The Last of Us episode 2

The series debut stays true to the critically acclaimed video game it is based on, while also featuring plenty of surprises to keep you on your toes –and there ...

The series opener is approximately one hour and 25 minutes, while episode 2 is significantly shorter at 55 minutes. And, of course, you can always stream it whenever you want on HBO Max. As stated above, there are two ways to watch tonight’s episode: Tune in to HBO or stream the episode via HBO’s streaming platform, HBO Max. If you’re here to learn what time [The Last of Us episode 2](https://hiddenremote.com/2023/01/15/last-us-soundtrack-songs-play-last-us-episode-1/) is coming out, you’ve come to the right place! Not familiar with the game? [HBO (and HBO Max)](https://hiddenremote.com/hbo/) on Sunday, Jan.

The Last of Us returns to HBO and HBO Max with its second episode. How long will viewers be sitting in front of their TV screens this week?

That’s in and around the standard runtime of a HBO drama, but the real story here is that it’s significantly shorter than the pilot episode. [With the help of HBO Max](https://twitter.com/InsideHBOMax/status/1615789880566779904), that premiere reached over 10 million viewers in just two days. How long will viewers be sitting in front of their TV screens this week?

Here come the Clickers... Everything you need to know about 'The Last of Us' Episode 2 on HBO and HBO Max.

Plus, there is plenty of source material to adapt from the video game plot in The Last of Us Part I and Part II — with a [Part III](https://www.inverse.com/gaming/last-of-us-3-release-date-trailer-story-leaks-rumors-tlou3) potentially on the way. We see him pick up the body of a child in the same manner he carried his daughter and throw it into the bonfire. Trying to bring her neighbors’ spooked dog home, she wanders into their house to discover a gruesome scene of one neighbor dead and bloodied, with the elderly woman on the floor eating the other. The zone is controlled by Episode 2 of The Last of Us, entitled “Infected,” will focus on Joel, Tess, and Ellie as they sneak beyond protected Boston in order to deliver Ellie to a group of Fireflies. Later that night, Sarah wakes up to the sound of jets overhead and her dad out of the house. Coming in at a runtime of 55 minutes, the second installment will also shed light on the Later, she returns home after [repairing her dad’s broken watch](https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/the-last-of-us-joels-watch-fan-theory) as a birthday gift and goes over to her neighbors’ house. Drawing 4.7 million viewers, The Last of Us is officially the second-most-watched premiere in HBO history. [why she is so important](https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/last-of-us-episode-1-ending-scene-explained-is-ellie-immune), as well as her telling the teen that even if she is immune from the contagion, she’s not immune from being dead. With new stakes on the line and a perilous landscape to cross, Episode 2 promises plenty of post-apocalyptic action to unfold. Audiences will soon see just how real the dangers are that await the characters in the outside world, with zombie-like humanoids lurking in the shadows of the abandoned city ahead of Joel, Tess, and Ellie.

The Last of Us, a post-apocalyptic thriller, was well received last week by the public, and this week, Joel (played by Pedro Pascal) and Tess (played by ...

The Last of Us episode 2 will be released on January 23rd in Australia. The Last of Us will also be available on NOW in the United Kingdom. [HBO] The Last of Us Episode 1: Who Is Riley?

If you're subscribed to HBO through HBO Max, you have the same date and time to keep in mind. The premium cable network drops its premieres on its linear ...

The second episode of The Last of Us premieres on HBO and HBO Max Sunday, January 22. You can also use that same cable username and password to log into HBO Max, which will allow you to watch The Last of Us on most devices. And if not, get excited for one of the best casts on TV to make you cry. Refresh your browser or HBO Max app and the episode should be there. Here’s everything you need to know about how to watch The Last of Us Episode 2. Based on the 2013 Naughty Dog game of the same name, The Last of Us is set in a version of Earth that has been devastated by the Cordyceps brain infection, essentially a zombie apocalypse but with more fungi.

We had witnessed in Episode 1 of the HBO series, “The Last of Us,” that Ellie was taken outside the quarantine zone by Joel and Tess. Joel still didn't have a ...

Now, this would have been done because the makers would have realized that if they entertained the possibility of airborne infection, then their cast would have to cover their faces and wear masks at all times. Bill and Frank were the only survivors in their neighborhood, and they were able to stay alive because they had some rules that they always followed. The threat was doubled as Joel, Ellie, and Tess would not only have to face the infected but also the army, which probably would have been given shoot-at-site orders. Joel, Ellie, and Tess would also be on the hit list of FEDRA, as the military would come to know about their escape sooner rather than later. Joel still didn’t have a clue about the whereabouts of Tommy, and he was probably trying his best to not get attached to Ellie. We still don’t know whether Bill and Frank were in danger themselves or if they were trying to warn Joel not to come out of the quarantine zone.

The Last of Us is back on both HBO and HBO Max with its second installment tonight. Here's when you watch episode 2 in your neck of the woods.

The Last of Us episode 2 airs in the US on HBO on Sunday, January 22, at 9:00 p.m. Are you ready for the second episode of The Last of Us‘ first season? ET on Sunday, January 22 ET, 6:00 p.m. But what dangers will they face along the way, and will the people they meet be friends or foes? News that will undoubtedly be music to the ears of fans who watched the series premiere last weekend.

Of course, the second game is already fairly controversial, so it'll be interesting to see if Druckmann wants to step back into the director's chair for the ...

The second episode of The Last of Us is directed by Neil Druckmann and marks his debut as a live-action director. When the HBO adaptation of The Last of Us was announced, many were relieved to hear Neil Druckmann was involved as both a producer and a writer on the series. The Last of Us is one of the most beloved video games of all-time and that's thanks to the very talented team at Naughty Dog.

Warning: this story contains The Last of Us spoilers for Episode 1, 'When You're Lost in the Darkness.' There are no game spoilers.] ''80s means trouble.

[Consequence](https://consequence.net/2023/01/the-last-of-us-hbo-adaptation-explained/3/). In present-day 2023, Joel, Ellie, and Tess enter a building crawling with [Infected](/category/infected-s1-the-last-of-us/) — an encounter that could cut the trio down to a duo, as hinted by a conspicuous absence in ["The Weeks Ahead" trailer released by HBO](https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/the-last-of-us-spoilers-hbo-releases-season-one-preview/). [Sunday's Episode 2, "Infected"](https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/the-last-of-us-episode-2-infected-cordyceps-virus-origin-joel-ellie-tess/): look closely, and you'll see Episode 1 ended with a lightning strike illuminating a screeching Clicker in the darkness. After sneaking out of the Boston QZ, Episode 1 ended with the trio failing to heed another danger sign reading "DO NOT PROCEED" as they fled FEDRA forces into [a Biological Contamination Area](https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/the-last-of-us-hbo-recap-spoilers-episode-one/). But watching the show, I wanted you to feel every bullet, every stab. Unlike the video game, there are no save points and no do-overs.

HBO has confirmed the length of The Last of Us Episode 2 and more episodes in the weeks ahead. The January 15th series premiere of HBO's adaptation of the ...

[0comments](#) Sunday's Episode 2, titled " [Infected](https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/the-last-of-us-episode-2-infected-cordyceps-virus-origin-joel-ellie-tess/)," is shorter and clocks in just under an hour — but fans can expect another extended episode with a super-sized runtime to follow on January 29th. [The Last of Us](/category/the-last-of-us-tvshow/) Episode 2 and more episodes in [the weeks ahead](https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/the-last-of-us-spoilers-hbo-releases-season-one-preview/).

After the premiere last week, HBO's TV adaptation of The Last Of Us looks to start Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie's (Bella Ramsey) journey.

HBO Max is not currently available in the UK. The Last Of Us lacks novel ideas, but when it’s this good it can get away with it.” NME is supported by you. [four-star review](https://www.nme.com/reviews/tv-reviews/the-last-of-us-review-pedro-pascal-bella-ramsey-3376317), NME wrote: “Gamers have been burned before by poorly conceived adaptations of their favourite titles, so they were naturally skeptical. When is the third episode of The Last Of Us available? How long is episode two of The Last Of Us?

That is because unlike the video game, there are no fungi spores in the television series, a key element in the infection outbreak. A new aspect of the ...

I specialize the latest on television, movies, professional wrestling, and video gaming Twitter: @Julianexcalibur Instagram: @Julianexcalibur Contact: [email protected] Entertainment Journalist.

Of course, Tess went out with a bang. Literally. And, of course, her final words changed the destiny of Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey). Before we ...

And Ratna determines – wrongly, as it turns out – that wiping out the inhabitants of Jakarta will protect the rest of the world’s population from succumbing to the infection. It’s easy to assume that this is a cold act of compassionless rationalism, but it’s actually an example of The Trolley Problem in action. In the world that we’re creating, if we put spores in the air, it would be pretty clear that they would spread around everywhere, and everybody would have to wear a mask all the time. With those five little words, she’s advising Joel to do as much good as he can with the hand he’s been dealt – and, perhaps, to be a little bit selfish sometimes. On a weekend, you can usually find her drinking copious amounts of tea and playing boardgames with her friends. To divert the trolley and then run as fast as you can to knock that one other person out of harm’s way. “I would like to be with my family,” she says haltingly. Two police officers in Jakarta, Indonesia walk into a restaurant and unceremoniously escort Ibu Ratna, a professor of mycology at the University of Indonesia, into a waiting car. And, of course, her final words changed the destiny of Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey). There, she was shot in the skull. We all know the answer, of course. She quickly became violent, attacking four coworkers, and biting three of them, before they were able to lock her in a bathroom.

More tension, more monsters, and another stunning hour of TV. By Evan Romano Published: Jan 22, 2023.

Tess spills lots of gasoline and grenades on the ground, and knowing her time is up, plans for a blaze of glory. After much struggling, Joel and Tess manage to kill the clickers—named for the clicking sound they make as they move—and escape to the roof of the museum. They debate whether they're going to get where they need to go by taking "the long way or the short way," before they realize that "the short way" is also "the dead way." She's gotten bitten ("Oops," Anna Torv heartbreakingly delivers, still with just the right smidge of snark), and by hook or by crook realizes this is going to be the end of the line for her. As they arrive at what was once the Fireflies HQ, they instead see a bunch of dead bodies; Joel, at this point, is perceptive. They debate whether or not to shoot her (spoiler: they don't), and then climb up out of their dark shelter to get Ellie where Marlene needed her to go: a Some may be looking at this show from a point of comparison with the source material— [we've got a story doing that too!](https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a42478320/the-last-of-us-hbo-show-video-game-differences/)—but my attempt is to look at this with fresh eyes. Ibu is incredulous at first of the Cordyceps growing in the body that the government official has her examining. Here, The Last of Us takes us to Jakarta for the origin of the outbreak—or, at least, as far back as this world's authorities might be able to trace. I am, however, a major fan of horror, sci-fi, and the post-apocalyptic genre, and have largely managed to shield myself from the major plot points. Episode 2, directed by co-showrunner and The Last of Us game creator Neil Druckmann, has just a few important plot-based takeaways, opting instead mostly for us to spend some time with the characters and world we're only now getting to know. [Halloween](https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a41626593/halloween-movies-in-order/) isn't all Michael Myers stabbing people; John Carpenter and Debra Hill knew that for the impact to be felt, you have to build up characters and tension along the way.

We recap the HBO series The Last of Us, Season 1 Episode 2, “Infected,” which contains significant spoilers.

As the creatures enter the building, Tess lights the place up in flames buying time for Ellie and Joel to get out of dodge. Tess asks one more time, so Joel snags her, and while Ellie fights it, he is able to get her out of the building. So now, the three of them start their trek towards taking Ellie where she is supposed to go. At the station, they asked her to look at the specimen they retrieved. After plenty of back and forth, Ellie tells them they think she is vital in finding a vaccine. Let’s dive into episode 2 of the show.

Joel, Ellie, and the gang go on a video game-style quest—and things get messy.

That’s certainly one of the ways they can spread the infection, but it’s nasty as all hell. So, I’m in the same boat as some of you newcomers to the story. The group comes across a hotel building that has become something of a swamp. Looks like we’ll have to find another way to get to the other side,” or, “Press X to climb, Joel!” I know the HBO series can’t have Ellie say lines like, “Joel, did you know that you can hold L2 to lock on to enemies?” but I still want her to say it. The city we saw with the slanted skyscraper at the end of the premiere episode wasn’t a good sign that anything is inhabitable outside of the QZ, either. He shines a flashlight in one of their mushroom faces and the beast doesn’t notice, so they seem to work purely on sounds alone. And The Last of Us just works. They still smuggled Ellie out of the QZ, though, and whatever’s happening to her may be the cure to this whole epidemic. So now, Joel was forced to make a deal with the Fireflies to smuggle Ellie out of the QZ in exchange for the car battery. Sadly, that car battery was sold off to the Fireflies by a guy named Robert. Say what you will about the Halo television series or the groan-inducing Sonic the Hedgehog movies, but HBO and The Last of Us creator Neil Druckmann are truly working on a whole other level. Whether it’s because of Druckman's involvement, or commitment to the source material, The Last of Us’s premiere simply had the right sauce.

Infected,” the second episode of HBO's dystopian drama, showed us how Joel and Ellie process a traumatic loss.

The bulk of the zombies are saved for the final sequence, but even with only a few of the monsters, the museum fight is intense and very well-constructed. Nasty all around, and if the fight sequence in a few spots perhaps drifted too close to feeling like a game level (the shots from Joel’s POV, for instance), for the most part, Mazin and Druckmann have a clear sense of how each action beat has to work as drama, rather than something interactive. The show does a good job of establishing the rules of play — the zombies track you by sound, not sight, for instance — as well as continuing to make the creatures feel distinctly gross in appearance and everything else. She is humanity’s potential salvation, but she’s also a girl who just lost someone she had grown to like a lot in a short amount of time. But perhaps the most important thing the episode does is to make sure we see Ellie as a person first, rather than a walking vaccine incubator. If The Walking Dead wanted to build a set like that, it would have necessitated situating most or all of a season there to amortize the cost. She is not only immune to the infection, but the Firefly doctors believe she may be the key to creating a vaccine to protect future generations from this plague. And it’s the strength of Torv’s work that in turn makes Tess’ death hit much harder than the loss of any character should after only two episodes. One step, then the next step, and maybe the one after that are all he can allow himself to think about. But in this case, the scientist’s certainty that there is no way to treat this infection serves as a contrast to the whole reason Joel is meant to take Ellie to parts west. She has studied spores and fungi all her life, and she understands instantly that there is no cure for this — that the only way to save humanity is, “Bomb. The zombie apocalypse is days away, and the government of Jakarta is finding this out before anyone else.

This week brought a more in-depth look at post-apocalyptic Boston as well as more details about what exactly has happened to the planet.

A professor of mycology, Ibu Ratna (Christine Hakim), is brought in by the government to examine the corpse of a woman who had gone on a murderous rampage under the apparent influence of “cordyceps” — a mushroom with bad vibes that is generally unpleasant to be around. Even in the Jakarta prologue, the first real sign that something isn’t right is when the professor cuts into a subject’s leg and no blood spills out — only a fibrous white substance. But as Joel and Tess explain to Ellie — who only knows about the plague from what she has read in books and heard through the grapevine — there are still large numbers of mindless infected killing machines all across the city, writhing on their bellies in the streets in order to stay connected to an underground fungal network. There is a scene about halfway through this episode when Tess leaves the other two behind to scout for a pathway behind some rubble, and Joel and Ellie’s awkward conversation is almost painful to witness. In fact, throughout the episode, our heroes end up trashing a lot of the past. The fungal origin of this zombie-style apocalypse has also inspired some spectacularly creepy imagery, from the tiny tendrils that snake out of the infected’s mouths to the darkness-dwelling creatures whose heads look like split mushrooms. (Asked where she learned to juggle a sharp knife, she cracks, “The circus.” Told that their path to Beacon Hill can go “the long way” or “the ‘we’re dead’ way,” she replies, “I vote ‘long way,’ just based on that limited information.”) Because she talks incessantly, by the time the travelers hit their first big roadblock, she has explained a lot about what her life has been like up until now: spending her days in classes with the other QZ kids, learning about the culture they can’t see firsthand and spending her free time exploring the places she’s not supposed to go. Once again there is a pre-opening credits prologue, set in Jakarta in 2003, revealing the origins of the mayhem we heard about on Joel’s radio in Austin last week. This episode offers several good “get to know you” scenes for Ellie, who was initially introduced as a sassy detainee, aloof and angry. Only when the camera angle changes can we see that she is actually asleep indoors, in one of those rotting old buildings. This week features more of a grand tour — and honestly, it’s kind of awesome. A big reason so many people are drawn to movies and TV shows about the End Times is that there’s something both exciting and eerie about seeing the bones of our world, gnarled and repurposed.

One of the needs we had was to show how the infected take over a city,” Craig Mazin, the show's producer, said.

Then there are those who watch the show and see it as the product of hundreds of people’s work, and view the proceedings as borne of creators’ choices. Which is what makes settling on an interpretation so difficult — and reading the scene as grossness for its own sake so easy. Because The Last of Us franchise has existed for nearly 10 years, a lot of people are instinctively in the latter camp, having seen Druckmann in particular elevated from random game director to minor celebrity within video game culture. But scratching the surface a bit, both the kiss and its tendrils give the sense that Tess is being welcomed into a new “community” of infected. There are those who buy into the fiction of the show and interpret the stuff that happens on screen very plainly, as a story. (You can read this as thoughtful critique or thoughtless reproduction.) And perhaps the showrunners, who are men, did not think about whether it might be cruel or send a weird message to subject one of the show’s most prominent female characters (so far) to an even worse fate than she suffered in the game, and in a more lurid way at that. The kiss is clearly nonconsensual, a grim fictionalization of rape culture and the kind of brutish behavior so many people suffer even in our current non-apocalypse. It’s possible the showrunners of this horror drama TV show wanted a dramatic and horrifying body horror gross-out scene. “And I remember one of the annoying questions I asked was, why are FEDRA soldiers all the way out here? But this closeness comes at a cost: a loss of both her identity and humanity. As Joel and Ellie, the series’s protagonists, make a break for it, Tess stays behind to slow the zombies down by upturning a few barrels of gasoline and setting off a stash of grenades left behind by a group of smugglers and freedom fighters. If the open city is really, really dangerous, it seems like they’re really going way, way out of their way to find Tess and Joel.

Tess, Joel and Ellie's journey takes a dark twist. Sean Keane headshot. Sean Keane.

Much to our relief, she manages light the fire and closes her eyes before the explosion kills her and a bunch of infected. They reach the Capitol Building and find the corpses of the Fireflies they were meant to bring Ellie to. She's quickly gunned down, but her sacrifice gives Joel and Ellie the chance to escape. They hope to replicate Ellie's resistance and restore the world. Several of these people were executed to stop the problem from growing, but it was too late. Fans of the [classic video game](/tech/gaming/sony-ps5-review-exclusive-games-power-playstation-5-sky-high-space-age-console/) will undoubtedly be pleased at how closely it mirrors the source material.

In “Infected,” the series' second episode, the late-'60s public affairs roundtable gives way to Dr. Ibu Ratna (a magnificent Christine Hakim), a scientist and ...

Aside from yet another example that no one in this world (outside of Joel and Ellie, at this point) is guaranteed to make it to the next episode, it makes sense that a short-handed fight against two angry opponents would only leave one of this trio unscathed. From top to bottom, “Infected” is about preserving dignity in the face of almost-certain failure. This is not the kind of show where everyone spends the first season getting out of tough scrapes and close calls at the last minute. Sometimes that relationship to sound is more playful (hello, new frog friend!) and sometimes it’s more instructive (just hearing the dead cordyceps root under the butt of Joel’s shotgun is enough to let him and us know that it doesn’t pose a threat anymore). Like the attack that plays out in the rear view window as Tommy drives the pickup out of their Austin neighborhood, the group of Infected that Tess shows Ellie is a set of consequences seen from a great distance. “The Last of Us” takes the middle road, where the destruction is the thing most preserved, as plant life of all kinds start to take their course. From Joel’s telling, this is the result of a success story — conceivably, mass casualties helped stop the cordyceps spread and set up the Quarantine Zone, a process that didn’t always play out in the major cities of 2003. “When You’re Lost in Darkness” focused on the collapse and the new semblance of order in a controlled area. It’s as matter-of-fact as the presentation of the bullet hole in the factory worker on the autopsy table. If last week’s first episode didn’t do enough to prime a viewing audience for a short supply of hope early on in “The Last of Us,” here’s an expert recognizing within minutes that nothing can be done. Everyone trying to stay alive is stuck in a dangerous game of Telephone, which would be hard enough even if the motives of everyone involved were pure. But it’s worth pointing out the first two cold opens in “The Last of Us” do just as much to build a sense of global unease as any overheard news report or Oval Office address or TV test pattern could.

In Boston, two decades later, Joel, Ellie, and Tess pass by evidence of that calculus's aftermath, a crater left by a bomb targeting Boston, just as other bombs ...

(And an [episode](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1BA-IIoWmM&list=PLob1mZcVWOagLL-shJOp-d5_qJOG2MvCJ&index=8) featuring the ruins of an amusement park I grew up going to chilled me to the bone.) (The book’s great, too.) And it looks like all of Life After People is available on the History Channel’s [YouTube page for the show](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLob1mZcVWOagLL-shJOp-d5_qJOG2MvCJ). • “Infected” was written by Craig Mazin and directed by the HBO series’ co-creator (and The Last of Us game writer) Neil Druckmann. Much of the pre-Infected world is made up of places and things she’s never experienced firsthand. There’s a reason the opening credits end on an image of just Ellie and Joel in silhouette, after all. The party does its best to stealth-mode its way through the exhibits, but they end up fighting the Infected and then making a hasty exit after a string of close calls that are maybe more than close calls. • Speaking of, this episode features the first scene of Ellie and Joel alone together. It’s excellent and a fine companion piece to The Last of Us.) As flames engulf the Statehouse, Joel and Ellie begin the next phase of their journey. The tension at the heart of The Last of Us is between the grim measures needed to survive and the desire not to snuff out what makes us human in the process. Then the clicking begins, a sound that Joel and Tess know means they’re among the Infected. [the cordyceps threat](https://www.vulture.com/article/the-last-of-us-fungus-infection-cordyceps-explained.html) and understand the cruel calculus needed to (maybe) contain it.

Ellie (Bella Ramsey) awakens to find Tess (Anna Torv) and Joel (Pedro Pascal) scrutinizing her, clearly unsure about what to do next. They offer her a scrap of ...

The fungus in the capitol building has activated and sent a warning to the horde of zombies they saw earlier. I’m so impressed by the level of detail here and even though they are making some changes from the game, it’s close enough to the source material in my book. When the general asks what to do, she tells him to bomb the city. We learn through conversation between Joel, Tess and Ellie that bombing is exactly what happened across the globe to slow the spread. As she examines the body, we see the tendrils start to grow out of the corpse’s mouth. When they reach the rendezvous, they find a bleak scene of death and violence. The zombies of The Last Of Us are a hivemind. Recall, Joel, Tommy and Sarah all discussing Jakarta in the kitchen in the series premiere. Fungal tendrils grow out of his mouth and snake into hers—and finally the lighter catches flame. But she explains that this was the entire point of the mission that Marlene (played by Merle Dandridge who also played Marlene in the video game) and the Fireflies were on. When she sees the front desk, she sloshes over to it and pretends to be the clerk checking guests into their room. They offer her a scrap of their jerky but she has sandwiches.

Tess sacrifices herself in this week's hour, in a bid to give Joel and Ellie a fighting chance of making it out of the State House alive after a horde of ...

As all of this is playing out in really sad fashion right there in the lobby, one of the corpses starts moving and Joel shoots it. Joel wants to return to the QZ, but Tess is adamant that they not turn back. Ellie wonders if FEDRA is responsible, but Joel looks at the state of the corpses and surmises that someone got bit. Then he notices that some of the connected tendrils are moving; outside, a pack of infected reanimates and starts moving toward the State House’s front doors. The bad news: There are a LOT of infected roaming the city, way more than the last time Joel and Tess passed through. where the truck outside is empty and there’s blood on the steps. As they climb over cars and such, Ellie tells her traveling companions how old she is (14) and how she got bit (she snuck into a boarded-up mall in the QZ, and it happened there). Joel grumbles that maybe Ellie’s second bite will be the one that takes, but Tess admonishes him to accept a little good news for once. “Or ones with split-open heads that see in the dark like bats?” It should be noted: The adults exchange a look on that last one. Tess talks him out of returning her to the QZ, where they’ll just scan and kill her, but she also demands to know what Ellie was doing with Marlene and why she’s so important. The corpse has a bullet hole in its head and a (human) bite on its leg; when the professor slices into the wound, spongy material starts to extrude from it. A mycology professor (aka someone who studies fungi) is brought to a lab to examine a specimen; she identifies it as Ophiocordiceps but scoffs when told it was taken from a human, because the fungi is not supposed to be able to survive in people.

Joel, Ellie, and Tess explore the fringe of civilization with disastrous results. Here's how the HBO thriller's second episode plays out.

“There’s a Firefly base camp out west, with doctors working on the cure,” says Ellie. Against all advice from Firefly leader Marlene (Merle Dandrige), Ellie tells Joel and Tess all about her bite, and her resistance to the cause of mankind’s near-extinction. When pressed on what they can do to stop the thread, Ratna’s answer is a single, horrible word, spoken in English: “Bomb.” Effectively, the woman violently attacked a number of colleagues at her place of work, a flour and grain facility. (Not a joke: a widespread number of fans left the Last of Us series premiere pointing at bread as the source of the apocalypse, with Joel’s half-assed Atkins Diet, or maybe just his inability to make a grocery run, literally saving his life. “Cordyceps cannot survive in humans,” says Ratna, leaning on her years of expertise, denying the truth on the microscope slide right in front of her.

The early death happens in the game as well, but the way the show gave us a few moments with Tess separate from Joel and Ellie in the first episode makes losing ...

And like the game, the episode can’t help but take a dark and sad turn by the end. Typically, when a game adaptation makes a direct reference to the game it’s based on, it’s cringe-y and distracting as all hell. It’s taken straight from the game, and even features a shot of Joel and Ellie crouched together behind cover as a clicker lurks around the corner, evoking all the feels for fans accustomed to that iconic visual of the duo in action. While this prologue is less compelling than anything we saw in episode 1, it does at least provide background as to how the pandemic started and underlines the sheer enormity of the cordyceps outbreak, which will likely pay dividends in the backs of our minds as the series progresses. Losing such a wonderful character so early in the show is tough, but the painful moment gives the story the sense of gravity and urgency that it needs. The look on her face when she advises the military to bomb the city and everyone in it to prevent the pandemic is chilling to say the least.

Bella Ramsey continues to be excellent as Ellie, granting humorous relief in a world that offers very little. She's dependent but resourceful and, crucially, ...

But now, after centuries of servitude, Renfield is finally ready to see if there’s a life away from The Prince of Darkness. There’s no irony lost that our first real meeting with one of them takes place in a museum - leading them to not only take over humanity’s present-day but also a place designed to preserve our past. It’s deeply effective and an ominous foreshadowing of the show’s hopeless present day as we're transported back to a bombed-out Boston. She's dependent but resourceful and, crucially, willing to learn as the true horrors of the wider world steadily become revealed to her. A scene filled with quiet dread, it ends with the loudest of suggestions - the bombing of an entire city. Although not essential to Joel and Ellie's journey, it offers compelling information that acts as an explainer of how the fungus works for newcomers, as well as fascinating new context for those familiar.

Joel and Ellie are forced to trek across the country after one character makes a horrific sacrifice.

Now, Joel and Ellie are forced to carry on, both to pursue a cure, but also to ensure that Tess’s death isn’t for naught. She was bitten in the museum, and now she only has hours to live. An Infected approaches her while she tries to get her lighter to work, and it kisses her, allowing the tendrils from its mouth to enter hers. After Joel shoots a straggling Infected survivor, he awakes the horde the gang saw earlier in the episode. After a detour through a museum and a nasty encounter with Clickers, they finally make it to the State House, only to find everyone there killed. The plan almost went off the rails when Tess discovered Ellie was infected, but eventually this only proved that Ellie really is immune to the virus.

In episode 2, Joel, Tess and Ellie continue their journey and face off against the deadly Clickers. Spoiler alert: These reviews will include spoilers for each ...

The Last of Us is becoming a very visceral experience and we’re fully digging it so far. They squirm and move and the idea of those burrowing into you is horrifying. Episode 2 of The Last of Us begins in Indonesia and chronicles the very beginning of the pandemic that would bring humanity to their knees. The entire sequence in which the gang hides from the infected is tense and riveting. While she initially held some hope that bringing Ellie to the Fireflies in time might help her, Tess has no choice but to admit that this is the end of the road for her. The Last of Us is purposely a little light on the zombie action; the focus has been shifted to humans, mostly to show how we, as a species, are coping with the shitshow that has become Earth.

Tess, Joel and Ellie's journey takes a dark twist in the HBO adaptation.

Much to our relief, she manages light the fire and closes her eyes before the explosion kills her and a bunch of infected. They reach the Capitol Building and find the corpses of the Fireflies they were meant to bring Ellie to. She's quickly gunned down, but her sacrifice gives Joel and Ellie the chance to escape. She dumps gas and grenades all over the floor. They hope to replicate Ellie's resistance and restore the world. A particularly horribly mutated infected notices her and tendrils extend from its mouth into hers -- never have I wanted a flame to ignite more. [changed it for the show](https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/news/the-last-of-us-spores-changed-games-tv-show-adaptation/) to avoid having characters wearing gas masks all the time. Several of these people were executed to stop the problem from growing, but it was too late. Fans of the [classic video game](/tech/gaming/sony-ps5-review-exclusive-games-power-playstation-5-sky-high-space-age-console/) will undoubtedly be pleased at how closely the series mirrors the source material. It's apparently [an Indonesian honorific](https://medium.com/curious/the-curious-case-of-indonesian-honorifics-7e75cb02b7e4). If any of these were infected with a fungal pathogen, it could be devastating. After being bitten by an unknown person, a woman working at a flour and grain factory in Jakarta, Indonesia, chomped on her coworkers before being gunned down.

Like the game that inspired it, this saw Joel (Pedro Pascal), Tess (Anna Torv), and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) make their way through an infected post apocalyptic ...

Uncharted 3 infamously had an Easter egg for The Last of Us in a newspaper two years before people would even know the now iconic journey of Joel and Ellie. The Last of Us and Uncharted has always shared a lot of DNA between them. Tess’ death in the game was horrific enough, but this added tension with the swarm of infected and the lighter is some of the best suspense we have seen in years. This isn’t the first Uncharted reference found in the first two episodes of The Last of Us as Ellie has been seen wearing a red and white baseball shirt. In the games, we only heard Tess’ death from afar due to us playing as Joel. The biggest example being that Tess’ lighter is the same lighter that Nathan Drake’s brother Sam used in [Uncharted 4: A Thief's End](https://collider.com/tag/uncharted/).

After achieving HBO's second-most watched series premiere in more than a decade, "The Last of Us" is now reaching an even bigger audience.

PlayStation Productions and Naughty Dog both produce the series along with Word Games and the Mighty Mint. Both series have significantly outperformed the launch of both seasons of “Euphoria,” which became HBO’s second biggest series of all time after “Game of Thrones” during its second season in early 2022. Set 20 years after the destruction of modern civilization, “The Last of Us” stars Pedro Pascal as Joel, a hardened survivor who is hired to smuggle 14-year-old Ellie (Bella Ramsey) out of an oppressive quarantine zone. The original video game was developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for PlayStation platforms. The immediate popularity of “The Last of Us” is unsurprising, as the drama series is an adaptation of the megahit video game of the same name that has sold over 10 million copies worldwide. What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal, heartbreaking journey, as they both must traverse the U.S.

In the final moments of “When You're Lost in the Darkness”, Joel (Pedro Pascal), Ellie (Bella Ramsey), and Tess (Anna Torv) finally managed to escape the ...

Also, just like in the series, Tess tells Joel to take Ellie to the Fireflies and chooses to sacrifice herself in the Capitol building rather than turn into an infected. Tess also demands that Joel take Ellie to Tommy’s, not to Bill and Frank’s. If you take a certain path, you can even [see Tess’ corpse](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMOztMpxXw8) in the game. One of the Runners spots her, and in one of the most disturbing parts of the series, forces its fungi-coated tongue down her throat. Just like in the series, she’s bitten by an infected while in the museum, and she keeps that information away from Joel and Ellie. After a lot of sneaking and some quick gun work, Joel is able to take them both out, but not before one of the Clickers bites Ellie. Knowing that a horde is coming, she begs her partner to take the kid to their friends Bill and Frank. As Joel and Tess question whether they can trust Ellie and her alleged immunity, our trio pick their way through the remains of Boston. As they do so, Tess explains the infected to Ellie. “The fungus also grows underground, long fibers like wires, some of them stretching over a mile,” Tess tells Ellie after seeing a horde of Runners clumped together. Even when we’re explaining and showing this stuff, it was important to keep it as a character drama.” [The Last of Us](https://decider.com/show/the-last-of-us/).

HBO's The Last of Us episode 2 included an interesting easter egg from another popular Playstation exclusive game, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End.

[The Last of Us' ranks](https://screenrant.com/last-us-show-video-game-adaptations-suck-wrong/), in the form of adaptations for Days Gone and God of War. While the Uncharted movie chose to explore its characters at an earlier point in the timeline than the games, HBO's The Last of Us presents audiences with the same story from the beloved game. [The Last of Us episode 2](https://screenrant.com/last-of-us-episode-2-zombie-kiss-explained/) included a momentous event for Tess, in which she needs to incite an explosion with the help of her lighter. One of the major differences between the Uncharted movie and The Last of Us series comes from both projects' critical reception. [Naughty Dog](https://www.instagram.com/p/Cnw3tvwr6t0/?igshid=NTdlMDg3MTY%3D), the game studio behind Uncharted and The Last of Us, revealed that HBO's The Last of Us episode 2 included an Uncharted Easter egg. [The Last of Us](https://screenrant.com/tag/the-last-of-us/) episode 2, as the show included an item from the adventure game franchise.

HBO's The Last of Us is a mostly faithful adaptation of the hit PlayStation game. But just how close to its source material does it get? We've gathered images ...

This video also shows what the world looks like after a seasons change! We've gathered images from episode 2 and put them next to stills from Naughty Dog's masterpiece to see just how similar some of it is. But just how close to its source material does it get?

Per HBO, the figure marks the “largest week 2 audience growth for an HBO Original drama series in the history of the network.” 'The Last of Us' Release Schedule ...

“The Last of Us” takes place 20 years after modern civilization has been destroyed. What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal, heartbreaking journey, as they both must traverse the U.S. Joel (Pedro Pascal), a hardened survivor, is hired to smuggle a 14-year-old girl named Ellie (Bella Ramsey) out of an oppressive quarantine zone.

An attack by the clickers is horrific and explosive – no matter how many times you watch it – but Joel and Ellie's chemistry is a joy to behold.

I’m all for a bit of foreshadowing but Tess telling Ellie she was just trying to keep her alive signposted her death a little too clearly, while the explanation about the virus being able to communicate via its interconnected web came just minutes before we saw it in action. It would have been easy to make the clickers look cartoonish, but for me, they were on the right side of horrific. The Argentine composer wrote the score for The Last of Us video games and much of the soundtrack for this TV series. Joel’s new mission, now that his previous one is a no-go, is to get Ellie to Bill and Frank’s (referenced last week, the ones with the excellent taste in musically coded messages). Of course, he’s softening and she’s warming to him – and now it’s just the two of them, they’ll have no choice but to get on better – but so long as she keeps asking questions and he remains suspicious of her immunity, we’re still some way off Joel and Ellie being happy companions. After the museum skirmish, Ellie deduced, from her reaction to the slain Fireflies and her decision to stay there rather than return to Boston, that Tess had been bitten. From the moment our trio entered the museum, to the arrival of the clickers and to Joel, Tess and Ellie’s eventual escape, I was on my feet. Prof Ibu Ratna (Christine Hakim), a mycologist from the University of Indonesia, was picked up by the military while having her lunch and taken to a laboratory to help shed some light on the corpse lying on the slab. Quite a leap to come out and say it, but with hindsight, probably the right call. Ellie responded, with a mouth full of chicken sandwich, that there’s a Firefly facility out west where they are working on a cure, and that’s where she will be heading once Joel and Tess have delivered her safely … After the credits, we were back in the present day, with Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Tess (Anna Torv) with Ellie (Bella Ramsey), on their way to dropping her off and collecting their battery as reward. The following article is for people who have seen the first two episodes of The Last of Us.

The second episode of The Last of Us HBO original series features an Easter egg to Naughty Dog's previous title, Uncharted 4.

Neil Druckmann decided to share that episode 2 of The Last of Us that just aired yesterday featured a design on Tess' lighter was actually modeled after the lighter Sam Drake has in Uncharted 4. A huge part of the success of the TV series adaptation is undoubtedly the fact that Neil Druckmann, co-president of Naughty Dog, is listed as one of the executive producers on the show. An Easter egg for the Uncharted franchise was shown off in the latest episode of HBO's The Last of Us TV series.

A Clicker from "The Last of Us" lurches through a museum, fungus bursting. Terrifying, yet oddly beautiful. Credit: Liane Hentscher / HBO ...

In the face of this constant growth, there's a good chance that Tess's fate is the future that awaits the rest of humanity. The instinctual response to the kiss is one of horror. They've expanded their numbers relentlessly, taking more and more of the city as their own. The final act of "Infected" is Tess's swan song. We see the terror in her eyes as she surrenders to the embrace of the infected, and we know that she's being brought into the community that she's spent much of her life fighting. [Fireflies](https://mashable.com/article/the-last-of-us-fireflies-fedra-hbo) and blows up the oncoming Clicker horde to buy them time to escape. When Joel, Tess, and Ellie find a vantage point in an abandoned hotel, they see a massive group of Clickers lying on the ground outside. [cordyceps](https://mashable.com/article/the-last-of-us-biscuits-contaminated-flour-cordyceps-outbreak) long enough for the fungus to take over their sight — are an unknown threat, a series of ominous screeches in the distance. They're a community — and that's the most frightening change of all. If you step on a piece of cordyceps in one place, Clickers miles away can feel you and begin to hunt. The show's version of this network adds an extra sense of dread to an already dreadful world. The very ground you walk on could betray you — one misstep and you're finished.

Episode 2 of the popular video game adaptation brought in 5.7 million viewers.

[Pedro Pascal ](https://www.tvinsider.com/people/pedro-pascal/)as Joel, a hardened survivor who is hired to smuggle 14-year-old Ellie ( [Bella Ramsey](https://www.tvinsider.com/people/bella-ramsey/)) out of an oppressive quarantine zone. The Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann-created series will run for nine episodes. What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal, heartbreaking journey, as they both must traverse the U.S. [Game Of Thrones](https://www.tvinsider.com/show/game-of-thrones/) spinoff [House Of The Dragon](https://www.tvinsider.com/show/house-of-the-dragon/), which estimated [ 29 million viewers across all platforms each episode](https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/09/media/house-of-the-dragon-viewership/index.html#:~:text=To%20put%20that%20number%20into,has%20not%20slowed%20down%20since.). [The Last of Us](https://www.tvinsider.com/show/the-last-of-us/) because the second episode of [HBO](https://www.tvinsider.com/network/hbo/)‘s post-apocalyptic drama brought in 5.7 million viewers across linear airings on HBO and streams on [HBO Max](https://www.tvinsider.com/network/hbo-max/), [up from 4.7 million views from the series premiere](https://www.tvinsider.com/1077604/the-last-of-us-series-premiere-ratings-viewership-hbo-max/). [largest week 2 audience growth for an HBO Original drama series](https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/the-last-of-us-episode-2-ratings-viewers-1235499252/) in the history of the network.” [Variety ](https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/the-last-of-us-episode-2-ratings-viewers-1235499252/)offered yet another update on the premiere of the series, which is based on the popular video game, reporting, “After one full week of availability, Episode 1 is now tracking at 18 million viewers, up nearly 4x from its premiere night audience.”

After a stellar premiere, The Last of Us saw its biggest increase in viewership from the first episode to the second, drawing 5.7 million viewers.

Things are looking up for video game adaptations this year with The Last of Us starting things off on a very high note. Later this year, Illumination and Nintendo will enter the game with The Super Mario Bros. It shouldn't come as a total shock that The Last of Us outperformed its premiere by such a wide margin. As expected, the series has also been on fire on HBO Max in the days after each episode premieres. It stars beloved actor Pedro Pascal as Joel, a hardened, grief-stricken survivor and smuggler tasked with safely transporting the teenage Ellie (Bella Ramsey) across an America ravaged by the cordyceps outbreak. [The Last of Us](https://collider.com/the-last-of-us-hbo/) keeps spreading its tendrils further.