouTube.
We have a tepolk store and we have a book
you can get where we get your books. Thanks as
always here a super Ducer Christina or Executiroveducer, my Inker Chuger, Joey.
Speaker 2 (44:52):
Thank you and thanks to you for.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
Listening Stuff I Never Told You disroduction by Heart Radio.
For more podcast from my heart Radio, you can check
out the heart Radio Apple podcast orre we listening to
your favorite chess
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha for Stuff I've Never
told you production of My Heart Radio, and welcome back
to the return of our Last of Us special. This
(00:25):
is a thing we do where we react to the
Last of Us TV show, currently in season two. It's
two years later. Here we are again not a sponsor,
but they should really get on it. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
You know they have their own podcast, right, I know they.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Have their own podcast, but this is still good.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
We're doing it too, I'm just saying.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
But also, so these are coming out on Saturdays the
week about a week after the original episode that we're
talking about airs. There will be spoilers, but only for
that episode and the previous season and also the video game,
but not plot specific spoilers from the video game. We
(01:14):
have a lot of We're trying to protect a lot
of people from being spoiled, which just a quick warning
from me, if you don't want to be spoiled, do
not go well, actually, I don't even care. If you
want to be spoiled, don't go anywhere near the Last
of Us to read it. It's a very toxic place.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Oh really, just from the old stuff or yeah, two, okay, okay, well,
so we talked about the old stuff before the game stuff, and.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
We will talk about that. We will talk about that
as we get to the where that is really relevant.
But I just know I have a friend who after
who'd never played the game, and he would after the
episode had aired, he'd go and Reddit, and I was like,
don't do not do that for the second season. Just
don't do it. You're gonna be disappointed. It's not good. Yeah,
(02:11):
but we've been talking about it. I've been so excited.
A Samantha and I are getting to hang out while
we're doing it and having food and drinks and it's
so fun. So thank you as always Samantha for letting
me do that and letting me geek out about all
of this.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Next time, I'm going to keep account of how many
times you say oh no, because I'm pretty sure we
had least like double digits on this first round.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
It's yeah, because there's a lot there's a lot of
moving pieces in this. If you don't know, this is
based on the twenty twenty game. The last of most
part two. This is half of a season, is what
I'll say, and it actually might be one third of
a season of that. It is much The game is
much longer. It's double the length of the first game.
(03:05):
It is much more complicated. They've already been greenlit for
season three. I think they're going to do a season four.
Personally it's going to be much shorter, but I think
they're going to do a season for but just to
say it is much longer, and it's kind of a
half season. Also, you know, I was doing my rewatches
(03:26):
to prepare for this, and I accidentally watched one of
the ones that feature ASL, which.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
I need to watch that version, okay, yes.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
And it was you know, I unfortunately don't under UNDERSTANDSL
but it looked really cool. So listeners, if anyone was like,
oh this was a good, good or bad, let us know.
But that was neat all. Right, So, the way these
usually work is Samantha gives a recap of the episode
and then I just talk about all of these things
(03:56):
that I have have to talk about. But since that
we were talking about the first episode of the season,
I was going to give a really brief recap of
last season wherein we meet Joel and his daughter Sarah.
There is an outbreak, a fungus outbreak of corgeous steps
that turns people into effected. It spreads really quickly. The
(04:20):
army steps in, there's bombings, and Sarah is killed, and
Joel becomes very angry and shut off. We jump ahead
several years and he's a smuggler and he's tasked with
smuggling this young girl, Ellie, who it turns out she
is immune to the infection, and they travel across the
(04:46):
United States to find the Fireflies who are working on
a cure, and she is the key to that cure
because she's immune. They lose a lot of people along
the way, and eventually Joel warms up to Ellie and
sees her as a daughter like figure in his life.
(05:07):
But then it turns out an order to make a vaccine,
the Fireflies are going to have to Ellie will die
in the surgery, and so Joel kills a lot of people,
murders a lot of people, and takes Ellie, who is
sedated and unconscious, and when she wakes up, tells her
(05:31):
there is no cure they've been trying. There's a bunch
of other immune people can't do it. We're going to
go back to Jackson, Wyoming, which is where his brother lives.
His brother used to be a firefly, and she asks him, like,
I need you to swear to me. Is this true?
Is everything you said about the Fireflies show? And he said,
I swear, And that's where it ended. And that's right
(05:53):
where it picks back up.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Yes, as an FYI, again, the show's different from the games,
a little bit of variation, and we love that. Any
christ a lot and screams a lot, I do not.
And therefore, because I have not played the game as
much as Annie, I give the recaps so I can
stick with the show and hopefully not just spoilers. Annie
would be good about this, but we don't know. She
(06:15):
gets too excited about future thoughts. Yes, so we are
back with season one, and we start with an opening
scene of gravesite or in a group of people sitting
there at this grave site, and we discover and meet
Abby and her crew. Abby is a very important character.
She's very upset, she's very mad. She wants revenge. She
(06:37):
wants them to help her with their revenge, her being
her crew they're fireflies, and they all say, yes, we will,
but we first we have to find another crew of
fireflies or something or anyone mention enough Isaac at this point, okay,
where I go? And then after that, yes, they were
bound together to make sure that they find Joel or Joe.
They don't know with a girl that may or may
(06:59):
not be immune. That's a rumor, they say, and they
agree that thees first are going to go do this thing,
and then they're going to go find Joel or Joe.
And of course, in that moment, she says slowly and
they're like, what he's like, he has to die slowly,
So anger pulsating anger, we are introduced to Abby. Moving along,
(07:19):
we come back to five years later. We are now
in Jacksonville and we see people trying to work on
things on pipes because you know, things are happening. They
need to fix things. New people are trying to come
in a lot of conversation and we find out yes
they are taking a lot of refugees, but they don't
have a lot of space. We have the pragmatists, Joel
(07:40):
being like, you need to stop letting everybody come in.
We can't provide for everyone. He's also working with a
transmitter at the same time that he's supposed to be
the foreman. Then we are soon introduced to a new
Kido Dina Dina walks in and obviously they have good rapport,
and Dina asks, what did you do? Why are you saying?
Why Ellie so bad? Essentially and what did you do?
(08:03):
And they kind of have a small conversation about like, oh,
you know, she's a teenager or whatever, whatnot.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
And then here he.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Kind of lets his slip that he's working on his
life with a therapist. Hello, a therapist. We move on
and we see Ellie. Oh, she has grown up. She
is now nineteen and she is sparring with a very
big boy, big boy. At this point, we also meet Jesse,
very excited played by young Mazino. If you don't know,
(08:30):
he's a cool actor coming in as well, and we
had this exchange. Obviously there's some hostilities still because Ellie
does not like being checked by Joel, being protected by Joel.
Things are being said, all those things. We move on
to finding Joel having a conversation with Maria, who is
again talking about the issue about too many people coming in,
(08:51):
trying to work on everything. She needs him to get
things done faster, all of these things, so back and forth,
and then reminding him he was a refugee one time.
Do we also didn't get to meet his nephew, who
comes in all excited talking about shooting zombies. Wonderful, wonderful,
and then but we also figured out that Ellie and
(09:13):
Tommy have been hanging and he's been shot, helping her
to learn to shoot, and they've been sniping some zombies
out there. A little bit of conversation again, we find
out that Joel is overstepping trying to protect her, telling
her him to keep her at gay duty, but she's
not having that. She wants to go on patrol. And
so of course, after being very obnoxious and spoiled and stubborn,
she's screaming I'm immune, trying to get her way, and
(09:36):
she does. She gets to go patrol. Moving on, we
see Joel going into a therapy session and we meet
a new character, Gil. She is the town therapist and
he brings in bad weed as payment, and she's like,
my husband was better at this, he grew it, he
knew how to cultivate it, he was good at it.
(09:56):
Whatever went on. So we know that she was married
to a man named Jean who is significant to the game,
but we don't know much about him. And now we're
going to Dot dot Dot In this therapy section, we
find out that he is trying to fix his problems
with Ellie, but he's not being honest about what's going down,
and Gil being a good therapist, she's not. She's like, yeah,
(10:20):
you're bullsh me. And she reveals that Joel had killed
her husband. He shot and killed him, and then we
don't exactly know why. There's a lot of assumptions that happening,
and she says, I do resent you, I do hate you,
but I'm working on that and I know you had
to do what you had to do, but I have
to be honest all the while. We find out he's
pretty drunk. Who isn't at this point, and so a
(10:41):
lot of truth come out. She's like, now you're turn
tell your truth and he never says anything except for
I saved her, so that's what we know. Moving on,
we have Ellie and Dina having these flirty chats talking
teasing each other about their exes. Essentially, so Dina used
to state Jesse, Ellie used to date Cat. They're going
(11:02):
on patrol. Cat is the leader at this point, and
of course they Ellie and Diana are a little rebellious
and have to do their own thing, go on their
own thing to find the zombies or the clickers and
all the infected, and then they go kind of get
into trouble after having an exciting scene of watching Ellie
(11:23):
hack away at a clicker. At another point she falls
through the floor ends up in the other room. It
wasn't the basement. It looked like a store, like the
downstairs are part of a store. And we find these
new types of zombies are silent and very smart. I
think one of us said it was a cat. It
wasn't on the shoot, but one of us like, we're like,
(11:44):
is that a cat? Having But they were smart and
Ellie got bit again. But that's okay because Elli ended
up shooting it and now has to hide this new
scar because no one knows she is immune, slash, infected,
slash all the things. So all that has happens and
they get back. Of course they had to sit. They're
sitting in front of a council. So it was an
interesting scene and talking about this new discovery of this
(12:06):
new type of infected moving on. All this time, we're
talking about a dance that's happening. There's something happening, coming together,
having a good old time and celebrating everybody's telling her
to come, but we also see her in her garage.
She now lives in the garage behind Joel's house because
she doesn't want to live with Joel. Interaction between them
(12:27):
not so great. The writing that she has in her
general inclues, don't this up. I'm a sitting about Dina,
because Dina makes a really bad pun yeah baar bacue,
and she writes that down. You know, we have that
memory in the notebook and all the good stuff, so
obviously they're made for each other. Here we go on
(12:49):
to the dance scene, and in this dance scene, we
see Ellie and Jesse just chilling the back watching people,
and at this point Dina, pulled to the dance floor,
tells her to come to dance with her. They have
this intimate moment about how everybody's looking at them, and
then they're being jealous of Ellie, and then Dina, who's
kind of drunk, ends up kissing and they end up
(13:10):
making out in the middle of the floor. Then enters Seth,
the bigot, who comes in says some inappropriate things and
then gets tackled by Joel, which Ellie does not appreciate.
Putt puts a downer on the whole event. Don't on
the whole event, and that's kind of how it goes
into that. And then we look away. We see some
(13:31):
people come in through and uh oh, it's Abby and
crew en scene.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Yes, they are approaching. We also see that there's fungus, yes,
in the pipes.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
There's an implication that the fungus has made it into
this this protected village.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Yes, because the sparkler somebody drops a sparkler in front
of it, then of the broken pipe, and they're like, wooo.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
I do need to read this.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
So I was kind of doing a little bit readthrough
about like recaps and such, and then you know, it
talks about who Gail is. And this comment says from
entertainmentw dot com. I enjoyed season one and was looking
forward to season two. So far, I am disappointed. I
can see why they jumped ahead five years, but Ellie
and Joel are at odds and so far it's not explained.
(14:38):
Joel's therapist said it's normal for this to happened. This
to happen due to Ellie being nineteen and trying to
discover her which seems she's getting a bit of a
late start. I do hope Episode two has Joel and
Ellie ironing out their problems. I know Ellie doesn't believe
him when he took her away from the hospital, but
he did save her life and she is old enough
to appreciate that. I have my finger scrawled that it
(15:00):
gets better. I really like the actor and actress playing
Joel and Ellie the most innocent of comments. I needed
that to be read.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
I did tell Samantha I was getting a little bit
more of that shot in Furrido. When I was reading,
I was like, Oh, you don't know what's coming with friends.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
I just really love that they're already annoyed, like, why
are they not talking to each other? This seems silly.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
It seems silly, to be honest, the first time you
played the game, it's very jarring. You're like, what, yeah,
what has happened to you? And it's purposeful. It's it's
supposed to make you feel what have I missed over
these five years? And we are going to talk about
that in the context of this episode, because again we
(15:46):
are going to do our damnedest to avoid spoilers. But
that was an excellent recap, Samantha. Thank you. Okay, So
a couple of things I want to talk about in
this since we're in the first episode. I've hinted at
this before. But the way this is going to play
(16:10):
out and the show versus how it plays out and
the game is just going to be very different. And
it's already proven that. So for instance, the scene, the
beautiful scene between Dina and Ellie at the dance is
one of the very last scenes of the game. Because
the game is told through a series of flashbacks that
(16:35):
happen that are hinted at. So the first main playthrough
you start is the day after the party, and everybody's
talking about it. Everybody's like, Ellie, what happened? We heard
you got in a fight with Joel, and so as
the player, you're trying to figure it out. But they
went ahead and put that early. And by the way,
people are freaking out because they left out one of
(16:56):
the most key parts of that. But I think it's
going to come later. I don't think they would cut
that out, but anyway, But also there's a lot of
shifts of POV. So another thing is the introduction to
Abby happens early in the game, but you don't know
what she's about as early you kind of are like,
who's this? You have your suspicions, but that's a very
(17:20):
early reveal of what of who she is and what
she's about. And that is a big theme in the
game is perspectives. And one thing that stuck out to
me and I was rewatching it is Joel how he
(17:40):
reframes a lot of things when people say things to her,
so like with the therapist, is like, say the thing
out loud, you know, say it, and he's like, ah,
I saved her. But then he also said that he
has this line where Dina ask him why is she
angry at you? Why is Ellie angry at you? But
he rephrases that what's wrong with her? Like, so he's
(18:02):
already he's constantly restructuring this. And then I did like
this line. It's very funny. But he says because I'm
a good guy, which I am to the.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
Therapists like you felt my husband. Yeah, she gives him
the most like, but she has. Catherine O'Hara such a
great casting job.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Yes, yes, And I was reading an interview with her
today about it, because she doesn't normally do such emotional roles,
not that she doesn't have the capacity to. But she said, like,
I just that takes a lot out of me. But
she was convinced to do this one. But she was very,
very very good as Gale of the Therapist, and I'm
looking forward to seeing more of her. Also, just want
(18:45):
to shout out the set design is really amazing. If
you want to look up side by sides, it's pretty
stunning how accurate it is. And also just some of
the things like the game mechanics, so the whole scene
where Ellie is learning how to use the scope for
the sniper rifles in the game, and it's even got
(19:05):
some of the same dialogue. Ellie's knife that is how
she kills clickers, by the way, and she's the only
character that can do that, which is really cool. Using
the bottle to distract the clickers kind of. The weapons
update table is a big feature of the game. Okay,
but yes, this episode is called Future Days, and that
(19:28):
is a reference to a song that may or may
not be relevant in the show. I think it will be,
but it's a continuity error because technically it didn't exist
at the time, but it was a huge thing in
the game. It was like the song that plays the game.
It is a song by Pearl Jam, and Pearl Jam
loves it. They've like given their full you can use it.
(19:51):
It's like the perfect song for this. But that's where
the title comes from. And if you look in the
background of Ellie's room, you can see Pearl Jam poster. Also,
if you notice Ellie has a tattoo. Now, she has
a tattoo that covers what is a chemical burn. She
(20:12):
put over the bite on her arm to hide it.
By the way, Kat her ex designed, didn't design, but
put that tattoo on. Yes, Cat is only mentioned in
the game, so I was very surprised when Kat showed
up pleasantly. I was like, oh God. And there's also
(20:32):
the symbolism of the moth. The moth is pretty relevant
throughout the series in terms of, you know, the Firefly's
theme is look for the lights, and the moth does
that that the moth can never find the light, and
it's like just always constantly looking for it and never
can find it. And once we get further in, I'm
(20:53):
sure we'll talk about there are some other theories about
why the moth is so important to this, but the
moth is part of for tattoo and it's also on
the guitar.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
And also Gail already says the moth is about death.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Yes, man, Gail does not care she drunk.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
She's okay, she either drunk or high.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
He let her be. I read it. I read an
article today. It was like, let her have her vices.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
I don't get everything is worse. Let her be.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
It's her birthday, her birthday.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
She's doing someone else's therapy, the man who killed her husband.
I mean, in her mind.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
It is very funny. How well, this actually is a
good segue to the next thing. I want to talk
about how Joel is just sort of complaining about Ellie
not wanting to talk to him, which is a legitimate complaint,
but she's just listening to him, like.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
She also makes that face when he punches, and she's
like huh yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Well she's in the background, like sipping her drink. Oh
my gosh. But this was an interesting this is so
you have this five year jump, and it does it's
really clear and how we see Ellie and Joel, how
different they are now. So we have what I jokingly
refer to as old man Joel. I don't feel like
(22:13):
he was like this in the game. But in the
show he had a kind of old He's got his glasses,
he's got he's got his his hair is a bit
more gray than it is in the game. He's like
working on his he's tinkering, right, He's just he's got
kind of a he's complaining about things that feel very
(22:35):
kind of old man vibe, which is not present in
the game. And we have talked about that, and in
the show they I personally feel they made him a
much more sympathetic character, at least a bit softer. He's
not really like that in the game. He would not
(22:57):
go to therapy. In the game, I don't have that
for one single second. But they did introduce we talked
about this in one of our episodes. They did introduce
when they did one of the remasters. You can see
that he has medication for anxiety on his table before
the outbreak happens. So they were looking at that and
(23:20):
reintroducing that. And in the first season of the show
you do see him having like panic attacks, but he
again that's not in the game. That conversation he has
that's very moving with Tommy in the first season. He
did not have that in the game. I appreciate that
they're doing this, but it is a very, to me
stark difference in this character. You do also kind of
(23:46):
get these hints of him that we've already seen, but
when he's kind of leading the construction effort and when
all these refugees are coming in and Maria's asking him like,
we need to move faster, we don't have places for
these people, he's the one that says like, well, we
should turn them away because our life vote, we don't
(24:06):
have space for them. You should look after your own first,
which I think is telling based on the decision he made. Also,
this is gonna be a lot of discussion about fathers
in this season, a lot of different types of fathers.
But it was kind of fun to see him be like, well,
(24:29):
do you know likes me? She should be mine alder
she appreciates me, right, which is such a like that's
just not how it works.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Something hasn't lived with you.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Exactly. And then we have Ellie, who we are first
introduced to in this season, where she's fighting this guy
who is much bigger than her and she takes him down.
But I think there's a couple of points in here
that are also telling to her character arc that's coming.
One is she doesn't tap out. The guy taps out
(25:07):
twice and Jesse is saying, Okay, that's enough, that's enough,
and she doesn't stop, and she's like, oh, I've just
caught up in the moment. I just caught up in
the moment. And then she gets really really angry when
she finds out that Caleb, the person she was fighting,
pulled his punches. She does not like that, and that's
a part of her really shaving against Joel protecting her
(25:30):
because Jesse was like, well, I don't want to deal
with Joel if something, if you'd gotten knocked out or whatever,
and she just really did not like that. And I
think you can see through a couple of scenes the
toll of growing up in the Apocalypse, because it feels
much more And even when you play the game, it
(25:53):
does have this vibe it's like, oh, a clicker, I
can I've done it. I know how to do that,
whereas like the first time, it felt very much like,
oh god, a clicker, I'm dead for sure. So seeing
them kind of joke about it, you realize that they've
grown up with this stuff, and it's a little sobering,
(26:13):
but you have a couple of quotes around that where
Jesse asks like, can you take things a little more seriously?
And then when Ellie Dina's like, maybe we should. She's
thinking about going back when they hear two clickers, and
Ellie's like, if you'd rather let them in handle it.
So there's a there's a little bit of a rebelliousness
for sure happening and just I think chafing at the
(26:36):
over protectedness. Okay, but this does bring us to we've
got a whole cast of new characters, starting with Dina,
who's played by Isabella Murzad. She is Ellie's best friend
as we start out, and then becomes the two of
them become romantic with each other. Ellie is very interested
(26:59):
in her, doesn't think she can ever get her, thinks
that Dina is way too good for her. But then
you have the dancing scene and it's like really intimate,
which is unfortunately interrupted by Seth. The bigot which we
did talk about is it's very I don't think it's
(27:19):
inaccurate at all because this is twenty twenty nine when
it's happening, but it's very disheartening that there's still homophobia
in this world where they are Z obviously right, but
there is he's like, we're at a church. They're like
really okay, But yeah, there are a lot of queer
elements in the game, and Dina and Ellie's relationship is
(27:43):
one of the big ones. And I also noticed a
lot of times when Ellie kind of is like, let's
go scout aricon, Dina will follow her. It's usually Ellie's
idea and then Dina will be like yes, But I
think that dynamic will also be important in the future.
(28:04):
And then there's Jesse, yes, played by young Mazino, and
he's sort of the adult ish leader of their group,
but they're also friends. They're friends, but they have sort
of that awkward relationship of he's somebody who has authority
over you and you don't like it necessarily. But also again,
(28:25):
Jesse and Dina have an on again, off again relationship,
which complicates some things. But he's a big he's a
big character in this he'll be a big character in
the season. And then yes, we have Abby, Abby, Abby,
Oh my goodness, who's played by Caitlin Deaver, who was
(28:48):
a fan cast. By the way, that's not why she
got it. She auditioned for Ellie but she was a
fan cast outside of that, however, and we are going
to talk about this more because his character is extremely divisive.
I'm finding it really interesting some of the comments that
(29:09):
are coming out early about her where people are mad
about her body type because in the game, Abby was
very buff, very very buff, and it was for a
couple of reasons, gameplay reasons, and one I think was
just a necessary plot point. But obviously Caitlin de Ver
(29:32):
is not that. But that people people were mad at
her being buff too, right, They had all these hateful
comments about how buff she was.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
I think when you have like for me, they like
the game was just sexist, like over the top ridiculousness
the game for the show, I think it had maybe
for those who were fans of the game and like
it is that's not what you imagined. Like her facial structure, yes,
for sure, But like I said that too, I was like, oh,
(30:05):
she's a lot shorter and smaller than I thought she
would be. I thought like she would at least look
but to me, it's like she was similar to the
size of Ellie seemingly, which was not what I was
expecting because in the gameplay she is almost like five
inches taller than her and like a lot more muscular,
so was not quite especially when she was sitting next
(30:26):
to Owen, she looked really short compared to that character.
So I was like, oh uh oh, that's the thing
what shocked me the most, because she does look very,
very small, so that that threw me off. I didn't
say it was a bad thing. I was just like, ah,
that's not what I was expecting. So for maybe some
of those things, not the jerks who would like just
(30:49):
hate women in general, just in like because like we
saw the person who played helped make the game for Abby,
Like I've seen the you know, behind the scenes, she's big,
like she is a muscular woman and she exists.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Yes, yes, And I mean we're gonna have to we'll
talk about that when we get to whatever episode that
will be. But there was a lot of hateful rhetoric
around almost like anti trans transphobic, right, rhetoric around her
(31:25):
being so big and so now it's hard to tell.
I'm like, are you the same people who just pissed
now or are you whatever it is different people. I don't.
Most of it has just been mostly kind of kind
of like what you were talking about, I did read
that they purposely cast somebody who looked more like Ellie
(31:47):
and body type, so I think that will play out
more in the future. I can't stress this enough. They
did reveal Abby's dad died in that scene where they're
(32:13):
going over the graves in the beginning, And you know,
the drafts are the same drafts that gift Ellie and
Joel saw.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
They paid a lot of money for that. Those drafts.
We need to use them again, at least the same shots.
We need to use the same shots.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Yeah, which do not in the game. But that's pretty good.
But I can't stress enough that you do not know
that until.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Later, right, we don't know what's why, and everybody immediately
hates her.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. But I think that's point.
That's I have expressed my concern about this before because
just the way that the game versus the show will
play out, because in the game, you can keep playing.
But now we're going to have a wait of who
knows how long before the next season comes out, so
(33:01):
that weight I think could be pretty bad. Hopefully it
won't be that long because they're already in pre production.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
But I wonder if they know that and so they're no,
like we're gonna have to do it within the same
year or within the next year, or we're gonna be
in trouble and lose all interest.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
They have to know that, but I think that's the
reason they switch that around instead of having sort of
a mid game right reveal. Yeah, you also meet Abby's crew,
which is Owen, Nora, mel and Manny, and they will
all be I don't think they'll have two bigger role
(33:36):
in this season, but I could be wrong. I don't
know how they're splitting it, but they will have a
big role at some point. And then Eugene. Eugene is
a band of shocker because Eugene is in He's in Okay,
but he's a polar ooid picture, like his ghost is everywhere.
You kind of.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
Running memories of him.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, but you don't. So there's gonna
be a flashback episode with Eugene given to understand. But
this is Gail's husband, and Gail is a completely new character.
Like I said, she's there's no way you could convince
me that Joel video game Joel would get therapy.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
But we also like in the game, I feel like
Eugene is like just a perverted old man, A little
bit proverted old only man.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Yeah, but I didn't really like him. He's a guy
who kept to himself.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Right, but like you find all the porn that he said,
like all these things, like he is definite late.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
He grew a lot of weedy weed. But we'll see
how that plays out. Because they're doing that thing they
sort of did with Frank and Bill where this was
a mention or very brief moment in the game. So
I don't know if they've changed his character how it's
gonna pay it, but they made clear with the weed
that that's gonna be true.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Yes, they're going to keep hold of that for sure.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Yes. Uh, then we we do have a lot of
new enemies. One of the biggest complaints the show owners
have said that they got from the last season is
that there wasn't enough infected, So there's gonna be way more.
We'll see how that works out. But there are new
infected you get introduced to in the game. I don't
know how many of them they're going to include, but
(35:19):
they've already introduced stalkers, which also don't come in until
about halfway in the game. So stalkers are this new
type of infected that are smart. They can plan, they
can hide, they can run away, they can kind of
set traps. In the game. There's a function where you
(35:41):
can listen and like it's almost like sonar, like bat hearing,
and then you can hear like you can see sounds.
You know, you can't see stalkers. They're so annoying and
they can they come together in groups, so you be
fighting one and then want to tax you from behind.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
So I was at least twelve oh no's with that appearance.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Oh gosh, it's very raptor like, oh unmust they figure
out open doors? They figured out how to open the doors.
So frustrating, especially if there are clickers too, because then
you really have to strategize and runners. Anyway, one thing
I want to I just want to tease. I'm not
going to say anything more about it, but I'm incredibly
(36:24):
excited about the rat King, which I think will be
next season. But that's gonna be cool. That is like
the King of Infected. Yes exactly, I'm so excited. There's
a thing in the game where you can hear the
rat King, like long before you actually encounter it, and
I'm hoping they do that in the show. I think
(36:46):
that would be really cool. But all right, this brings
us to one of the biggest things, one of the
most jarring things of this episode and a game when
you first start, is the rift between Joel and Ellie.
So when we last saw them, they seem to be
in an okay place. They're you know, going back home,
(37:11):
as Joel called it. They seem to have this father
daughter relationship, they've bonded, and now something has gone wrong,
and it is very clear, it is very awkwardly pigfully clear,
and we don't know quite what it is. We have
the suspicions of what it is, but we don't know
for sure. And this has a lot to do with
(37:37):
Ellie's lack loss of trust in Joel and questioning what
he's telling her and just how he's kind of controlling
her narrative. She's he's the one telling her, you cannot
tell anybody about this immunity. You cannot do that, and
(37:57):
he to the point other people as mentioned, no, if
I do something wrong with Ellie, Joel's going to do
something possibly violent. So like Tommy lies to Joel about
hanging out with Ellie, Jesse says that thing where he's like,
I don't wanna, I don't need Joel bothering me, And
(38:18):
I really feel like there's this she's annoyed at both
the overprotectedness. She is convinced he's lying, but she's also
like having to deal with his anger violence overprotectedness when
it comes to other people. So like when he attacks Seth,
whether you think that's the right thing he should have
(38:40):
done or not, if you're looking at his past record
of how he's dealt with these threats, like she I
feel like she might think she has to stop him
from being violent. And also she definitely is annoyed at,
and I think rightfully so, at her agency being kind
(39:04):
of taken away. And there is a lot of like
questioning about the impacts and consequences of violence, which will
be confronted with his decision. But we also see things
like the guitar because in the first season he said
he would teach her to play the guitar. He did
(39:26):
clearly he did, and she has a guitar, but she's
not keeping up with it. It's kind of discarded and
she hasn't like the strings are bad, and he takes
it to fix it. So that's a clear sign something's wrong. Also,
she did move into the garage, and then you sort
of have this the therapist saying, it's such a normal problem,
(39:49):
like a nineteen year old. It's every daughter ever has
this problem. But you know, we as the viewers know, no,
it's not just that. I mean, so does Gail, and
that's why she as her like, no, I know you're
lying and you're hiding something. Yes, But one thing I
thought was interesting in sort of the when the show
owners were talking about it and the clip after was
(40:12):
they were talking about that scene in the party after
Joel attacks Seth, I just pushes him down, and they said, like,
she inadvertently embarrasses Joel Ellie and inadvertedly embarrasses Joel, which
is interesting because I played this game with my brothers
and I was like, I feel like he invertedly embarrassed her,
And so that's kind of going back to that perspectives
of who you think they I mean, honestly, it's probably
(40:34):
both both are true. But it was just so funny
because I remember look at my brothers to be like,
are you seriously look at this? Yeah? But then also
there are a lot of similarities that are going to
be explored. Tommy said, you know, you and my brother
(40:57):
the same person to Ellie. But also you can start
to see some similarities between Abby and Joel, and they
talk about that in the after show too, about you know,
if this kind of remind if Abby's lost kind of
reminds you of Joel's loss of Sarah, then that's not unintentional.
(41:20):
You see Abby houses watch. So there are these things
that are gonna come come out and be more obvious
as we go forward, which I'm very excited about. Very excited. Okay,
And this brings us to just some random shout outs
that I have. So one is the knife, Ellie's knife,
(41:42):
which her mom gave her. She still has, and that's
how you kill the clickers. Shimmer her horse, if you remember,
she meets Shimmer when she's much younger. The horse is
much younger. And the first season Cat, I just cat
Ellie's X did the tattoo. I was not expecting Kat
(42:02):
to show up.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
That was.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
A real shock. She did not want to be there.
I appreciate it. I wouldn't want to either. If you
look around Ellie's room, there are a ton of them.
Like the comic book posters. There's Also she has a
poster of space. She said she want to go to
the moon to be like Sally Ride. That's what she wanted.
Her journal is a game mechanic that you don't have
(42:29):
to actually engage with if you don't want to in
the game, but they like if you read it. A
lot of what she had written is what's from the game.
If you remember, after they kill the clickers, Den and
Ellie kill the clickers, there's a dog employee of the
month that is a clue to how to open a
safe in the game. Multiple Curtis and Viper mentions, we
(42:52):
must shout that out. This is also something you can
miss in the game. It's kind of a conversation you
can have if you choose to with Dina or she's
talking about how Joel loves Curtis and Viper and she
mentions like, hell, yeah, we should watch them with Joel
and I might watch them. And then just the line
because I love it, Oh, Ellie, I think they should
(43:13):
be terrified of you, because oh my, it's so good.
It's so good. That whole scene was beautiful. It's like
shot for shot, it's amazing. And that was the trailer
for the game was pretty much that scene Crooked Stills music,
same music them. Yeah, oh my gosh. Anyway, thank you
(43:39):
so much listeners and Samantha for coming along this journey.
Hopefully they're fun. Even if you don't watch the show
and you're not really interested, sort of like our Sex
and the City things are.
Speaker 2 (43:49):
Yes, please enjoy this with us. And yeah, just watching Annie,
I'm gonna keep a count. I'm like, keep a tally
of the oh.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Nos, some good some tallies the tears and yeah, we'll see. Yeah,
there are seven episodes in this season, so hopefully you
don't absolutely hate this, but if you do, there's always
said calm down before we start, before we start season three,
whenever that will be. But yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm very
very excited. I'm looking forward to it and there's so
many things I cannot wait to talk about. It's gonna
(44:20):
be great. But in the meantime, listeners, if you have
any thoughts, if you have any recipes, last of those
recipes are things that you think are good fits for
the last of us. We've cut kind of a rough menu,
but let us know. You can email us at Hello
at stuffanenever told you dot com. You can find us
(44:41):
on Blue Sky at Momsup podcast or in Instagram and
TikTok at Stuff I Never Told You. We're also on YouTube.
We have a tepolk store and we have a book
you can get where we get your books. Thanks as
always here a super Ducer Christina or Executiroveducer, my Inker Chuger, Joey.
Speaker 2 (44:52):
Thank you and thanks to you for.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
Listening Stuff I Never Told You disroduction by Heart Radio.
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