April 26, 2025 • 61 mins
Through the Valley. Monumental decisions are made that forever change the course of our characters and story. Things quickly unravel as Jackson is attacked and losses are sustained. Every path has a price.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Andy and Samantha.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm welcome stuff I never told you production of iHeart Radio,
and welcome to the second episode of our seven episode
mini series we are doing on season two of the
Last of Us, which is not a sponsor. As ridiculous
(00:30):
as that isous it is very ridiculous. If you're familiar
with this segment, then you know basically what we're doing
is we're reacting to the previous week's episode, and we're
only spoiling that episode plus the previous season, the first game,
and parts of the second game, but not plotline parts.
(00:54):
We're being very careful here. Yeah, we're trying our best.
I think we're doing a pretty good job so far.
But yes, this is just a special thing we're doing.
Hopefully you enjoy it even if you haven't watched the
show or played the game, although maybe not for this episode,
which we'll talk about. But yeah, there's only seven and
(01:16):
then we'll eventually get to season three because they're splitting
the second game into at least two seasons, and I
personally think it's going to be three seasons, but we
will see. That is what we're doing here. I did
want to say before we get into this one. The
Showwriners have called this the Empire strikes Back season, so
(01:37):
make of that what you will. Also, this is why
I need a fandom therapist. I looked it up. There
are fandom therapists, but really they're just like therapists that
no fandoms. I need to tell me why this upsets
you so much? When XYZ happens in this game, That's
what I need. But anyway, please see your past episodes.
(02:03):
But the way these works is Samantha gives the recap
and then I go through all of my thoughts. Anaya
have a lot of thoughts about this one, for sure.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Yes, yes, she has many thoughts.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
I did not count the oh no's because there was
too many guts.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
There's a yeah, I think I guessed the very first moment.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
You did before I even even I think it started.
I was like, really.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Because the sound effect, I was like.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Immediately like it was like nothing had happened except for
the sound effect.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
So I did not get keep count.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
But I do have some amazing pictures of you and
your friends are friends friends of the show. Marissa and
Katie's reaction and it's quite hilarious.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
It is a tale there they are tales. But here
we go. Are you ready any Yeah? Sure you ready?
Speaker 3 (03:00):
We open to a scene of a dream or not.
Abby is going down the hospital corridors because she's hearing
the alarms and as she's going down hearing snipe likes
like screams and muffle screams. In the background, we hear
someone say, don't do don't go in there, because she
has reached the operating room and she turns to look
(03:20):
as hers herself and then she's saying, don't go in there,
don't go in there. You'll regret this. Don't go in there,
and they're like, you're lying. She's saying that you're lying,
there's nothing wrong. Well, essentially back and forth, and finally
she's like, Okay, you're gonna regret this. You're gonna see
his brains on the floor, and essentially she goes in
scream wake up. We find Abby now up to date
the five years later, she and her crew are at
(03:43):
a cabin close to Joel and Ellie's and Kamma Jackson,
and they have been searching for Joel the entire time.
As the light shines down on them because apparently, I
guess I got must have got there at night and
they didn't see. They look out and see that the
area that they've been searching for is a giant town.
(04:06):
It's not a small keep like a couple of tents
here and there is a whole village.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
And they were not ready.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
So they have a hole back and forth for a
minute about what to do in plans, and Abby is
holding firm she will find Joel. They will find a way,
they will find she. Her plan is to find someone
who knows about the town, take them in, get the
information that they need, and then dot dot dot because
they're like, you can't just let them go, and they
(04:33):
we'll deal with it. So as Abby gets ready she's
going to go on patrol herself. The rest of them
are coming around together saying, what are we going to do.
There's no way we can take them. We're all going
to die, in which Owen says, my plan is to
convince her to turn around. So end of that, Abby
makes her way out in the very freezing cold.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Oh dear god.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
We come to back to Jackson. We see Ellie being
woken up by Jesse saying, we need to go on patrol.
You gotta do your duty. Da Da Da and there's
a whole cute back and forth which is actually in
the game about the fact. She's like, look, man, last
night was crazy because he was like I heard y'all.
(05:16):
Y'all got into them some things after I left, and
she was like, oh no, everything was crazy. Dina was drunk.
I don't know all these things, and Dina didn't mean it,
and he's like, what I was talking about, you get
in a fight and then he's like.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
It's all stuff.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
I can't believe you would do this, blah blah, just kidding.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
I knew I don't care type of thing, and then
she was like shut up and she goes get it
ready and he's like no, but that was kind of dumb,
and she's like ah. So they go on and he
keeps talking about what's going on with him with Joel,
with everything, and finally she's like, Joel and I are good.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
We're fine.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Joel's Joel, I am me and we're fine. It's just
we handle it as in fact, let me go patrol
with him. You're getting on nurse. Let me go patrol
a hit with him, and he's like, you can't. He
went out with Dina, but also Maria wants to talk
to us. So they go to the cantina where Seth
I guess owns it or runs it, and Assessed the
(06:12):
apologizes with a steak sandwich and we had we had
a stake sandwich Annie the first episode, thinking that episode
was going to be the first episode we miss moving
miscalculated just.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Want because it's the first scene yeah, after the title
card in the game.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Yeah, but we are Yeah, I had to come back
to it.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
We were all also off on the second one. Anyway,
moving on, we didn't do so well with the predictions
for the mills, so we move on and they are
all going on patrol. At the same time, we have
Tommy giving a spiel about protocols because there's a giant
mass amount of infected out there and they found out
(06:53):
that they're all under the snow and there's tons of them,
so just be aware. So they have a whole plan
about how to keep the city safe, if the village
is safe, and everybody's responsibilities and duties doing all this
and reminding people what to do and protocols. I feel
like that was foreshadowing obviously, as they are still working
on that pipe that we saw from the first episode.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Oh he cuts into it and he.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Realizes, oh no, the court is ups are communicating, are communicating,
And then we flash onto finding Abby. He's still traveling
and she is a bound to determine because she just
spotted two people on a horse and she's like, okay,
I gotta get them, I gotta get them. She's going
downhill and she's like like steep hills, just sliding, just sliding.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
All the way down to the point.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
She loses her gun and she goes into the middle
of nowhere and she looks around. She realizes this, holy crap,
a lot of infected, a lot of bloaters like just sticking.
And it was really a scary scene. She's looking around like,
oh my god, Oh my god, what do I do?
And they start coming awake because they realize she's there.
Also again the communicating with the village, so a lot
(07:58):
of things are happening. So she like runs for it,
and there's a whole scene. It kinda is like the
behind the Back, not behind the Bassards, the Battle of
the Bastards scene. Y'all know, Game of Thrown people know, Okay, anyway,
moving on, they run and run and run. She goes
to what a building and climbs over a wall and
then she's like going to the side and makes the
mistake of being around a fenced area, a wire fence,
(08:20):
and oh that scene. Because they are trying to get
to her every way possible. One breaks through, it's like
grabbing at her. She goes through and.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
She's like, oh my god.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
And then we hear a gunshot and it's Joel and
he has rescued her and he pulls her up and
they go around and they're trying to figure out what
to do inside the building.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
So Dina and Joel and Abby are all together. Oh
my god.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
So during this time they're trying to figure out where
to go, what to do. She Abby says, my people
are here, they're up in the cabin.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
We can make it.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Let's go.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
So they're like make a decision, grab onto each other
and move on. And by the way, Dina's like, who
are you? She does where did you come from?
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Where did you come from?
Speaker 3 (09:00):
So she asks a good question that I'm really surprised
Joel didn't ask. We flashed back and we realize, holy crap,
they infected are coming and they are all coming for Jackson,
and everybody's preparing.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
We got the whole wall.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
We've got like barrels crashing with gas, and we got
all the guns, people in the village getting ready, people
at the top getting ready to shoot. So it's everything's
happening with all the children and women are being put
into bunkers.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Essentially, Wow, this is going down, and oh my god.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
We see the giant floater, like the really big messy
one messy and they know he's coming, and so Tommy
yells they're gonna breach because there's no way to stop them.
We have flamethrower people getting ready to go, and then
two of them runaway.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
You know. The other one is Seth I killed.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Does he die in the game?
Speaker 2 (09:59):
I don't think he see him again in the game.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
But well that is a variation from the game, because
that does not happen in the game, correct.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Yeah, no, oh, this whole thing doesn't happen in the game.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Well later, yeah, But like anyway, so we have that saying,
oh my god, it's a whole thing. We have Maria
and Tommy making eye contact with each other knowing what's
going down. Tommy's running down getting that flamethrower because again,
two people will make an exit, not the coolest.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Uh, and they're trying to all fight uh these floaters.
We go back to Abby and Dina. Because it's a
cut back and forth drama, there's a lot of trauma.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
So we go back and Abby and Dina and Joel
have made it to the cabin and everybody's like trying
to fix mel It's really on top of the trying
to get in the warm up, trying to give him food,
making sure they don't have like frost happening.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Dina is noticing.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
Nina is very aware of everything, watching looking at people,
looking at tags and like trying to figure out who
they were, and like where are you from? Who are
you at the Then this is when we see the
gun being pointed at Joel, and Abby pretty much tells
her intentions about what's going on after she's kind of
given the hint and like this is so, and so
this is Joel, this is it? Like like she makes
(11:10):
a giant announcement. All of them are like what what
and so that has happened? And Abby begins her speech
about what she's doing, who she was, and how she
lost everyone and she's like, you know, do you know
who I am?
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Essentially, and he was.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Like are you military? She's like, do we look like military?
And you know, he does a little observation. He's like no,
He's like, wait, are you firefly? And he kind of
gets that and she's like, didn't you know all the
fireflies are dead? Drama, and then at this point he
gets shut in the knee. She takes his kneecap out.
(11:45):
At the same time, they have Dina. Dina's freaking out,
and Abby instructs them to put Dina to sleep, so
like gives her medicine, so she gets knocked out and
she falls out, and he.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Oh, all the bad things are happening.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
All the while, Ellie and Jesse have also gone on patrol,
so they actually don't know what's going down. Because the
storm has gotten so bad, they are told to, you know,
get shelter. So they go and do their thing. Put
the horses left, get in the shelter, lay about.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
It turns out to be a eu Jay's place.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Lots of weed, lots of good bonds, all the things
there if you need it. She talks about all the
things that she's going to take back, and this was
a variation as well that I know we're going to
talk about, but like you know, here we have a
representation of who Jane was a We find out that
Jean had been a firefly as well, and that he
quit a while ago because he was tired of all
the killing quote unquote something. A conversation comes up about
(12:37):
how it was really sad when Joel had to put
him down, and that's kind of the end of that story.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
In that moment that like, we don't know much more
of that.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
While this is happening, they do get an alert and
this is kind of pre attack on the Jackson just
they just know it's coming, and people are calling them
and saying, hey, we can't find Joel, we can't reach Joel,
we can't find Dina.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
So Ellie and Jesse are like, we're down, let's go,
let's go.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
So they immediately get their stuff and immediately make their
way up. They make a plan to go around so
they can cover more space, so they split up. Jesse
goes one way, Ellie goes the other, and that's where
we can come back again. Back in the town big Bloater,
going after Tommy. Tommy's about to die. We got a
flame thrower that is crapidly losing gas and he's like
(13:23):
Oh my god, I'm.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
About to die.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
I'm about to die like he's you can see it everywhere.
And then as that ends, the Blowter dies. He gets roasted,
really really well, really really good and roasted.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
And it comes back to battle and seeing all the
dead bodies, but he's still going after all the other
uh infected, because that's obviously happening as he's trying to
round out.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
That and of the battle there.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
All the while, I didn't forget to tell y'all that
Joel does see what's happening in Jackson because he sees
all the flames and he's trying to rally he was
he was trying to rally everybody back to go to there.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Yeah, again when he figured out what was going down,
he knew what was happening. Abby gives a big speech
about what's happening. He says, you know, just kill me.
I'm so tired of the speech. If you're going to
do it, do it. So At the same time, Happy
finees a bag of golf clubs, the infamous golf clubs.
And I'm pretty sure we got trolled with that comment.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
That I read that day.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Yeah, I was gonna say something, but I was like
we can't explain why it's a punt. I think it's.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Yeah, yep, I think it was.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Uh. So she takes that nine iron and goes to
town on a very brutal, brutal beating, brutal beating on him,
and she is taking out all her rage and everybody's
just watching and like, if you watch the faces of
her friends and her allies, you have different emotions between yes,
vengeance and yes enjoyment and yes disgust. Like there's several
(14:50):
different concern as this going down.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
We have Ellie's hearing this.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
Ellie has approached the cab and she made it first,
she sees their horses and she's like, okay, what's happening?
Goes in Godziah and she hears noises and can't bear
out what it is. And as she opens the door,
she realizes something that Joel is in there. And as
that happens, she comes in, she gets attacked because she
doesn't see everybody because she's in the panic, and it's
(15:16):
the gun is taken from her and she's put down,
not I mean first, she definitely takes a swipe with
a knife, gets one of them in the face.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Manny gets gets a cut in the face, which he
is not happy about the entire time.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
But she's put down and having to witness what is happening.
The rest of the crew Abbey's cruise just tell her
to get it over with. They're done, we gotta go,
we gotta go. And so the final blow is with
the broken club chink to the head, essentially to Joel.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
We see Joel.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
He does try to get up as Ellie is pleading
for him to get up, does not get up.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Ellie tells them I will kill you all. I will
find you and I will kill you all. They leave
her out the door very quick and leave.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
We have her just alone with Joel's body because Dina
is hasted out and not awake. Jesse makes his way
up there. Eventually, as the scene clears at Jackson Hole
or Jackson Wyoming, they have defeated all of the infected,
but now they're having to kill off their own people
(16:23):
who have been bitten and clean up the mess that
is there. Tommy and Maria are united and are okay
and walk away, and the final scene we see Ellie, Dina,
and Jesse on horses dragging Joel's body back to the encampment.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Or back to the village end scene.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
About the cry right now. Oh terrible, Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
It is all terrible.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
It's very good.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Oh okay, how are you?
Speaker 2 (17:14):
I'm good. This is okay. This is the one that
I've been wanting to talk about. I'm so relieved it
out there because it is just we're gonna get into it.
But it was so emotionally devastating when I played it,
and it was really hard. We weren't even sure what
(17:35):
they were gonna do, right because Pedro Pascal and We're like,
are they gonna are they gonna do it? We don't know.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
They did it, and they did it and they stuck.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Like even though her Ellie walking in I remember this
in the playthrough, hearing the hearing the noise, so she
didn't know exactly what was happening until she opened the door.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
It was spot on.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Yeah, yeah, we're in talk about that later because that
that kind of ringing sound is going to be recurrent
from here on out. But okay, let's get into it.
Because I have a lot of thoughts about this.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
I will say Annie did not react the way I
thought she was going to react. I thought you would
be on the floor screaming Joel's name. Much like the game.
When we first played that through, Annie just sat in
my partner's living room. This is like COVID during the lockdown. Yeah,
(18:35):
with a piece of apple pie. It was for her birthday,
I believe, Yeah, and her sobbing and just saying Joel why,
and then my dog sheches just staring at her. I
think it was more for the pie, but then he
was also she was also confused about what was happening. Yeah,
(18:56):
So for us to see the scene, knowing that it
was coming, we weren't. We were sure if it was
gonna be this episode of the next.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
But you did not.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
You you did.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
You were in tears, like the emotions were there, but
it wasn't as in depth or like, uh, as long
or as deep as I thought it was gonna be.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
I did upon another rewatch, I had had a pretty
I had it pretty good. But I think because I
was just so relieved, which sounds awful, but like I
just haven't bating it. Yeah, I was anticipating it. I've
played that game fifteen to twenty times, and I'm not exaggerating.
I don't think more than that. I think it's probably
fifteen to twenty, but who knows, I could probably look
(19:36):
but I just was like, finally I could share this
pain with people. And I do feel kind of bad
because I said I was looking forward to like schaden Freuda,
and now I've gotten a lot of videos of it,
and I'm like, oh, I'm so sorry, you're so sad.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
But I'm also like, I know what you're going through.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Yes, yes, and it happened so early. We'll get into
that second. But okay, first of all, let's start with
the title name, which, as I said, had cost me
a lot of consternation because it was the only title
name they didn't confirm previously because they knew they knew
everyone who played the game. We were looking for when
(20:20):
is this episode it's gonna happen, So it's called it's
titled Through the Valley. And this is a reference to
a song that Ashley Johnson, who is the voice of
Ellie in the game, covered, and you first hear her
cover it in a twenty sixteen trailer for the Last
(20:42):
of Us two, which tells you how long these games
take to make, because the first one came out in
twenty thirteen, and when in that trailer, it's very clear
there's a vengeance story, but we didn't know what it was.
And when you listen to the lyrics, it's all about like,
I'm strong and my convict, I'm going to do what
I have to do. My soul will be damned though
(21:03):
I'm on the wrong side. And in the trailer it's
focused on Ellie, but in the show it kind of
starts on Ellie and then it moves to Abby, which
I think was very purposeful. But that is where that
song at the end comes from. But yeah, let us
(21:23):
talk about the big battle scene. This actually is not
in the game at all. There is a scene like
it where the Horde that's chasing Abby Joel in this
case Tommy, which we'll talk about in a second. It
wasn't DNA. It was Tommy. Back to the lodge where
Abby and her crew are. They do throw like a
lot of them all the top cocktails and set the
(21:46):
Horde on fire, but it is nothing like this. I
suspect this was in part a response to the complaint
that they didn't have enough infected in the first season,
so they're like, hey, won't act there, let's do it. Then.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
Did you know the person who directed this episode was
like did do some Game of Throne as well as Succession,
and then apparently in Succession he directed the most like
one of the most famous deaths in Succession, so they
brought him in so that it feels like they did
that to make sure to have it have that feel.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Yeah, and I believe he said in the like behind
the scenes after the episode, he was like, I need
to the thing I knew I needed to get right
with Joel's death, Like I knew I had to get
the makeup right, get all that right. But one thing
that is different about how the infected act in this
(22:44):
is they're communicating almost like telepathically. I mean it's through
the roots, which is new to the show as well.
But I didn't notice this until I was watching something later.
But when the Bloat, which is the big one, is coming,
Tommy notices that they all start following all the other
infected called runners start following the bloater because they know
(23:05):
the Bloater can break in to the break in, so
they're making strategic choices. Now they're smarter now.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
They did address in the episode about the ghost.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Story, yes, but they really and then like that scene
where they're all chasing after Abby and Joel and Dina
and then they kind of branch off, like it's like
a fish school coming together. They're coming together in a
way that's very scary. And the Bloater and the game
(23:39):
is like very difficult. And by the way, they also
explode when they die, so everybody, we were all screaming
out the TV like, no, Tommy's gonna die. But they
got rid of that for the show. So Tommy is fine.
But like the flame throwers one of your most powerful weapons.
You get it at the end of both games, and
(24:01):
for Tommy, the slame thur in the game also is
only a campfire kind of amount of fuel, but he
had two like full canisters of gas and this floater
was not going down, So that suggests that they're evolving
and becoming stronger to humanity's defenses. Also, I have to say,
(24:26):
well that you hear that growl of the Bloater.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
I was like, well, the coming, before we could see it,
she kept saying it's coming.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
I hear the Bloater.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
One thing we do have in our house because my
partner really really gets excited about sound, is a pseudo
surround sound set up, so you do have that like
background noise and then behind you.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Yes, but that sounds so ingrained. You're like, he's just
around here, somewhere. But also I did love and I
think your partner pointed this out too, but there's this
scene where you can when the blower is coming for
Tommy on like a one on one fight, you can
see its reflection in the window. That was cool. That
(25:09):
was really cool. This isn't I guess this isn't part
of the big battle scene, but I'm gonna include it
because it was a pretty big set piece. But the
scene where Abby is crawling under the fence and it's
like collapsing under all of those infected is like straight
from the game, and it's terrifying because you're kind of crawling, which,
(25:30):
by the way, you do play as Abby. We're gonna
talk about that in a second, but at this point
you're playing Zabby and you're crawling under and that was
really good. I also just want to kind of flag
the dogs. So the second game introduces this very terrifying
(25:57):
functionality where people have have dogs that can smell you
when you're hiding, so you can't just like hide in
the bushes like I like to do. The dog will
find you, so you have to either run or kill
the dog. I don't know. I don't know what they're
(26:20):
going to do in the show, but I will say
if they follow the game, there is going to be
at least one dog death. Yes, I mean, I'll try
to warn everybody once we get to that. If I
think they're going to do it, I'll try to warn you.
But I don't know. I have no idea. But that's
that is a new thing they introduced in the second game.
(26:43):
But it was really cool. It was really cool. It
felt very helms deeper Game of Thrones, and I did
like seeing how prepared they were. And it was also
kind of so sad because even with all those preparations,
just the carnage, absolute carnage, and Jackson is not in
(27:04):
a good shape, which again this did not happen in
the game. None of this happened in the game. I
think they added it in both because of the you know,
people will like it, but I think they also put
it in there because it added a lot more drama
in terms of we had so many moving pieces, everybody's
in danger, we don't know what's gonna happen, right, And
(27:27):
it was effective. It happened so fast, and it's like
bouncing back between so many things.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
Uh, they did please a lot of drama in one
episode an hour.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
It's only an hour, so I did want to touch
on some key differences before we get to the big
the big thing we must talk about. Uh. So one is,
as we mentioned, in the game, Jesse, it's Tommy and
(28:00):
Joel that go on patrol together, and it's Ellie and
Dina bank go on patrol together. And then Jesse later
finds Ellie and Dina at Eugen's hideout and he's like,
oh God, we can't find Joel and Tommy. So that's different.
I have a couple of reasons for why I think
that is, but I will say, you know, when Abby's
(28:24):
doing her like hey, here are names, Dina definitely picked
up on that and remembers all their names, which I
believe is replacing a mechanic in the game where you
find all their photos. So I think it's okay, yeah,
because she knows she knows all their names, she saw
the patch. And another one, a huge one that I'm
(28:48):
I'm going to talk about more in a second, is
that in the show, you know Abby's motivation in the game,
you do not at all. You have no idea. You've
got your theories, but you have got no clue, and
it can it kind of completely changes how that scene
plays out. Then, Yes, the destruction of Jackson, that's new.
(29:10):
I do think it's a pretty stark reminder that they're
not safe and they got kind of complacent. I mean,
obviously they were prepared, but they just had a lot
of stuff that a lot of people outside of Jackson
don't have. They had this nice celebration the night before.
So when Joel sees Jackson on fire and he makes
(29:32):
the choice ultimately to trust Staddy or be like, okay,
we'll go with you, that, I mean that kind of
makes it worse that he dies, not knowing just knowing
that Jackson.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
There's so many things.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
I know, It's awful, so bad. I love it though,
but yeah, he dies like knowing Jackson's on fire and
all the people he loves are there, and but also
Ellie is right there and watching it, so that is different.
I read some interesting I was watching a good breakdown
(30:10):
of it today and I also read that you know
kind of when Jesse and Ellie go out and they
see the storm and they're like, oh no, it would
be fine, we don't worry about it, and it turns
out they definitely did. But also Abby is in the mountain,
so it's sort of like dismissing this threat that was
up there, and Abby unintentionally is the one that awakens
(30:33):
all of those infected when she falls down, and Abby
was there for Joel. So it's just kind of a
mess of the fallout of the decisions these characters make,
which is sort of something we're going to see a
lot of coming work. But all right, let's talk about
(31:05):
the big thing, Joel's death. Oh man, oh my gosh.
Like I said, I'm really relieved it's out there. I'm
so ready to talk about it. I have gotten so
many texts about it, including from people I haven't heard
from literally two years. Didn't even say what they're talking about,
(31:26):
just said how could you? And I assume they're talking.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
About this, which is hilarious because it's not like you
controlled the game in any least way.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
No, no, but it was great. I was like, oh yeah, sorry,
And it is like I'm joking about it because it
was really painful, Like I went through the five stages
of grief with this game, and I started with denial.
But I'm just gonna I'm just gonna be real with you.
He's dead. He's dead.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
I'm sorry, he's not gonna there's no magic in that.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Nope, he is not coming back. He is dead. There
are a lot of flashbacks that he'll be in so
that we understand what happened of the five years we missed,
So he's not gone. I guess Pedro Pascal will be back,
but he is dead. And one of the reasons I
(32:22):
say this is that when the game first came out,
they had this fake out trailer where all a lot
of the scenes that you play later in the game
you see Joel in them. It turns out it's not Joel,
(32:44):
it's Jesse actually, so they pulled it. So I thought
he was going to come back. I saw what I saw,
and I was like, can't be I saw.
Speaker 4 (32:53):
The trailer, this is not true. I was really like,
I don't know what this is, but it's gotta be wrong.
But it was incredibly, incredibly painful, a lot of DearS
over many playthroughs.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
But another thing with this is we talked about this
in our episode we did on the most recent remaster,
there's a documentary about how this game got made and
a lot of things went wrong because of the pandemic.
(33:34):
One of the big ones was that they delayed the
game both because of supply chain because of the pandemic,
and they knew this was going to be a huge
spoiler and they were trying to protect it. But that
made a fan in quotes really angry. And because the
(33:59):
engineer there's the designers were working from home, this fan
was able to get into their servers and was like
basically doing kind of a hostage threat with the gam
where it's like I'm gonna leak a scene every day
until you release the geit and he got frustrated and
(34:19):
eventually was like yea agile diyes here's the sun and
it blew up. Like people were furious. And this is
if you remember in the last one I said stay
away from Reddit when it comes to Last of As two.
It had a huge impact because the game is meant
(34:40):
to be played, it's meant to go. You got to
go through the whole thing. It's like grief, you got
to go through the whole thing. And so people were
seeing this one scene and they were so outraged by it,
to the point like I've had people who never played
the game tell me they hate it for X Y Z,
and I'm like, but the it's not actually what happens,
(35:01):
and they go, but they've heard this kind of like
Reddit dialogue, and it's really sad. It's really heartbreaking because,
as I said, the Firskin came out in twenty thirteen,
this one came out in twenty twenty, so seven years
of work and have it leaked and then torn apart
(35:22):
and then get death threats for it. It's pretty awful.
But it also is kind of funny because some of
the people involved or like, I don't care if you
get spoiled on the show Man done, Like, yeah, that's fair,
that's fair. But anyway, I do know that they wanted
(35:44):
to kill now. I know they wanted to kill Joel
Off pretty early in the show too, because they were
worried that it would get out. So they still care
a little. But yeah, anyway, but I had no idea.
I had never parents and anything like this in a game.
But so you start as playing Joel, you played most
(36:06):
of the first game as and Joel tells Tommy what
happened in the first game with the Fireflies with Ellie
and her being immune and then after the title card,
that's where it starts to seem with Jesse, who's waking
her up from Morning Patrol, which we saw in this episode,
and you're starting you start controlling Ellie. Another thing they
did is they you knew, like I said, it was
(36:27):
a vengeance tale, but they made you believe it was Dina.
Dina was the one that was going to die. And
that's why at first I was like, maybe that's why
they put Dina here. I still think I think they
were just kind of trying.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
To save still messing with us.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
I think so. I have a theory, but I'm going
to wait for the next episode to explain. But yeah,
we really thought it was her. And I remember when
I got this game, I went and found it. Here's
what it says on the Beck experienced the devastating physical
and emotional consequences of Ellie's vengeance as you embark on
a relentless pursuit of those who have wronged her. I
(37:07):
knew I was in for it. I was like, oh, no,
this is gonna be wrong. And it was.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
It was.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
It was, but it was rougher than I could have
ever imagined. And Joel's death happened so fast in the game,
it's within an hour. It doesn't the show too, but
it's just like everything falls apart so quickly, and it
completely shifts what you think this is going to be. Wow,
(37:38):
especially because you've got like the relationship between Joel and
Ellie being so fractured and then he's dead hour O yep.
And to reiterate, you had no idea who these people
were that were coming in or why they were there.
(37:59):
You know why I'm controlling this random character because you're
controlling Abby within the first hour as well. You don't
even know who they're looking for. The first time I
played it, I thought they were looking for Ellie, but no,
you don't know. And yeah, you control Abby at the
fence part. You're looking for these patrols. It's a real mind.
(38:22):
And there's actually one that's wilder, way wilder later that
I cannot wait to talk about. And then there's another
one that just hits you where hurts. Oh. They love
doing that, they love doing it. But the shock factor
of this death is really hard to overstate because I nope,
(38:43):
I couldn't couldn't believe it, couldn't believe it. It does
play out differently in the show because of you know,
you know, Abby's motivations, which gives it an added layer
of tension because you know, but I think it diminishes
the shop. But people who haven't played the game and
just watched the show, you can write in and tell
(39:04):
me I'm not sure. I've seen a lot of different reactions. Interestingly,
I've seen a lot of you know, hey, they humanized
Abby a bit more in the show because at this
point in the game, you have no idea, you have
no clue, but you feel really helpless, and I feel
like they captured that in the show as well, where
(39:26):
it's just like everything is unraveling and you're too late
or you made the wrong decisions and you can't stop
it now. But it is also the consequences of your
actions as a character and as a gamer. So that
is one thing I love about this game is it
(39:48):
really makes you question some of the things you've done,
because you know, a lot of video games like this,
not necessarily with the humans in the game, but it's
kind of fun to kill clickers if you know what
you're doing. Like it's it's sort of the point is
it's like this is the objective and then this comes
(40:10):
in and is like, but actually there's consequences to what
you did and now you've got to face it. Whoo,
which brings us too Abby, Abby, Abby. One of the
reasons I always say it like that is because Ellie
gets so obsessed with event she just starts repeating Abby's name.
(40:31):
It's one of my favorite, like most disturbing scenes in
the game, but it became a whole thing. When we
would play it. I would do places we would just say.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
It would include that in other games, yes.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
You would, which I have looked up. Her name Abby
means my father is Joy, which makes sense. So in
the show she is the same age as Ellie is
currently when she found her dad dead, So so that's
a We're going to see a lot of these parallel she.
Abby was nineteen when she found her dad dead. Now
(41:07):
Ellie has witnessed a father figure die in front of her.
Abby has this whole speech about how she broke her code.
She does not get to have the speech in the
game because they are trying to obscure her motives. So
in the game she's like basically like do you know
(41:30):
who I am? And Joel's like, just get it over
with and she does, whereas in the show, she has
this whole speech and then Joel says, just get it
over with and she does. But she has this whole
thing about her code, which I'm very interested in because
that doesn't track with how I know the code of
(41:51):
the WLF. But we'll find out more about that, I
am sure. But she breaks it too, and she knows
that's I think that's one of the lines in the
song so resonant is it's you know, I know I'm
on the side of the wrong. I know I'm gonna
be damned for what I did, but she decided it
was worth it. This is also an instance where she's
(42:12):
basically like, tell me the truth and we'll go from there,
and he does tell you the truth, even though he
didn't for Ellie or Gale the Therapist. Another really heartbreaking
thing about this is kind of the accidental circumstances of it.
There's a lot of things that could have gone differently,
(42:34):
and Joel might still be alive, but she does accidentally
get what she wants. She you know, Owen wants to
convince her it isn't worth it. A lot of the
other people in the group seem to think it's not
worth it. She almost turned around because of the cold.
Joel has a lot of instances where he almost went
(42:55):
to Jackson but then trusted her saved her life, like
a bunch of different things, And I think that's really
reminiscent of all the questions that come after death, like
what if I had done this? Or what if? What
are the ways I could have changed this outcome? And
that's so painful. But yeah, I've read some really interesting
(43:20):
articles about how the balancing act between making Abby like
a villain and an anti hero, which is so interesting
to me because, like I said, she's a very divisive
character in the game. I don't think you'd ever there
was never any worry with that. But again, you didn't
(43:41):
know her motivations. You had no idea who she was,
and that goes back to it. Yeah, she has the
speech we see all the graves, the dream slash flashback
that she has at the beginning, where she's talking to
her younger self and she says, I don't know you.
That's gonna be pretty prominent I think throughout it is
(44:01):
in the game, But she's like, she doesn't recognize who
she's become, her younger self doesn't recognize who she's become,
but also she doesn't It's she hasn't faced a trauma
of what happened, so she is unable to go into
the door, and that is something that will come up
(44:22):
a lot, and it's actually really interesting the presentation of
trauma in my opinion, from here on out, if they
follow the game, Ellie's also going to have a recurring
nightmare involving a door that won't open or being too late.
She also so the alarm. The reason I guess at
the beginning before anything can even come on the screen
(44:42):
is that sound that alarm Abby hears in her dream.
It is just so iconic to me. Ellie's is the
sound that like piercing sound that they did include in
the show when Joel's but they also included it in
the trailer the second season. For the second season, and
(45:04):
everybody who played the game was like, huge jerks, we
know exactly what this is. But one thing I also
wanted to bring up here. In the first game, Joel
kills the nurses too when he goes into the operating
room to save Ellie, And in this I feel like
(45:27):
they kept them alive so they were witnesses and they
could explain what he looked like, and they could. That's
how they found Joel. But that is another fallout of
what he did is heard Abby's dad is believed to
be the only person that could have made a cure,
and he killed him and also the nurses. So that's
(45:51):
pretty bad. But in the first scene where we see
Abby in the show, where they're saying, like where Noras says, Oh,
it wouldn't even matter anyway, because is there's nobody who
could manufacture it here anymore. That's what she's talking about.
Also that actress, I didn't realize this is gonna be
and the next Naughty Dog game, Naughty Dog is the
(46:12):
one that does last us in galact.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
I thought she's pretty significant. They've got her in for
a good reason.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
Mm hmm. Yeah. She's also been in the live action
Drink movie, so she's been around. I didn't know that though.
That was a new thing. Somebody pointed out to me.
There's also kind of this. You can see the fracturing
in their group that you kind of mentioned, Samantha and
your reactions to what Abby does. But Mels is probably
(46:43):
one of the biggest where she says, you know, we
said we wouldn't hurt anybody else. She's crying during this
whole thing, so that's something to keep in mind. Also
the whole like Joel saving her life after he had his,
like our life bodis swamped thing. I think this is
a no good deed goes unpunished theme which is going
(47:08):
to come back later. And then when he didn't get
to point this out in the game because she just
goes right in for the kill. But he in the show,
he says, you know, I saved your life and she says,
what life? And I think that's a throwback to what
Marlene says in the first season where she's like, what
kind of life will Ellie have in this world? That
(47:43):
does bring us to the golf club. It's a very
iconic It is so iconic. It's awful. I mean, it's
it's horrific. They definitely it cuts away much faster in
the video game than it did in the show, but
it's very brutal in the game as well. Both of
(48:05):
them are bad. Both are bad, and this kind of
brings us to a point I feel like a lot
of people bring up and so in the first episode
of the season, when Gail says it's not your fault.
I know that, it's how you did it. I think
that's going to be a recurring theme as well. And
(48:26):
Gail's story is like Ellie's. If you believe that Joel
didn't have a choice, which I think he did, but
if you believe it, which I think Joel thinks he
didn't have a choice, or she's like, I know you
didn't have a choice. It's how you did it. He
killed all of those people, and Abby spared Dina and Ellie,
even if her murder of Joel was brutal and Joel
(48:48):
killed according to this eighteen soldiers and one doctor, but
in the game it was it was more than that,
to say Ellie, which is a pretty that's pretty significan y.
But yes, also, as you mentioned, we read that kind
of what we thought might be kind of an innocent
(49:09):
review in the last episode that I was like, I
think it might be a pun because it said they
hope they ironed out the.
Speaker 1 (49:20):
Yep, they got me. But there's you sweetaters, Yeah, Jock.
Speaker 2 (49:27):
The funny thing is, though a lot of people who
haven't played the game or like roll mad understandably, I
get it. And I saw a comment today one of
my favorite comments was all y'all making golf funds that
we didn't get you so superad and so like I
remember there was a bunch of articles that said something
(49:49):
like the last of us to tease up for another season,
or like yeah, we were all making these puns. And
then there was an instance where Bell Ramsey just posted
under a Taylor Swift video where Taylor Swift was swinging
a golf club, Joel, that gave me a good chuckle.
(50:10):
That gave me a good chuckle. I mean, it's horrible,
it's so sad, but it was like a traumatizing event
that we now have all been like I got through that.
At least let me make a golf joke. Even Patron
Pascal did it. He posted something today about it. Yeah.
(50:33):
But and we're going to talk about this more later.
One of the sad things is because Abby is such
a divisive character. The voice actor who was in season one,
she was one of the nurses, and Caitlin Deaver who
plays her in the show, have gotten death dreats. And
I believe Katelyin Diaver has a bodyguard or had one,
(50:55):
And Isabellehmer said said, like, you know, she's not Abby's
not h Caitlyn Deaver's not abby. But people were so
angry about it, and you know, it's it was. It hurt,
and it was I was mad too, but I wasn't.
(51:15):
I'm not gonna send any death to us. It was
a good story.
Speaker 1 (51:19):
I was mad because it was a good right, this
is a tale.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
Yes, you don't have to play, It's okay, it's all right.
I also learned, and this is really sad, that her
mom had died a few weeks before filming the scene. Yeah,
oh that's real. That's that's difficult. And this is something
(51:45):
I'm gonna I'm really interested to see how it continues.
But like the different conversations I've seen on playing Out,
playing out from like people who played the game and
people who haven't, they're pretty different in some ways. It's
really interesting. So I'm gonna keep an eye on that.
(52:05):
But I did want to touch John briefly. One of
the reasons this game resonated with me so much is
my dad had died less than a year before this
came out, and it wasn't on good. We didn't have
a good relationship when he died. There was a lot
(52:27):
of unresolved issues, and so this just is like it
really resonated with me. And I've said before, but I'm
able to experience emotion easier through fictional things, and so
it was a really cathartic grieving process for me. And
(52:48):
I mean it might sound silly to some of you,
but I really did go through the grieving process with this.
I went through denial and a group part. I was
like all of these things. I just it was so
powerful and it was really painful. And it also came
out during the pandemic. And I don't know why, but
(53:11):
I'm one of those people that for me that somehow
playing a game about an infection during a pandemic gave
me some kind of release, the same way a horror
movie might. But so one thing I didn't want to
point out I mentioned in the last episode. There's a
(53:33):
scene they cut out that is huge in the in
where after the dance and Ellie and Joel get to
their fight and Ellie sees Joel on the porch with
her guitar and she walks away. You'll notice she has
the guitar back the next morning when Jesse comes to
(53:57):
get her, and that's when she says, like, you know, Hey,
we worked it out, or basically we're working on it,
so I would just poured that out and I'll just
say she also really really loves music. She has all
of those vinyls and the tapes and her window is
covered in music sheets. That's going to be important later too.
(54:21):
Another thing we'll find out about this because as we said,
this wasn't in the game, but Eugene's whole story now's
got another layer because Ellie was clearly like, oh he
was a firefoy, oh oh, and Jesse's like, oh, yeah,
that's a shame couldn't be saved. Right. There's a scene
I don't know they'll include in the show, but they
(54:44):
basically Ellie's having this thought like if they had had
a cure, he could have been saved. So kind of
that survivor skill that she struggles with. Something else to
bring back as we start this journey is Ellie's fear
of ending up alone, which she mentions in the first
(55:06):
game in the first season, and also just her kind
of loss of Ellis innocence and the revenge that is coming.
It's a lot of like cycle of violence and trauma.
(55:28):
So just like Joel's action had consequences, so do Abby's
and so will Ellie's. And there are as I said,
there are a lot of flashbacks, the ringing sounds and
the trailer that I mentioned. Ellie can, She'll have like
these PTSD the flashbacks in the game if there's a
(55:49):
loud sound or something like that. And they're also just
non PTSD ones, but they're sad still, but that's something
to look forward to. Yeah. Also, just quick shout out
to the women leaders on this show for Better Hours.
(56:12):
There's a lot of women leaders.
Speaker 1 (56:15):
Maybe of them confront some things.
Speaker 2 (56:17):
They really really can, they really can. This brings us
to my random wrap up at the end. I did
want to call out this scene between Ellie and Jesse
at the beginning. I love that scene where they're kind
of teasing each other. I'm so glad they put that
in the show. I love that scene. Also, I forgot
(56:37):
to mention the composer Gustavo Sento Laya. He was in
the last episode and he's also sort of a character
in the game. He has a banjo and in the
remastered version you can play him in guitar free play mode, which,
by the way, you can play the guitar in last
of us too. I'm actually like, that's the worst thing
I met. I'm really mad at it, but you can
(57:00):
do that. He was playing at the dance Seattle. I
realized we kind of might have spoiled it for some
people because we've talked all about how the second season
mostly takes place in Seattle, and then that's where Abby's frohim.
But anyway, there's a lot of hints of Seattle. I'm
(57:20):
told that the beer I think it was red Rock
that was on being advertised on the walls from Seattle.
There's a lot of music from the Seattle grunge period,
and there's a lot of kind of themes of like
that period of like the lack of respect of authority
and things like that. Also, this is gonna be a
(57:43):
bigger conversation later, but I think that some people get
really some people get really frustrated. I'm not saying it
wrong too with Ellie, but I would just say, like
I would remember, she's nineteen. There's a lot of lying
and taking choices away from her that's happening, and underestimating
(58:05):
her when she could defend herself. It does really suck,
Like I mean, it's awful because you want these characters
to get along. It feels really painful, but I mean,
I don't know. I would just urge people to give it,
give her some give her some room. And also like
(58:29):
she knows he's lying, because it doesn't it just doesn't
really hold up what he's saying. And because he's telling
her like you can't tell anybody about the immunity, even
though he said there were a bunch of immune people,
like hmmm, so she she knows. And it's just a
(58:50):
frustrating feeling, I think. But that being said, that does
bring us to the end of this episode and to
some no for the future. I know you're hurt. You
might be.
Speaker 1 (59:04):
Angry, Christina, I you okay.
Speaker 2 (59:09):
I would urge patients. It's a really good story. You
are meant to go through it. It's not it's gonna hurt.
But that is one of the reasons why Samantha and
I've discussed it's kind of concern the weight between seasons,
because you are meant to You're really meant to go
through it all at once. But I'm excited. I'm very excited.
(59:35):
It's also like a very you never know when your
time is up. You never know when it's the last
time you'll see someone, and that's gonna be a pretty
big theme. And also parallels. There's gonna be a lot
of parallels. Yeah, same side, same coin, doesn't mean and
my friend like to say I even got her coin
(59:57):
that says that. Yes, when I'll explain that when we
get to that section. But yeah, in the meantime, Uh,
I hope you're okay, and I hope you're enjoying this
whether you watch it, play it, or don't. And we'll
be back next week. We'll see the fallout fallout of this.
(01:00:21):
In the meantime, if you would like to email us,
you can our emails Hello at Stuff Iever Told You
dot com. You can also find it some on fu
sky at mom Stuff. Podcast are on Instagram and TikTok
at Stuff I've Never Told You. We're also on YouTube.
We have a tea public store, and we have a
book where I do talk about Ellie. You can get
wherever you get your books. Thanks as always too, our
super producer, Coristinier, execut Pducer, My Ander, Contruder.
Speaker 1 (01:00:40):
Joey, thank you, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (01:00:43):
And thanks to you for listening Stuff I Never Told You.
Distrection by Heart Radio for more podcast or my heart Radio.
You can check out the heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or orre you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, this is Andy and Samantha.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm welcome stuff I never told you production of iHeart Radio,
and welcome to the second episode of our seven episode
mini series we are doing on season two of the
Last of Us, which is not a sponsor. As ridiculous
(00:30):
as that isous it is very ridiculous. If you're familiar
with this segment, then you know basically what we're doing
is we're reacting to the previous week's episode, and we're
only spoiling that episode plus the previous season, the first game,
and parts of the second game, but not plotline parts.
(00:54):
We're being very careful here. Yeah, we're trying our best.
I think we're doing a pretty good job so far.
But yes, this is just a special thing we're doing.
Hopefully you enjoy it even if you haven't watched the
show or played the game, although maybe not for this episode,
which we'll talk about. But yeah, there's only seven and
(01:16):
then we'll eventually get to season three because they're splitting
the second game into at least two seasons, and I
personally think it's going to be three seasons, but we
will see. That is what we're doing here. I did
want to say before we get into this one. The
Showwriners have called this the Empire strikes Back season, so
(01:37):
make of that what you will. Also, this is why
I need a fandom therapist. I looked it up. There
are fandom therapists, but really they're just like therapists that
no fandoms. I need to tell me why this upsets
you so much? When XYZ happens in this game, That's
what I need. But anyway, please see your past episodes.
(02:03):
But the way these works is Samantha gives the recap
and then I go through all of my thoughts. Anaya
have a lot of thoughts about this one, for sure.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Yes, yes, she has many thoughts.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
I did not count the oh no's because there was
too many guts.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
There's a yeah, I think I guessed the very first moment.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
You did before I even even I think it started.
I was like, really.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Because the sound effect, I was like.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Immediately like it was like nothing had happened except for
the sound effect.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
So I did not get keep count.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
But I do have some amazing pictures of you and
your friends are friends friends of the show. Marissa and
Katie's reaction and it's quite hilarious.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
It is a tale there they are tales. But here
we go. Are you ready any Yeah? Sure you ready?
Speaker 3 (03:00):
We open to a scene of a dream or not.
Abby is going down the hospital corridors because she's hearing
the alarms and as she's going down hearing snipe likes
like screams and muffle screams. In the background, we hear
someone say, don't do don't go in there, because she
has reached the operating room and she turns to look
(03:20):
as hers herself and then she's saying, don't go in there,
don't go in there. You'll regret this. Don't go in there,
and they're like, you're lying. She's saying that you're lying,
there's nothing wrong. Well, essentially back and forth, and finally
she's like, Okay, you're gonna regret this. You're gonna see
his brains on the floor, and essentially she goes in
scream wake up. We find Abby now up to date
the five years later, she and her crew are at
(03:43):
a cabin close to Joel and Ellie's and Kamma Jackson,
and they have been searching for Joel the entire time.
As the light shines down on them because apparently, I
guess I got must have got there at night and
they didn't see. They look out and see that the
area that they've been searching for is a giant town.
(04:06):
It's not a small keep like a couple of tents
here and there is a whole village.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
And they were not ready.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
So they have a hole back and forth for a
minute about what to do in plans, and Abby is
holding firm she will find Joel. They will find a way,
they will find she. Her plan is to find someone
who knows about the town, take them in, get the
information that they need, and then dot dot dot because
they're like, you can't just let them go, and they
(04:33):
we'll deal with it. So as Abby gets ready she's
going to go on patrol herself. The rest of them
are coming around together saying, what are we going to do.
There's no way we can take them. We're all going
to die, in which Owen says, my plan is to
convince her to turn around. So end of that, Abby
makes her way out in the very freezing cold.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Oh dear god.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
We come to back to Jackson. We see Ellie being
woken up by Jesse saying, we need to go on patrol.
You gotta do your duty. Da Da Da and there's
a whole cute back and forth which is actually in
the game about the fact. She's like, look, man, last
night was crazy because he was like I heard y'all.
(05:16):
Y'all got into them some things after I left, and
she was like, oh no, everything was crazy. Dina was drunk.
I don't know all these things, and Dina didn't mean it,
and he's like, what I was talking about, you get
in a fight and then he's like.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
It's all stuff.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
I can't believe you would do this, blah blah, just kidding.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
I knew I don't care type of thing, and then
she was like shut up and she goes get it
ready and he's like no, but that was kind of dumb,
and she's like ah. So they go on and he
keeps talking about what's going on with him with Joel,
with everything, and finally she's like, Joel and I are good.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
We're fine.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Joel's Joel, I am me and we're fine. It's just
we handle it as in fact, let me go patrol
with him. You're getting on nurse. Let me go patrol
a hit with him, and he's like, you can't. He
went out with Dina, but also Maria wants to talk
to us. So they go to the cantina where Seth
I guess owns it or runs it, and Assessed the
(06:12):
apologizes with a steak sandwich and we had we had
a stake sandwich Annie the first episode, thinking that episode
was going to be the first episode we miss moving
miscalculated just.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Want because it's the first scene yeah, after the title
card in the game.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Yeah, but we are Yeah, I had to come back
to it.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
We were all also off on the second one. Anyway,
moving on, we didn't do so well with the predictions
for the mills, so we move on and they are
all going on patrol. At the same time, we have
Tommy giving a spiel about protocols because there's a giant
mass amount of infected out there and they found out
(06:53):
that they're all under the snow and there's tons of them,
so just be aware. So they have a whole plan
about how to keep the city safe, if the village
is safe, and everybody's responsibilities and duties doing all this
and reminding people what to do and protocols. I feel
like that was foreshadowing obviously, as they are still working
on that pipe that we saw from the first episode.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Oh he cuts into it and he.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Realizes, oh no, the court is ups are communicating, are communicating,
And then we flash onto finding Abby. He's still traveling
and she is a bound to determine because she just
spotted two people on a horse and she's like, okay,
I gotta get them, I gotta get them. She's going
downhill and she's like like steep hills, just sliding, just sliding.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
All the way down to the point.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
She loses her gun and she goes into the middle
of nowhere and she looks around. She realizes this, holy crap,
a lot of infected, a lot of bloaters like just sticking.
And it was really a scary scene. She's looking around like,
oh my god, Oh my god, what do I do?
And they start coming awake because they realize she's there.
Also again the communicating with the village, so a lot
(07:58):
of things are happening. So she like runs for it,
and there's a whole scene. It kinda is like the
behind the Back, not behind the Bassards, the Battle of
the Bastards scene. Y'all know, Game of Thrown people know, Okay, anyway,
moving on, they run and run and run. She goes
to what a building and climbs over a wall and
then she's like going to the side and makes the
mistake of being around a fenced area, a wire fence,
(08:20):
and oh that scene. Because they are trying to get
to her every way possible. One breaks through, it's like
grabbing at her. She goes through and.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
She's like, oh my god.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
And then we hear a gunshot and it's Joel and
he has rescued her and he pulls her up and
they go around and they're trying to figure out what
to do inside the building.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
So Dina and Joel and Abby are all together. Oh
my god.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
So during this time they're trying to figure out where
to go, what to do. She Abby says, my people
are here, they're up in the cabin.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
We can make it.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Let's go.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
So they're like make a decision, grab onto each other
and move on. And by the way, Dina's like, who
are you? She does where did you come from?
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Where did you come from?
Speaker 3 (09:00):
So she asks a good question that I'm really surprised
Joel didn't ask. We flashed back and we realize, holy crap,
they infected are coming and they are all coming for Jackson,
and everybody's preparing.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
We got the whole wall.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
We've got like barrels crashing with gas, and we got
all the guns, people in the village getting ready, people
at the top getting ready to shoot. So it's everything's
happening with all the children and women are being put
into bunkers.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Essentially, Wow, this is going down, and oh my god.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
We see the giant floater, like the really big messy
one messy and they know he's coming, and so Tommy
yells they're gonna breach because there's no way to stop them.
We have flamethrower people getting ready to go, and then
two of them runaway.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
You know. The other one is Seth I killed.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Does he die in the game?
Speaker 2 (09:59):
I don't think he see him again in the game.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
But well that is a variation from the game, because
that does not happen in the game, correct.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Yeah, no, oh, this whole thing doesn't happen in the game.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Well later, yeah, But like anyway, so we have that saying,
oh my god, it's a whole thing. We have Maria
and Tommy making eye contact with each other knowing what's
going down. Tommy's running down getting that flamethrower because again,
two people will make an exit, not the coolest.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Uh, and they're trying to all fight uh these floaters.
We go back to Abby and Dina. Because it's a
cut back and forth drama, there's a lot of trauma.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
So we go back and Abby and Dina and Joel
have made it to the cabin and everybody's like trying
to fix mel It's really on top of the trying
to get in the warm up, trying to give him food,
making sure they don't have like frost happening.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Dina is noticing.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
Nina is very aware of everything, watching looking at people,
looking at tags and like trying to figure out who
they were, and like where are you from? Who are
you at the Then this is when we see the
gun being pointed at Joel, and Abby pretty much tells
her intentions about what's going on after she's kind of
given the hint and like this is so, and so
this is Joel, this is it? Like like she makes
(11:10):
a giant announcement. All of them are like what what
and so that has happened? And Abby begins her speech
about what she's doing, who she was, and how she
lost everyone and she's like, you know, do you know
who I am?
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Essentially, and he was.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Like are you military? She's like, do we look like military?
And you know, he does a little observation. He's like no,
He's like, wait, are you firefly? And he kind of
gets that and she's like, didn't you know all the
fireflies are dead? Drama, and then at this point he
gets shut in the knee. She takes his kneecap out.
(11:45):
At the same time, they have Dina. Dina's freaking out,
and Abby instructs them to put Dina to sleep, so
like gives her medicine, so she gets knocked out and
she falls out, and he.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Oh, all the bad things are happening.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
All the while, Ellie and Jesse have also gone on patrol,
so they actually don't know what's going down. Because the
storm has gotten so bad, they are told to, you know,
get shelter. So they go and do their thing. Put
the horses left, get in the shelter, lay about.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
It turns out to be a eu Jay's place.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Lots of weed, lots of good bonds, all the things
there if you need it. She talks about all the
things that she's going to take back, and this was
a variation as well that I know we're going to
talk about, but like you know, here we have a
representation of who Jane was a We find out that
Jean had been a firefly as well, and that he
quit a while ago because he was tired of all
the killing quote unquote something. A conversation comes up about
(12:37):
how it was really sad when Joel had to put
him down, and that's kind of the end of that story.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
In that moment that like, we don't know much more
of that.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
While this is happening, they do get an alert and
this is kind of pre attack on the Jackson just
they just know it's coming, and people are calling them
and saying, hey, we can't find Joel, we can't reach Joel,
we can't find Dina.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
So Ellie and Jesse are like, we're down, let's go,
let's go.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
So they immediately get their stuff and immediately make their
way up. They make a plan to go around so
they can cover more space, so they split up. Jesse
goes one way, Ellie goes the other, and that's where
we can come back again. Back in the town big Bloater,
going after Tommy. Tommy's about to die. We got a
flame thrower that is crapidly losing gas and he's like
(13:23):
Oh my god, I'm.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
About to die.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
I'm about to die like he's you can see it everywhere.
And then as that ends, the Blowter dies. He gets roasted,
really really well, really really good and roasted.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
And it comes back to battle and seeing all the
dead bodies, but he's still going after all the other
uh infected, because that's obviously happening as he's trying to
round out.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
That and of the battle there.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
All the while, I didn't forget to tell y'all that
Joel does see what's happening in Jackson because he sees
all the flames and he's trying to rally he was
he was trying to rally everybody back to go to there.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
Yeah, again when he figured out what was going down,
he knew what was happening. Abby gives a big speech
about what's happening. He says, you know, just kill me.
I'm so tired of the speech. If you're going to
do it, do it. So At the same time, Happy
finees a bag of golf clubs, the infamous golf clubs.
And I'm pretty sure we got trolled with that comment.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
That I read that day.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Yeah, I was gonna say something, but I was like
we can't explain why it's a punt. I think it's.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Yeah, yep, I think it was.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Uh. So she takes that nine iron and goes to
town on a very brutal, brutal beating, brutal beating on him,
and she is taking out all her rage and everybody's
just watching and like, if you watch the faces of
her friends and her allies, you have different emotions between yes,
vengeance and yes enjoyment and yes disgust. Like there's several
(14:50):
different concern as this going down.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
We have Ellie's hearing this.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
Ellie has approached the cab and she made it first,
she sees their horses and she's like, okay, what's happening?
Goes in Godziah and she hears noises and can't bear
out what it is. And as she opens the door,
she realizes something that Joel is in there. And as
that happens, she comes in, she gets attacked because she
doesn't see everybody because she's in the panic, and it's
(15:16):
the gun is taken from her and she's put down,
not I mean first, she definitely takes a swipe with
a knife, gets one of them in the face.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Manny gets gets a cut in the face, which he
is not happy about the entire time.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
But she's put down and having to witness what is happening.
The rest of the crew Abbey's cruise just tell her
to get it over with. They're done, we gotta go,
we gotta go. And so the final blow is with
the broken club chink to the head, essentially to Joel.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
We see Joel.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
He does try to get up as Ellie is pleading
for him to get up, does not get up.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Ellie tells them I will kill you all. I will
find you and I will kill you all. They leave
her out the door very quick and leave.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
We have her just alone with Joel's body because Dina
is hasted out and not awake. Jesse makes his way
up there. Eventually, as the scene clears at Jackson Hole
or Jackson Wyoming, they have defeated all of the infected,
but now they're having to kill off their own people
(16:23):
who have been bitten and clean up the mess that
is there. Tommy and Maria are united and are okay
and walk away, and the final scene we see Ellie, Dina,
and Jesse on horses dragging Joel's body back to the encampment.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Or back to the village end scene.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
About the cry right now. Oh terrible, Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
It is all terrible.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
It's very good.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Oh okay, how are you?
Speaker 2 (17:14):
I'm good. This is okay. This is the one that
I've been wanting to talk about. I'm so relieved it
out there because it is just we're gonna get into it.
But it was so emotionally devastating when I played it,
and it was really hard. We weren't even sure what
(17:35):
they were gonna do, right because Pedro Pascal and We're like,
are they gonna are they gonna do it? We don't know.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
They did it, and they did it and they stuck.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Like even though her Ellie walking in I remember this
in the playthrough, hearing the hearing the noise, so she
didn't know exactly what was happening until she opened the door.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
It was spot on.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Yeah, yeah, we're in talk about that later because that
that kind of ringing sound is going to be recurrent
from here on out. But okay, let's get into it.
Because I have a lot of thoughts about this.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
I will say Annie did not react the way I
thought she was going to react. I thought you would
be on the floor screaming Joel's name. Much like the game.
When we first played that through, Annie just sat in
my partner's living room. This is like COVID during the lockdown. Yeah,
(18:35):
with a piece of apple pie. It was for her birthday,
I believe, Yeah, and her sobbing and just saying Joel why,
and then my dog sheches just staring at her. I
think it was more for the pie, but then he
was also she was also confused about what was happening. Yeah,
(18:56):
So for us to see the scene, knowing that it
was coming, we weren't. We were sure if it was
gonna be this episode of the next.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
But you did not.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
You you did.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
You were in tears, like the emotions were there, but
it wasn't as in depth or like, uh, as long
or as deep as I thought it was gonna be.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
I did upon another rewatch, I had had a pretty
I had it pretty good. But I think because I
was just so relieved, which sounds awful, but like I
just haven't bating it. Yeah, I was anticipating it. I've
played that game fifteen to twenty times, and I'm not exaggerating.
I don't think more than that. I think it's probably
fifteen to twenty, but who knows, I could probably look
(19:36):
but I just was like, finally I could share this
pain with people. And I do feel kind of bad
because I said I was looking forward to like schaden Freuda,
and now I've gotten a lot of videos of it,
and I'm like, oh, I'm so sorry, you're so sad.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
But I'm also like, I know what you're going through.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Yes, yes, and it happened so early. We'll get into
that second. But okay, first of all, let's start with
the title name, which, as I said, had cost me
a lot of consternation because it was the only title
name they didn't confirm previously because they knew they knew
everyone who played the game. We were looking for when
(20:20):
is this episode it's gonna happen, So it's called it's
titled Through the Valley. And this is a reference to
a song that Ashley Johnson, who is the voice of
Ellie in the game, covered, and you first hear her
cover it in a twenty sixteen trailer for the Last
(20:42):
of Us two, which tells you how long these games
take to make, because the first one came out in
twenty thirteen, and when in that trailer, it's very clear
there's a vengeance story, but we didn't know what it was.
And when you listen to the lyrics, it's all about like,
I'm strong and my convict, I'm going to do what
I have to do. My soul will be damned though
(21:03):
I'm on the wrong side. And in the trailer it's
focused on Ellie, but in the show it kind of
starts on Ellie and then it moves to Abby, which
I think was very purposeful. But that is where that
song at the end comes from. But yeah, let us
(21:23):
talk about the big battle scene. This actually is not
in the game at all. There is a scene like
it where the Horde that's chasing Abby Joel in this
case Tommy, which we'll talk about in a second. It
wasn't DNA. It was Tommy. Back to the lodge where
Abby and her crew are. They do throw like a
lot of them all the top cocktails and set the
(21:46):
Horde on fire, but it is nothing like this. I
suspect this was in part a response to the complaint
that they didn't have enough infected in the first season,
so they're like, hey, won't act there, let's do it. Then.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
Did you know the person who directed this episode was
like did do some Game of Throne as well as Succession,
and then apparently in Succession he directed the most like
one of the most famous deaths in Succession, so they
brought him in so that it feels like they did
that to make sure to have it have that feel.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Yeah, and I believe he said in the like behind
the scenes after the episode, he was like, I need
to the thing I knew I needed to get right
with Joel's death, Like I knew I had to get
the makeup right, get all that right. But one thing
that is different about how the infected act in this
(22:44):
is they're communicating almost like telepathically. I mean it's through
the roots, which is new to the show as well.
But I didn't notice this until I was watching something later.
But when the Bloat, which is the big one, is coming,
Tommy notices that they all start following all the other
infected called runners start following the bloater because they know
(23:05):
the Bloater can break in to the break in, so
they're making strategic choices. Now they're smarter now.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
They did address in the episode about the ghost.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Story, yes, but they really and then like that scene
where they're all chasing after Abby and Joel and Dina
and then they kind of branch off, like it's like
a fish school coming together. They're coming together in a
way that's very scary. And the Bloater and the game
(23:39):
is like very difficult. And by the way, they also
explode when they die, so everybody, we were all screaming
out the TV like, no, Tommy's gonna die. But they
got rid of that for the show. So Tommy is fine.
But like the flame throwers one of your most powerful weapons.
You get it at the end of both games, and
(24:01):
for Tommy, the slame thur in the game also is
only a campfire kind of amount of fuel, but he
had two like full canisters of gas and this floater
was not going down, So that suggests that they're evolving
and becoming stronger to humanity's defenses. Also, I have to say,
(24:26):
well that you hear that growl of the Bloater.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
I was like, well, the coming, before we could see it,
she kept saying it's coming.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
I hear the Bloater.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
One thing we do have in our house because my
partner really really gets excited about sound, is a pseudo
surround sound set up, so you do have that like
background noise and then behind you.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Yes, but that sounds so ingrained. You're like, he's just
around here, somewhere. But also I did love and I
think your partner pointed this out too, but there's this
scene where you can when the blower is coming for
Tommy on like a one on one fight, you can
see its reflection in the window. That was cool. That
(25:09):
was really cool. This isn't I guess this isn't part
of the big battle scene, but I'm gonna include it
because it was a pretty big set piece. But the
scene where Abby is crawling under the fence and it's
like collapsing under all of those infected is like straight
from the game, and it's terrifying because you're kind of crawling, which,
(25:30):
by the way, you do play as Abby. We're gonna
talk about that in a second, but at this point
you're playing Zabby and you're crawling under and that was
really good. I also just want to kind of flag
the dogs. So the second game introduces this very terrifying
(25:57):
functionality where people have have dogs that can smell you
when you're hiding, so you can't just like hide in
the bushes like I like to do. The dog will
find you, so you have to either run or kill
the dog. I don't know. I don't know what they're
(26:20):
going to do in the show, but I will say
if they follow the game, there is going to be
at least one dog death. Yes, I mean, I'll try
to warn everybody once we get to that. If I
think they're going to do it, I'll try to warn you.
But I don't know. I have no idea. But that's
that is a new thing they introduced in the second game.
(26:43):
But it was really cool. It was really cool. It
felt very helms deeper Game of Thrones, and I did
like seeing how prepared they were. And it was also
kind of so sad because even with all those preparations,
just the carnage, absolute carnage, and Jackson is not in
(27:04):
a good shape, which again this did not happen in
the game. None of this happened in the game. I
think they added it in both because of the you know,
people will like it, but I think they also put
it in there because it added a lot more drama
in terms of we had so many moving pieces, everybody's
in danger, we don't know what's gonna happen, right, And
(27:27):
it was effective. It happened so fast, and it's like
bouncing back between so many things.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
Uh, they did please a lot of drama in one
episode an hour.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
It's only an hour, so I did want to touch
on some key differences before we get to the big
the big thing we must talk about. Uh. So one is,
as we mentioned, in the game, Jesse, it's Tommy and
(28:00):
Joel that go on patrol together, and it's Ellie and
Dina bank go on patrol together. And then Jesse later
finds Ellie and Dina at Eugen's hideout and he's like,
oh God, we can't find Joel and Tommy. So that's different.
I have a couple of reasons for why I think
that is, but I will say, you know, when Abby's
(28:24):
doing her like hey, here are names, Dina definitely picked
up on that and remembers all their names, which I
believe is replacing a mechanic in the game where you
find all their photos. So I think it's okay, yeah,
because she knows she knows all their names, she saw
the patch. And another one, a huge one that I'm
(28:48):
I'm going to talk about more in a second, is
that in the show, you know Abby's motivation in the game,
you do not at all. You have no idea. You've
got your theories, but you have got no clue, and
it can it kind of completely changes how that scene
plays out. Then, Yes, the destruction of Jackson, that's new.
(29:10):
I do think it's a pretty stark reminder that they're
not safe and they got kind of complacent. I mean,
obviously they were prepared, but they just had a lot
of stuff that a lot of people outside of Jackson
don't have. They had this nice celebration the night before.
So when Joel sees Jackson on fire and he makes
(29:32):
the choice ultimately to trust Staddy or be like, okay,
we'll go with you, that, I mean that kind of
makes it worse that he dies, not knowing just knowing
that Jackson.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
There's so many things.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
I know, It's awful, so bad. I love it though,
but yeah, he dies like knowing Jackson's on fire and
all the people he loves are there, and but also
Ellie is right there and watching it, so that is different.
I read some interesting I was watching a good breakdown
(30:10):
of it today and I also read that you know
kind of when Jesse and Ellie go out and they
see the storm and they're like, oh no, it would
be fine, we don't worry about it, and it turns
out they definitely did. But also Abby is in the mountain,
so it's sort of like dismissing this threat that was
up there, and Abby unintentionally is the one that awakens
(30:33):
all of those infected when she falls down, and Abby
was there for Joel. So it's just kind of a
mess of the fallout of the decisions these characters make,
which is sort of something we're going to see a
lot of coming work. But all right, let's talk about
(31:05):
the big thing, Joel's death. Oh man, oh my gosh.
Like I said, I'm really relieved it's out there. I'm
so ready to talk about it. I have gotten so
many texts about it, including from people I haven't heard
from literally two years. Didn't even say what they're talking about,
(31:26):
just said how could you? And I assume they're talking.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
About this, which is hilarious because it's not like you
controlled the game in any least way.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
No, no, but it was great. I was like, oh yeah, sorry,
And it is like I'm joking about it because it
was really painful, Like I went through the five stages
of grief with this game, and I started with denial.
But I'm just gonna I'm just gonna be real with you.
He's dead. He's dead.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
I'm sorry, he's not gonna there's no magic in that.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Nope, he is not coming back. He is dead. There
are a lot of flashbacks that he'll be in so
that we understand what happened of the five years we missed,
So he's not gone. I guess Pedro Pascal will be back,
but he is dead. And one of the reasons I
(32:22):
say this is that when the game first came out,
they had this fake out trailer where all a lot
of the scenes that you play later in the game
you see Joel in them. It turns out it's not Joel,
(32:44):
it's Jesse actually, so they pulled it. So I thought
he was going to come back. I saw what I saw,
and I was like, can't be I saw.
Speaker 4 (32:53):
The trailer, this is not true. I was really like,
I don't know what this is, but it's gotta be wrong.
But it was incredibly, incredibly painful, a lot of DearS
over many playthroughs.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
But another thing with this is we talked about this
in our episode we did on the most recent remaster,
there's a documentary about how this game got made and
a lot of things went wrong because of the pandemic.
(33:34):
One of the big ones was that they delayed the
game both because of supply chain because of the pandemic,
and they knew this was going to be a huge
spoiler and they were trying to protect it. But that
made a fan in quotes really angry. And because the
(33:59):
engineer there's the designers were working from home, this fan
was able to get into their servers and was like
basically doing kind of a hostage threat with the gam
where it's like I'm gonna leak a scene every day
until you release the geit and he got frustrated and
(34:19):
eventually was like yea agile diyes here's the sun and
it blew up. Like people were furious. And this is
if you remember in the last one I said stay
away from Reddit when it comes to Last of As two.
It had a huge impact because the game is meant
(34:40):
to be played, it's meant to go. You got to
go through the whole thing. It's like grief, you got
to go through the whole thing. And so people were
seeing this one scene and they were so outraged by it,
to the point like I've had people who never played
the game tell me they hate it for X Y Z,
and I'm like, but the it's not actually what happens,
(35:01):
and they go, but they've heard this kind of like
Reddit dialogue, and it's really sad. It's really heartbreaking because,
as I said, the Firskin came out in twenty thirteen,
this one came out in twenty twenty, so seven years
of work and have it leaked and then torn apart
(35:22):
and then get death threats for it. It's pretty awful.
But it also is kind of funny because some of
the people involved or like, I don't care if you
get spoiled on the show Man done, Like, yeah, that's fair,
that's fair. But anyway, I do know that they wanted
(35:44):
to kill now. I know they wanted to kill Joel
Off pretty early in the show too, because they were
worried that it would get out. So they still care
a little. But yeah, anyway, but I had no idea.
I had never parents and anything like this in a game.
But so you start as playing Joel, you played most
(36:06):
of the first game as and Joel tells Tommy what
happened in the first game with the Fireflies with Ellie
and her being immune and then after the title card,
that's where it starts to seem with Jesse, who's waking
her up from Morning Patrol, which we saw in this episode,
and you're starting you start controlling Ellie. Another thing they
did is they you knew, like I said, it was
(36:27):
a vengeance tale, but they made you believe it was Dina.
Dina was the one that was going to die. And
that's why at first I was like, maybe that's why
they put Dina here. I still think I think they
were just kind of trying.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
To save still messing with us.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
I think so. I have a theory, but I'm going
to wait for the next episode to explain. But yeah,
we really thought it was her. And I remember when
I got this game, I went and found it. Here's
what it says on the Beck experienced the devastating physical
and emotional consequences of Ellie's vengeance as you embark on
a relentless pursuit of those who have wronged her. I
(37:07):
knew I was in for it. I was like, oh, no,
this is gonna be wrong. And it was.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
It was.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
It was, but it was rougher than I could have
ever imagined. And Joel's death happened so fast in the game,
it's within an hour. It doesn't the show too, but
it's just like everything falls apart so quickly, and it
completely shifts what you think this is going to be. Wow,
(37:38):
especially because you've got like the relationship between Joel and
Ellie being so fractured and then he's dead hour O yep.
And to reiterate, you had no idea who these people
were that were coming in or why they were there.
(37:59):
You know why I'm controlling this random character because you're
controlling Abby within the first hour as well. You don't
even know who they're looking for. The first time I
played it, I thought they were looking for Ellie, but no,
you don't know. And yeah, you control Abby at the
fence part. You're looking for these patrols. It's a real mind.
(38:22):
And there's actually one that's wilder, way wilder later that
I cannot wait to talk about. And then there's another
one that just hits you where hurts. Oh. They love
doing that, they love doing it. But the shock factor
of this death is really hard to overstate because I nope,
(38:43):
I couldn't couldn't believe it, couldn't believe it. It does
play out differently in the show because of you know,
you know, Abby's motivations, which gives it an added layer
of tension because you know, but I think it diminishes
the shop. But people who haven't played the game and
just watched the show, you can write in and tell
(39:04):
me I'm not sure. I've seen a lot of different reactions. Interestingly,
I've seen a lot of you know, hey, they humanized
Abby a bit more in the show because at this
point in the game, you have no idea, you have
no clue, but you feel really helpless, and I feel
like they captured that in the show as well, where
(39:26):
it's just like everything is unraveling and you're too late
or you made the wrong decisions and you can't stop
it now. But it is also the consequences of your
actions as a character and as a gamer. So that
is one thing I love about this game is it
(39:48):
really makes you question some of the things you've done,
because you know, a lot of video games like this,
not necessarily with the humans in the game, but it's
kind of fun to kill clickers if you know what
you're doing. Like it's it's sort of the point is
it's like this is the objective and then this comes
(40:10):
in and is like, but actually there's consequences to what
you did and now you've got to face it. Whoo,
which brings us too Abby, Abby, Abby. One of the
reasons I always say it like that is because Ellie
gets so obsessed with event she just starts repeating Abby's name.
(40:31):
It's one of my favorite, like most disturbing scenes in
the game, but it became a whole thing. When we
would play it. I would do places we would just say.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
It would include that in other games, yes.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
You would, which I have looked up. Her name Abby
means my father is Joy, which makes sense. So in
the show she is the same age as Ellie is
currently when she found her dad dead, So so that's
a We're going to see a lot of these parallel she.
Abby was nineteen when she found her dad dead. Now
(41:07):
Ellie has witnessed a father figure die in front of her.
Abby has this whole speech about how she broke her code.
She does not get to have the speech in the
game because they are trying to obscure her motives. So
in the game she's like basically like do you know
(41:30):
who I am? And Joel's like, just get it over
with and she does, whereas in the show, she has
this whole speech and then Joel says, just get it
over with and she does. But she has this whole
thing about her code, which I'm very interested in because
that doesn't track with how I know the code of
(41:51):
the WLF. But we'll find out more about that, I
am sure. But she breaks it too, and she knows
that's I think that's one of the lines in the
song so resonant is it's you know, I know I'm
on the side of the wrong. I know I'm gonna
be damned for what I did, but she decided it
was worth it. This is also an instance where she's
(42:12):
basically like, tell me the truth and we'll go from there,
and he does tell you the truth, even though he
didn't for Ellie or Gale the Therapist. Another really heartbreaking
thing about this is kind of the accidental circumstances of it.
There's a lot of things that could have gone differently,
(42:34):
and Joel might still be alive, but she does accidentally
get what she wants. She you know, Owen wants to
convince her it isn't worth it. A lot of the
other people in the group seem to think it's not
worth it. She almost turned around because of the cold.
Joel has a lot of instances where he almost went
(42:55):
to Jackson but then trusted her saved her life, like
a bunch of different things, And I think that's really
reminiscent of all the questions that come after death, like
what if I had done this? Or what if? What
are the ways I could have changed this outcome? And
that's so painful. But yeah, I've read some really interesting
(43:20):
articles about how the balancing act between making Abby like
a villain and an anti hero, which is so interesting
to me because, like I said, she's a very divisive
character in the game. I don't think you'd ever there
was never any worry with that. But again, you didn't
(43:41):
know her motivations. You had no idea who she was,
and that goes back to it. Yeah, she has the
speech we see all the graves, the dream slash flashback
that she has at the beginning, where she's talking to
her younger self and she says, I don't know you.
That's gonna be pretty prominent I think throughout it is
(44:01):
in the game, But she's like, she doesn't recognize who
she's become, her younger self doesn't recognize who she's become,
but also she doesn't It's she hasn't faced a trauma
of what happened, so she is unable to go into
the door, and that is something that will come up
(44:22):
a lot, and it's actually really interesting the presentation of
trauma in my opinion, from here on out, if they
follow the game, Ellie's also going to have a recurring
nightmare involving a door that won't open or being too late.
She also so the alarm. The reason I guess at
the beginning before anything can even come on the screen
(44:42):
is that sound that alarm Abby hears in her dream.
It is just so iconic to me. Ellie's is the
sound that like piercing sound that they did include in
the show when Joel's but they also included it in
the trailer the second season. For the second season, and
(45:04):
everybody who played the game was like, huge jerks, we
know exactly what this is. But one thing I also
wanted to bring up here. In the first game, Joel
kills the nurses too when he goes into the operating
room to save Ellie, And in this I feel like
(45:27):
they kept them alive so they were witnesses and they
could explain what he looked like, and they could. That's
how they found Joel. But that is another fallout of
what he did is heard Abby's dad is believed to
be the only person that could have made a cure,
and he killed him and also the nurses. So that's
(45:51):
pretty bad. But in the first scene where we see
Abby in the show, where they're saying, like where Noras says, Oh,
it wouldn't even matter anyway, because is there's nobody who
could manufacture it here anymore. That's what she's talking about.
Also that actress, I didn't realize this is gonna be
and the next Naughty Dog game, Naughty Dog is the
(46:12):
one that does last us in galact.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
I thought she's pretty significant. They've got her in for
a good reason.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
Mm hmm. Yeah. She's also been in the live action
Drink movie, so she's been around. I didn't know that though.
That was a new thing. Somebody pointed out to me.
There's also kind of this. You can see the fracturing
in their group that you kind of mentioned, Samantha and
your reactions to what Abby does. But Mels is probably
(46:43):
one of the biggest where she says, you know, we
said we wouldn't hurt anybody else. She's crying during this
whole thing, so that's something to keep in mind. Also
the whole like Joel saving her life after he had his,
like our life bodis swamped thing. I think this is
a no good deed goes unpunished theme which is going
(47:08):
to come back later. And then when he didn't get
to point this out in the game because she just
goes right in for the kill. But he in the show,
he says, you know, I saved your life and she says,
what life? And I think that's a throwback to what
Marlene says in the first season where she's like, what
kind of life will Ellie have in this world? That
(47:43):
does bring us to the golf club. It's a very
iconic It is so iconic. It's awful. I mean, it's
it's horrific. They definitely it cuts away much faster in
the video game than it did in the show, but
it's very brutal in the game as well. Both of
(48:05):
them are bad. Both are bad, and this kind of
brings us to a point I feel like a lot
of people bring up and so in the first episode
of the season, when Gail says it's not your fault.
I know that, it's how you did it. I think
that's going to be a recurring theme as well. And
(48:26):
Gail's story is like Ellie's. If you believe that Joel
didn't have a choice, which I think he did, but
if you believe it, which I think Joel thinks he
didn't have a choice, or she's like, I know you
didn't have a choice. It's how you did it. He
killed all of those people, and Abby spared Dina and Ellie,
even if her murder of Joel was brutal and Joel
(48:48):
killed according to this eighteen soldiers and one doctor, but
in the game it was it was more than that,
to say Ellie, which is a pretty that's pretty significan y.
But yes, also, as you mentioned, we read that kind
of what we thought might be kind of an innocent
(49:09):
review in the last episode that I was like, I
think it might be a pun because it said they
hope they ironed out the.
Speaker 1 (49:20):
Yep, they got me. But there's you sweetaters, Yeah, Jock.
Speaker 2 (49:27):
The funny thing is, though a lot of people who
haven't played the game or like roll mad understandably, I
get it. And I saw a comment today one of
my favorite comments was all y'all making golf funds that
we didn't get you so superad and so like I
remember there was a bunch of articles that said something
(49:49):
like the last of us to tease up for another season,
or like yeah, we were all making these puns. And
then there was an instance where Bell Ramsey just posted
under a Taylor Swift video where Taylor Swift was swinging
a golf club, Joel, that gave me a good chuckle.
(50:10):
That gave me a good chuckle. I mean, it's horrible,
it's so sad, but it was like a traumatizing event
that we now have all been like I got through that.
At least let me make a golf joke. Even Patron
Pascal did it. He posted something today about it. Yeah.
(50:33):
But and we're going to talk about this more later.
One of the sad things is because Abby is such
a divisive character. The voice actor who was in season one,
she was one of the nurses, and Caitlin Deaver who
plays her in the show, have gotten death dreats. And
I believe Katelyin Diaver has a bodyguard or had one,
(50:55):
And Isabellehmer said said, like, you know, she's not Abby's
not h Caitlyn Deaver's not abby. But people were so
angry about it, and you know, it's it was. It hurt,
and it was I was mad too, but I wasn't.
(51:15):
I'm not gonna send any death to us. It was
a good story.
Speaker 1 (51:19):
I was mad because it was a good right, this
is a tale.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
Yes, you don't have to play, It's okay, it's all right.
I also learned, and this is really sad, that her
mom had died a few weeks before filming the scene. Yeah,
oh that's real. That's that's difficult. And this is something
(51:45):
I'm gonna I'm really interested to see how it continues.
But like the different conversations I've seen on playing Out,
playing out from like people who played the game and
people who haven't, they're pretty different in some ways. It's
really interesting. So I'm gonna keep an eye on that.
(52:05):
But I did want to touch John briefly. One of
the reasons this game resonated with me so much is
my dad had died less than a year before this
came out, and it wasn't on good. We didn't have
a good relationship when he died. There was a lot
(52:27):
of unresolved issues, and so this just is like it
really resonated with me. And I've said before, but I'm
able to experience emotion easier through fictional things, and so
it was a really cathartic grieving process for me. And
(52:48):
I mean it might sound silly to some of you,
but I really did go through the grieving process with this.
I went through denial and a group part. I was
like all of these things. I just it was so
powerful and it was really painful. And it also came
out during the pandemic. And I don't know why, but
(53:11):
I'm one of those people that for me that somehow
playing a game about an infection during a pandemic gave
me some kind of release, the same way a horror
movie might. But so one thing I didn't want to
point out I mentioned in the last episode. There's a
(53:33):
scene they cut out that is huge in the in
where after the dance and Ellie and Joel get to
their fight and Ellie sees Joel on the porch with
her guitar and she walks away. You'll notice she has
the guitar back the next morning when Jesse comes to
(53:57):
get her, and that's when she says, like, you know, Hey,
we worked it out, or basically we're working on it,
so I would just poured that out and I'll just
say she also really really loves music. She has all
of those vinyls and the tapes and her window is
covered in music sheets. That's going to be important later too.
(54:21):
Another thing we'll find out about this because as we said,
this wasn't in the game, but Eugene's whole story now's
got another layer because Ellie was clearly like, oh he
was a firefoy, oh oh, and Jesse's like, oh, yeah,
that's a shame couldn't be saved. Right. There's a scene
I don't know they'll include in the show, but they
(54:44):
basically Ellie's having this thought like if they had had
a cure, he could have been saved. So kind of
that survivor skill that she struggles with. Something else to
bring back as we start this journey is Ellie's fear
of ending up alone, which she mentions in the first
(55:06):
game in the first season, and also just her kind
of loss of Ellis innocence and the revenge that is coming.
It's a lot of like cycle of violence and trauma.
(55:28):
So just like Joel's action had consequences, so do Abby's
and so will Ellie's. And there are as I said,
there are a lot of flashbacks, the ringing sounds and
the trailer that I mentioned. Ellie can, She'll have like
these PTSD the flashbacks in the game if there's a
(55:49):
loud sound or something like that. And they're also just
non PTSD ones, but they're sad still, but that's something
to look forward to. Yeah. Also, just quick shout out
to the women leaders on this show for Better Hours.
(56:12):
There's a lot of women leaders.
Speaker 1 (56:15):
Maybe of them confront some things.
Speaker 2 (56:17):
They really really can, they really can. This brings us
to my random wrap up at the end. I did
want to call out this scene between Ellie and Jesse
at the beginning. I love that scene where they're kind
of teasing each other. I'm so glad they put that
in the show. I love that scene. Also, I forgot
(56:37):
to mention the composer Gustavo Sento Laya. He was in
the last episode and he's also sort of a character
in the game. He has a banjo and in the
remastered version you can play him in guitar free play mode, which,
by the way, you can play the guitar in last
of us too. I'm actually like, that's the worst thing
I met. I'm really mad at it, but you can
(57:00):
do that. He was playing at the dance Seattle. I
realized we kind of might have spoiled it for some
people because we've talked all about how the second season
mostly takes place in Seattle, and then that's where Abby's frohim.
But anyway, there's a lot of hints of Seattle. I'm
(57:20):
told that the beer I think it was red Rock
that was on being advertised on the walls from Seattle.
There's a lot of music from the Seattle grunge period,
and there's a lot of kind of themes of like
that period of like the lack of respect of authority
and things like that. Also, this is gonna be a
(57:43):
bigger conversation later, but I think that some people get
really some people get really frustrated. I'm not saying it
wrong too with Ellie, but I would just say, like
I would remember, she's nineteen. There's a lot of lying
and taking choices away from her that's happening, and underestimating
(58:05):
her when she could defend herself. It does really suck,
Like I mean, it's awful because you want these characters
to get along. It feels really painful, but I mean,
I don't know. I would just urge people to give it,
give her some give her some room. And also like
(58:29):
she knows he's lying, because it doesn't it just doesn't
really hold up what he's saying. And because he's telling
her like you can't tell anybody about the immunity, even
though he said there were a bunch of immune people,
like hmmm, so she she knows. And it's just a
(58:50):
frustrating feeling, I think. But that being said, that does
bring us to the end of this episode and to
some no for the future. I know you're hurt. You
might be.
Speaker 1 (59:04):
Angry, Christina, I you okay.
Speaker 2 (59:09):
I would urge patients. It's a really good story. You
are meant to go through it. It's not it's gonna hurt.
But that is one of the reasons why Samantha and
I've discussed it's kind of concern the weight between seasons,
because you are meant to You're really meant to go
through it all at once. But I'm excited. I'm very excited.
(59:35):
It's also like a very you never know when your
time is up. You never know when it's the last
time you'll see someone, and that's gonna be a pretty
big theme. And also parallels. There's gonna be a lot
of parallels. Yeah, same side, same coin, doesn't mean and
my friend like to say I even got her coin
(59:57):
that says that. Yes, when I'll explain that when we
get to that section. But yeah, in the meantime, Uh,
I hope you're okay, and I hope you're enjoying this
whether you watch it, play it, or don't. And we'll
be back next week. We'll see the fallout fallout of this.
(01:00:21):
In the meantime, if you would like to email us,
you can our emails Hello at Stuff Iever Told You
dot com. You can also find it some on fu
sky at mom Stuff. Podcast are on Instagram and TikTok
at Stuff I've Never Told You. We're also on YouTube.
We have a tea public store, and we have a
book where I do talk about Ellie. You can get
wherever you get your books. Thanks as always too, our
super producer, Coristinier, execut Pducer, My Ander, Contruder.
Speaker 1 (01:00:40):
Joey, thank you, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (01:00:43):
And thanks to you for listening Stuff I Never Told You.
Distrection by Heart Radio for more podcast or my heart Radio.
You can check out the heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or orre you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
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Anney Reese
Samantha McVey
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