Now that’s a song. That’s a music video. I’ve been thinking a lot about how there’s been a shift in public spaces and at concerts in recent years because people aren’t really dancing anymore. And then I think about the music video for “Little Bit” by Lykke Li and how all the performers in that are dancing so uninhibitedly and it looks so cool. Dancing is cool. Having fun is cool. Not caring about how silly you look is really fucking cool. I think the dance floors would be a lot more fun if everyone was thinking more about “Little Bit” by Lykke Li.

Hi, btw. It’s been a minute (more like a month). How the hell is it already August? Seems kinda fake if you ask me. It’s also a relief though because I’m officially all done with summer. It’s been a blast, I’ve done lots of very fun things with my friends, but I am all done. I know I’m all done because I started my yearly Halloween watches in July again. To be fair, I do that basically every year (and I needed to for something related to work this time around), but when I start the yearly Halloween watches is always a good indicator of where I’m at with the seasons.

It’s my first summer back in California since 2011, which is wild and proving to be interesting because my body adjusted back to the heat much faster than I thought it would. I thought the last 15ish years of living in the PNW and Montana would have left a longer lasting impression on what I can withstand. Nope! Turns out you can take the guy out of California but you can’t take the California out of the guy!

However, I am definitely feeling a little disgruntled with the heat these days. It’s felt like most of July was draped in an uncharacteristically humid heat wave that has left the nights too warm and the rest of the days feeling extra sticky. Every day I wake up in my apartment that has a million fans constantly whirling (it’s so loud) and I walk around outside and I am just so incredibly sweaty. So, so sweaty. I need fall to start! Maybe it will rain a lot again this year like it did last year right after I moved here.

I have some various write-ups for Claira’s Corner that I want to get out sooner rather than later, but I keep procrastinating on them, so I figured I’d just sit down and vomit out a stream of consciousness sort of check-in on some of the things on my mind lately. What is Substack if not a personal journal that I can send directly to hundreds of people’s inboxes?

Current Earworms

• “Little Bit” by Lykke Li (duh lol)

• “Satan” by Andy Shauf (thank you Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma)

• “oh yeah?” by Steve Lacy (thank you Spider-Man: Brand New Day and also shoutout Steve Lacy for spoiling that big Spider-Man detail lol love that guy)

• “Wolf Like Me” by TV on the Radio (again, thank you Spider-Man: Brand New Day)

• “Turn Off the Light” by Nelly Furtado (HUGE thank you to the DJ that was playing this inside the Nordstrom’s at The Grove (lol? talk about an ‘I live in LA’ type of sentence) for reminding me that I have freewill and can listen to Nelly Furtado whenever I want. Her album Whoa, Nelly! is a cultural cornerstone)

• “biting bullets” by ridgeclub (honestly anything ridgeclub is a must right now. I’m obsessed)

As always, I’m also always listening to Cocteau Twins. The Cocteau Twins song of the day is “Love’s Easy Tears” from their 1986 EP Love’s Easy Tears. Also, I’m not quite ready to say this with full confidence, but I think my favorite album of their’s is changing. My favorite album has been Head Over Heels for a long time… but that might be changing soon. I guess we’ll put a pin in that and I’ll let you know eventually because I haven’t decided for sure yet.

Epic Gamer Moments

My not-so-epic gamer moment is admitting I have a bad habit of starting games, getting too busy to play, and then instead of getting back into them months later, I just start a new game instead. Does anyone else do that??? I feel like it’s a me problem. I really should be playing more Lego Batman. Or finally finishing Silent Hill 2 (I’m stuck in the metal cage labyrinth because it’s too fucking dark. I literally cannot see where I should be going). Here’s some of the other games that I’ve started (and really enjoyed!!!!) but haven’t finished for various (and justified!) reasons: Death Stranding 2, Ghost of Yotei, Cyberpunk 2077, God of War Ragnarök, Timeline, Heavy Rain… It goes on and on.

The point is, instead of alllllllllll those other games I still need to finish, I’m replaying two games.

After Spider-Man: Brand New Day took so much inspiration from Insomniac’s Spider-Man, I simply had to jump back into another playthrough. It’s my fourth time playing through and I’m having a blast as I always do. The gameplay in general is so much better in Spider-Man 2, but the actual feel of Spider-Man is better. Yuri Lowenthal is such an exceptional Peter Parker and I think the story here is so strong and engaging. Hell, I even like the MJ levels, which is a controversial thing to say. I actually think disliking the MJ levels is a little bit of a skill issue to be honest.

I’m also replaying Breath of the Wild for the first time. I haven’t played the game since 2020 and it’s been such a delight rediscovering how simple the game is compared to Tears of the Kingdom. Playing Breath of the Wild again is revealing to me that I much prefer Tears of the Kingdom overall, but I’m really enjoying re-exploring this version of Hyrule. I’m REALLY excited to eventually replay Tears of the Kingdom. Here’s a picture of my first horse I’ve wrangled in this replay:

I took the picture with the Instagram camera so the quality is REALLY bad. I have a really bad habit of taking pictures on Instagram camera instead of my regular camera… But also the pictures I take with the regular iPhone camera also look ugly a lot of the time so there is no winning at this point.

Summer Saviors

There’s a few different items and activities that have really made this summer shine for me.

• Disneyland offering $60 evening tickets for three weeks in July. I went to California Adventure twice in July, once with one of my sisters and her boyfriend and again with several of my friends, and it was such a blast both times. We only had access to the park from 5PM - 10PM, but that surprisingly felt like enough time both visits. The real highlight of this was spending time with people I love while doing something really fun and active. The cherry-on-top was that it was so much cheaper than usual.

• a Woozoo Oscillating Fan. This is NOT an ad, although I kind of wish it was. I bought this little fan in a moment of desperation at the peak of the July heat wave. We already had loads of fans running in the apartment, but it was not enough. This little fan has made such a difference in keeping my room cooler. I wouldn’t be here without it. That little fan saved my life.

• Free Jazz Nights at LACMA. Every Friday evening I go to LACMA and I lay on a blanket in the shade and read a book and drink a Dr. Pepper while I listen to a different Jazz group perform for two hours. It’s AWESOME. And free! It’s a great place to people-watch. These have been a weekly staple for me since they started back in May and are something I really look forward to each week.

• Gelato and pizza from Andre’s Italian Restaurant. Did you know you can get a cup of gelato and a slice of pizza for like $7? Yeah, you can! At the Italian cafeteria-style restaurant called Andre’s. Also they have GIANT plates of pasta. I love stopping here. It’s such a neat restaurant. It’s been around (admittedly at different locations) since the 60’s!

• Weekly Neighborhood Walking Events. One day a week, I go to a park near my house in the evening and I meet up with a bunch of 60-70 year old neighbors and we all go for a walk for an hour. I am quite literally the only person under 60 who attends. I was nervous about going the first week, especially when I arrived and realized that the only neighbors making use of this event were my oldest neighbors, but I’m so glad I’ve joined in. It’s really refreshing speaking to people so far outside of my usual bubble. Everyone has such interesting stories and architectural history to share about the neighborhood we all live in. I’ve found these to be so unbelievably valuable. We should all be talking to older people more.

• Therapy. Lol! I’m back in therapy for the first time in several years. Yay! It was extremely, extremely needed. I spent March through June in an increasing, pretty significant decline mental health-wise and going back to therapy has been really, really beneficial to my well-being and my personal relationships. Thank god for therapy, amiriteguysandgals?

• Mini orange gatorade bottles. I’m trying really hard to be more mindful about electrolytes. I like how little the mini bottles are because they’re easy to carry around. I drink orange gatorade because it’s the only flavor of gatorade I’ve ever tried. When I was a kid I loved orange gatorade and I do sometimes (often) have a mindset of “why would I try another flavor when I know I like this one.” Maybe someday I will try a blue one… Or a red one. I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet.

• Hobbies by Amanda Dobbins. Talk about a summer must-read. I can’t get enough of this. I’m looking forward to each new post. Amanda Dobbins is such a great writer. Reading Hobbies has made it clear the intersection of my interests and her’s is fairly slim, but that honestly doesn’t even matter. Even if I don’t have a clue about what she’s discussing, I’m hooked because her writing is so sharp and engaging and fun.

The TV Graveyard

A list of all the shows I started and mostly didn’t finish so far this summer.

• Widow’s Bay - so good, stuck on episode 8, oops

• The Four Seasons - really fun, stuck on season 2 episode 1, need to finish for something I want to write about

• Love Island USA - I technically finished this, but also not really, I started skipping episodes near the end because it got so boring, Team Brinity yay

• Couples Therapy Season 5 - I did finish this, I love Dr. Orna and I find her work so impressive and honestly really helpful to listen to, this season in particular was really good

• Daredevil: Born Again - for work, such a chore, really behind, I got stuck on episode 2 of season 1 and haven’t made much of any progress, look what they’ve done to my boy

• Portlandia - this is one of my favorite shows of all-time, I’m not really keeping track of progress because I’ve rewatched it in totality over a dozen times

The Great Errand Debate

I’ll leave you with one of my near-constant musings: What is the better way to do errands? Saving them all for one day a week or getting them done throughout the week as needed/appropriate?

I save my errands for one day a week, but I’m finding more and more that this might not be the right method for me anymore. I’m out and about already most days, so having a day of errands, which is also usually one of the only days I don’t have other work to do, is starting to put a real strain on me. I think this is mostly because I am carless in LA and getting around takes a lot more intentionality. Errand days make me want to scream because I have to go to the laundromat and the grocery store and also the post office and also the library and maybe also The Grove and all these places are near each other, but just far enough apart to make the journey’s feel much too cumbersome when stacked on top of each other and experienced in this dreadfully humid heat wave. And then I go home and it’s time to clean the apartment? WOOF! Too much stuff in one day! I really ought to start getting things done while I’m already out and about for work.

I asked my Instagram followers about this as well and the results were really interesting:

The most illuminating thing brought to my attention by the poll is that a vast majority of the people I actually know personally are doing their errands throughout the week. Interesting. Very interesting.

I’m realizing that sometimes being 30 means you have to change the way you do your errands. I think I’m ready to do that.

There, a nice, hopeful thought to conclude with.

One day, hopefully soon, I’m going to become a weekly Substacker. Having no deadlines is proving to be my greatest challenge. In the meantime, I hope this was an enjoyable read? Interesting read? I had fun writing it either way!

Thanks for stopping by my corner of Substack! TTYL :)

June was also a big month for me because I started watching Love Island USA for the very first time. This is not a Love Island USA write-up, but I do need to just reiterate something I already said on Instagram. Why is every lightbulb in the world present and always on, on Love Island? Surely this is a form of psychological torture? No wonder those people are pronouncing words wrong and butchering metaphors and idioms and are incapable of recognizing the toxicity of a lot of the partnerships they’re staying committed to. Their brains are literally melting under all the lights! That’s a joke, the real reasons are probably because of the No Child Left Behind Act, influencer culture, heteronormativity, and covert conservatism infiltrating the youngest generations. Truthfully, more recently, I’m actually feeling really bored with Love Island. It seems like the winners are already more than obvious (I do love Brinity despite my complaints), everyone is staying in the same goddamn couples, the same fights keep happening, and the challenges continue to be weird goop-fetish content. I’m bored!!!! I wish Traitors was back on!!!!!

Making up for my mounting frustration with Love Island USA is the fact the movies released in May and June were mostly pretty awesome. As a whole, I’m finding a lot of really wonderful gems this year. I do think the year overall is looking quite similar to last year so far. By that I mean there’s a handful of pretty solid major releases but the true best of the best releases of the year are the smaller, more independently made/released films. That’s admittedly basically how every year goes for me, but I do think it’s always worth mentioning! There’s a lot of great films that have come out in the past two months (and throughout the year overall), especially if you’re going at least a little off the beaten path! Let’s talk about the ones from May and June!

But first!!!!! Did you hear the amazing news? The best horror film of 2025 is available on Letterboxd Video Store right now. I’ve been absolutely raving about Robbie Banfitch’s Tinsman Road since I saw it last fall. I saw it three times in theaters, once in Seattle and twice in Los Angeles. It scared and moved me in ways that have really stuck with me. Its found footage foundation bleeds into the satisfyingly eerie conversation it starts about the supernatural and our belief in such entities. Do the things that haunt us exist whether we believe in them or not or do they solidify into something terrifyingly tangible only once we succumb to the whispers in the back of our mind asking, “what if this is real?”

It’s time for you to learn why sorrow is terror. The film is available for the month of July through the Video Store. If my raving hasn’t been convincing enough, here are some of my peers who have come away from it with more enthusiastic praise. Please watch it! Please support independent filmmaking! (Disclosure: This is not an ad, I’m just really, really, REALLY passionate about this film)

Okay back to business.

28. Voicemails for Isabelle

    

    I almost feel bad putting Leah McKendrick’s film last. Almost…

    Zoey Deutch and Nick Robinson are undeniably charming in Netflix’s latest romantic dramedy, but I’m not sure that charm is able to make up for the rest of the film’s shortcomings. This film has a shallow approach to portraying the longterm relationship we develop with our grief. The loss of Jill’s sister operates almost exclusively as a plot device, offering little to no insight into the experience of losing a sibling or the difficulties of navigating that loss. I think the story as a whole is built around a desire to have the main character say she doesn’t need a man, she needs her little sister. It’s a beautiful sentiment, but it rings very hollow in the context of this film. Worse still, the use of a dead sibling as a plot device feels distractingly uninspired here. The entire film’s trajectory is apparent within the first 15 minutes of the film and while predictability isn’t normally a fault I put a lot of stock in, I do think for a film like this—one who has little to offer beyond the thoughts: “love your family”, “live amidst your grief”, and “open your heart to guys who lie and invade your privacy by listening to voicemails intended for your dead sister”—that’s an especially damning problem to have. Also, I’m amazed by how ugly and plastic San Francisco looks on screen. The scenes where Jill goes to her spot by the Golden Gate Bridge are so jarringly flat. I felt a little embarrassed each time she went there. How do you make that view—one of the most beautiful in San Francisco—look so ugly??

    I do think I’m being a bit extra harsh with this one—as I often am when it comes to films dealing with grief or ones that don’t portray the Bay Area with genuine intentionality—so maybe take all of this with a grain of salt. In general, this is better than a lot of Netflix’s other films of a similar genre.

27. Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu

Did you know that Rotta the Hutt isn’t like his father? He’s his own man-slug?

I hated that slug baby in the Clone Wars movie and I hated him in this as well. Realistically speaking, The Mandalorian and Grogu should probably by in last place for this ranking. But I’m a Star Wars guy. I can’t put it in last. I simply can’t. Sorry.

The Anzellan and solo-Grogu sequences are doing A LOT of heavy-lifting for this film. The puppeteering is really wonderful as is how effectively the scale of the characters vs. the world they reside in was shown. But that’s basically all the praise I can offer this one.

For more in depth thoughts, check out the podcast episode we did.

26. Stop! That! Train!

On the one hand, Adam Shankman’s action comedy disaster movie is quite funny. I saw it in theaters with my friend Des and exactly two other people and the four of us were having a grand old time, laughing what felt like just about every five minutes. The film is unapologetically chaotic with endearing performances from (almost) everyone, and it’s pretty awesome to see a film prominently featuring a cast of Drag Queens released in theaters right now.

On the other, after leaving the theater, I haven’t thought about this film much at all. I know I laughed a lot while watching the film, but I’d have a hard time specifically naming any of the jokes from the film that made me laugh now that I’m almost a month removed from the watch. That’s a bummer in its own right, but it’s especially glaring when I have thought about virtually every other comedy I’ve seen in theaters this year. After the film’s NewFest premiere, there was an accusation that the film used generative AI throughout that gained a great deal of traction. I think the filmmaker’s response to these accusations further muddied the conversation around AI-usage in film, which is a huge negative, and the back-and-forth way the issue was discussed taints the film’s legacy in a really unfortunate way.

25. I Am Frankelda

What a beauty!

I Am Frankelda’s stunning stop-motion animation is absolutely magnificent to take in. I spent Fourth of July night watching this and there was something really beautiful about watching this beautiful display of hand-crafted artistry while fireworks were visible from my bedroom window. I love being surrounded by the beauty of human expression in its many forms.

Since the film is a prequel to the Cartoon Network Latin America show Frankelda’s Book of Spooks, this film is more than able to deliver a richly layered world. There’s a monarchy! Various monstrous species! A thoughtful fusion of the fantastical and historical! In many ways, watching this reminded me of The Dark Crystal, which is a very big compliment. The downside to this prequel setup is that there’s also an abruptness to this that can feel a little jarring at times. There’s a lot of backstory that filmmakers Arturo Ambriz and Roy Ambriz are attempting to cover and there are swaths of story that begin to feel a bit rushed.

Additionally, I think since this is a prequel to a show, it’s given Netflix an excuse to bury the film on the platform. I’m reminded a bit of how they quietly dropped Lost in Starlight, one of the best animated films of last year, one day last summer with a similarly low amount of fanfare. As always, I’m appreciative of the fact Netflix has committed time and resources toward providing a home for animated films, I just wish they invested a little bit more into those efforts so more people actually knew these titles existed in the first place. Especially!!! When films from Latin and South America are already often pushed to the side in the North America market… Unless they’re getting a big awards push.

24. She’s the He!

I caught She’s the He! last year as part of NewFest’s yearly slate and I was incredibly charmed by its execution of a potentially sticky premise. High school seniors and best friends Ethan and Alex claim to be trans women to navigate a difficult environment with their peers and in the process, Alex realizes she’s actually trans. Misha Osherovich is an absolute vision as this character, presenting her quest for self-actualization with striking vulnerability. And Nico Carney portrays Ethan’s misguided, flawed role as the best friend with an impressive amount of charm. The humor and the film’s willingness to cast that humor aside for moments of raw honesty often feel adjacent to queer classic But I’m a Cheerleader. Like Stop! That! Train! I’m so happy the film received a theatrical release in June. It’s been really nice to see the film finally find its audience after its festival run last year.

23. Girls Like Girls

I’m an OG Tumblr guy. It was my main form of social media for all of high school and most of college. I had just finished my freshman year of college when Hayley Kiyoko’s song “Girls Like Girls” released and closeted me did cry in my bedroom while listening to it during summer break. Between that experience and the film’s early-2000’s setting, it felt like Girls Like Girls was made for me, or people from my generation, when in actuality, the approach this takes to its subject matter feels much more geared towards the newest generation of young LGBTQ+ teens.

That is not even remotely a bad thing though. It just means I’m on the outs with this one. I do appreciate how it takes the time to speak directly to the “otherness” that often comes with queerness, but I think in general the film lacks a level of depth that grows more and more noticeable the further into the story we go. The two main characters carry a complexity within themselves that seems ripe for tapping fully into, but the film rarely does, instead our attention is often redirected towards more traditional relationship drama. I came out of the film craving so much more from it despite how sweet of a feeling it left me with. I was in the minority though! I saw it with a big group of friends and they all enjoyed it quite a lot!

22. Supergirl

Normally for something like this, I’d say, “Maybe if I hadn’t read the comic first, I’d like this more”. The only problem is I purposefully didn’t read Supergirl Woman of Tomorrow until after I’d seen Supergirl. I still didn’t enjoy this very much. Between how it handles Ruthye’s character, the conversation around preserving her “innocence”, and the larger scale issue of sex trafficking the film’s overall sentiments leave a nasty taste in my mouth. Messy, messy, messy. At least Milly Alcock is absolutely electric on screen. And I really like the uncredited Seth Rogen little alien guy character.

Many more thoughts are available through our podcast episode.

21. Couture

I’m so happy this film was finally released! Sydney and I saw it at TIFF last year and we were both quite warm on it, especially compared to a lot of our peers. I actually really love what I initially wrote about the film on Letterboxd. I’ve thought about this film fondly quite a few times since last September. Using Paris Fashion Week as the connecting thread between four women provides the perfect foundation to explore the societal burdens of womanhood. Angelina Jolie’s work here is by far some of my favorite from her and her maturity as a performer works beautifully when set beside her less experienced costars Anyier Anei, Ella Rumpf, and Garance Marillier. All around a really thoughtful, moving film from writer-director Alice Winocour.

20. Remarkably Bright Creatures

PNW moment!!!!!! YAY!!!

So a not-so-secret secret about me is that I love Olivia Newman’s other film, Where the Crawdads Sing (I know). I saw it three times the year it came out (I know). Her latest, based on the book that I disliked so much I quit my last book club, didn’t quite capture my heart to the same degree, but I did still enjoy Remarkably Bright Creatures much more than I expected. I think a lot of that comes down to the fact I just really like whenever Sally Field or Lewis Pullman is in a movie and this has both of them.

I think my disappointment with Voicemails for Isabelle makes even more sense when I look at it in the same space as Remarkably Bright Creatures. As a film about grief, RBC’s exploration of those sensations is far more concrete and well-thought-out. As a film set in a distinct setting, it looks far prettier and more lived in. As a film reliant on the back and forth between its two leads, I’m much more charmed by Field and Pullman’s pseudo-parent-child relationship as opposed to Robinson and Deutch’s romantic dynamic. While the aims of the two are inherently different, I think when set beside each other, it all helps illustrate the difference in quality between different Netflix releases these days. It really is a bit of a gamble with these.

19. Silent Friend

Made For Me: The Movie thanks to its centering around various individuals seeking to communicate with trees. Unfortunately, my overall feelings for Silent Friend are more middling. I think certain aspects of this are beautiful. I especially love the sequences set in the 70s centered around Enzo Brumm’s moody, anti-plant guy performance. It pains me to say the weakest piece of the film are tied to Tony Leung and Léa Seydoux’s story. Ildikó Enyedi makes beautiful films, but similarly to how I felt about another of her films, On Body and Soul, I’m much more captivated by the beauty she captures on screen as opposed to the stories she’s telling through those stunning images.

18. Toy Story 5

The latest Toy Story installment made me cry, what a shocker! It’s also my least favorite of all the Toy Story films. Anything and everything I could say about this one is something I said in our podcast episode, so go listen to that if you haven’t already.

17. Masters of the Universe

I had fun with this! I liked it way more than I thought I would. It made me laugh and smile :) We talked about it for the podcast and I don’t think I have anything to add beyond what I said during that episode.

16. Backrooms

I still prefer the general idea of the backrooms over Backrooms the film. There’s some really awesome moments here that conjure such distinct emotional responses in me. I’m still really fascinated by the ways Gen Z’s anxieties about the disappearing stability around us has manifested into this particular sort of creepypasta structure. I think Backrooms will be one of those movies that ages really nicely the further away from the 2020’s we get. A lot more thoughts were shared in our podcast episode.

15. Rose of Nevada

Mark Jenkin’s latest, a folkloric time-traveling yarn about the woes of dying economic strongholds within small village ecosystems, is a feast for the senses. The work accomplished here is a testament to what film as a visual medium can accomplish and it’s riveting to experience that. I love the textures this conjures, molding a world that feels as though it’s trying to push through the screen and infiltrate your actual space. George MacKay and Callum Turner are both really fantastic here. In their performances, they move in such a way where it seems like they’re carrying the mounting unease of the situation on their shoulders with this quiet anguish and surrender. I’ve somehow missed Jenkin’s other films, but I’m quite keen to check them out after how engrossing I found this.

14. Hokum

My favorite surprise of the year so far is how much I’m enjoying a lot of films more on rewatch. Hokum especially was one that I came out of SXSW not really vibing with. I do still think the film is underutilizing its folkloric possibilities and certain parts of the writing are extremely heavy-handed when explaining the faults of its central character, but my willingness to move past those issues has grown significantly. Seeing the film for a second time with friends who were really bought in to the terror it’s trying to impart on its audience made the experience extra fun and insightful. Adam Scott is so great as a scared guy wandering around in the dark with an old lantern. The hotel the film is set in is also a really fun place to see the characters navigate—its winding halls and decrepit, hidden rooms make for a space that feels as though its writhing with all the ghosts it holds.

13. Maddie’s Secret

What a woman! John Early’s ability to construct a story with this level of emotional maturity is a really impressive feat. He’s been getting plenty of well-deserved praise for Maddie’s Secret and yet it still doesn’t quite feel like enough. It’s amazing how well this film works and how earnestly it conveys its emotional truths while refusing to sacrifice Maddie’s dignity or personhood in the process. She’s a fully-realized character, which is the sort of thing that is still frustratingly more rare than not. I’m going to talk about Maddie’s secret for a second aka SPOILER ALERT: As someone who has struggled for well over a decade with an eating disorder (I’m a restrictor, not a purger), I find the way Early portrays Maddie’s disordered relationship to food to be so authentic. In particular, I really appreciate how the film portrays someone’s reaction to relapsing after a prolonged period of recovery. This captures the disorientation, denial, and panic of that experience so well.

12. Jackass: Best and Last

I love these guys. I spent so many parts of my childhood sneaking around and watching Jackass when my parents weren’t looking. Their presentation of masculinity made a lasting impression on me that I still carry today. Watching their latest feature is coated in an overwhelming sense of bittersweetness. There’s always something really profound about creatives lovingly dedicating their lives to something and then stepping away on their own terms rather than on the terms of big suits or other outside forces. I struggle to imagine a world going forward where I’m not watching these guys poop and vomit and hit each other in the nuts, but I’m so, so, so thankful for the years of time they’ve provided already doing just that. There are some substantial shortcomings with this one. I think the film avoids fully addressing the whys behind this being the last Jackass film in a substantial way. Rachel’s lack of anything to do feels a bit disappointing. But at the end of the day, it’s Jackass. I’m always having a blast with these guys.

11. Leviticus

Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen have some of the best on-screen chemistry of the year in Leviticus. Their ability to shift between tender affection and paralyzing terror is monumental and is what really drives home the strengths of the film. As a former youth pastor, I really identified with the religious aspects of the film. There’s an especially painful focus in the film that illustrates how religious people have warped their homophobia through a veil of protection and care, which is then used as justification to inflict immeasurable harm onto the most vulnerable. A very direct link can be drawn between the dangers shown in Leviticus to the dangers of conversion therapy, but I think too that the threats here also manifest in broader iterations of the self-hatred and internal/external homophobia we carry in the wake of desire. Once again, this has grown on me a lot since I saw at SXSW. I’ve thought about the ending of the film in particular A LOT lately. I appreciate that Adrian Chiarella knows how to balance the fluidity of fear with the stability of love, it makes for a lasting impression that leaves you deeply moved.

10. Disclosure Day

Yes, I liked the new Spielberg that half of the internet has deemed one of the worst of the year! My friend Des and I liked it so much I walked out of my first screening and directly into another screening! Back-to-back Disclosure Days! Double Disclosure Day!

While maybe a little out-of-touch, I find the film’s central belief that empathy will save humanity extremely moving. It’s a belief that at my core I believe too and there’s something really beautiful about Spielberg presenting it in this way to arguably the least receptive audience possible. It’s brave to continue making films in a manner that has grown increasingly abandoned! Emily Blunt is at her absolute best here! Every time I look at Josh O’Connor I think about how badly I need to start taking testosterone! Good movie!

Lots more thoughts are available through our podcast episode.

9. Pressure

Everyone needs to get Pressure Pilled NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!

Did you know this film features Andrew Scott drinking a full glass of water with no cuts? Big gulps of water. And then later he stands in the rain and gets drenched while wearing a beautiful blue button-down shirt. And also he spends the whole movie having a volatile and tense yet ultimately respectful working relationship with Chris Messina who is playing a cocky American who’s friends with a bunch of movie stars. Oh, and also they’re both meteorologists and they’re fighting about the weather and debating the effectiveness of previous data and intuition all through a scientific framework. How are you not all closing this tab and running to watch Pressure right now?

At a time where the theaters are an endless revolving door of giant IP films, the dialogue-heavy groundedness of Pressure is a breath of fresh air that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. I saw this film on my birthday (my birthday tradition is going to the movie theater :)) and it was quite literally the perfect tone setter for my first day as someone in their 30s.

8. The Devil Wears Prada 2

It’s a miracle whenever a legacy sequel is actually good and The Devil Wears Prada 2 is actually really good. Andy’s transformation in the first film is something that’s always really stuck with me and it’s great to see her all these years later even more confident and secure in her identity as a writer. I’m a sucker for stories like these because I struggle a lot with imposter syndrome and there’s something really comforting and empowering about seeing fictional writers find success and joy in the career field I’m a part of and love with my whole heart. It’s shocking to see a film so unflinchingly comment on the state of the industry right now too, even if the bite is a little less painful than it could have been. This movie just makes me really happy :)

We talked even more about this one for the podcast too!

7. Power Ballad

Girl Dad Movie of the Year! Paul Rudd is so ridiculously charming. Even when he’s playing a man obsessively consumed with resentment, I’m kicking my feet and sighing when I watch him. Power Ballad was one of my favorites out of SXSW this year and it makes me a little sad it came and went so quietly in June. I know it was a stacked month but this is the sort of film you kind of just assume will be a slam dunk. This was my very first John Carney film, so I’m not sure if this is a major trend in his work or not, but I just adore how passionately this depicts the good and the bad of the music industry. It finds the space to identify some of its larger shortcomings while still providing plenty of space to showoff the magic of making music.

6. The Sheep Detectives

I love these sheep so much. Mopple is my favorite, but I would die for any of them—especially Winter Lamb. Now that The Sheep Detectives is streaming, I’ve almost put off getting work done seven times to rewatch this again instead. The alluring temptation of these murder-solving sweeties is too strong. I love how this movie makes me feel: warm and so appreciative to have lived and loved as much as I have already. My little life is so precious and that’s in large part because of how brief it is. Sometimes grief and pain feel endless, like an inescapable thing that eat up so much of my precious time and I so badly want to push it all away, but they’re such necessary sensations. It’s not life without those feelings. It’s really special that a film like this can remind me of that. I also think there’s something really beautiful about a film that nearly everyone I knew was kind of joking about before its release and then after it came out we all stepped away deeply-moved and full of praise for it. I love being surprised by movies!

5. Blue Film

One of the biggest surprises of the year so far for me is Elliot Tuttle’s Blue Film. Nuanced and uncomfortable, the subject matter at the core of the film is inescapable. We must sit in the discomfort, the two leads remaining alone and in close proximity to each other over the course of the night, prohibiting any sort of distraction or reprieve. Kieron Moore’s defensive mask is the perfect thing for Reid Birney’s reflective demands to bounce off of… Until they manage to slip beneath and through. Little moments from this keep popping into my head randomly and leave me stopping in my tracks. I sat through a Q&A after my screening where Tuttle cited Catherine Breillat’s film as a major source of inspiration and even as someone with a limited knowledge of her work, that influence is so apparent (in a good way). I’m so appreciative for challenging films like this one, even more so when they manage to push through all the red tape and screen in theaters.

4. Obsession

While it won’t be my movie of the year, I think this (or Project Hail Mary) will easily be the defining film of 2026. As has been the case with a lot of the horror films released this year, Obsession has grown on me more and more since my first watch. Listen to our podcast episode for more of my thoughts on this one.

3. I Love Boosters

My favorite film score of the year so far is I Love Boosters’s. It’s so fun and springy and energetic. The same can be said about the film as a whole. Boots Riley’s return to the narrative feature space is such a blast. Its absurdity moves beyond what was expected after Sorry to Bother You, shedding the surprise of an unexpected third act for something that refuses to withhold its zaniness for even a second. The absurdity compliments the ridiculous nature of capitalism quite well, elevating the commentary to a louder and bolder place. I could spend the rest of my life only watching Keke Palmer performances and I think I would live a satisfied life. She’s such a star and that ability to draw an audience in with supposed ease is especially clear here. I especially love the moments between her and LaKeith Stanfield. Riley frames these moments in such a hypnotic, jarring way that has really stuck with me. They’re romantic, but also tainted by how the allure of these moments is more an impossible-to-take detour than the solution to the problems at hand. What a fun, smart movie.

2. Is God Is

The poetic symmetry that manifests as literal text on screen in Is God Is hasn’t left my mind. I love this movie. From its unflinching portrayal of what revenge costs (take note, Supergirl) to its beautiful presentation of the intimacy of sisterhood, everything about this film speaks exactly to what I adore most about film as a medium. I’m finding more and more often that my favorite films of the 2020’s are directed/written by women who started in theatre. There’s this really fascinating use of framing, like the outlines of the stage are still present on screen in these works, whether it be in Janet Planet, Forbidden Fruits, or Is God Is. I’m finding a lot of depth to explore in the sensations and visuals they’re constructing.

I was also really blown away by all the performances in Is God Is. Kara Young is an absolute force, but the power behind her performance is only able to manifest so strongly thanks to how well she’s complimented by Mallori Johnson’s quiet, equally effective work. It’s rare to see Sterling K. Brown as a villain (unfortunate shoutout to The Predator), but it’s always such a thrill. He’s able to rework his trademark vulnerability into something so dangerous when given the opportunity and that really becomes apparent in his scenes here.

God, I love this movie.

1. The Invite

So far this year, I haven’t given any new releases a 5/5. There are three films that on rewatch I think I will probably bestow that honor on. One is Sophy Romvari’s genius feature debut, Blue Heron. The second is Jordan Firstman’s unbelievable directorial debut, Club Kid. And the last is Olivia Wilde’s The Invite. This movie is ELECTRIC.

This became one of my favorite chamber pieces of all time almost immediately. Wilde utilizes the claustrophobia of this setting to great effect, creating a space that is both intimately personalized and a noticeable deterrent from its occupants connecting fully with one another. The walls here hold all their secrets, all the years of pent up resentment and domestic anguish, and everything in between. The way it discusses modern relationships is refreshingly blunt, offering a perspective I feel like is often lacking on-screen. What I love about this too is how the pain its exercising sneaks up on you. You spend almost the entire film oscillating between big belly-laughs (it’s SO funny) and commiserating winces (it’s SO biting) and then the final ten minutes happen and it’s like getting hit by a truck. I almost lost my breath from how hard it hit.

There’s a reason The Invite has been receiving near-universal praise since its Sundance premiere. I could watch it a dozen more times.

That’s a wrap! So many great movies!

I’m working on a big piece full of LGBTQ+ film recommendations for Claira’s Corner and I’m REALLY excited to share it with you all once it’s finished :) In the meantime, would love to hear about your favorites from May and June.

Thanks for stopping by my corner of Substack! TTYL :)

I thought about doing just a ranking of everything I watched (20 films total) while at Cannes, but I also feel wary of turning Claira’s Corner into a nonstop ranking depository. Plus, I shared thoughts and a ranking on Letterboxd and we did a podcast episode recapping our movie highlights. Also! I always feel hesitant to go too long on festival watches when the majority of people haven’t seen the films yet. So instead, I thought I’d do a little bit of a loose, train of thought recap, highlighting different experiences and musings on the fest with some specific movie shoutouts at the end as a grand finale.

The Good aka The People in My Life Bring Me Endless Joy

The first night of Cannes Year Two was immortalized by me getting into bed before 10PM and eating a baguette while I scrolled on my phone— a vastly different experience to the year prior where I naively hit the ground running by watching multiple films on the first day and never really letting up.

This year I tried really hard to slow down, not just as I acclimated to the time change, but overall as well. Maybe it’s because I’m turning 30 in less than a week or maybe it’s because I’ve gone to enough festivals now to recognize how taxing they are on me mentally and physically, but I gotta slow down, man! This year in particular, I’ve been having an extra hard time at festivals. I miss home. I do really poorly when out of my usual routine. Even when I’m trying my best, I’m not eating enough, I’m not sleeping enough, and I’m usually mentally beating myself up with an often crippling sense of imposter syndrome and anxiety.

I do think it’s important to note here that having the ability to do that is a luxury in itself. Attending the festival with the podcast gives me the sort of flexibility and freedom that a lot of my peers don’t have. I go to the screenings that interest me rather than ones that I was assigned. I record for a few hours here and there rather than spending most nights frantically trying to get first drafts in before a deadline. Like I said, I’m very lucky and very fortunate to be in the position I am right now!

I didn’t go to a single screening one day, partially so I could catch up with pals I wouldn’t have otherwise seen, but also so that I could give my brain and eyes the sort of rest I rarely grant myself at festivals. I walked to a big church up on a hill with Sydney one day when we had a long enough lull and got to see some really lovely views of Cannes. One morning I walked over an hour to one of the theaters housing screenings instead of taking the usual 25 minute Uber or shuttle ride because I had the time and I was missing all the walking I do in LA since I don’t have a car. I walked along the beach in a direction I’d never gone before and I saw lots of dogs and ants and a seed fell off a tree and hit me on the head. It was all very beautiful and grounding and made me feel less homesick. I went to a proper sit-down dinner with a bunch of friends before our screening of Hope. I went to a reception party, which is something I’ve never done before, at a place up in the hills of Cannes. It was really fun and I met lots of cool people in the filmmaking and distributor space including Thriller: A Cruel Picture (1973) star Christina Lindberg!

The thing I love most about Cannes, besides the films and the overall “oh my god I’m in France” of it all, is the people I get to see while I’m there. Most of the year, a lot of my friends live in my phone. We’re spread out across the US and various countries. Festivals in general double as a work trip and a big catch-up fest where I finally get to see them after months, or sometimes even a year. The hangs have this almost frantic energy to them because they are often always fleeting or squeezed in via 30 minute increments.

We’re randomly running into each other on the street outside a theater and trying to fit in a conversation as we each continue to walk in opposite directions. We’re fighting to get in line together so we can spend that time swapping stories. Sitting together during screenings is a big plus, although not always possible with seating availability or if the tickets are assigned seating (this is the case for screenings in the big theater at Cannes, the Grand Lumière), and usually the second the movie’s over everyone scatters like cockroaches, hurrying off to other screenings or a meeting or to write or record or to try and find a way to eat something of substance.

I can’t begin to describe the rush of joy that courses through me when I’m sitting in a theater before a movie and glance around, suddenly noticing a friend is also in the theater. Those moments quite literally save my life and turn me into a spluttering mess because I’m just so. excited. Wow! My friends are here! I feel really, really lucky that I’ve come to know such a great group of people who are kind and funny and thoughtful and care about the state of the world at large and make beautiful, interesting art and are insanely driven and hardworking. I feel like a better person when I’m around my friends. I love them a lot, which is something I feel like I say a lot and also no where near enough. I love them a lot!!!!!

And another thing! I was really proud of how much more French I was able to understand this year. I took French for three years in high school, but American schools have a tendency to teach French in a very robotic, outdated sort of way that left me feeling extra insecure about how much (or how little) I knew. I suck at speaking French, I’m maybe just averagely bad at listening, but I’m pretty good at reading and writing in French. Last year, I had some really brief passing phrases with festival staff as I was going into theaters from time to time. This year, I was having proper conversations with the festival staff and theater employees and uber drivers and even some fellow festival attendees who would sit next to me. I was really proud of myself and it felt good to see my attempts at continuing to study French on my own at home have paid off over the last couple years. It’s cool to see progress!

The Bad aka The French Are Out to Get Me

I have to put a lot of effort into not succumbing to my natural state of cynical pessimism and most of the time I think I succeed really well at doing so. But also I don’t want to completely invalidate when things are hard or frustrating or not great. I am not going to disclose the “big” things that were especially hard because they feel private, but I do have a collection of inconsequential grievances. We’ll keep this brief and in list form though because at the end of the day it’s like… I’m literally in Cannes. I need to chill out most of the time.

1. My badge was printed on a printer that was clearly running out of ink and my photo was so incredibly washed out. I could not stop looking at how washed out I was in my photo. Mortifying.

2. One of the French badge-scanners clocked the fuck out of me and almost wouldn’t let me into a screening because she didn’t think I was the same person as my photo. What the hell-y, madame. But also thank you for confirming I really need to get on T.

3. The festival staff at the Grand Lumière Theatre confiscated my little bag of Fritos I flew over with me from the States and had intended to eat before my screening of Minotaur. I was supposed to eat Fritos for breakfast and they took that away from me.

4. The Thai place we went to for dinner one night was out of gyoza and that’s one of the only things I can eat at Thai food places because I have a really severe allergic reaction to carrots. (I don’t want to talk about that because it’s embarrassing and also sounds fake. like what do you mean I am allergic to one of my favorite vegetables. it’s been getting worse for years and is at the point now where I cannot eat them at all and also get a reaction if other food has even just touched carrots. Annoying. Rude. Outrageous.)

5. I tried French Onion Soup for the first time (it’s just called Onion Soup in France) and I hated it.

6. I only saw three cats the entire time I was in Cannes. No where near enough cats.

7. There’s these snack shacks I like to get smoothies from but they always hide the smoothie menu in a way that makes it impossible to check the menu properly before you order and so then I try and order a smoothie and look like an idiot because I don’t know the proper names of the smoothies and then the people working in the snack shacks will reveal the super secret hidden place where the smoothie menu is tucked away and I look like a damn fool. Also the smoothies are not actually that good, I just desperately need fruit whenever I’m at festivals.

8. I got a terrible, absolutely insane sunburn on the back of my neck, but only in the little sliver of skin that was exposed between the bottom of my press badge lanyard and the top of my shirt, when I was helping shoot video for Letterboxd. This was on the very last day of the festival and I didn’t realize it was a sunburn until after I finally got home. I spent our whole travel day back to LA thinking I had somehow cut the back of my neck on something because it hurt so bad. No, just a sunburn. Ridiculous! Here, look at it (but also don’t say anything about my bedhead, I’d just woken up when I took this, or the ugly ass cross tattoo I got when I was religious. stop. it’s embarrassing. don’t look at it):

And The Movies aka Some Superlatives Worth Mentioning

Like I said, I don’t want to rerank all the films I watched at Cannes when I did that on Letterboxd already. So I’m going to give out superlative awards to the films I saw!

Movie I Cried The Most To* - Tangles

^{*I cried during 11/20 of my screenings}

Movie With The Most Aura-Farming* - Colony

^{*Hope is a very close second}

Movie That Made Me Feel The Most Alive - All of a Sudden

Movie(s) With The Best Songs - Club Kid and Gentle Monster

Movie That Most Reminded Me of My Dad - Garance

“Most French Movie to Ever French” Award - Parallel Tales

“Most Stardew Valley-esque” Award - Nagi Notes

“Most Politically Thought-Provoking” Award - Minotaur, Fjord, The Meltdown

“That Sign (Bad CGI) Can’t Stop Me, I Can’t Read (IDC)!” Award - Hope

Get That Movie AWAY From Me (Derogatory) - Her Private Hell

Get That Movie AWAY From Me (Complimentary)* - Club Kid

^{*Because I’m obsessed and keep shouting it out so much and want to watch it a million more times}

“So Boring, I’m Literally Thinking, ‘Honk Shoo Honk Shoo’” Award - Fatherland and The Samurai and The Prisoner

Favorite WLW Representation* - Tangles, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Garance, and A Woman’s Life

^{*There were A LOT of films this year with LGBTQ+ representation - 21 total across all categories, which is an increase from last year and a welcome counterweight to Sundance’s noticeably limited selection this year}

“Oops! This Is The Only Movie I Haven’t Given A Superlative For and I Feel Bad For Leaving It Out” Award - Butterfly Jam

Best Ending aka Final Scene That Took My Breath Away* - Fjord

^{*Honorable Mention Fatherland, but only an Honorable Mention because of Fatherland’s other superlative}

Movie That Has Grown On Me The Most Post-Cannes - Paper Tiger

Movie(s) I Can’t Stop Thinking About - Club Kid, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, The Man I Love, Minotaur

“I Can’t Believe I Left Cannes Before I Could See This Movie” Award* - La Bola Negra

^{*Last year’s recipient would have been a two-way tie between Resurrection and The Mastermind}

I think that’s all I have to say about Cannes for the time being. I had an amazing time. I hope I can go back again next year. I highly recommend looking into the festival’s 3 Days in Cannes accreditation if you are even remotely interested in attending. Also, in case you forgot, I love my friends and movies veeeeeerrrrrrryyyyyy much!!!!!!!

If you have any pressing questions that were not addressed, feel free to leave them here :) Thanks for stopping by my corner of Substack! TTYL!

It’s been almost exactly a year since my last post and a big part of why I left this space alone for so long is because I felt, and still do feel, very much like I absolutely HAD/HAVE to do a write-up on the last episode of The Last of Us season two because I did one for literally every other episode in the season. However, consider this everyone reading and also the me who thinks that, I really did not like the finale and I really don’t want to have to rewatch it again to write about it… TLDR; disappointing, really messy, VERY worried for Season 3. Maybe someday I will revisit it for the sake of completion.

In the meantime, I would really like to use this space more consistently! There’s a sense of freedom tied to the idea of Substack that I find really refreshing. Typing away on here reminds me a lot of the years I spent writing One Direction Imagines on Tumblr (lol) or Warrior Cats and Winged Wolf RP on Freewebs dot com (RIP Freewebs dot com). I can imagine some of y’all’s eyebrows are raised at the thought of 10-to-18-year-old me spending my time writing such things and now you want to know more. Well, we don’t have time to talk about that sort of lore right now because I want to talk about some of the movies I was watching in April.

So we’re going to do that! This is a breakdown of the new releases in April that I watched in order of how much I liked them + the new releases in May that I’m looking the most forward to! New to me watches are not included for the sake of time and length, but please know I watched some really exceptional films this past month. Also, huge shoutout to The Pitt season two. What a great show. I talked about it quite a bit for our podcast’s Patreon :)

At the time I’m writing this, I’ve seen 18 of the films released in April 2026. There are quite a few I’ve missed— some intentionally (Balls Up, Outcome), others with varying degrees of “ah, well” (Normal, Fuze, Pizza Movie) and even more with great sadness (Mārama, Mad Bills to Pay, Our Hero, Balthazar). A lot of the films I have seen are admittedly titles I saw at festival screenings, but I remember movies really well— arguably freakishly well— so I am including them.

[read this in a Mario voice, except not Chris Pratt’s Mario voice, do a different Mario voice] Here we go!

18. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie

Honestly, I’m surprised we were able to talk about this movie for as long as we did on the podcast. There’s no story and there’s also way too much going on and all of it is really not good. I started playing Super Mario Galaxy for the first time earlier this year and I am floored by how disinterested the film is in pursuing the story offered there. Not to get too into gaming on a post about movies, but I actually don’t really love SMG as much as I thought I would either. I am such a big Mario game guy but there’s something about that one that doesn’t quite hit the same for me. I think it’s because of the 3D level designs. I’m honestly finding it pretty disorientating to play. But maybe that’s because I turn 30 in less than a month (aka skill issue).

ANYWAYS! Super Mario Galaxy Movie. Every year, I have a little collection of movies that I have affectionately started referring to in my head as the Forget-Me’s. They’re the movies I see in any given year and then by the end of the year, I completely forget they came out that year. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is already turning into a Forget-Me of 2026. I keep having to remind myself it came out this past month. No other Forget-Me has ever become a Forget-Me so quickly.

17. Thrash

I love shark movies. The thing about shark movies though is there’s only so many places to go with this type of movie, especially as scientific understanding of sharks has improved over time. As a result, the world of gonzo-ridiculous shark movies has really flourished. These are movies that are content with being as outrageous as they can be for the sake of chaos and some good, old hungry-hungry-shark sequences. Special shoutout to Avalanche Sharks (2012) for being sooooooo bad and also so unreal ridiculous. Sharks on a mountain eating women in bikinis!!! What are we doing!!

Thrash commits the worst sin of all when it comes to shark movies. It tries to be both deep and ultra-ridiculous. I bet you’re thinking, “But, Claira, can’t a movie do both?” and it’s like yeah, technically, obviously, but also I am the boss and I am saying that shark movies cannot really be both if they want to be so ridiculous, at least to the degree Thrash is attempting. Part of this stems from me being mad I had to watch an hour of disaster sequences. I have a very big fear of tornadoes and tsunamis and hurricanes. Disaster movies are the one kind of movie that I’m not seeking out. I’ll watch anything, except maybe the disaster movies. The other part of this stems from the fact Thrash is just not very good at all. I do like that it includes Stacy Clausen in its cast though. I think it’s great that he has a Netflix release (this) and an upcoming horror release (Leviticus) in the same year.

The explanation of why the sharks show up in Thrash made me LOL (necessary props to them for using bull sharks instead of great whites) and the end of Thrash made me LMAO. Ridiculous movie. I would probably watch a sequel.

16. Lee Cronin’s The Mummy

[blowing raspberry noise] What a stinker! We talked about it plenty on the podcast, but I am so bummed this wound up being such a poor film. I’m still willing to give other contemporary versions of monster movies a try, but my wariness of them grows stronger with each new attempt. Wolf Man wasn’t good either, but it’s at least trying to offer a new point-of-view to see its horrors through. Lee Cronin’s The Mummy can’t even manage that.

15. Michael

Technically speaking, it would make sense to shift Michael a little higher up the list, but it’s all just so noticably devoid of depth that I can’t justify having it anywhere else. The film’s unwillingness to offer any sort of complexity in how it portrays Michael Jackson as a person is its greatest failing. We talked about all the issues with this one on the podcast as well. I don’t think I have anything else to offer by talking about it more at this point.

14. Apex

So the thing about Baltasar Kormákur’s new film is that it begins with Eric Bana falling off of Troll Wall. It’s just like the beginning of the movie Fall (2022) except it happens on a mountain called Troll Wall. I really like that there is a mountain in Norway called Troll Wall and that it killed Eric Bana like seven minutes into the movie. Very economical of Troll Wall. Admittedly, this movie does lose points for giving me Eric Bana and then taking him away so quickly. Movies don’t understand that they all need more Eric Bana in them. Eric Bana, if you are reading this, please confirm that you are working on the film adaptation of Jane Harper’s “Exiles”, the third and final installment in the Aaron Falk trilogy!!!!!

The other thing I like about Apex is there’s a scene near the beginning that feels like a homage to Australian creature feature Razorback (1984). In both Razorback and Apex, a woman is threatened by men at night while alone in the Australian wilderness and in both instances, a larger, more threatening predator watches from the shadows. The difference here lies in the fact that Charlize Theron’s Sasha is a woman destined to save herself whereas Judy Morris’s Beth Winters is a woman destined to be devoured, but it was a real treat to see how similar the sequences felt when I was watching Apex. In general, I appreciate how the film as a whole feels very much in conversation with other Australian-set films of its kind. Razorback, Wolf Creek, and now this each balance the horrors of humanity against the backdrop of Australia’s unforgiving landscapes in really interesting and continuously evolving ways.

Beyond that though, I don’t think there’s much here to write home about.

13. Roommates

April was the month of Chandler Levack and this is the first of two features from her that are on this list. It’s also, obviously, the weaker of the two. There’s a lot of different reasons why Roommates falters so much, but I would argue none of them necessarily have to do with Levack’s direction. The problems here are ultimately story and performance problems. The biggest detractor from Roommates is how the film is framed through Sarah Squirm telling a roommate horror story to Ivy Wolk and Storm Reid. The actual story surrounding Sadie Sandler and Chloe East isn’t perfect either, but every time we have to cut away from them to go back to Squirm and Co. making some poor attempt at comedic commentary about their experiences, the entire flow of the story is derailed. The film in general takes on a bizarrely mean-spirited approach in the back-half that I found really hard to stay on board with. What works so well in Levack’s other films is that her characters are awful, and while that awfulness is called out and there are consequences for it, it never feels laced with an air of superiority like how Roommates does, which I think comes down to the fact this wasn’t written by Levack.

12. Omaha

Cole Webley’s directorial feature debut premiered last year at Sundance to quite a mixture of responses from my peers. I fell in the middle with this one, finding myself a fan of the cast’s performances (especially Molly Belle Wright’s) but wary of how exactly the film chose to execute its heartbreaking premise. Omaha feels reminiscent to something like Left-Handed Girl because both films tell their stories through the perspectives of their young leads. However, part of what helped make Left-Handed Girl work so well was the fact it was willing to show as much about its characters as it could despite the limited perspective it conveyed these details through. Omaha makes attempts at this, trying to widen our understanding as it progresses, but it’s so glued to this one specific trip that the realities of the characters outside of this journey feel flimsy and impossible to incorporate. In most instances, this would be frustrating, but for something like Omaha, whose entire premise hinges on our ability to understand these characters and their specific breaking point, the unwillingness to fully recognize its characters as individuals who exist outside of their trauma is especially frustrating. I think that fact means the film as a whole is a disservice to what it’s trying to portray.

11. You, Me & Tuscany

Ugh!! I wanted to love this so much! My heart yearns for more rom-coms in theaters. The death of the rom-com could be accredited to the fact most of them get sent straight to streaming now. You, Me & Tuscany isn’t a standout of the month, but I know for a fact I would have liked it even less had I seen it at home alone. The communal experience of sitting in a theater always makes these sorts of films more fun and that’s especially true here. I was let down by Halley Bailey and Regé-Jean Page’s chemistry and individual performances. I found them both oddly wooden with each other and individually, something that was made even more glaring by the fact all the different side characters involved here are so bubbly and alive and fun to watch. I like the modern spin on While You Were Sleeping, even if in some ways this version is even more ludicrous than the 90’s classic.

10. Exit 8

It’s so rare for video game adaptations to be actually good. On paper, Exit 8 could have easily fallen into the same category as most other adaptations of its kind, particularly because the game itself has such a limited premise. Part of the appeal of the game lies in that simplicity, as it often does for games sitting in the indie-horror space, but that thin of a story can’t support the weight of a film, at least if you want the film to be good. The construction of a more extensive narrative in Exit 8 allows the film to lean less on its scares as the focus, making those moments hit with more efficiency. I do think sometimes the film gets a little too caught up in the story it’s built, but I’d rather have too much than too little in that regard. I was initially a little annoyed that NEON waited to release the film for so long after scooping it up last August after its Cannes premiere, but now I think that was a wise choice. Released in the same year as Return to Silent Hill and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Exit 8’s success as an adaptation only looks even more impressive. Only time will tell if it winds up being the best of its kind this year… although, at least right now, it seems like that accolade might just go to Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil due later this year.

9. Bunnylovr

Of all the April releases I’ve seen, Bunnylovr is easily the film with the quietest release. A real shame because I found Katarina Zhu’s debut to be quite powerful in how it portrays the experiences of a modern sex worker. On Letterboxd, the synopsis uses the word “drifting” to describe the film’s protagonist and I can’t think of a more appropriate word. There’s a dreamlike apathy tied to how Rebecca navigates her life, and that apathy is directly linked to a lifetime of growing up online. Everything is bathed in the blue light glow of computer screens, pretty but eventually the cause of painful strain. Zhu very thoughtfully dissects misogyny, power dynamics, and the differences between action and words here. In some ways, this feels like a darker companion to Bob Trevino Likes It. Also, the movie has a really cute bunny in it. I wish more people had seen it!

8. Over Your Dead Body

Samara Weaving and Jason Segel trying to murder each other? Sign me up! Their comedic timing and chemistry in this US remake is such a blast. Or it is until the film sticks way too long on a sequence about sexual assault. By no means is the film endorsing the act, but the way it lingers on this impending threat and tries to lace the situation with humor does take the wind out of the film’s sails for a bit. I haven’t seen The Trip, the Norwegian film this is remaking, but my understanding is this specific sequence is handled with a little more tact in that instance. Beyond that issue, I did really enjoy the film. The film’s writers, Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney, have had a busy month between this and their other film, Pizza Movie, both coming out in April. I’m still really impressed by how fun most of the film is despite how often each new reveal grinds the entire forward motion of the film to a halt and jolts us backwards again and again. The rhythm is such an odd one and yet it’s still easy to fall into step with.

7. Mother Mary

The one that almost got away from me. I kept putting off sitting down with David Lowery’s latest, which I can’t explain given the fact I am such a massive fan of A Ghost Story, The Green Knight, and Ain’t Them Bodies Saints. I’m a sucker for a good ghost story and while Mother Mary insists it is no such thing, I do find the ways it has ghost-like specters coursing through its veins particularly striking. Its beauty hides something dark and nasty in its depths that I really enjoyed plunging into. There is a certain air of poetic pomp here that I can imagine doesn’t land quite as nicely for others, but for me, the inability to conceal its musings made the film all the more fun. Michaela Coel is so great here, her movements and expressions conveyed with a sort of jerk that I associate with flighty, small birds, always a second away from flitting away in the name of self-preservation. Meanwhile, Anne Hathaway is so drenched in sadness, she’s perpetually sinking, the weight of her woes always obvious in the way she moves and speaks. I loved it!

6. The Drama

Again, we talked about The Drama at length on the podcast, but it’s worth repeating that I think this is the most romantic movie of the year so far. I’m really glad I rewatched this film because it really solidified all the reasons why I liked it. There are certainly flaws here, but overall it’s a really solid film that remains quite thought-provoking.

5. Faces of Death

In a similarly hyperbolic sense as The Drama, Faces of Death is April’s biggest surprise. Hell, it might be one of the biggest surprises of the year. I can’t believe how much I adored this. It manages to honor its predecessor while approaching its central premise from a completely new, fully-updated angle. Sometimes I think horror specifically can really struggle at tying its scares together with modern technology, but Faces of Death meets the challenge with eagerness and manages to be quite frightening, in part because of the incorporation of social media. The films Barbie Ferreira has been in post-Euphoria have created an impressively diverse portfolio that more than proves that she has the range to do it all. I thoroughly enjoyed her work here, especially when she’s getting to bounce directly off of the also very impressive Dacre Montgomery. Their final moments on screen together are jaw-dropping.

4. The Christophers

Recent statements about generative AI that I vehemently disagree with aside, Steven Soderbergh’s newest release is a fantastic conversation about legacy, art, and the role of the critic within artistic spaces. It’s breezy and simplistic rather than intense and overwhelming and it’s all the better for that sort of approach. Again, Michaela Coel is just divine here, playing a very different sort of role than the one seen in Mother Mary. It’s been a great month to admire her range. Ian McKellen’s performance as a cunty artist is a real treat as well. Their back and forth with one another feels almost cosmic, two generations of talent colliding to create something that leaves a lasting mark.

3. Erupcja

The last year or so has been, in part, all about Charlie XCX’s introduction to the world of acting with small performance after small performance. Her other performances that I’ve seen are all ones that I’d dub as “passably fine”, but her work in Erupcja is on a whole different level. I think her ability to take on the role of Bethany so authentically stems from Pete Ohs’s approach to filmmaking. Erupcja feels inherently collaborative because it was, the cast coming up with the details of the story as they went along, which speaks perfectly to each character’s own form of noncommittal living. The narration as well as the way the film is edited reminds me endlessly of some of Mike Mills’s best work. I love how the film wraps itself up, finding a form of finality that still alludes to the unknowability of life. I also checked out Ohs’s other film, The True Beauty of Being Bitten By a Tick, this month and it was almost just as great as this. Shoutout Letterboxd for offering the film via Letterboxd Video Store. I am loving the way Ohs creates films and I’m quite keen to check out more of his work this year.

2. Mile End Kicks

It’s a double Michaela Coel month, a double Chandler Levack month, AND a double Barbie Ferreira month! How lucky are we! In Mile End Kicks, Ferreira’s work as a messy mid-20s freelance music critic hits close to home on a multitude of levels. The time period, her struggles to connect with others, the men she throws herself at, and her desire to write all feel familiar and yet uniquely explored. She’s so me!! Levack’s ability to present deeply flawed characters in a way that is honest and yet still compassionate really shines through here when looking at the film’s protagonist, Grace, and the asshole musician she falls for along the way, Chevy. Also, Devon Bostick is sooooooooooooo sexy in this movie, it’s a little outrageous. I find the work he’s done post-Diary of a Wimpy Kid to be almost as impressively diverse as Ferreira’s post-Euphoria, although I do think he has a harder time trying to shake Rodrick Heffley’s image from audience’s memories when they watch him.

1. Blue Heron

Sophy Romvari’s Blue Heron is the film of the year. I hate saying things like that when it’s only May and there are so many months left in the year, but it’s true. It was one of my absolute favorite films I saw last year and it’s one of the films I’ve thought about the most so far this year. It’s endlessly evocative. I can’t fully wrap my head around how clever it is at playing with form and our relationship to memory. It’s all just so unbelievably effective. There’s very little like it. Aftersun has been an apt, and frequent, comparison, although I do think the level of honesty found within Blue Heron elevates it slightly above Aftersun.

I want to, and easily could, write a whole essay just on Blue Heron and all that it manages to convey, but I also recognize that the film was on the limited side with its release. I really, really, really want people to see this one and I don’t want to go too in-depth when so many haven’t gotten to experience it yet.

Romvari is one of those filmmakers that I think I’ll look back on 30 years from now and be very, very grateful I was seeing her films in theaters as they came out. I believe she will become one of the driving voices of the medium going forward. If you weren’t aware, her short films were recently re-added to the Criterion Channel. It’s a treasure trove of a collection, full of similarly invigorating technical achievements and moving explorations of our relationship to memory and our loved ones. Still Processing is my favorite of the bunch and I also really love In Dog Years and Grandma’s House, but you truly can’t go wrong with any of her work.

Looking to the future, my most anticipated May releases are:

Silent Friend - Few films feel more “made for Claira” than a film about a tree observing the world around it across many decades. This movie was made for me! I’ve only seen one other film directed by Ildikó Enyedi, On Body and Soul (2017) (would definitely recommend), and I’m deeply curious how that film’s use of dreams as a point of connection will converse with her latest’s use of a tree in a presumably similar manner. I’m in the midst of reading (among several other books) “The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape” by Katie Holten, which is a collection of musings about and appreciation for trees of all shapes and sizes written by an expansive group of botanists, authors, artists, philosphers, etc. that I think is likely the perfect written company to what Silent Friend will be. I love trees and I can’t wait to see this movie.

Is God Is - I’ve been growing really fond of films adapted from plays in recent years, especially films adapted from plays that are also directorial feature debuts. Annie Baker’s Janet Planet was my favorite film of 2024 and I had such a blast with Meredith Alloway’s Forbidden Fruits from last month. Trailers for Aleshea Harris’s directorial debut started playing at the AMCs I frequent recently and the energy behind what they’re showing so far seems absolutely electric. The visual aesthetic of the film and the distinctive characters its introducing remind me of The Harder They Fall, which absolutely rips. Plus, it’s a film about sisterhood and reckoning with the horrors of girl/womanhood, which are almost always a guaranteed win in my book.

Forge - Jing Ai Ng’s directorial feature debut fell onto my radar a couple of months ago and I’ve been excitedly waiting for it ever since. After how much I loved The Christophers, I’m keen to see how Forge tackles the world of forgery, particularly because of how different an angle its approaching things from. I’ve also been thinking about how great of an actor Kelly Marie Tran is again ever since this past January when I watched another film she stars in, Rock Springs, virtually at Sundance. I’m really looking forward to seeing her play an FBI Agent tasked with investigating art forgery. My one fear is that I’ll wind up missing this one. It opens in LA while I’m in Cannes and I’m worried it will already be booted out of nearby theaters by the time I get home. Fingers crossed that’s not the case.

Saccharine - I loved the squirmy, painfully bleak way Relic sought to depict the realities of losing family members to memory loss, so my hopes are very high for the latest from Natalie Erika James. Interweaving our fixation around diet culture with our knee-jerk aversion to death is an intriguing idea and I’m hopeful it will prove to be a worthwhile and thought-provoking watch. I’m kind of pretending Apartment 7A doesn’t exist because it felt so shackled to Rosemary’s Baby in a way that felt very studio-influenced.

I’m heading to Cannes in T-6 days so there are also a lot of titles premiering there that I’m excited for! I figured I’d save Cannes talk for a future post of some kind instead of making this even longer than it already is though.

I would love to hear from you if you’ve read this far! What were your favorite watches of April? What are you most excited to see in May? I asked on Instagram, but it’s worth asking here too: what type of posts would you like to read on here in the future?

Yay, yippee, yahoo! Thanks for stopping by my corner of Substack :) TTYL!

It’s time to dig into Episode 6 of The Last of Us Season 2 and I’m excited to really explore what this episode reveals to us. A lot of people consider this to be one of the best episodes of the series, which is understandable. However, I do think part of that is just because audiences missed having Pedro Pascal on their screens every week. Who can blame them for that, really?

Unfortunately for me, I think this is the episode that really sealed the deal that I wasn’t going to have a change of opinion about this season of the show. We’ll discuss it soon but I do want to get this out of the way immediately: the show adapted my favorite scene of the game in a way that I think really butchered the importance of the scene and I am still in mourning about it.

Even though the season is over (and I’ve already watched the finale), I’ll still be doing my best to avoid discussing scenes from the game that have not yet been adapted for the show. Also, fair warning: this is a long one. There’s A LOT to go over. Okay… Here we go!

Austin, Texas 1983

Our flashback episode opens with a new flashback not previously seen in the game. It’s an interesting choice to show us a scene from Joel’s childhood. Our knowledge of Joel’s life before the outbreak is isolated to just the opening 5 minutes of The Last of Us Part One and small snippets of dialogue here or there. For the purposes of the game, Joel’s actions as a character are defined almost entirely by the loss of Sarah on the night of the outbreak. Every act of violence, every lie, every denial is influenced by that steadfast fear of losing Ellie, who in many ways is a new Sarah to Joel. The show has widened our understanding of his choices, revealing a history of lying to protect those he loves, a willingness to cause bodily harm to those who threaten his loved ones, and a cycle of violence that predates the outbreak through his father’s methods of discipline.

A little detail that I really appreciate from this scene is the reveal that the watch Joel wears throughout the series once belonged to his father. The watch, frozen forever on the very second Sarah was shot, as an object that has been passed down through generations of men who cause harm in the name of love is a really nice visual to build.

Outside of that though, I do see a lot of what’s discussed between Joel and his father to be a further illustration of how desperate the writing is to make every theme of the story as abundantly clear as possible. The Last of Us Part Two is about finding oneself trapped in the cycles of violence and the agonizing process of trying to break out of those cycles. This isn’t a new concept to be exploring in this story, but having the characters discuss it so directly feels a bit cheap, particularly when this is the one and only time we will likely ever see Joel’s father. Additionally, I think part of what I always found so compelling about Joel’s character is that in the game, it’s easy to interpret his actions as a byproduct of the environment he finds himself in post-outbreak. Before the outbreak, there are environmental cues that make us believe he struggled financially and with his mental health, but the rage, distance, and violence that defines a lot of his behavior throughout the game is a coping mechanism for a world that is full of so much death and suffering. In expanding his character in the show, we instead view him as someone who has always carried this violence within himself and it’s just something he unleashed as the world fell apart. There’s pros and cons to either side of this type of characterization, but given how limitedly we explore this new depth to Joel, it feels a lot less impactful to me.

The Fifteenth Birthday

An interesting thing of note about this episode is that the majority of flashbacks all fall on Ellie’s birthday. In the game, only one of these flashbacks happens on her actual birthday and the rest are occurring at different points over the years. I’m not sure what sort of rationale to conjure about this minor change beyond the writers wanting to make it as simplistic as possible for audiences to follow. Which is… again… a discredit to audiences’ intelligence… ANYWAYS.

Get Seth off my TV or so help me!!!!

I think it is so fascinating how attached the show is to including his character in as many scenes as possible. The trade between Joel and him for a birthday cake and for some bone to finish the guitar Joel is making for Ellie works mostly to help draw an immediate connection to what we just saw in the opening flashback. Seth reveals that before the outbreak he was a police officer, just like Joel’s father. We can now draw a connection between Joel’s father’s abusive actions towards his children with Seth’s homophobic and xenophobic comments that he makes in the earliest episodes of the season through their shared profession. Connecting Seth to Joel’s father also, I think, attempts to draw more sympathy for Seth’s character that I don’t see much point in. We just watched Joel’s father tearfully admit he has messed up but he’s trying to do better than his father before him, and by placing Seth in the same profession, it’s a quiet attempt to encourage audiences to see that same sentiment in him as we do in Joel’s father. I’ve written previously about how I think it’s not effective to include his character so much in the episodes, but I feel that even more in how this episode briefly attempts to strengthen our understanding of him.

We get a lovely scene of Joel making Ellie’s guitar. I really like this scene because of how quiet and intentional it is. It’s a nice change from the dialogue-heavy scenes that define most of the season. Joel’s woodworking is a nice way of illustrating how he’s begun to let his guard down in Jackson and in the game, we only ever see this side of him in the aftermath of his death as we walk through his home. Getting to see this version of Joel build something with his own hands and look at it with such satisfaction really helps show the other side of him that comes out around Ellie. I like that! It’s nice!

Not seen previously in the game is the moment directly after Ellie intentionally burnt her bite mark. In the game, when we see this flashback between Joel and Ellie, Ellie is wearing a bandage on her arm to show the wound is still fresh but she doesn’t talk about it with Joel. It’s only with Dina later in the weed den that Ellie reveals that she burnt her arm intentionally to cover her bite mark. The focus of the scene in the game is more on the subtly awkward dynamic between the two of them and then Joel giving her the guitar as a surprise gift. Maybe that’s another reason why they change the flashback in the show to occur on Ellie’s birthday? They needed more justification as to why Joel would be giving Ellie a gift? Anyways, including Ellie’s injury is, to me, a way for the writers to show again how much more affectionate this version of Ellie and Joel are with one another. We see this not only in how they embrace after Ellie explains why she hurt herself, but in their physical proximity to each other in their living situation too.

In the game, Ellie always lives in the garage. Something significant about her that I’ve always found very compelling is that Ellie craves consistency and closeness, but never at the sacrifice of her own autonomy. She and Joel care for each other, but as Gail reminds us in the first episode this season, she is not Joel’s daughter. The game respects these boundaries, ensuring that she always has her own space, her own boundaries in place between herself and Joel that the show seems disinterested in exploring. I think it’s perceived as being more appealing to show audiences when the two behave more explicitly as father and daughter. Audiences can understand that sort of relationship whereas something that exists in a more muddled grey area like the game’s iteration can leave some frustrated or uncertain of how to react. The other downside to this more affectionate dynamic between the two of them is it can be used as a subtle way to absolve Joel of his choices in season one. In the US in particular, children are seen more as objects or extensions of their parents rather than fully-fledged people with their own rights. When we as an audience are encouraged to view Joel as Ellie’s “father”, we can more easily justify why he makes such severe choices for her without her consent or acknowledging her desires because that’s what parents “should” do. This is a possible rationale that is present when examining Joel’s actions in the game as well, but it’s in a much more hypothetical space and I think it’s easier to truly see Ellie’s side of things when their relationship is blurrier. This version of them strives to diminish Ellie’s perspective, amplifying Joel’s desires to be a good father and to break the cycles of his past with Ellie. It’s another shift in focus from Ellie’s deeply personal experiences to another character’s, which is yet another issue that has plagued this season.

It’s nice to see Joel play “Future Days” finally! I was floored by interviews where Mazin shared that he didn’t want to include the song and that Druckmann had to talk him into it. The use of this song specifically is such an easy expression of Ellie’s inner turmoil as she grapples with her grief and I really don’t understand why Mazin was so set on ditching it for something else. I’m relieved it was ultimately kept.

The Sixteenth Birthday

This is the first playable flashback in the game and it arrives after Ellie and Dina’s fight on the first night in Seattle. After potentially ruining her relationship with Dina by calling her a burden, Ellie recalls this memory, which transports us to a rare, fleeting moment of joy within the game. This is also our first time seeing Joel since the first two hours of the game and it always hits extremely hard. The game does such a fantastic job of reflecting on Joel’s death before this moment, reminding us of him and his absence constantly so that when he appears on screen again, it knocks the wind out of you. Shoving all the flashbacks together into one episode instead of drawing them out across the season robs audiences of this same sensation.

The initial starting point of the flashback is the same in the game as it’s shown in the show. Joel and Ellie are walking through the forest towards a big surprise that Ellie insists on trying to guess. In the game, her very first guess is a dinosaur (rather than a bow and arrow in the show), which is sweet given that is exactly what her surprise is. There is a minor gameplay mechanic revealed during this walking sequence which shows us that Joel kept his promise and taught Ellie how to swim. Also in the game, an interesting note is that it is possible to miss out on Ellie climbing up the t-rex in front of the museum as this action is optional and not clearly marked as possible.

In the show, Joel implies Ellie likes Jesse in this scene, revealing that he isn’t aware of the fact she is a lesbian. In the game, this conversation is saved for the next flashback, which has been changed significantly for the show, when Ellie is another year older.

Then, the show fast forwards through part of this sequence. I’m really surprised by this decision because this flashback specifically is one of the most beloved in the game and BTS shows that they also shot this part of the flashback for the show. Before Ellie and Joel make it to the space exhibit, they first go through a giant dinosaur exhibit. Ellie’s love for dinosaurs means we get lots of sweet dinosaur facts and there’s a fun additional task in the form of putting an Indiana Jones style hat on all the dinosaur skeletons. At the end of the dinosaur sequence, as the two walk up a set of stairs, they’re met with the skeletal head of a brachiosaurus. This image is a callback to their encounter with a giraffe near the end of The Last of Us Part One. It’s sweet and reflective, drawing us back to that previous tender moment between the two, and, maybe more importantly, placing us back in Salt Lake City, which will become even more relevant by the end of the flashback.

Space sequence follows and the way it’s portrayed in the game is exactly as it is in the show. So… No notes on that beautiful moment lol.

However, this flashback progresses even more in the game. The show rushes us out of this sequence and on to the next one rather abruptly. There is a brief pause as Ellie stops to stare at literal fireflies. This is meant to remind us of the Fireflies and allude to the possibility that Ellie is still thinking about what happened in Salt Lake City. In the game, this revelation is far more explicit. Ellie and Joel continue through the museum to a second building that can only be accessed via window. Joel boosts Ellie up with the hope that she can open the door from the other side once she’s in. However, the door is blocked and the two are temporarily separated.

What follows is a hard shift in tone. We go from joyful and warm to fearful and cold very quickly. This side of the museum is plunged in shadows and as we go further through the exhibit of North American animals, we hear noises that imply a possible threat is close by. Ellie also encounters some taxidermy animals here that allude to what’s to come in her story down the line. She encounters a moose surrounded by hungry wolves and she expresses sympathy for it. The scene is eerily reflective of a moment from Joel’s death scene where the WLF have him pinned for Abby.

As we continue through the rest of this exhibit, in addition to the scary sounds we hear, Ellie also comes across disturbing writing on the walls. Someone has written confessionals throughout the exhibit, admitting to terrible acts. The writing throughout this sequence reads as follows:

“I killed for them”, “the woman we tortured chocked on her own blood”, “the 4 soldiers at the gate the last one cried”, “the stragglers who snuck into camp they just wanted food”, “the kid who ran into the blast I couldn’t stop him”, “the people in the van we locked them in and doused it with gas”, and finally, “there is no light”

beneath which sits the skeleton of who wrote these admissions, killed by a self-inflicted gunshot wound. A note reveals that this person is wracked with guilt for what they have done for “them” with nothing now to show for it. It’s not revealed quite yet but this person is a former firefly, left alone after the group disbanded because of Joel’s massacre. All these terrible actions committed with no greater good to show for them. The message above his head an indication that the Firefly mantra “when you’re lost in the darkness, look for the light” has been proven false. Their light is gone, all that remains is the darkness.

The source of the scary noises is also revealed here in the form of a wild boar. The boar is another animal that will come up again later on in the game and plays a crucial role in exploring Ellie’s inner turmoil. After the boar flees the room, Joel busts through a side door, finally having found Ellie. Ellie barely acknowledges him though, her attention drawn to one last piece of graffiti on the wall from our skeleton friend. The Firefly symbol with the word “Liars” written beneath it. Ellie is visibly shaken by this sight and Joel has to coax her out of the room and in doing so, he briefly obscures part of the writing on the wall so it reads as “Liar”. He walks away first, leaving Ellie to stare at the graffiti for another beat on her own before she follows after him. The camera stays fixed on the image so that the last thing the player sees during the flashback is that graffiti. The moment is poignant and ends our joyful flashback with a sense of unease, these final beats revealing that Ellie is still plagued with doubt about whether or not Joel has told her the truth. Heavy stuff! I wish the show really leaned into this moment more rather than just briefly showing the insect equivalent (and this is coming from a guy who LOVES bugs!).

The Seventeenth Birthday

New flashback time again. Joel brings another cake to the house to surprise Ellie with. He walks in on her with Cat and a fresh tattoo. “So, all the teenage shit all at once,” Joel bemoans. BOOOOOO! Oh brother, this guy stinks! I found this moment to be really frustrating. It again feeds into the enthusiasm the show has with painting Joel explicitly as Ellie’s father through the way the two interact with one another. Even as Ellie rebels against this dynamic, stating at one point that he doesn’t “own anything”, the way she maneuvers through this dispute still implies how prevalent this father/daughter dynamic is between the two of them. It also speaks to a larger issue between the two of them in that the show has an unwillingness to let the resentment Ellie feels towards Joel fester. They resolve this dispute in less than 24 hours, and though it ends with Ellie still moving to the garage, which helps show that a rift is starting to form, it is a pretty positive conclusion between the two of them. I wish again that this show was willing to explore the sensations of rage and building resentment that defines so much of Ellie as a character. Part of the effectiveness of these flashbacks in the games is in how we can see clearly how upset Ellie grows over the years and how determinedly Joel turns the other way when it comes to these feelings she’s having until it’s too late.

I do think this flashback does start to show how Joel can hear Ellie without actually hearing her. Or, more accurately, how he develops a sort of selective hearing when it comes to what she communicates to him. He can acknowledge her queerness and her desire for space, but not that there is deeper meaning behind her assertion he doesn’t own her. He can understand her fixation on the imagery of a moth, but not catch that his initial interpretation of what it symbolizes is wrong. Thank god we have Gail to reveal to him that his understanding of the insect’s symbolism was way off (not). Get her off my screen too!!! To quote the YouTuber Berleezy, “I’m sick of her ass!” and how she spells out every piece of subtext for Joel and us as an audience. Can’t we let anything stay in the subconscious? Must everything be so blatantly spelled out?!

In the game, this flashback is completely different, but its intentions are more aligned with the events of the show’s nineteenth birthday flashback, so I’ll discuss them in comparison to that instead of here. Overall, I do not like this new flashback.

The Nineteenth Birthday

Opening with Ellie fully moved into the garage, this flashback begins with a reveal that Ellie is really struggling with the lie she’s been told about Salt Lake City. Her doubts are manifesting in such a way that she’s building towards having a direct confrontation with Joel, something that never goes well, at least in the game.

The equivalent of this scene in the game is the second flashback we play through which takes place when Ellie is seventeen. Her journal entries made available during this sequence speak to her inner anxieties about her immunity (she fears she might be contagious), her blossoming relationship with Cat, and how that relationship is negatively impacting her friendship with Dina. Gameplay opens with her on patrol with Tommy, he lets her try out his rifle (we see a version of this scene in the first episode of season one), and he reveals that Joel has expressed concern for Ellie because she is noticeably distant. She denies anything being wrong and concedes that she could do more to ease Joel’s anxieties about the state of their relationship.

The two meet up with Joel in the ski lodge, which we had previously seen in the opening of the game as Joel, Tommy, and Abby fled from the infected horde. It’s a noticeable shift in feel from that first scene, which was steeped in cold atmosphere and panic about the dangers at hand, because for this flashback, everything is painted in a warm, autumnal glow. Joel has Ellie’s guitar and points out that she needs to change the strings. Tommy encourages the two to continue on patrol to a music shop where they can get new strings and Ellie agrees to go, although she does try to convince Tommy to tag along as a buffer.

Ellie and Joel discover the path to the music shop is blocked and they decide to cut through a hotel. Between dealing with an arguably insane amount of infected (we even fight a bloater!), the two try and talk about the state of things in Jackson and with each other. Two teenagers have recently run away from Jackson and no one has heard from them since. Ellie is frustrated by the need to wear a gas mask even when it’s only her and Joel around. Joel expresses worry she’s told Jesse and Dina about her immunity, which she denies. This is the flashback where Joel expresses a belief that Jesse might like Ellie, which she bemusedly denies. In the game, Joel is unaware of Ellie’s queerness until the night of the Winter Dance, and it is a rather somber moment in the flashback when it’s revealed he has no idea that Ellie is dating a woman at this time (Cat).

Just as the two think they may have found a way out of the hotel, they come across the remains of the two missing teenagers mentioned earlier. One of them is a skeleton and the other is an infected that they kill. A note reveals that the two ran away from Jackson out of guilt for living in such a stable environment. They dreamed of leading more people to the community but just a few hours after leaving, they were both bitten. The boy, Adam, shot Sydney but was too afraid to kill himself before the infection took over.

Ellie is visibly shaken by the note and says, “If only they were immune, right?” with the implication behind that statement being she feels tremendous guilt that the two could not be protected from the infected by her immunity. Joel’s guard goes up as he tries to insist they should get going so they can take the bodies back to Jackson. Ellie instead lashes out at Joel, demanding to know why he took her from Salt Lake City before she was awake and able to speak with the Fireflies. In the game, Joel’s lie revolves entirely around the fact that dozens of other immune people exist and there was no good that came from the Fireflies’ tests. Show Joel adds an extra detail to the lie that raiders appeared and killed everyone. Game Ellie insists Joel must have misunderstood the Fireflies and if they had waited they could have gotten more answers. Joel grows visibly angry with Ellie and cuts her off, denying any possibility for a cure and stating, “I know you wish things were different. I wish things were different. But they ain’t.”

He acknowledges Ellie’s pain without claiming responsibility for it and he offers his own commiseration in addition to hers as an attempt to realign himself with her. Ellie fights back tears but agrees that she’s done probing the issue and, like the last flashback, Joel walks away first, leaving us to watch Ellie collect herself before she walks out of frame. The camera stays fixed on the bodies lying on the ground, making sure the last thing we see in this flashback is the loss of life that could have been prevented if Joel had made a different choice.

The show’s version of these events are very different and feel more like a desire to include Gail in another(?!) scene rather than freshly articulate the divide between Ellie and Joel.

Joel interrupts Ellie’s attempt at practicing her questions with another birthday surprise: Patrol! Yay, wow, so awesome. Ellie in the game is already well-versed in patrols, she was ready to start going on duo patrols at seventeen rather than nineteen, but whatever! The show has committed itself to painting Ellie has more immature and incapable this season and so her inexperience with patrols makes sense (but I am begrudged about it). Of note in this sequence to me too is how horrified and scared Ellie seems at the sight of Eugene’s patrol partners body. Her expression reads like she’s never seen a body before, which I found a bit confusing to take in. Ellie insists she and Joel let Eugene return to Jackson with them so he can say goodbye to his beloved Gail and this reads in a similar manner to how much empathy game Ellie has for the two teenagers who died in the hotel. It visibly pains her to see people suffering when she holds the cure within herself. I do like how hard she fights for Eugene’s right to say goodbye.

Joel convinces her to go get the horses, adding another lie to his mountain of them. Because the show has been more reluctant to explore Ellie’s growing doubts and anger towards Joel, she’s quicker to believe him in this moment and fully trusts him. Thanks to that that trust, Joel can go Of Mice and Men Eugene before she returns. He insists they both lie to everyone back home instead of telling them the truth of what he’s done. Once confronted with a grieving Gail, Ellie reveals that Joel was lying to her about the nature of Eugene’s death. Gail is horrified by what Joel has done and Ellie looks at Joel through new eyes finally. It’s an essential moment in this version of their relationship arc, but because we jump from this scene to the Winter Dance, the show winds up missing out on really leaning into this growing anger fully, which is a real shame.

In the game, after the hotel flashback, we get one more, very brief flashback that plays directly after Ellie has brutally killed Nora. It’s revealed that a year before the main events of the game, Ellie left Jackson and returned to St. Mary’s Hospital in Salt Lake City. She finds notes from Abby’s father that express his excitement about Ellie’s immunity and a voice recording left by none other than Mel(!!) that reveals that the Fireflies are disbanding and she personally wanted to go after “the smuggler and the girl” with some other people (presumably Abby, Owen, Manny, Nora, Jordan, Nick, and Leah) but there’s no point because the only person capable of making a vaccine is now dead. Shortly after Ellie finds this recording, Joel arrives at the hospital as well. He embraces Ellie and chastises her for leaving without speaking with him about her plans and Ellie roughly pushes him away from her. In the game, this is only the second time we have ever seen Joel physically affectionate with Ellie. The other time was in the first game directly after he had to physically restrain her to get her to stop hacking at David’s face with a machete. In that moment, she had fallen into Joel with a visible sense of relief, so her pushing him away in this flashback is striking and cause for concern.

Ellie demands to know the truth about what happened in the hospital. Between Joel’s flimsy story and Mel’s recording, she’s essentially put the pieces together herself but she needs to hear it from Joel directly. She promises to go back to Jackson if Joel tells her the truth but swears that he will never see her again if he lies to her one more time. At long last, Joel confesses the truth to Ellie and she breaks down into anguished sobs. When he reaches out to comfort her, Ellie jerks away and states that she will return to Jackson like she said she would, but that they are done. And she means it. The two of them do not speak again until the night of the Winter Dance almost a year later. This flashback ends with Ellie walking away from Joel, which is a notable change from the last two flashbacks that had Joel walk away first. Ellie holds the power now. Additionally, instead of remaining fixed on one point, the camera follows her as she moves so that the last thing the player sees in this scene is her devastated expression.

Unfortunately for all of us, the show cuts this flashback entirely, using Ellie’s anger about what Joel does to Eugene as the main cause for their rift and Ellie finding out the truth about Salt Lake City is saved until one of the last scenes of the episode. This makes these moments feel incredibly rushed and less emotionally heavy than their game counterparts. Boo!!!! I am booing the writing in this show very loudly!!!

The Dance 2.0

It’s an odd choice to me that we see the dance scene again but through Joel’s perspective. It’d be one thing if this was our first experience with the dance scene, but as a retread of a previously shown scene, I don’t think there’s much here that feels worth sitting in. If anything, the inclusion of this scene to me makes it feel like all the flashbacks should be viewed through Joel’s perspective rather than Ellie’s. This shift in focus is super frustrating to me because the flashbacks are some of the most illuminating for us as players when it comes to understanding Ellie’s perspective. The show not only refocuses on other characters instead of Ellie, it also overwrites her perspective whenever possible, making sure the freshest version of these events are not seen through her eyes. It puts us as an audience against her at every turn and while that is a feeling that builds between the player and Ellie in the game as her actions grow more cruel, it’s done with a lot more complexity and subtly compared to the show’s equivalent.

I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this before but I suppose it’s also worth noting that the dance scene in the game isn’t shown until the final three hours of the game. The only way we know about what happened at the dance before then is through dialogue in Jackson at the beginning of the game.

The Porch

Seeing this scene included here is, for lack of a better word, utterly devastating to me. The porch scene is, in my opinion, the absolute heart of everything and is the most important scene in the entire game. But a crucial piece of that lies in the fact that this flashback is the second to last scene in the game and comes after huge story beats. Absolutely everything in the game builds to this scene. Every death and every new reveal adding to a mounting need for a specific type of relief that this scene offers. Including it now in the show feels like all the air has been let out of the balloon. I am so sad and disappointed.

Not only is the placement of this scene changing the entire feel of the scene, but the conversation at hand is different as well. In the game, the porch scene is the first and only time Joel and Ellie discuss her queerness and Joel is immediately supportive. His support frustrates her because she’s still so incredibly angry with him about his lies and I think she also feels especially vulnerable about Joel finding out about this part of her in such an uncontrolled, unpleasant way. Ellie expresses that Joel has robbed her of purpose in life just as she does in the show. But the conversation between the two of them is so much more nuanced and subtextual in the game, in part because so much more time has passed between Ellie finding out the truth and this moment. Something especially worth noting is that Joel does not say he loves Ellie in the game. The show’s decision to do so made me roll my eyes and throw up my hands in frustration. It’s the type of writing you see fifteen year olds include in their fan fiction for the game. Writing choices like this feel like a fantasy world where everyone says everything they’re feeling at all times and no one has any regrets because thank god we all said what we were thinking at every turn. Game Joel saying he would do it all over again if given the chance IS him saying he loves Ellie. Having the show’s version of the character say those words and then also that he loves Ellie feels like a redundancy and a cheap way to draw sympathy from audiences. Especially when he repeats the line his father said to him in the opening flashback about how he hopes Ellie does better than him someday.

My other issue with the show’s version of this scene is related to Ellie’s decision to forgive Joel. In the game, this isn’t the moment where she finds out about Joel’s lies. She’s had time to process the truth and what it means for her and her relationship with Joel for sometime. She has been living her life in such a way where Joel has been removed and she’s had time to assess what that means and whether or not it’s truly how she wants to go forward. Her decision to speak to him after the dance is huge given how committed she’s been to severing their relationship entirely. The show rushes us through these moments, which is an especially odd characterization of Ellie because again and again we see how incapable she is to forgive people. It’s one of her greatest faults that she bears grudges for so long and that quality is absolutely unidentifiable in the show version of her. I have plenty more complaints about how this choice to forgive dilute so much of her character but I think I’ll save it for the finale where those issues feel somehow even more prevalent.

The show had previously teased this scene in the first episode, a choice that had given me pause and cause for concern even then, but the game’s one reference to this scene is far briefer and with way less context involved and it occurs much later in the game as well. Because of this, we spend, quite literally, the entire game assuming the very last time Ellie spoke to Joel was when she got angry with him at the dance. The gradual reveal of the flashbacks fleshes this out even more, showing us that not only was the fight at the dance possibly their last conversation, but that she had cut ties with him entirely before the dance. There’s a great sense of mourning in these realizations that the player feels and it makes it easier for us to sympathize with Ellie’s choices because her quest for revenge is seemingly fueled by this need to atone for the fact she never forgave Joel.

But then!!! The porch scene flips that assumption on its head. Ellie did forgive Joel and what she’s seeking is not atonement for not forgiving him, but rather retribution for being robbed of what a full reconciliation could have meant for the two of them. It wasn’t just that Joel’s secrets were finally known, Ellie’s were too. She wasn’t hiding her queerness from Joel anymore, just as Joel wasn’t hiding his transgressions from Ellie. They could have finally seen each other fully and on a level playing field, had his death not followed less than 12 hours later. There is so much relief in knowing that Ellie expressed a desire to reconcile with Joel, but there is also a new found grief in understanding how close healing was before it was snatched away.

For me, this scene means a lot for very personal reasons. I never had an opportunity to reconcile with my dad before his own sudden passing. Our relationship ended on very, very bad terms, and there are countless times over the years that I have wished for a moment with him like Ellie and Joel share here at the end of the game. There is a sort of transmitted catharsis in seeing this scene play out, particularly because of its placement. We end the entire game on this choice to forgive and the brief and final scene that follows this flashback is so devastating and healing in its own right. I love it and treasure it a lot as a piece of understanding my own relationship with grief and regret.

So maybe, because of that, I just truly can not look at this piece of the show in fairness, but I do think ultimately the writing in this scene again is so heavy-handed and fan-servicey in a way that feels borderline immature and cowardly.

If you haven’t already seen the game version of this scene, I highly recommend watching it here.

Overall, I found this episode incredibly frustrating in how it handles the material. Interestingly enough too, even though we get so many more flashbacks compared to the game, everything shown here feels so much more rushed and half-hearted. It’s a very troubling combination, particularly since this is an episode written by Druckmann and Halley Gross rather than Mazin. The game’s creator and writer are just as involved in the butchering of this story as Mazin is and that’s all the more alarming to me.

I hope to have my breakdown of the finale up sooner rather than later. However, to be transparent, it’s rough going. I watch the episodes at least two times through before I start writing and I rewatch certain scenes even more as I write these out and truthfully… I am dreading having to go through that process again. It was tough just getting through this episode. But I will persist, because I need to finish things I start, and because I do ultimately find the payoff of explaining my thoughts thoroughly rewarding.

Thank you for reading if you did, especially since this is so late and much longer than usual! Curious to read your thoughts on this episode if you’re willing to share them!

In regard to Episode 5, I will admit that I’m still not a fan of what the show is doing overall. I’m hopeful the last two episodes might turn things around, but overall, I see this episode as a continuation of all the issues that have appeared within the show’s writing since this season began. Excited to get into it all here as I breakdown the differences between the episode and the game. Apologies in advance if this reads particularly scattered or messy (I am so, so tired). And as always, if there are any spoilers to what may still be to come in the show, I’ll be sure to mark them appropriately.

A big thing of note here is there are a lot of changes between this episode and the game. I’m going to prioritize first going through the game’s order of events and then I’ll back track slightly to dissect how the show adapts these sequences and whether or not I think those changes work.

There’s a couple of big developments when it comes to the opening of this episode. We open with Hanrahan interrogating a WLF squad leader, Sergeant Park. While a flashback, some of the dialogue in this sequence seems to be implying to me that she is not who I thought she was meant to represent in the game and is instead an entirely new character. Or the show has changed her origin story entirely (a likely thing for them to do…). I’m curious to learn more about her in the future, my guess is still that we’ll see the full scope of her story in Season 3 rather than in what’s left of Season 2.

The more major thing about this opening scene is that the show is introducing spores as an infection source. I will not lie, I’m shocked this is happening. Spores are a key component of the first and second Last of Us games, operating as both a tool to elevate the tension in certain areas of gameplay and to help illustrate Ellie’s immunity to others. In the first game, Joel and Ellie enter a subway tunnel filled with spores after Tess’s death. It is here that Joel finally believes Ellie is immune because of her ability to breathe in the spores without a gas mask. The game’s tutorial helped show what happens to people who breathe spores almost instantly so this moment between Joel and Ellie a few hours later is helpful in showing the key difference between her and all other people. In the show, Ellie is instead bitten by an infected and Joel and Tess witness her not turning. As the first season was airing, there was a lot of adamant assertion from Druckmann and Mazin that including spores in the show just wouldn’t work. You couldn’t see the actors’ faces if they’re wearing gas masks, the logic behind spores just didn’t work soundly, and they wanted to instead include a detail that was cut from the game: the infected communicating via mycorrhizal networks. I’ve always really liked the idea of the mycorrhizal network and for the first season, cutting spores mostly made sense to me. However, it had me extremely worried for scenes in the second season where the inclusion of spores felt absolutely essential. One of those scenes has already past, it’s when Ellie and Dina are escaping the horde in the light rail station and I do think the changes they made to how Ellie reveals to Dina she’s immune work for the most part. The second scene that heavily features spores is Ellie’s confrontation with Nora, which we’ll discuss soon. There are some additional sequences that incorporate spores that would potentially be included in Season Three of the show, but given how things have gone this season, my best guess is they’ll almost all be cut.

Walking back the decision to include spores is a really peculiar one to me. Adapting this, and the existence of stalkers, to be newly evolved forms of infected rather than mainstays of humanity’s understanding of infected, deprives the characters of a sense of normalcy within their world. The evolution of the infected is something that occurs in the second game, but it feels more like an enhancement of gameplay rather than a narrative necessity. There’s so much going on within Ellie’s world where she’s at a disadvantage already, so adding these new elements of infection in the show just amplifies that to a degree that feels a bit like overkill. The show has gone out of its way to minimize Ellie’s efficiency in dangerous situations (as we’ll discuss soon), particularly in how she handles infected.

The opening scene with Ellie and Dina in the theater as Dina tracks WLF movement made me physically recoil a few times. Their interactions are so bizarrely juvenile and seemingly removed from the situation they find themselves in. Ellie is still written to be so much more lighthearted and silly compared to her game counterpart and it’s difficult to reconcile with how detached she seems to be from her goals for revenge. In the game, this first interaction between them plays very differently and is directly following a mostly lighthearted flashback scene that ends in a wave of melancholy. I’m sure we’ll talk about it during the flashback episode. Ellie and Dina had spent the night apart because of Ellie’s cruel statement that Dina is now a burden due to her pregnancy. The next morning, Ellie finds Dina listening to a radio she had repaired as she tracks WLF movement and suffering from pretty significant morning sickness. The two reconcile, but there is an important aspect to this exchange in how Ellie doesn’t explicitly say she’s sorry for what she said. Throughout the game, we see this struggle within Ellie not only to forgive those who have wronged her, but also an inability to admit when she herself has done wrong. These moments amplify a mounting sense of uneasiness that the player feels when watching Ellie’s actions play out on screen. The game is consistently and adamantly anchored in a perpetually growing sense of rage and dread that the show has mostly avoided. Despite Ellie’s shortcomings, Dina remains committed to supporting her through this quest for revenge, which also grows increasingly hard to watch.

The show includes a moment where Ellie finds a guitar and plays a few chords of Pearl Jam’s song “Future Days”. Big moment!! Kind of. “Future Days” is a song that springs up throughout the game, working as a way for Ellie to reconnect with Joel’s memory. By the time she plays the song briefly in the theater, it’s now the third time in the game we’ve heard the song, once from Joel directly and once in the music shop before Ellie performs a song for Dina. Cutting these mentions of the song to just this first one dilutes the impact of the song, although I’m sure we’ll see the scene of Joel singing it in the next episode.

Then there’s another exchange between Ellie and Dina about what route they should take to get to the hospital. They discuss the Scars more, which is an interesting choice as they are completely uninterested in this group in the game. Here is where the biiiiiig divergences come. Ellie’s time in Seattle has already been significantly cut down in previous episodes, mostly due to the fact multiple members of Abby’s team were cut from the show entirely. Now, as we leave the theater, it becomes apparent that they’re cutting even more of Ellie’s section.

In the game, Ellie and Dina are setting out not for the hospital, but for a fictional Seattle neighborhood called Hillcrest where reports of a “lone male trespasser” have been heard over the radio. As a reminder, in the game, Tommy left before Ellie and Dina and they are attempting to locate him as well as Abby’s crew. The assumption is that Tommy is the man mentioned over the radio and the two plan to rescue him from the WLF. Dina ultimately doesn’t go with Ellie, her morning sickness so severe that she is incapable of traveling. She gives Ellie a bracelet, insisting it will bring her good luck. Ellie shares that she doesn’t believe in luck, which is a tragic statement because it can be interpreted as a callback to her experiences with David in the first game. This separation is a point of anxiety in the game, it’s our first time playing as Ellie without a companion assisting us. The Hillcrest sequence is considered by many people to be one of the most challenging and most fun parts of the game. To start out, we maneuver Ellie through a couple different areas where there are no enemies, just opportunities to scavenge for supplies (usually necessary after the extended sequences fighting infected in the tunnels) and find new notes.

The notes throughout Hillcrest provide some really interesting backstory to the state of Seattle after the WLF had defeated FEDRA and had begun taking over control of the Seattle QZ. The residents of Hillcrest formed a sort of resistance to the WLF, refusing to relocate to a designated area until the situation grew increasingly dangerous. Most of the notes in this sequence talk about Boris, a father of a young teenage girl who is killed by the WLF after she vandalizes their vehicles. The other residents grow increasingly wary of Boris as he grows more and more reckless and attempts to rally them to fight back against the WLF in an act of vengeance for his daughter. Eventually, he realizes the other residents plan to turn him over to the WLF to ensure their own safety. In retaliation for this betrayal, Boris captures all the prominent leaders of this group and locks them in a spore-infected garage, turning them into infected. He’s bit during this choice and ultimately becomes a stalker we have to fight and kill to obtain a bow and arrow (Ellie’s weapon of choice in the game). Boris’s backstory is one example among many of other characters reflecting Ellie’s own emotional state. Boris’s desire for revenge alienated him from his community and turned him into a monster. This becomes increasingly relevant in the game while playing as Ellie.

The rest of Hillcrest involves fights with more WLF squads and infected. This part of the game introduces us to another new type of enemy, WLF dogs, who can sniff Ellie out and ruin attempts at playing stealth. Dogs as an enemy is another example of how the game constantly confronts the player and puts them in difficult, uncomfortable situations. You have to kill dogs in this game and they are going to cry out in pain and their owner’s are going to scream in horror and it’s going to suck. In theory, you can avoid doing so, but it is very, very hard to do. These gameplay sequences are difficult and long, involving upwards of 10+ enemies to get through. Near the end of the sequences, you essential devolve into fleeing from the WLF, eventually jumping through a window where suddenly you’re grabbed from behind and hidden from a passing WLF patrol. The reveal here is that the player is incorrect in assuming that it is Tommy holding Ellie. As she turns, it’s revealed that it is instead Jesse, who has followed after Ellie and Dina in an effort to help them locate Tommy.

This reveal is an exciting one in the game. You’re relieved to see another person who can join Ellie’s team, but you’re also worried about what this will mean in regard to Dina’s pregnancy. Plus, this reveal means we still don’t know where Tommy is.

Ellie and Jesse make it through another fight with the WLF, this time in the form of a car chase that ends with them crashing their car into a river. They return to the theater where Dina embraces Jesse and we get a flicker of Ellie’s insecurity about her relationship with Dina when Jesse is now present. She grows distant and withdrawn as Dina helps Jesse with his injuries and catches up with him. The weight of Dina’s pregnancy sits heavily in the air during this sequence. Jesse is under the impression that Dina just has the flu and she does not correct him. There’s a new added point of tension in waiting to see when, or even if, she’ll tell Jesse about the pregnancy. We get another flashback at this point in the game, which may or may not appear next episode.

After the second flashback, which feels even heavier emotionally than the previous one, Dina finds Ellie and helps her with her injuries. This is when Dina reveals she has overheard that Nora is at the hospital and she shows Ellie where to go. Ellie insists on going right away, even though it would be better to wait until Jesse has rested and is able to go with her. This moment is the first one where we see Dina pushback against Ellie’s quest for revenge. She seems frustrated by Ellie’s insistence to go alone and they have a moment of conflict that feels quite charged. In the game, Ellie’s desire for revenge outweighs everything else. We see her compassion, her levelheadedness, her rationale slip further and further away. The show seemingly avoids this descent, often requiring other characters to talk Ellie into continuing forward rather than her forcing everyone else to go along with her.

Playing alone once again, we maneuver Ellie through the downtown area where she fights mostly infected. She goes through an office building that is full of stalkers, who overwhelm her. She winds up falling into a river that leads into the sewers. After leaving the sewers, she makes it to a park where we have our first face-to-face encounter with the Scars. Until now, we have never seen this faction of enemies on screen, only their artwork, their carnage, and mention of them in notes. Their communication through whistling and their ability to sneak through areas makes for an exciting change in combat style compared with the WLF, who often feel much more militaristic and direct. It’s a challenging set of gameplay sequences that eliminate a lot of the players’ resources before the next big sequence, making for a much more satisfyingly challenging experience.

Finally, after going through a lot of enemies, we reach the hospital. The sequence begins with Ellie taking hostage a lone WLF solider who is playing Hotline Miami on a PS Vita (lol) instead of keeping watch. Ellie holds a knife to this unnamed soldier’s throat and demands to know where Nora is. The solider complies, giving her the necessary info before attempting to draw her own knife. Ellie brutally kills the soldier and this moment is significant because it represents the first time we’ve seen her kill another person while in the position of power. Previously, we’ve seen some pretty brutal displays of violence from Ellie. Whether it be in the first game, when she kills David, or earlier in the second game when killing Jordan, or even all the deaths that occur during moments of combat in the games. However, in theory, you can stealth through almost every single combat sequence in the game without killing a single NPC. So the death of this soldier is a big shift in Ellie. While the solider was going to draw a knife, Ellie had the upper hand and had the ability to handle the situation in different ways outside of killing her. Ellie’s compassion at this point has really begun to fall away and we see that in her decision to kill the soldier and then immediately chastise her dead body after the fact.

One last big combat-heavy sequence follows where we fight to get into the hospital or you can try to sneak in undetected, but this is very, very difficult to achieve. Ellie climbs through an air vent and eventually spots Nora below her. She enters the room where Nora is working on packing up supplies and holds her at gunpoint. A quick note is that the hospital in the game does not have injured WLF present. It is simply a supply point that the WLF are clearly in the process of clearing out entirely.

Ellie’s conversation with Nora here in the show plays out almost exactly as it does in the game. The only notable difference in this moment is that in the game, Nora does not apologize to Ellie for the fact that she saw Joel’s death. Their chase sequence is also mostly the same, the big difference being that Ellie eventually chases Nora to a death end at the end of a hallway. The floor at the end of this hallway is collapsed, leading down into a dimly lit, spore-filled area. The soldiers who had been chasing after Ellie enter the hallway and hold her at gunpoint. Ellie grabs Nora and holds a gun to her head and a standoff briefly ensues. After a soldier insists she needs to surrender because there’s no where for her to go, Ellie purposefully throws herself and Nora through the hole in the ground and into the spore-filled area below. This is another moment where the game gives Ellie more control over her own actions. Her choice to infect Nora is calculated and significantly more cruel. In the show, she doesn’t know what the spores are or what they may mean, depriving her character of some of her increasingly alarming cruelty.

The final conversation Nora and Ellie share also plays quite differently. Nora never explains exactly what Joel did in Salt Lake City. She instead only pleads with Ellie to “think about what he did”. She asks, “How many people are dead because of him?” but Ellie doesn’t engage with this question whatsoever. In the game, at this point, the player is still unsure of whether or not Ellie knows what Joel did at the end of the first game. There is a strong suspicion she’d figured it out, but it isn’t confirmed. The show chooses to instead tell us quite directly that Ellie knows what Joel did and she “doesn’t care”. I think this is another unfortunate example of the show telling us something rather than showing it to us. There is no sense of mystery about whether or not Ellie knows. Maybe this reveal would land better if it weren’t for the fact Ellie also has to constantly be talked back into going forward. The coldness her character displays here in this final scene with Nora is such a significant shift from what we’ve seen previously and on the one hand, I’m glad we’re finally getting this version of Ellie finally, but on the other, I find it to be something that is arriving far too late in the show to really resonate.

Ellie torturing Nora is what she does in the game as well, the only big thing of note here is how the scene plays out. This exchange between the characters is a cutscene, which typically means the player is a little more at a distance with what’s happening on screen. However, after Nora insists that she won’t give up her friend, the camera becomes fixed on a closeup of Ellie’s face. We watch as she works herself up to what she’s about to do. The button for a melee attack appears on screen and we will sit on a still shot of Ellie’s rage-filled expression until the player hits the button. The camera never cuts to Nora, we never see where Ellie hits her, we only hear her increasingly pained cries. Ellie hits Nora three times and with each strike, the player has the hit the button to deliver the blow. This moment is one of the boldest in the game in my opinion because it forces the player to actively participate in the the darkest thing Ellie has ever done. Here, at least on a first playthrough, is where a lot of players really begin to question whether or not what Ellie is doing is the right move and I believe it’s directly because of how involved the player is in Nora’s torture.

While still a difficult scene to watch in the show, I do think this still plays with significantly less impact because there is no way to replicate the direct responsibility a player feels in this moment when adapting the scene for television. Bella Ramsey is still giving a very good performance, especially in these moments with Nora, but it’s hard to view it all as truly impactful when the game’s version involves us so much more directly.

Backpedaling now to examine the changes in the show, I think it’s important to note that the show has taken around four hours of gameplay (longer if you take your time) and condensed it down into a 45 minute long episode of television. Adaptations are always going to have to whittle down their source material to some extent, but this episode really made it feel like we are speedrunning Ellie’s time in Seattle. I’m confused by why things are so rushed because this hurried pacing really deprives the show of the emotional intensity that dominates the game.

The show includes a scene where Dina vomits again, a brief allusion to the morning sickness that keeps her on the sidelines for much of the game, and she and Ellie share an intense conversation where she insists that murdering Abby and her crew is the right thing to do. This feels so incredibly heavy-handed, as all these moments do in the show, and a very bizarre choice. In many ways, this conversations makes it seem like the two are there for Dina’s need for revenge rather than Ellie’s. Dina’s backstory here is different than in the games'. In the game, Dina reveals that her mother died at some point before her sister. Dina’s sister grew increasingly paranoid over the years and the two were constantly on the move. At some point, men killed her sister and Dina does say that she would gladly torture the men if she ever found them. However, show Dina states that she killed the man who killed her family almost immediately, despite her young age and she insists on continuing on with Ellie because she would have hunted him forever if she hadn’t killed him. This version of Dina lacks an ability to accept loss and move on that game Dina possesses. Ellie in the game never ever stops to ask if Dina’s involvement is a good idea, even after the pregnancy is revealed. In part, this is because Dina stays in the theater after the reveal, but more importantly, it’s because she’s too consumed with her proximity to revenge to properly consider the safety of those she loves. Having show Ellie so worried about Dina’s safety feels awkward and distracting, depriving her character again of the nastier, more uncomfortable emotions that define her character in the game.

The show then cuts to that night where the pair have to try and maneuver around WLF guard towers. This experience is new to the show and does work as a way to replicate how abruptly the WLF can overtake the player in the game. There’s no telling whether each new sequence in the game will involve infected, WLF, or Scars, so I do like how the show attempts to exemplify that in these sequences with the WLF, the stalkers, and the Scars.

Something that I’m finding increasingly confusing is how ill-prepared the show characters are with dealing with infected. Part of this can be accredited with how “new” the stalkers are as an enemy and to be fair, in the game, the infected are definitely the most overwhelming foe to have to deal with because of how unpredictable their movement is. But at the same time, the show went out of their way to make Jackson feel especially vulnerable to infected attacks. With that reality in mind, I’d expect these versions of the characters to feel more confident about fighting against the infected since they seemingly deal with it more often. However, the show consistently puts the characters at a significant disadvantage against these foes where they are easily overwhelmed and become almost incapable of fighting back.

I’m also really tired of how often Ellie is getting chomped on in the show. While she is immune, getting bit in the game is a major rarity and something that is still considered a very big deal. Dina might know about Ellie’s immunity now, but no one else does and their willingness to believe Ellie is significantly less likely compared to Dina’s. Bites heal poorly and are easily noticeable and the two are traversing through unknown territory, the possibility of capture always present. I don’t understand why Ellie is so glib about bites, seemingly not considering at all what could happen if someone noticed a bite on her (instant execution).

Ellie and Dina’s deal with a room full of stalkers here, which does play a little like it does in Ellie’s playable sequence in the game. However, naturally, they are incapable of getting the upper hand and need saving. Jesse arrives suddenly and saves the day. Yay to strong men saving silly, naive girls…. The three flee from WLF into the park where they encounter Scars for the first time directly. Dina is shot with an arrow so that she and Jesse have to go back to the theater. In the game, Ellie is also hit with an arrow during this sequence, which means this is another moment in the show where something notable that is supposed to happen to Ellie happens instead to another character. Again and again, I feel as though everything related to Ellie is diverted away from her so that her image in the eyes of the audience remains as close to how they saw her in the first scene as possible.

Another detail about this moment in the park that I really don’t like is how the show writes Ellie and Jesse’s relationship. In the game, while Dina and Jesse did use to date, the three are a well-defined trio. Jesse is closer in age to the girls and the three have grown up together. While he does hold more responsibility in Jackson, it’s not to the extent that is shown in the show. In the park, and even in Jackson, Jesse and Ellie speak to each other in a much curter, borderline aggressive way that I find really disappointing to see. Part of what makes Jesse’s inclusion in Ellie’s gameplay going forward so interesting is he’s another character who cares deeply about Ellie and can see clearly how much crueler she’s become while in Seattle. He’s loyal to her and Dina despite their mistakes and how their choices directly put him in harms way. He’s patient and understanding and one of the more interesting characters in the game and the show, so far, has instead turned him into someone much more combative and who operates more as a roadblock to Ellie rather than a genuine ally.

The mischaracterization across the board in the show has been really disheartening to take in. There’s a very clear inability to trust audiences or to offer a challenging experience to them. Characters feel much more one-dimensional and removed from their situations. There’s no way for this to be fixed at this point. Had the season been longer, I think we could have seen improvements in this regard, but I’m also hesitant to say that given just how significant some of these changes have been. I truly just do not recognize these versions of the characters and I’m left at a loss with how to deal with them in good faith.

Wow that’s the episode! Kind of a messy write up but that seems fair given how messy this show has gotten. My writing probably makes it clear that I’m really just not a fan of the show anymore. I’m frustrated, maybe especially because people who haven’t played the game deserve more than this and they likely will never experience it if they don’t play the game or watch a playthrough. It’s a real shame!

The flashback episode is next and I’ve heard a lot of positive things about it. I’d like to think I’ll enjoy it, but if I’m being honest, given what I have seen about the episode already, I think I’ll still ultimately feel more frustrated than satisfied with it.

Sorta. For the most part.

While Episode 3 left me with a near overwhelming sense of dread, Episode 4 has provided a much needed balm to soothe my wary heart. Changes from previous episodes have led to moments in this episode that I’m still not particularly a fan of, but overall, there’s a significant improvement here that I would go as far as to say the rest of the season thus far has significantly lacked. Transparently, I think what has changed the most is that this one feels the most like the game.

This is an episode all about choices. As individuals, as partners, as groups, the choices here carry significant weight and propel us forward in ways that are essential to the larger framework within the story as it continues.

You know the drill, for this piece, I’ll be going through the episode and comparing it to the game, analyzing how these changes from source material impact the overall narrative and whether or not I think those changes work well. As we’ve seen in previous episodes, the amount of changes is growing with each episode, although it’s easier to understand why those changes are being made in this episode specifically. Any sort of predictions will be saved until the end of the episode and will be clearly marked.

Easily, in my opinion, the best part of the newest episode comes in the form of Jeffrey Wright. I personally consider him to be one of the best working actors today and it’s a relief to have him play the role of Isaac once again. His presence in the game is incredible despite how limited it is. Including more of his backstory here is a great choice given how little we know about his role as the leader of the WLF before the events of the game transpire.

In the game, throughout our time in Seattle, we gradually learn more about Isaac, especially in Seattle Day One, but our information (at this point in the story) is scattered through notes found throughout the city as Ellie and Dina look for a way forward. We know he took up the mantle of WLF leader after FEDRA successfully executed the original leaders, a pair of siblings. He infiltrated FEDRA at every level, inserting covert WLF members at the gates leading into the Quarantine Zone, amongst the higher ranking FEDRA officers, amongst civilians in the area. He rewarded boldness and a willingness to question choices made by those in power, writing in notes that that mentality contributed to great leadership down the road. He punished some members of his group, stationing them in dangerous areas despite their anxieties and pleas for forgiveness. Most notably, in these early sections of exploration, a specific note is perhaps the most illuminating of his character. In a more open, exploration-heavy section of Seattle, the player can (optionally) find a convoy of FEDRA vehicles that have been riddled with bullets. Inside the lead vehicle are the dead bodies of FEDRA officers who were hiding inside the truck in hopes of escaping the city. Amidst their bodies, the player can find a note directly from Isaac, addressed presumably to one of the now dead soldiers that reads as follows:

Everything is in place. We will be waiting.

Once we intercept the convoy and take the FEDRA officers captive, you can abandon your post and join us.

I know you’ve taken numerous risks and lived in fear of being discovered. Your loyalty to our cause is appreciated.

Isaac

Personally, I’ve always interpreted this note, where it was found, and what later scenes reveal about his character, as an indication that Isaac sacrificed his inside man to ensure all of the FEDRA officers were killed in this prepared trap rather than abide by his promises found in the note. A key part of his character lies in the fact that Isaac is ruthless and unafraid to kill those who get in his way as he fights to maintain control of the city.

Interestingly enough, the scene portraying Isaac’s backstory in this episode seemingly reimagines this specific note and its context. The FEDRA vehicle full of unsuspecting soldiers shown in the game feels very similar to the one we see in the show. The biggest difference is that the show has Isaac playing the inside man, a sergeant.

The conversation between soldiers in this moment is helpful in showing just how fascist and gleefully brutal the FEDRA officers often became in Quarantine Zones. Our last interactions with them came in Season 1 within the Boston QZ and the recently liberated Pittsburgh QZ. It’s been quite some time since we’ve seen this specific group and it’s important to hear about their moments of cruelty here alongside seeing Isaac’s cruelty in present day. Josh Peck’s appearance as one of the FEDRA officers is a surprise and another really neat addition to his recent filmography.

What I’ve always loved about Isaac’s character is that he is extremely willing to participate in extreme forms of violence, but it’s done with a cold, quiet assurance that makes the moments all the more terrifying. Wright conveys that very well in how he portrays Isaac chastising of his squad, in his somber exchange with Hanrahan, and in his clean, emotionless slaughter of his men. He does what must be done, at least according to his own perceptions, but there’s a weight to his movements that illustrates the invisible burden that he carries.

The introduction of Hanrahan here is extremely interesting. She is, presumably, a character we know of well in the game but who we never see beyond mention in notes or more artistic forms of expression or even know the name of. Despite no onscreen moments in the game, her influence is huge and is foundational to understanding the state of Seattle while Ellie is there. It’s interesting to see how the show portrays her as the rebellions leader rather than Isaac himself. I like this change as it will contribute a lot to future events in the show. If there was one area of the game the show should be expanding on, it’s Hanrahan and Isaac, and it’s nice to see that becoming a key part of the episode this week and seemingly future episodes.

Ellie and Dina’s first day in Seattle is a very interesting combination of scenes plucked straight from the game and restructuring to accommodate previously cut or changed moments from the game. Little exchanges as they journey through the streets such as their naivety about Pride flags and talking about Apollo 1 after finding dead bodies in a tank are little dialogue exchanges that the player can trigger through non-combat areas.

Dina scrounging through the pharmacy is a new addition. I find its inclusion to be a really heavy-handed foreshadowing to her big reveal near the end of the episode. In the game, we see her puking at the sight of dead bodies and Ellie writes in her journal about Dina feeling sick as they traveled through Idaho and Eastern Washington. We see her grow increasingly fatigued as the two maneuver through the infected infested light rail tunnels. But we never see her find or take a pregnancy test. I find an addition like this to be another example of the writing holding the audiences’ hands too much. However, I think it’s also an unfortunately necessary inclusion given how different of a relationship Ellie and Dina have at this point in the show vs the game. In the show, it’s less likely for Ellie to see what Dina is going through worth noticing or drawing concern.

The guitar scene in the music shop is a really special moment to see brought to life in the show. It’s a fan favorite, especially because it’s a very, very rare moment of tenderness amidst a game perpetually plunged into grief and anguish. But it’s also important to note that this moment between Ellie and Dina is completely missable in the game. Bella Ramsey does a wonderful job of performing the song and I really enjoyed Isabel Merced’s performance in this moment too. In the game, before Ellie starts singing “Take on Me” she sings part of a different song that carries significant memories about Joel and I’m a bit bummed to not see its inclusion here. It is first performed in the beginning of the game and is brought up repeatedly, specifically throughout the duration of Seattle Day 1, but it hasn’t made an appearance in the show yet and I’m surprised to see it removed entirely so far. Guitars in the game are used as a way to call us back to Joel, a reminder of his memory and, at times, as a transitionary tool to lead into flashbacks, which help break-up the days in the game. After Ellie performs “Take on Me” in the game, she and Dina discuss a moment they shared back in Jackson where she performed the song at a bonfire they attended. Dina states, “You should have kissed me then” and Ellie responds, “I wanted to”. This exchange is removed from the show since the two aren’t together yet, which makes sense, but it does deprive us of another moment of direct expression of just how long Ellie and Dina have cared about each other beyond just a platonic relationship.

The music shop is found within the same “open world” space as the FEDRA convoy mentioned above. At this point in the game, the player has to lead Ellie and Dina through various abandoned areas as they look for gasoline required to open an electric gate, which leads to a visible WLF building, the Serevena Hotel. Only two areas in this space are mandatory, both of which are, according to another note found, the only locations that might possess gasoline, a synagogue and a courthouse. Infected are found throughout these areas, breaking up the quiet, dialogue-heavy exploration with moments of combat.

I’m sad to see the synagogue section removed. Throughout your time in the building (and the open world area at large), Dina opens up about her own upbringing, her sister who was killed, and her relationship with Judaism. She admits to Ellie that she still prays regularly, despite not practicing, as a way of processing her grief. The discussion is a highly relevant one as we progress further in the game and Ellie continuously denies her own grief. While the show is offering us a lot of these little exchanges between Ellie and Dina, they’re predominantly of a very different nature than the ones shared in the game. We learn so much more about Dina as a person in the game compared to the show, and their conversations carry a lot of weight because of how consistently the loss of Joel is the dominating force behind their actions. The show, so far, is not maintaining this same atmosphere, which I think is a real shame. Everything so far feels a lot more lighthearted, outside of the scenes with the WLF and Isaac.

A majority of Ellie and Dina’s first day in the city continues to play out very differently in the game compared to the show and that is directly because of the exclusion of specific characters. After finding gasoline, Ellie and Dina enter the Serevena Hotel, where they find WLF bodies. Killed recently by gunshots, the two follow a trail of the dead until they encounter a room where Nick, one of the members of Abby’s group, is tied to a chair. He’s dead, but was clearly tortured first. It’s our first sign of Tommy’s presence in the city and reveals that Ellie and Dina aren’t far behind him. It’s also our first taste for revenge. As a player, if you’re on board with this path for vengeance, this is a bittersweet moment. One of the intended targets is dead, but we don’t get to participate ourselves. Ellie expresses a similarly mixed reaction that gives Dina brief pause. Dina is disquieted by Tommy’s brutality, but accepts it as necessary and shares that she would have done much worse if she’d been given the opportunity to tie her sister’s killers to a chair.

Dina and Ellie leave the hotel, intending to find a building to camp in for the night before continuing their search for Tommy. Riding on Shimmer, the player jumps over a barbwire barricade and lands on a landmine. The blast sends Dina disappearing out of sight and Ellie is knocked to the ground. Shimmer is severely wounded. A squad of WLF soldiers converge on Ellie, shooting Shimmer in the head before knocking Ellie out. Shimmer in the show is still alive, seemingly minding her business somewhere in the city and I wish her well.

When Ellie wakes up, she’s been tied up and is face to face with Jordan, the most aggressive member of Abby’s group. In the show, his character has been combined with Manny’s. Jordan is the person Ellie cut with her knife as she tried to save Joel and who kicked her repeatedly. The two have a tense exchange where Jordan demands to know how many of them are in the city. Ellie’s final words to Jordan are delightfully chilling: “You can’t stop this.”

Jordan’s squad leader, Mike, enters the room and states that Isaac has issued a new mandate, kill all trespassers. Jordan stops Mike from shooting Ellie, insisting that order doesn’t make sense and that they need to get as much information as possible from her to ensure they can fight back against the group. As the two argue, Dina appears from above, standing atop a skylight. She shoots through the glass, killing Mike before falling to the ground below and knocking the wind out of herself. Jordan turns to Ellie and states, “You shouldn’t have come here”, before approaching Dina and he attempts to strangle her to death. The player has to try and grab a piece of glass to cut through Ellie’s restraints and upon doing so, races towards Jordan and stabs him in the neck, killing him. It’s a high intensity scene, which is missed in this episode, but it’s understandable why we don’t get an adaptation of it. On Jordan’s person is a note from his partner, Leah, another member of Abby’s group. His death our first taste of direct vengeance and it offers a satisfying change in pacing for the game. From here on out, it becomes an almost relentless push that rarely lets up.

The player then has to escape the building they’re in, an elementary school, where you have to fight a large number of WLF. This is our first true experience with understanding how large, how well trained, and how aggressive the WLF are. Ellie and Dina, once safe, read the note from Leah which mentions she’s stationed at a TV station nearby. In the show, the two notice the station on their own and travel there almost immediately, which makes sense since they don’t need to first find Nick and Jordan. Reaching the station takes more time in the game as the player encounters multiple WLF patrols that are out looking for Ellie and Dina.

Once reaching the station, the scene they discover is near identical to the one depicted in the show. The WLF squad based there are strung up and disemboweled. Graffiti on the wall indicates an unknown group are responsible. In the game, we haven’t encountered a group of slaughtered people, so our first impression of this secondary group is cult-like imagery of the mantra “feel her love” and these dead soldiers. It’s a very different introduction compared to the show, which first presented the aggressively exposition-heavy scene for this group in the last episode. In the game, this moment is also happening in broad daylight, a big difference from the show which has these scenes playing out in the night amidst heavy downpour. I like this change, it adds a lot of necessary atmosphere to the scenes that the show has notably lacked before this moment.

Ellie and Dina find Leah amongst the dead and Ellie expresses more disappointment that she didn’t get to kill Leah herself. Leah had photos on her person of the entire Salt Lake Crew in Jackson and Ellie is confronted with a photo of Abby, which feels especially poignant as it’s our first time seeing the character since Joel’s death. As Ellie and Dina try and leave the station, they run into a squad of WLF who have arrived to check on the dead squad. You can either fight or flee from the squad in this section and I think the show captures both of these options incredibly well. The mounting tension as you try to stealth by enemies that significantly outnumber you, the frantic chaos once you do engage in combat, these sensations are replicated very well in this part of the show.

In the game, the player eventually flees into the light rail tunnels just like show Ellie and Dina do. The game spends a lot more time in the tunnels though, which are used as a way to introduce the player to a new form of infected, Shamblers. I’m skeptical that the show will ever include this type of infected. If anything, their inclusion might be saved until Season Three. Throughout this section, since it’s an enclosed area, Ellie and Dina are wearing gas masks. In the game, spores are a prevalent component to the infected’s presence and their presence is often used as a way to show Ellie’s immunity to others. The show, thus far, has replaced this idea with the mycorrhizal network that draws hordes to different areas and having Ellie be bitten again and again. Although Ellie had admitted to Dina earlier in the game when they slept together that she was immune, Dina didn’t believe her, so she maintains her secret by wearing the mask through the tunnels.

That detail becomes essential at the end of the section in the light rail tunnels. A light rail car Ellie and Dina are walking through, falls and in the fall, Ellie’s mask breaks. Dina panics and almost pulls off her own mask, insisting they can share. The thought is rooted in hysterics, non-immune people become infected the second they breathe in spores, and helps show quite plainly how much Dina cares about Ellie and how she’s willing to risk her own safety for Ellie. The two flee the tunnels as a huge horde of infected chase them. After escaping, Dina collapses, completely exhausted, and Ellie helps carry her to a nearby theater to rest.

The conversation in the theater is perhaps where the biggest differences between the game and the show lie, at least relationally, and this is the section of the episode that works the least for me.

In the game, Ellie and Dina have their first fight as romantic partners in the theater. Ellie demands to know why Dina is so sick. Dina counters with her disbelief that she just witnessed Ellie breathing spores. Ellie reiterates that she told Dina already that she was immune and Dina fully accepts this truth finally. She never, ever holds Ellie at gunpoint. There is never a moment in the game where she considers killing Ellie, at least that we see shown explicitly. After admitting her immunity, Ellie begs Dina to say something since she’s fallen completely silent. In tears, Dina admits that she’s pregnant. Ellie is immediately indignant, demanding to know how long she’s known and when Dina reveals she’s suspected for a few weeks, Ellie grows more upset, frustrated that Dina didn’t say something when there was still time to turn back and return to Jackson. Dina explains that she didn’t know for sure and she didn’t want to be a burden to Ellie. Ellie counters with, “Well you’re a burden now, aren’t you?”, which leaves most players, and Dina, shocked. This moment is especially poignant if the player experienced another optional dialogue sequence earlier in the game. Ellie tells Dina about Bill from the first game and Dina expresses distaste for Bill’s decision to live alone in a town, insisting you can be safe and still have community. Ellie counters that going alone is the wiser move, viewing companions as a possible “burden” if they become sick or hurt. That conversation ends with Dina in a noticeably shaken mood. Dina’s dialogue in their fight works as a call back to this exchange and Ellie’s choice to use that same verbiage strikes a nerve. Back in the theater, Dina, horrified, goes to sleep without another word, leaving the player to explore the rest of the theater and marinate on what exactly Ellie has said and the implications of Dina’s pregnancy. Ellie locates another guitar near the theater’s stage, she plays the song I alluded to earlier, and we enter our first flashback of the game. This scene will definitely make an appearance later this season as it has been shown in “next time on” previews.

Ellie spends the entire night in another area of the theater. When she eventually locates Dina the next morning, she’s repaired a radio (in the game, the theater has power via a generator), and has begun tracking the WLF’s movements throughout the city. The two reconcile, although Ellie never explicitly says that she’s sorry for what she said. The two overhear on the radio that a “lone male trespasser” has been located and needs to be stopped in an area to the north. The two prepare to head out, but Dina’s morning sickness prevents her from going with Ellie. Dina gives Ellie her bracelet as a “good luck charm” and Ellie says she doesn’t believe in luck, a subtle callback to previous conversations with Joel and David in the first game.

This is, obviously, extremely different than how the scene is portrayed in the show. Most significantly, the game’s version is rooted in heavier, more negative emotions compared to the show which ultimately plays these reveals in a much lighter, more joyful manner. I’m not a fan of this shift personally. A key part of Ellie’s time in Seattle is that as we progress through the days, we see more and more how much of Ellie’s humanity is being stripped away from her as she goes after Abby. That lack of humanity is made the most clear through her interactions with her companions, who she seemingly goes out of her way to speak cruelly to. These exchanges also double as a form of self-sabotage, ensuring her support system grows more distant and wary of her. The game features a lot of examples of Ellie creating opportunities for her to harm herself, whether it be physically, emotionally, relationally, or psychologically. So far in the show, I’m not seeing this depth of emotion in Ellie’s character at all. The show has consistently maintained her joking, playful persona that defined her in season one and I find this to be one of the most frustrating things about this season as a whole. It contributes a lot to minimizing the gravity of situations and presenting Ellie as significantly less mature and competent.

Ironically, even though Ellie regrets what she says to Dina in the heat of the moment in the theater, her pregnancy does become a burden on the two from here on out. She becomes extremely sick and she no longer goes out into Seattle with Ellie as she continues her hunt for Abby. In the game, there’s never a moment where Ellie says that she wants to live with Dina and the baby and build a life together because she’s so blinded by her desire for revenge. Ellie expressing a desire to live that life with Dina in the show is sweet, but feels out of place, once again interrupting Ellie’s one-track mind. It also feels like a huge leap considering how unestablished their relationship is in the show.

It’s difficult because I don’t explicitly hate the scene in the theater in the show. Ramsey and Merced are delivering incredible performances here once again. It’s the larger emotional ramifications that I struggle to fully buy into. Dina’s reaction to Ellie’s newest bite makes sense, especially given the removal of all their previous interactions surrounding immunity and how much they care and trust one another as a whole. I actually really love the moment where Ellie wakes up after having fallen asleep and Dina shines a flashlight on her, waiting to see if she’s losing control of herself. Ellie sits frozen in the beam of light and you can’t see Dina at all from behind it except for the gun she has pointed at Ellie. This moment feels like a direct callback to Season 1 Episode 1, where Joel, holding Sarah, stands in a flashlight beam as well, a faceless soldier standing behind the light and pointing a gun at them too. In both instances, the fear of infection is what places the characters in these positions, but the change in outcome comes down to the choices the soldier and Dina make. The soldier decides to follow orders, shooting Joel and Sarah, unwilling to listen to their insistences that they aren’t infected. Dina chooses to trust Ellie, dropping the gun and the harsh light of the flashlight. She picks up the lantern instead, illuminating her face in a soft glow so that she and Ellie alike are cast in the light as she reveals her own secret. I’m a really big fan of this detail and how it’s conveyed on screen!

Ellie and Dina sleeping together after their confessions in this moment makes sense, but only because they’ve delayed this essential encounter so late into the story. I’m glad we get this moment, WLW scenes are still relatively rare to see on screen. Through a more logical framing though, I find it to be a frustrating turn of events that replace any sense of anxiety or dread that these confessions could, and honestly should, have with a sense of excitement. The morning after I also especially struggle with, specifically because of the huge leap the two have, essentially going from friends who have crushes to a fully committed couple who are ready to raise a child together. I think this feels extremely rushed and really doesn’t make much sense at all as a next step in their relationship, but again, this is the unfortunate byproduct of changes made in previous episodes. I’m nervous to see how these changes continue to impact future scenes, especially as the two journey towards the hospital (and Nora) together.

As mentioned above, Ellie goes through this upcoming section alone and she’s looking for Tommy in a neighborhood called Hillcrest rather than heading to Nora, so we’re also seeing a potential acceleration of Day Two similarly to how the show accelerated the events of Day One in Seattle. Hillcrest is one of the most fun sections of the game to play, but including it in the show doesn’t make much sense given how much less action-focused the show is and because of the changes in motivations for why Ellie is leaving the theater that day.

Similar to the opening scene, the other scene we get with Isaac in this episode is one that I really enjoy. We see a similar scene in the game where Isaac is torturing a captured Scar/Seraphite. However, in the game, this scene is our very first time seeing Isaac on screen and it carries significantly different connotations. Jeffrey Wright is knocking it out of the park in this scene, monologuing as he tortures his victim. The conversation here lands well for me, but I think that’s just because I’m blinded by my affection for Wright and the relief that these scenes are committed fully to their darker tones compared to Ellie and Dina’s scenes which lean far too much on playfulness. It is ultimately, more of the same heavy-handed exposition, telling the audience exactly where things stand between the Seraphites and the WLF rather than revealing these disputes to us more through environmental details and direct encounters. I do appreciate the final moments of this scene though where we see the soldier Isaac spared in the opening scene again. The hardening of his character, from a wide-eyed, scared FEDRA officer, to the cold, cruel WLF member lands very well. Shoutout Ben Ahlers for his performance as this character. I’m curious to see if we see more of him in the future of he was used purely in this episode as an illustration of what happens when control is prioritized over humanity.

A couple of predictions for next week’s episode: Ellie and Dina will ultimately become separated, most likely due to Dina’s pregnancy. We’ll get a flashback set in Jackson of Tommy and Jesse reacting to Ellie and Dina’s departure possibly (or we’ll get this in episode 6/7). Ellie will say I love you to Dina which will be sweet but a bit eye-rolling given how the rest of their relationship is playing out so far. All of the flashbacks in the game are being saved for an episode dedicated solely to them, which I think will be show in episode 6. Predictions over.

Yippee! What an episode. Overall, it’s definitely my favorite of the season so far. I feel a lot better after this episode than I did episode three. I’m really looking forward to seeing how this next episode plays out. If you so please, definitely share your own thoughts about the episode! I’m very curious to hear how this episode is received by game-players and show-only people alike!

I have A LOT of thoughts, which is probably going to become a redundant thing to say (if it isn’t already). If there’s one thing the latest episode of the show has shown me, it’s that the divergences from the game’s story structure are going to be more vast than previously anticipated, especially as each change compounds onto the others. This is a fact that I’m still very torn about overall, but at the very least, it means I’ll have plenty to write about here each week!

Like the two previous write ups, I’ll be doing my best to compare the episode to its source material while avoiding major spoilers as best as I can. Any predictions for the future that rely on spoilery knowledge will be marked clearly.

I want to be candid. I didn’t like the latest episode. Issues I’ve had with the previous episodes that I was pushing aside came to the forefront in ways that I found almost impossible to ignore. However, there’s still a lot of story left to go in the season’s remaining four episodes and in the already confirmed season three, so who knows! Maybe I’ll come around to things by the end of the season?

I guess we’ll find out!

Usually, I try and break these down by going through the episode’s scenes one by one and comparing them to the game. But with just how different things are here, it might be easier to focus first on the game’s order of events and work outward from there. Hopefully it doesn’t feel too messy, but I do think avoiding mention of future events does mean my critique of these scenes is a little shallower than I’d prefer. I’ll probably circle back to a lot of things later into the season.

The opening of this episode drops us immediately into the aftermath of the infected attack on Jackson and the loss of Joel. The two catastrophes entwining to form a larger, greater sense of loss within Jackson as a community. The show has striven to show that this is both a personal story and a larger story about the state of humanity as a whole, a noticeable change from the game which remains mostly singular with the exception of some pivotal moments, and we certainly feel that change in how the show navigates Joel’s death. A woman washes Joel’s body (rather poorly, might I add) while surrounded by the dozens of other dead community members. He is just one among many. Tommy comes in and takes over the duty, staring at Joel’s watch. The only words spoken, “give Sarah my love”, come straight out of the mouths of every YouTuber I’ve watched play the game. One of those sentiments that is gentle and tender, but also hard to reconcile with. This attempt at somber acceptance feels a little like a disservice to exploring the complicated dynamic that Tommy and Joel have shared, probably because Gabriel Luna has no one to bounce off of in this moment and because the writers seem to really want every emotional beat stated out loud instead of existing in the subconscious. Joel’s watch is synonymous with Sarah’s memory in a way that I feel is strong enough on its own without the show needing to name it so blatantly. Then we head to Jackson’s medical center where countless people are being treated for their injuries, Ellie among them. She awakens and wails in anguish, clearly stuck in the moment of losing Joel.

It’s not that these moments are necessarily bad, Luna and Bella Ramsey both give great performances, but they do feel heavy-handed, filling in gaps that didn’t necessarily need to be filled. Part of what’s so devastating about the games is how the characters withhold their emotions, from each other and themselves, and it’s odd to see these blatant displays, particularly in front of uninvolved community members. The show has done a lot of work to make its characters more directly state their feelings, but I’m not a huge fan of these sorts of changes, as they often feel like fan-service or like audiences can’t be trusted to handle nuanced, more complex displays of emotions. This moment in the hospital also paints Ellie as isolated in a way that the game doesn’t. She’s comforted by unnamed community members that we don’t know. Dina, Jesse, Tommy, none of the characters that make up her limited support system are present. For all the self-sabotage Ellie does in the game in an effort to isolate herself, her support system fights, and fights hard, to remain present in her life amidst the grief and rage. It’s interesting to see a lack of this in one of Ellie’s most vulnerable moments.

In the game, after Joel is killed, Ellie is knocked out cold by Jordan (one of the Salt Lake Crew that the show has, so far, just combined with Manny’s character). The show’s version of this moment allows for Ellie to crawl to Joel and cradle his body, but the game keeps her confined, unable to reach him. The divide between the two feels especially intentional and impactful in the game given how unwilling Ellie is to address her grief going forward and how estranged the two were before Joel’s death. She’s awoken by Dina who has found her, Tommy, and Joel. We get a devastating closeup of Ellie taking in the sight of Joel without the adrenaline or rage clouding her perception and she has to come to terms with the fact he really is gone. Even in this moment, she does not move, frozen where she lays on the floor.

Then we cut to Ellie in her home. Bruises have formed on her face, but in a state that implies some healing has begun. It’s never clearly stated how much time has passed, but it can’t be more than a week or two at most. Cutting to this point leaves a lot of space for us as a player to imagine what came after the previous scene. How did the group get Joel back to Jackson? How did Tommy react when he woke up and realized what had happened to Joel? All these unknowns work because the player gets to transplant their own expressions of grief into these moments of black screens instead of the show telling us exactly what happened.

A knock at the door prompts her to move with great effort and it’s revealed Tommy has come to visit. He’s equally as bruised and haunted looking. He brings food and word of Maria’s concerns for Ellie. The two sit and have a tense conversation, Ellie expressing an adamant assertion that she is leaving to go after Abby in the morning whether Tommy comes or not. The show has Dina withhold all the information she has about the Salt Lake Crew until Ellie is well enough to travel, but it’s clear in the game Tommy has clued Ellie in on everything he can right away. The way they speak in this scene implies they have talked about what to do next many times before. Tommy’s reluctance to leave for Seattle seems to stem, at least at first, from Maria’s denial of sending a group after Abby. Lines of dialogue here are used in the show, specifically when Ellie says, “If it were you or me, Joel would be halfway to Seattle already”. This line carries a lot more weight in the game though since the time between the death and now is much shorter. In the show, they allow three months to pass before the story progresses and the scenes leading up to this moment imply a sense of healing and moving on within the community at large. Tommy’s response to Ellie’s statement is an important one. Where show Tommy elaborates on why Joel would not go after Abby’s group, in the game, Tommy simply states, “No, he wouldn’t” and there’s a certain type of venom behind those words that has multiple implications.

It’s not just that Tommy doesn’t think Joel would avenge him, whether, like the show says, because he’s dead and there’s no point, or because the two’s complicated relationship left Tommy with possible doubts of how far Joel would go for him. Tommy’s words also imply Joel wouldn’t leave Ellie alone to go after Abby and he wouldn’t bring her, unwilling to put her in harm’s way. He’d stay with her over seeking justice for Tommy. That last implication is the most important. Tommy understands how much Joel wanted to protect Ellie and he knows a trip to Seattle is the last thing Ellie should be doing because it puts her in grave danger.

In the game, there’s a lot more unknowns about the WLF as a group. The show has Dina state that Eugene told her about them, that they were a small sect that they hadn’t heard about in years, so an assumption is drawn that they are still a small group now. But in the game, there is none of that insight. This is a new group, unheard of and there is no way of knowing if they are a small group or a large group until they get there. Ellie isn’t deterred by these unknowns in the ways Tommy hopes. After Ellie says she’s going no matter what, there’s a long, heavy pause between the two where the camera stays trained on Tommy. He looks defeated and wary before there’s a shift in his expression. He asks Ellie to give him a day so he can appeal to Maria one last time and hopefully get a group put together. The two end the conversation in an embrace and we see Ellie fight the urge to breakdown while in his arms.

Another cut to black follows. The next scene takes place the following day starting with Ellie visiting Joel’s grave. After an emotional moment of silence, she and Dina begin walking out of the cemetery, heading for Joel’s house. Dialogue here reveals that Tommy left Jackson the night before, leaving the community in a state of lockdown and making Ellie and Dina’s chance of sneaking a horse out with them next to impossible. Tommy’s choice to leave alone indicates that the moment in the previous scene where we see a shift in his expression is the moment where he makes the decision to leave. In his effort to prioritize what Joel would have wanted for Ellie, he’s chosen to go after Abby alone, bringing about the justice that Ellie craves; while also hopefully ensuring she remains safe and unscarred by these actions. It’s not just that Ellie would be placed in a life-threatening position by going to Seattle, it’s that she’s never taken another person’s life purely out of vengeance. She’s killed to protect, but never just to bring harm and Tommy knows firsthand how damning and life-altering that distinction is. He hopes his leaving will allow him to shield her from that permanent shift in her character.

The other pivotal moment in this time before entering Joel’s house is in stating clearly the relational dynamic between Ellie and Dina. Ellie offers Dina an out several times, insisting since Tommy’s leaving makes things harder and that she doesn’t have to come with her. Dina stops Ellie in her tracks and cradles her face, the two’s physical intimacy already established in the earlier scene during the blizzard when the two had sex. Dina says one of my favorite lines in this moment, “You go, I go. End of story”. It’s short, sweet, and illustrates so much about Dina’s character. Her loyalty, her commitment to Ellie and to their desire for justice, her steadfastness, and her calm. This statement also makes it clear that the two will be going forward as a unified couple rather than individuals. Ellie is at her most fragile in these moments and Dina knows exactly how to help settle her and comfort her. Ellie’s trust of Dina is made even more clear when she allows Dina to join her at Joel’s home. When they reach the door, Ellie pauses, her hand trembling and Dina offers to get what she needs. Ellie declines and the two enter the home together, Dina remaining on the first floor so Ellie has the space she needs to grieve, but with the knowledge that Dina is nearby if needed. These moments of care also help define Dina’s character, her empathy for others always at the forefront of her dialogue and choices.

The playable sequence that follows is one of the most impactful in the game. As Ellie, we get the opportunity to wander through Joel’s house. Along the way, in various rooms, there are seemingly random objects we can pick up and interact with. Ellie often murmurs vague dialogue while holding the objects, alluding to fond memories with Joel that we as a player don’t know about yet. Each of these objects ultimately relates to future flashbacks we play through later in the game, making their inclusion here work as subtle foreshadowing. It’s a profound sequence because it shows just how settled and alive Joel was in Jackson. His softness is something we saw very little of in the game (the show explored this much more) so through his home, we see the hints of that softness in his hobbies and the mementos he holds onto and all the other environmental details. My favorite moment in this sequence is when Ellie smells Joel’s jacket hanging up in the closet. I’m glad the show included this as well as it’s a deeply realistic display of mourning. I did the exact same thing after the death of my own dad. This scene is so quiet and so slow, a sharp distinction from the previous moments leading up to Joel’s death and the majority of what is to come.

The show also shows that Ellie has a mostly empty bedroom in Joel’s house. I find this change another example of how much more simplistic and literal their relationship has been portrayed in the show. In the game, Ellie never lives in Joel’s house, she always lives in her garage setup. The garage is located on Joel’s property, but there’s a very clear boundary drawn between the two that I think is really important to understanding the full scope of their relationship. They care deeply for one another but they never, ever call each other dad and daughter. The boundaries Ellie maintains with Joel add a lot more depth to the conversations surrounding her autonomy and how Joel has deprived her of it through his actions in Salt Lake City. The lines of their relationship blur at times, making them messier and more difficult to navigate. A lot of players describe them as father/daughter, but that’s merely an interpretation rather than a canonized dynamic. Keeping their relationship out of this literal space makes it more complicated and, in my opinion, more satisfying to see playout. Ellie and Joel choose each other in various ways despite that familial verbiage and sense of connection and that is just as legitimate, if not more so, than naming it so literally.

In the episode breakdown, Neil Druckmann states that the show version of this sequence in Joel’s house allows for more time to mourn as an audience whereas the game rushes us onward. However, I strongly disagree with this thought. The playable sequence in the house can be drawn out for as long as the player would like to remain there. The cut-scene with Maria doesn’t begin until the player has Ellie retrieve Joel’s revolver, and even then, you have to walk her down the stairs to really transition the game onward. As a player, you can sit in the house for 15 minutes, 45 minutes, however long you’d like. There are so many little details in each room that paint a larger picture of Joel’s life whereas the show condenses these down and moves us away quite quickly.

When Dina calls out to Ellie in the game, it’s not because she’s entered the home uninvited like in the show, it’s because someone else has joined them. As the player leads Ellie down the stairs, the moment transitions into a cut scene where Maria reads Ellie and Dina a letter from Tommy. Maria is furious and extremely worried that Tommy has left her and gone on this journey alone, perceiving it to be a suicide mission. Tommy’s note begs her to lock Ellie up, so she doesn’t go after him, but Maria ignores this request, instead pleading for Ellie and Dina to bring Tommy back alive. She offers them a horse and supplies so that they don’t have to sneak out ill-prepared. Going forward in the game, Ellie is able to use this idea of rescuing Tommy as a way to manipulate her companions into going further and further in her quest for revenge. Game Dina’s choice to join Ellie is purely out of a sense of loyalty and a desire to protect Ellie, rather than a more selfishly motivated one. Show Dina wants to help Ellie, but as she states in the show, she “loved him too” and that seems to take priority when it comes to understanding her reasons for wanting to go. In earlier episodes, I liked the change of having Dina have a relationship with Joel, as it offered a more established sense of community for Joel to be a part of, but now I’m really not a fan of this change as it adds a lot of combative energy to Ellie and Dina’s interactions. They’re supposedly best friends but they’re constantly at odds with each other in the show in a way that is rarely an issue in the game. Their time in Seattle is spent having to fight against multiple groups of foes so their unified stance with one another is all the more important and I don’t feel like the show’s version of Ellie and Dina is providing that so far.

After a cut to black, we are just outside of Seattle. Ellie and Dina have made it. Text on screen reveals that it’s Seattle Day 1. The player navigates through a new foliage-heavy environment until reaching the gates leading into Seattle’s Quarantine Zone. It’s abandoned and the skeletons of long-dead FEDRA officers are lined up outside the gate, presumably killed by WLF (which is confirmed through findable artifacts). A puzzle sequence follows and afterwards, we’re in the city and on the move, hoping to find our first sign of the WLF ASAP. This sequence plays well because the death of Joel is still extremely fresh for the player (having happened only 30 minutes before at most) and the atmosphere of these scenes is laced with an uncertain apprehension. As players, we want to find the WLF quickly and these moments of gameplay deprive us of that instant gratification, instead offering an overwhelming sense that Elle is in over her head, vulnerable and at a disadvantage, in an area that is absolutely massive and with virtually nothing to go off of in terms of finding her targets.

The time jump shown with our arrival to Seattle is the first time jump since the opening of the game. In the time after Joel’s death when we’re in Jackson, it’s still winter. The cold weather adding to the emotional feel of all the scenes. When we cut to Seattle, the lush, green environment provides a jolt of surprise, helping illustrate how much time has passed. I understand why a time jump happens in the show before Ellie leaves. They prioritize showing how hurt she was physically as well as allowing the community to be more involved in the entire process of events. Plus, realistically, they wouldn’t have been able to bury Joel in the winter like the game shows, but this change does mean we’ve lost out on environmental elements adding to the larger emotional impact of these moments. The starting point of Ellie’s debilitating grief and rage beginning in the throes of winter, which is cold, and dark is set in direct contrast with the freshness of spring as Ellie begins her new journey, which is a really rewarding, subtle piece of storytelling and I’m sad it’s not included.

There’s a lot of moments after we first enter the QZ that I’m starting to think won’t be included in the show at all as they relate to characters that haven’t been included in the show so that’s about where I’ll stop game scene wise.

Now to tackle the new scenes included in the game.

Gail the therapist is becoming my enemy. I find her inclusion distracting and another effort from the writers to take a lot of the subtly of characters and twist it into blatant conversations that immediately rid us of any nuance these moments could have. I’m not a fan of her conversation with Ellie, which is laced with so much snarky sarcasm, or Tommy. I’m all for new characters being added to the show, but their inclusion should, in my opinion, more naturally fit into the story. So far, Gail feels like a forced insertion every time she comes on screen. My apologies to Catherine O’Hara. I think she is great, but I hope we don’t see her anymore.

Dina withholding information about Abby is just one of many moments that she shares with Ellie that alters the state of their relationship. The lack of any physical intimacy in the last episode has grown into something so much more frustrating this episode. In the game, established by their sex scene, Ellie and Dina are in a committed relationship to one another. By the time they reach Seattle, Ellie’s journal entries reveal that she is fully in love with Dina. They are explicitly romantic partners. They even call each other “babe”! The show instead has Dina state that she isn’t gay (I’m hoping this is just them trying to explore the idea of her coming to terms with her bisexuality rather than erasing it entirely?) and that she and Jesse have gotten back together. Sorry, but HUH? If the episode hadn’t already lost me at this point, it would have right here with that conversation in the tent. The games have received a lot of hate from those who are upset by both games’ explicit inclusion of LGBTQ+ characters/relationships, and I find it really disappointing to see them veering so sharply away from having Dina and Ellie’s relationship be a key part of the story. One kiss at the dance does not provide the same impact as a full-blown relationship in terms of adding to the larger narrative or positive queer representation.

In the show, a community meeting happens after the three-month time jump where Ellie has to plead for the council to approve sending a group after Abby. The community has a debate over what to do, various individuals sharing their opinions. The dialogue in this scene feels like a “This is the point of the story” seminar where the intent behind the story’s larger themes are statements said out loud and the delivery of these statements feels stilted. I’m not opposed to the meeting as a whole. As previously stated, the game built Jackson into a near-utopian environment, run solely by Maria. Shifting this perspective to a more vulnerable, communist structuring works well and offers some interesting spaces to explore. I just don’t really think the show is using those spaces to its advantage. There’s this repeated trend of characters saying things out loud that are so literal and exposition heavy, it’s really starting to feel like the story as a whole is depriving itself of the heavier emotions the game carries. It feels like the writers would rather give audiences immediate payoff instead of letting questions and worries fester and build into bigger, more impactful moments down the road. In addition, these conversations demand us as an audience to look at the loss of Joel in a wider context, understanding how fragile Jackson is, how many were lost, etc. The game’s singular focus adds to the relentless demand for vengeance that follows Ellie throughout her journey, and I find these moments with the community, who demands we see the bigger picture, to be like an emotional roadblock, trying to get us to think of things more critically long before the game does. I’m all for questioning the motivations of our protagonists, just not through such blatant displays or so early on in the process.

Another aspect of the meeting I’m not a fan of is the realigning of Seth as a character. In this episode he receives a chance for further redemption after calling Ellie and Dina “dykes” at the Winter Dance. He’s the only one who seems to adamantly support their desire to go after Abby. When the council denies Ellie’s request to go, he helps get Ellie and Dina a horse, provides more supplies and a new rifle, and ultimately shakes Ellie’s hand. I find this development of his character counterintuitive to why he’s included in the game. In the game, the only scenes we see featuring him are his moment of cruelty at the dance and then the attempt at an apology the next morning, which is phrased in such a way that makes it feel like it’s not a genuine apology. Ellie essentially brushes Seth off and that is the last we see of him. His character works as an early introduction to Ellie’s ability to hold a grudge and refusal to forgive the people who have wronged her, which is absolutely essential to her character arc throughout the rest of the story. Changing this to allow him to be a more nuanced character technically also speaks to the larger ideas of the game, but I really am of the mind that not every single minor character needs a fully fleshed-out arc, which the show seems determined to provide. Having Ellie and Dina sneak out instead of leave with permission obviously changes the entire feel of their mission as well, although I believe this change is done to provide reasons behind moments that will likely happen in future episodes that couldn’t otherwise happen because of other changes the show has made.

The show also chooses to introduce us to a new group of people who remain nameless in the show for now. A group of survivors with scars on each side of their mouths who communicate via whistles are fleeing the city. A father and a daughter have, yet again, an exposition-heavy conversation about their Prophet and why faith alone cannot protect them. They hide from Wolves (WLF) and we see later via Ellie and Dina that the entire group was massacred. Ellie thinks Abby and her crew might have killed them all and she states they are even more justified in their pursuit of them. This change is alarming for two reasons. The first being that the game never, ever has Ellie looking at a bigger picture when it comes to killing Abby. It is purely for selfish reasons and that narrow view allows for impactful conversations with her companions in the future. Secondly, this group is introduced in a much more mysterious and sinister way in the game. Similar to Abby and her crew, the show has cast aside the idea of allowing these groups to reveal themselves gradually over time through background dialogue and environmental cues and instead gives us dialogue-only explanations early and rather abruptly. There is still mystery with this group as we only see them briefly here, but the game takes much, much longer to show them on screen, instead having the player following behind them, taking in their left behind impact on areas with a forever mounting air of fear. In the game, our earliest secondhand interactions with this group are laced with eerie graffiti and bloodshed. We do not view them as innocent refugees. Any sort of nuanced perspective about them doesn’t come until after the halfway point of the game and so the immediate inclusion of that perspective here once again feels like a refusal from the show writers to let moments breathe and build overtime.

The show ends with the reveal that the WLF are very, very large and very well-armed. This is something players learn fairly early on once Ellie and Dina reach Seattle, so timing-wise, I’m not opposed to this reveal, but it still adds fuel to the show’s inability to let things gradually build and a tendency to tell rather than show things to the audience.

Overall, this episode essentially covers maybe 30 minutes of cut scenes/gameplay total, which is also probably why they take so many liberties when it comes to adding new story points.

The next time teaser makes it really clear to me what scenes exactly we’ll be getting in the next episode and while I’m excited to see some really pivotal scenes adapted to the screen, I’m also kind of dreading these moments. The emotional impact of these moments will likely land very, very differently because of the changes made in the episodes so far, maybe especially this episode.

I’m still excited to see what happens next, I’m still hopeful I’ll like things more once I have the full picture in front of me, but for now… I am mostly feeling wary, dissatisfied, and very unsure of what the show is doing.

The upside though is the positive feedback from those who have not played the games has continued! I think I’ve shared previously that the creators of the show have stated that the intention of the show is to offer this story to those who will never play the games. I’m not just a game player, I’m an obsessive when it comes to The Last of Us games, so at the end of the day, my frustrations and uncertainties about the directions the show is headed, while still valid, aren’t as important as the impact the show is having on those who are experiencing everything for the first time. I’m really glad people are enjoying the show so far! I think I just wish show-only watchers could experience the way the game makes you feel more than the show is allowing so far.

Phew, I did it. Until next time! I would love to hear what you thought of the episode overall if you feel like sharing!

IT happened.

The show changed A LOT.

As mentioned in my last write up, I will be writing primarily about the changes made between the show and the game while avoiding too much mention of future events to ensure spoilers are kept to a minimum. Any explicit discussion about the future of the story will be clearly labeled and saved until the end. Not much point in a lengthy preamble, is there? Let’s get into the episode and how it differs from its source material.

Fair warning: This will probably be a long one.

Episode 2 drops us into a hallway we know well. While this specific dream sequence is new, the use of this mechanic is essential to Abby’s character throughout the game. Abby operates in ways that are very reminiscent of Joel, the two both presenting a cold, hard front to most people that ensures their inner vulnerabilities are rarely exposed. A majority of our understanding of characters comes from the dialogue they have with their companions during playable sequences. It takes a long time for Abby to start to open up to her companions during her sequences so her nightmares in Saint Mary’s hospital operate as that window into her inner thoughts, providing insight into her relationship with grief and guilt that the player wouldn’t otherwise know. It’s a pleasant surprise to see this concept introduced so early as it’s something we don’t start seeing in the game until the halfway point. Typically, her nightmares are a repetitive series of walks down that hallway and into the room on the other side of the door, environmental changes the key to understanding her changing view of this specific memory. Having a direct conversation with her younger self is possibly one of the more rewarding changes made in the episode. Not only does it offer a more direct statement about her relationship with this past trauma, it also illustrates to us the difference in this past version of Abby vs her current iteration. In the game, that difference is made abundantly clear through the use of Abby’s muscular build, but since the show has (foolishly) omitted this detail about Abby, this is the next best thing. Dever does an excellent job of conveying the shift in Abby’s personality, her young self carrying a vulnerability that is noticeably gone in her older self. There’s also a clear indication here that while she is reliving the moment in Salt Lake City over and over again, she doesn’t want to confront the trauma head on. She urges her younger self to stay away, to avoid the pain that awaits through the door, her pleas intermingled with her younger self’s muffled sobs that are forthcoming. I’ll come back to it later on but there’s a line in this exchange that stuck out quite sharply to me: “His brains are on the floor.”

The order of events in this episode is a little out of sync with the game. As stated previously, the game opens with Joel’s admission to Tommy that he killed the Fireflies to save Ellie. Joel meets with Ellie briefly. Then we jump into the future were Ellie is awakened by Jesse (as seen in this episode). After this first sequence as Ellie in Jackson, then we have the moment in the lodge where Abby jolts awake from an unseen nightmare. Players don’t know her name, who she’s with, that she’s a former firefly, why she’s on screen. The shift here is the byproduct of the first episode opening with the scene in the makeshift graveyard. In the show, we know what Abby is after, which means a lot of the subsequent dialogue can be changed from the game. When Abby wakes up in TLOU2, the only other person awake is Owen (at this point in the subtitles he’s only referred to as “man” while Abby is referred to as “woman”). They converse briefly, conveying a certain degree of intimacy with each other, before Owen tells Abby he wants to show her something. A brief sequence follows where they navigate through the snow. This is part of the first two hours of the game, which operates as setup and as a tutorial so we learn the controls for how to crawl, navigate tight spaces, jump, etc. Through this sequence, Abby and Owen’s conversation reveals details about them: their names, their relationship to one another, Abby’s fear of heights, and that they’re outside of Jackson, hoping to find “him”.

This reveal is the first sign of trouble in the game, the first instant where a foreboding sense of unease begins to take hold of the player. The name of their target is never explicitly stated (this carries a very interesting weight to it that I won’t discuss for a possibly a long while), but as a player, we’re quick to assume they’re looking for Joel due to something he did either in the previous game or before the game’s events. Owen points out a lookout in the distance that he saw a patrol head to. He thinks the rest of their group will want to turn back after they realize how established Jackson is, which is why he showed Abby first on her own, hoping they can figure out what to do. Abby expresses an inability to rely on Owen, which he counters with a statement that becomes a defining remark of the story, “I want what you want. But not at any cost”. There’s something else about this conversation that is noticeably excluded from the show to the point where I’m a little unsure if it will be included at all. I think it will be, it’d be an alarming thing to omit, but who knows… So I won’t mention it for now just in case. The exchange ends with Abby so upset with Owen that he walks back to the lodge and she decides to forge ahead on her own towards the lit up lookout in the distance. We encounter the first hints of a horde of infected through the proceeding playable sequence while also learning how to stealthily kill infected in a very similar fashion to how you would if you were playing as Joel. There are countless moments within Abby’s playable sequences that remind us of Joel, which is an important comparison that the show, so far, seems to be avoiding. The sequence ends with Abby finding horse tracks in the building blizzard before the game cuts back to a playable sequence as Ellie.

In the show, after Abby awakens, the rest of the group is present for this initial conversation with Owen about the size of Jackson and what comes next. There’s a shift here that feels pretty noticeable. In the game, Owen and Abby, while part of a larger group, often have their own asides and sense of togetherness that keeps them partially separated from the rest of their team. The show touches on this a little bit, but having Abby have to defend their presence in Jackson to the entire group at once adds a different feel to the group dynamic. It feels much more like Abby is on her own rather than supported by Owen. The group knows Abby is heading out rather than her disappearing in a moment of frustration. Owen expresses blatantly that he intends to convince Abby that they need to go back to Seattle, once again establishing a noticeable wedge between Abby and Owen that isn’t really there in the game. It’s also worth mentioning that in the game the Salt Lake Crew has three additional members: Nick, Leah, and Jordan. Nick and Leah are exclusively background characters with no dialogue but Jordan does hold a little more significance in future scenes.

Jesse waking up Ellie plays almost exactly like it does in the game. I do think this version of the scene feels a little more stilted than in the game, presumably because of how much more information we know in the show at this point compared to the game. As mentioned before, this is essentially the true opening to the game so the entire feel of the dialogue is different. We don’t know who Dina is, just that Ellie kissed her and she used to date Jesse. We haven’t seen the Winter Dance scene so we don’t know what exactly happened between Ellie and Seth and Joel the night before, just that something happened that ended in Ellie angry with Joel. Ellie doesn’t have an impassioned declaration that she and Joel have worked things out and that she wants to go on patrol with him. Instead, when Maria tries to ask Ellie about what’s going on between the two of them, Ellie responds with a terse “we’re fine”, that sounds exactly like the opposite of that. I’m not a fan of how Ellie expresses this point in the show, it feels a little heavy handed in my opinion, particularly because Ellie has always held her relationship with Joel close to the chest rather than talking about it openly with people.

Another thing of note in the game is that stalkers are an already well established form of infected (they’re considered the secondary stage between a runner and a clicker) so the town isn’t worried about them. The potential threat of a horde of infected nearby is briefly mentioned as a possibility but the threat carries a lot less weight. Game Jackson is so well established that there is a significant perimeter around the town where infected aren’t present. There is no town wide emergency preparedness meeting. The inclusion of these details are interesting, especially in helping further establish Tommy’s role within the community. In the game, his position feels much more passive. Maria is the one running Jackson, seemingly exclusively, rather than a council of individuals working together to guide the group. The responsibility Tommy carries in this episode in particular will carry a lot more significance in the future I think.

One of the biggest things to note change wise is that in the game, Joel and Tommy are out on patrol together, not Dina and Joel. In the game, Jesse and his patrol partner are meant to relieve the brothers while Ellie and Dina are partnered up for patrol by Jesse (chillest ex boyfriend in the world and wingman of the century). Keeping Tommy in Jackson shows how embedded he is in leading the town, his focus directed towards the community at large rather than the game’s sharper distinction that he’s with Joel first before anyone else. That change feels especially poignant after the previous episode which involves Joel and Maria’s debate about the value of individualism vs collectivism. Joel’s constant insistence that individual care trumps collectivist care is something that comes up again and again and this new episode shows just how damning that choice can be in this world. In relation to that, there is no horde of infected attacking Jackson in the game. Abby is still chased by a horde until she’s led to Joel and Tommy, but this group of infected never gets even remotely close to Jackson. It’s an interesting addition and one I actually find quite confrontational as a game player. I don’t want to watch Tommy kill infected, I want to get back to Joel and Ellie as quickly as possible. But this desire to focus on the individual rather than the group made me think a lot about those ideas of individualism vs collectivism. This is inherently a personal story, but the actions of the individual character’s have wide impact and it is important to sit with the larger group from time to time rather than sticking exclusively with just Ellie and Joel so that we can reckon with those impacts fully. So I ultimately like that confrontation, it’s a nice challenge from the show, maybe particularly as someone who knows the game so intimately.

Keeping Tommy in Jackson also means there’s the possibility for an added sense of guilt that we don’t see with his character in the game. Could Tommy have saved Joel if he’d been on patrol with him or if he’d gone out to look for Joel when he learned his brother couldn’t be reached via radio? In the game, since he’s there, we know the answer is a definitive no, but now we might get to see the character(s) grapple with that question directly.

Ellie and Dina’s time on patrol offers a lot of insight into their dynamic. As I mentioned in the last episode, there’s a greater sense of flirting tension between the two of them that is obviously completely gone from this episode. They clear the supermarket of infected before the blizzard falls upon them and leads to them waiting out the storm in a nearby library. The most significant moment during this time in the library comes after the two find Eugene’s hidden weed farm located in the library’s lower level. Ellie and Dina smoke a joint before their conversation turns to their kiss from the night before. The scene ends with the two having sex. While not technically essential, I’m disappointed that this moment isn’t included in the show. The game’s inclusion of sex has always felt refreshing to me and adds extra layers to its characters’ relationships. It’s not that Ellie and Dina are incapable of showing how much they care for each other without this scene, but I do think it keeps their dynamic in a slightly more juvenile place. In addition, after having sex, Ellie reveals to Dina that she is immune to the infected, something Dina doesn’t believe but that shows VERY clearly how much Ellie trusts Dina. We can tell from visual details and dialogue that Ellie and Dina have known each other for years, but it’s not until they share this intimate moment together that Ellie feels safe enough to reveal her secret to Dina. The lack of this moment is quite jarring and while it might come up in a different way in the future, I miss the intensity and vulnerability of it in this episode.

Also in their dialogue during patrol, we learn that Dina used to go on patrols with Eugene before he died (Jesse holds this role in the show). Now that the show has more explicitly revealed that Eugene was bit and Joel had to kill him, I think it’s appropriate to point out how different his character is here compared to the game. In the game, Eugene dies of “old age” (technically a stroke). He was a former Firefly who specifically served with Tommy. In a note, we learn that he was previously married with a young child but he abandoned his family to join the Fireflies and there is no other mention of his family so it’s clear they never reunited after he left the group. Ellie expresses a desire to go out like Eugene since he dies of natural causes despite the fact the characteristic Dina uses the most to describe Eugene is “lonely”. This favoring of isolation is something that comes up a lot through Ellie’s dialogue throughout the game and is especially interesting given her younger self’s admission to Sam in the first game that her greatest fear is ending up alone.

Phew, a lot already discussed and we haven’t even gotten to The Moment. But I think it’s time.

Joel Miller is dead. He was violently murdered. This is the moment that led to thousands of people quitting the game. It’s why you see a lot of people online saying TLOU2 is one of the worst games of all time. It’s an extremely bold move to kill off such an iconic, complex character. I also think it’s the only way things could have gone for Joel after what he did. There’s so much tragedy and righteousness and other very heavy feelings surrounding this loss and having to grapple with the reality of all those sensations is one of my favorite things about the game. I’m looking forward to seeing how this moment and its after effects manifest in the show going forward.

While I appreciate the show’s attempt at recreating this moment in a new way, I will say… I am ultimately disappointed by the changes here. Watching this scene play out certainly got my heart racing, but it didn’t leave me shattered like the game’s depiction did (and still does, even after dozens of playthroughs). If you haven’t seen the game’s version of this moment, I highly recommend watching the scene so you can feel the difference yourself.

As Joel and Tommy enter the lodge where the Salt Lake Crew are camped out, there’s a sharp divide between the player and the Miller brothers. As a player, there’s this overwhelming sense of impending doom that begins to permeate through the scene. We felt a glimmer of it in Abby, Joel, and Tommy’s meeting. Tommy introduces himself and Joel to Abby and there’s an expression that crosses Abby’s face that essentially confirms Joel is who she’s looking for. Then, in the lodge, the player knows Joel and Tommy are outnumbered and surrounded. However, the brothers enter with a distinct sense of ease. They don’t feel threatened, even though they are curious about this group of individuals who are “just passing through”.

Key to this exchange in the game is that Joel introduces himself to the group by name. The entire room shifts in recognition and anticipation, a slow pan revealing each unknown enemy eyeing Joel. Joel cautiously states, “y’all act like you’ve heard of us or something” before the camera whips to the left, revealing Abby who was previously out of frame. She holds a shotgun, which she aims and fires at Joel’s knee after replying, “that’s cause they have”. The moment is abrupt, violent, and nauseating. Tommy screams in horror and attempts to fight back before he’s violently knocked unconscious. In the show, even this initial setup is exceptionally different.

Joel is so focused on Jackson burning in the distance that he’s hardly looking at any of the group. He’s ordering them around, demanding they help save the town. Dina is being cared for by Mel for frostbite. Abby is the one to introduce Joel by name to the rest of the group, cluing them in on what’s happening. I’m not a huge fan of this change. Part of the tragedy of Joel’s death in the game lies in how much of the moment is because of his own trusting attitude. Abby was going to kill Joel one way or another once she led him back to the lodge, but the game’s insistence that he essentially seals his own fate feels a lot more significant than Abby’s introduction in the show. The way the group knocks Dina out via medication is also strikingly more tame and a little frustrating. It once again shows a much more significant divide between Abby’s group and herself in that she’s the only one causing harm to people whereas in the game the group as a whole are active participants in this process.

Knocking out Dina before shooting Joel also feels strange, depriving us of a moment where she could properly attempt to fight back. Dina’s pseudo-daughter relationship with Joel is very sweet and having her here for this moment instead of Tommy ensures her investment in what comes next is more personal to her. I like that change. What I don’t like is how much more fragile and easily dominated she feels in this moment because of the show’s decision to avoid spilling her blood. The vulnerability here feels less rewarding to take in.

Abby speaks with Joel for a long time after shooting him, which also left me frustrated. I think it’s fair for the audience to know with certainty that these are former Fireflies. However, revealing explicitly that Joel killed Abby’s father here is quite surprising. We don’t know just how personal things are for Abby until the halfway point in the game and that reveal is one of the most impactful cut scenes in the entire playthrough, specifically because before then, the player has always assumed Abby only killed Joel because he deprived the world of a cure. The loss of a cure is the last thing on Abby’s mind in her quest for revenge, but the reveal of that coming so much later on leaves the player stunned in a way that the show has effectively taken away. That lack of clarity adds a lot more anguish to Joel’s death as well. The player doesn’t know for sure why this is happening and quite frankly neither does Joel and that makes it all the scarier. Where previously I was a fan of some of the mystery being set aside to ensure show watchers have a fair playing field, I think stripping these moments of all their mystery really dilutes the weight of future scenes that were used to provide deeper understanding in the game.

Another noticeable difference between the game and the show is where inside the lodge Joel’s death occurs. In the show, it happens on the main floor of the building, right in front of floor to ceiling windows. The scene is so bright, endless light shining through. In the game, this moment happens in the bottom level of the building and is plunged in near darkness. As Ellie, we enter the lodge through the upper level and have to descend further and further down into the home in what feels like a journey into hell itself. The pained cries of Joel guide the player down to where he is rather than Abby’s angry yells leading Show Ellie up to the main room. This descent down changed into a progression upwards deprives the moment of a lot of its emotion, claustrophobia, and visual appeal. On the other hand, it is interesting to have this moment happen in the light given the Fireflies mantra, “If you’re lost in the darkness, look for the light” which once offered a sense of hope and now propels us into such a painful loss. Ultimately, I think this sort of change is mostly inconsequential, but I’m still a little let down by it because it does contribute to a larger shift in the feel of the scene.

Bella Ramsey conveys Ellie’s panic in the moments directly after taking in the sight of Joel very well. They are great and deserve all the praise they are receiving. So does Dever through this entire sequence, I was really impressed by the way she conveys Abby’s rage and internal anguish. A small but tragic change that I like is that in the show, Joel seemingly attempts to get up because of Ellie’s pleas. In the game, at that point, Joel is so far gone he can barely move his fingers. When Ellie enters the room Joel is being tortured in, we also get the most significant moment with the game exclusive character known as Jordan. He’s the one Ellie cuts with her knife, she slashes his face wide open. He kicks her repeatedly in the stomach in retaliation and after Joel is killed, he kicks her in the head, knocking her unconscious. All of this is minimized or removed entirely. Manny is seemingly a blend of his game character and Jordan in this moment for the show, which makes sense.

In the first season of the show, whenever Joel had a moment of anxiety, the sound of ringing would begin and overpower almost any other sound. I loved this detail, specifically because it was something utilized in TLOU2 to convey Ellie’s own bouts of anxiety and I liked that this would be a similarity between the two characters down the line. In the game, after Joel is killed, all we hear is this ringing and Ellie’s muffled vows of vengeance. I was surprised the show didn’t lean into this auditory detail much at all, especially after they used it so much in the first season. I missed its presence, even though the show does try to replicate its sensation with a silent approach.

The final blow Abby imparts on Joel is also very different between the game and the show and the change feels very intentional. Stabbing someone is inherently more intimate due to the need for close proximity. However, in the context of this scene, I think it also feels, somehow, less violent despite it being shown fully on screen. In the game, Abby hasn’t broken the golf club she uses and so for the killing blow, she brings the club down on Joel’s head one last time. While we don’t see a full on shot of this final moment, Joel’s brains are visible afterwards, covering the club and the floor. We hear the crack as his skull caves in. The change here is more narratively intentional as well in my opinion, calling us back to the exchange Abby has with herself in her nightmare. In an effort to deter her younger self from entering the room, Abby states, “His brains are on the floor”. Personally, I think she stabs Joel instead of bashing his head in because she doesn’t want to recreate the image of her father’s dead body. It’s clear from her nightmare that she can’t look at that image head on. I think if she had left Joel with his brains on the floor, while a direct “eye for an eye” approach, it would have dropped her into the moment she found her father’s body. The image haunts her and so she avoids it, not just in her nightmares, but in her waking moments as well.

Ellie embracing Joel’s body after the Salt Lake Crew has departed is an interesting addition as well. It once again adds a lot more explicit tenderness to their relationship compared to the game. While the game doesn’t show anything remotely like this, concept art for the game does imply that this more tangible expression of grief was something they wanted to explore and I think it’s neat to see it actualized in the show.

Here is the concept art that the final minutes of episode 2 is recreating:

Another really powerful addition to the show in its final moments is that we get a cover of “Through the Valley” sung by Ashley Johnson, the voice actor and mo-cap performer for Ellie in the game. Johnson as Ellie sings this song in the very first trailer that was ever released for TLOU2. It’s one of my favorite video game trailers of all time. (Now that it’s no longer a spoiler, I recommend watching it if you haven’t played the games)

Wow. Okay. I think I’m done with all my little comparisons. Ultimately, I think this is still a solid episode, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as the first episode of the season. However, the 30 minute documentary Making The Last of Us begins with Mazin and Druckmann stating that the entire point of this show is to offer this story specifically to people who have never/will never play the game. At the end of the day, I have the game, which I think in many ways is a near perfect experience, and the show, while exciting to witness, isn’t for me in the ways it is for people who haven’t played the games before. I think this episode confirmed that for me more than any other episode. I’m at peace with it (but I also will continue to compare the differences between the two extensively lol).

I have a lot of questions about how the rest of this season will unfold. I think the next episode will be surprisingly quiet and slow. I think we’ll have a lot of intentional time spent mourning Joel’s loss and dealing with the aftermath of his death and the horde attack on Jackson. I’m looking forward to these moments and seeing how they are conveyed in comparison to the game.

Thanks so much for reading if you did, would love to hear what you thought of the episode overall if you care to share. Until next time!!! :)

Haha lol. No but seriously. Anyway…

The Last of Us Part Two is my favorite video game. I’ve played it more times than any other video game. Between the original release and the remastered release, I’ve logged 200+ hours in the game. I’ve beaten it on every difficulty at least once. I’ve beaten it with Permadeath turned on. I’m playing through it again right now on Grounded+ just for funsies. I love this game. I love the characters and each of their arcs and all their relationships with one another. I love the emotions it steeps itself in. I love the thematic ideas it explores. I. Love. This. Game.

I’ve been anticipating the second season of The Last of Us with bated breath. The first season’s efforts to translate the game into a new medium worked wonderfully thanks to its blend of copying scenes from the game beat for beat and exploring the world in new, sometimes more intimate ways. However, I will say, like the first game, my enthusiasm and interest in the show is much more about how these events lead into the sequel. The Last of Us 2 (TLOU2) is where the real meal is in my humble opinion.

I’m really excited to dive into each of the episodes here. This and other future write ups are going to be primarily a comparison of the game vs. its episodic counterpart. I need somewhere to go “well in the game…” over and over again without driving anyone too bonkers. What I anticipate to be one of the biggest differences between the two is related to the fact that the game relies heavily on a non-linear storyline whereas the show is seemingly sticking closer to something a little more direct. However, while I’ll be comparing the scenes depicted vs. their source material, I won’t be writing at length about future events that are coming. There is a fair deal of people who haven’t played the game and on the off chance they’re reading this, I don’t want to spoil things for them. (Hi show-watchers!) For any sort of predictions, I’ll save them for the end, keep them vague, and I’ll be marking them clearly so you can skip them if you so please!

There’s an elephant in the room the moment this season begins. The show opens with an introduction of Abby and her crew (Manny, Nora, Mel, and Owen, which is a smaller group than in the game. Maybe the others will join in, in the next episode). Everything here is new, never before seen in the game. There are allusions to a scene like this in the form of a note and an audio recording of Mel’s that can be found in the game, but they remain much more vague due to their placement in the story. The game opens with a recap of the final moments of the first game with Joel revealing what he did to the Fireflies to Tommy in a moment of vulnerability and tension. Tommy’s reaction is a quietly horrified one that ends with a promise to take the truth to his grave. It’s followed by a scene that we might possibly see in a future episode. Joel gifts Ellie a guitar and performs the song “Future Days” (the name of this episode *nudge nudge*). Their interaction is marred by this unspoken tension, the byproduct of Ellie’s uncertainty about Joel’s lie, that breaks only in the final moments where the player can’t help but sigh in relief and delight at the prospect of the two growing closer while living in a safe community. THEN we jump five years into the future, specifically to the morning after the Winter Dance.

An introduction to Abby to start the show is striking for a multitude of reasons, the biggest being this seemingly abandons the sharper sense of mystery surrounding her game equivalent’s introduction. In the game, at least at first, there is a lot of uncertainty about who Abby is and why she’s near Jackson. The reveal of her intentions is gradual and slyly revealed through fight sequences and dialogue but it’s still completed in less than two hours of gameplay during the prologue/tutorial stage. The larger meaning behind her goals isn’t addressed until the back half of the game. The show rips the bandaid partially off which I don’t mind at all. Anyone who has played the game knows Abby is a threat and letting the entire audience in on that detail levels the playing field in a way that I think is worthwhile, especially with how rampant spoilers are.

Abby’s need for revenge permeates through this scene. It’s cold and bubbling with rage, her grief condensed down into something particularly sharp and dangerous. Her group seems wary of her words and her intentions. They can’t meet her gaze, except for Owen, whose presence works almost immediately as an assurance and an anchor for Abby to hold onto. If Manny, Mel, and Nora are a point of contention for Abby, working as a wall she can’t climb over, Owen is operating as a doorway for her intentions to navigate through. Their relationship is one of the most interesting of the game and I really like this early depiction of their dynamic in the show.

While I’m a fan of Kaitlyn Dever overall, I do still feel, at least at this point, that her casting was a mistake. Abby is one of my favorite characters in TLOU2 and while I think Dever can more than easily convey the emotional complexity of Abby, I still firmly believe that the physicality of Abby is absolutely essential to her character. I’ll hold off on some of the reasons why that is for now, as I think it might make more sense to discuss those later on as more about Abby is revealed in future episodes, but for now… Yeah, I’m bummed. I felt especially bummed when Owen and Abby are close together in frame, his towering over her feels so off to me.

The remnants of the Fireflies offer a lot of insight into the events after Joel’s hospital rampage here. Ellie’s immunity was not widely known even amongst their ranks. Details about Joel’s identity are fuzzy and somewhat uncertain. Seattle as a next option is mentioned and confirmed as where they should go. Important names are mentioned. Having these discussions in front of the giraffes Ellie and Joel once admired and the newly dug graves of their fallen comrades builds a really distinct image. The hope that can be found in the animals commingling with the devastation Joel’s choice has left. Life and death in a snapshot. The Fireflies have the ability to choose to follow the light (the giraffes) or the darkness (death) in this moment and Abby is adamantly pointing them towards the latter. “When we kill him… we kill him slowly.”

In the show’s flash forward to five years later, we’re embedded deeply into the day to day life of Jackson. I really appreciate all these new moments. Jackson is so briefly featured in the game, the urgency to reach key moments rushing us out of the community in less than 30 minutes. The game also paints the town as a fully functioning utopia, whereas the show is willing to explore some of its possible vulnerabilities, which I find refreshing. There’s frequent mention of the tension that has sprung up between Ellie and Joel during the time-skip here. We see Ellie training and her frustration over how Joel’s influence is impacting the way others interact with her. There’s a reveal of pipes with lots of roots in them, which we circle back to at the very end of the episode and that I think everyone is being waaaaay too chill about despite the show’s emphasis on how the cordeceps operate through a mycorrhizal network. Dina and Joel have a sweet interaction where he teaches her how to repair electronics (something that game Dina learned from the deceased Eugene) and the two speak about Ellie’s anger towards Joel. (Joel asking “what did I do?” made me snort. What a deluded guy). Ellie and Tommy out on patrol together, taking down infected and it’s revealed here that Ellie carries a sort of bemused indignation about having to hide her immunity. Joel and Maria’s back and forth about the state of Jackson, the inability to keep up with the needs of the growing community, and whether prioritizing themselves or all vulnerable people is better works very well.

Amongst these new additions, the big kicker is that Joel is going to therapy.

I think this is the addition I find least interesting or beneficial. I’m a huge fan of Dina and Joel having an on-screen and deeper relationship (it will contribute a lot in the future). I really enjoy the moments between Ellie and Tommy, the game often keeps the depth of their relationship off-screen and it’s nice to see them interacting here in a way that is similar to a moment in the game that I suspect might be cut. Joel and Maria’s conversation is beneficial in laying out their dynamic, the vulnerabilities of Jackson, and showcasing yet again how Joel is a man who operates on an individualistic level instead of a collectivistic one. Therapy time with Gail though… Is a change that I’m struggling to wrap my head around, even though there is a specific moment here that I really appreciate.

It’s odd watching Joel attempt a display of emotional vulnerability in as clerical as a setting as therapy. Gail certainly breaks the mold of what we would expect from a therapist, drinking during their session, accepting weed as payment, and revealing she hates Joel for killing her husband, Eugene, even though it was necessary. There’s a lot said and unsaid in these moments. I find them somewhat interesting, although I am a bit confused on why Eugene’s backstory has seemingly changed considerably from his game counterpart. The moment in this session that I love is when Gail makes the clarification that Ellie is not Joel’s daughter. The two’s relationship is very pseudo-father/daughter and that aspect is part of why it’s such a compelling relationship to watch play out. However, I have always been a bit put off by how often fans of the game refer to them explicitly as father and daughter. I find that that language is often used to absolve Joel of some, if not all, of the responsibility of his choices surrounding Ellie’s autonomy.

The trailers for this season had led me to assume that Joel would be revealing everything he did to the Fireflies to Gail. His line, “I saved her”, which is used in the trailers, is a key part of his confession to Tommy during the start of TLOU2. I think it’s possible he reveals things to Gail fully in the future because it definitely doesn’t seem like we’ve seen the last of her, but I am relieved that he doesn’t immediately lay it all out on the table. Joel’s inability to open up to others has always felt like one of the most foundational aspects of his personality. Putting him in therapy, especially willingly, adds a softness to the character that feels more like a concession to how beloved Pedro Pascal is (and to a specific subset of fans who refuse to acknowledge Joel as a flawed character). These moments between Gail and Joel are interestingly combative, especially in how the framing of them implies Joel is unwilling to acknowledge the harm his actions have caused, but until I see more of where exactly this might be going, I think I can safely say this is the part of the first episode I like the least.

Maybe the biggest surprise of the show is how much I love Ellie and Dina’s interactions, the new ones for the show and the old ones from the game that have been brought to life here. Bella Ramsey and Isabela Mercad have amazing chemistry and they bring such an intimate, special relationship from the game to life in a really wonderful way.

All of Ellie and Dina’s interactions in the game occur after the Winter Dance and their first kiss. We previously only knew these two as a couple, with the exception of journal entires that discussed their friendship, so having these moments on patrol before the dance are a real treat. We get to see that outside of a romantic relationship, the two compliment each other and when they work together it’s with an almost unspoken ease. And we get to see the possibility of something more crackling in the air between them. I really like the little bit of slowburn that comes from this. I think it really helps show their age in a natural way. Their conversation about their exes (Kat and Jesse) is changed a bit from the game but I think it carries more weight here, especially since Kat literally joins them on their patrol. In the game, Kat is only ever mentioned in conversation or journal entries, we never get to meet her (a sequence including her was ultimately cut). I’m a little bummed that Jesse and Ellie seem less close in the show compared to the game, but maybe we’ll see that they’re closer in future episodes.

I won’t say much else for now about this, but I want it on record that I am EXTREMELY curious about the change the show makes in having the mini horde of infected take down a grizzly bear instead of a moose. The imagery of a moose is used in the game A LOT and its significance is pretty substantial in my opinion so the change here was a bit eyebrow-raising.

Ellie’s encounter with a stalker during her and Dina’s patrol is also fantastic and a nice change from the game. The supermarket sequence involves the two working together the entire time and there are no stalkers, just runners and clickers. In the game, this moment is part of the tutorial section so having a large number of enemies is important to getting the player used to combat. Cutting things down so significantly and in a way that helps introduce the idea of the infected evolving over time works really well for the show and alludes to some fun possibilities in the future. The lack of combat in the show has always been a point of conversation, although I don’t mind the shift too much overall and I think this scene in particular shows how less is more sometimes. The actor playing the stalker adds a really distinct sort of uneasy tension to the moment that is really satisfying to sit in. I’m surprised Ellie gets another bite during this scene and I’m curious if they’ll use its existence as a point of focus for certain moments that will come about in the future.

Let’s talk about THE DANCE.

The quick conversation between Joel and Ellie before the dance feels reminiscent of the opening scene of the game that I mentioned above, but it definitely feels heavier given the state of their relationship. It’s awkward and stilted and hard to take in, but that’s what makes it so great. Joel taking Ellie’s guitar, a gift from him and a call back to the first season where he vowed to teach her how to play, to replace her strings left my stomach in knots. I really do think we’ll get to see the opening scene of the game in the future because it will work as a direct parallel to this scene.

The dance itself is transplanted directly from the game. The dialogue is virtually word for word the same. The outfits are the same. The scenery is the same. The song is the same. The mannerisms of Ellie and Dina and Joel are spot on. Ellie and Dina’s kiss brought me to tears, it’s so tender. The only difference is the placement of the scene, which we don’t see until the final few hours of the game. The context of the scene is completely different because of that, making this moment feel lighter overall despite Ellie and Joel’s dispute.

Random little odds and ends:

There was a lot of DiScOuRsE about Bella Ramsey’s portrayal of Ellie leading up to this season. A lot of insistence they couldn’t fulfill the role or meet the needs of the character. So far, I’m still really enjoying their performance. In this episode, especially because it is a little less momentum heavy, we really get to see Ellie defined by the passage of time without the influence of some of the future traumas her character endures and that define her arc in the game. Ramsey offers these moments to us very well and I’m so pleased with how they convey Ellie’s maturation without sacrificing her humor and other lighter qualities. I’m really looking forward to seeing how they convey Ellie’s gradual transformation throughout this story.

My biggest fear for the show was that it would take the scene I consider the key to the entire game and present it early on in the show. It’s teased in this episode and as it began to play out, I was overwhelmed with a sense of tense frustration that honestly would have probably led to this write up having a VERY different tone overall had it played out in full. Luckily, The Scene was only teased. My favorite scene, the most important scene, was not ultimately included in this episode and I thank the showrunners very much for not taking us there right now.

Overall, I’m fascinated by how much lighter the first episode of the show is compared to its game equivalent. The game has some moments of lighthearted fun, but it very quickly plunges us into a very dark place and that sensation rarely if ever lets up from there. I appreciate the changes made for the show, which allow audiences to soak up these glimmers of joy and curiosity before things get exceptionally heavy, and I’m very curious to see how the change in scene order impacts the emotional weight of other scenes down the line.

Abby and her crew are coming. The horde is coming. Jackson is smaller and more vulnerable than its game equivalent. There’s a lot to anticipate for the future.

*PREDICTIONS INCOMING*

I think the next episode will primarily focus on the incoming infected horde that is approaching. The “next time on” segment involves A LOT of scenes of Jackson defending itself against the infected. However, I think the end of the episode will involve Abby making contact with at least two people from Jackson, the two in question’s names rhyme with Tina and Coel. I think the episode will end on a cliffhanger that jumpstarts a very crucial moment in this story and then we get the full scope of that moment in episode 3. I think in episode 3 we will also see the council, seemingly led by Tommy and Maria, come back for some pivotal scenes and decisions. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think I might be right. We shall see, we shall see.

*PREDICTIONS DONE*

YAY! First episode! I enjoyed it way more than I thought I would. Full confession: I watched it twice in a row. I had high expectations and a little more wariness than excitement going in, but this first episode has instilled me with a great deal of hope and enthusiasm to see where things go from here.

Thanks for reading, feel free to share what you thought of the first episode too! :)

Where “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” had a wide berth of in-world years to stretch its wings and take creative liberties, Collins is working within a more confined space for “Sunrise on the Reaping”. Sandwiched between the first prequel and the original trilogy places the story in a precarious place that demands a meticulous retread of past mentions and a thoughtful attempt at finding a middle ground between the messy chaos of Lucy Gray’s Games and the careful refinement of Katniss’s. Luckily, Collins is an author who is neat and thorough about ensuring consistency between her books. The limited sentences from the previous books that allude to the events occurring now are each addressed and fleshed out fully rather than retconned, widening the web of intricacies that link events and characters together. Dramatic irony is our best friend here and while at first I found that a bit… cheap?, the knitting together of past and future grew on me considerably.

One of the details that I initially found a little on the cheaper side was the reveal of a direct lineage between Katniss Everdeen and Lucy Gray Baird. The Covey’s forced integration into District life by the Capitol was a particularly striking detail in “Ballad”. Seeing the gradually erasure of their presence in the District is significant given President Snow’s history with the clan and the wider determination of the Capitol to flatten Districts into homogeneous bubbles. It’s a pleasant surprised to see that the Covey not only still exists but permeates through many of Haymitch’s internal thoughts despite Snow’s efforts to erase Lucy Gray from history. It would seem the lifestyle of the Covey, wandering and freedom of expression through art and escaping from the authoritarian Capitol, is like an ear worm, transferring from a tangible community into the very DNA of the series’s most significant hero. The songs of liberation are nestled down in the deepest depths of Katniss, a game of telephone that somehow maintained its original message through decades of loss and forced forgetting.

My reservations with a detail like this lies in how it changes the perspective surrounding Katniss’s own games. This newfound link between Snow and Katniss is one that I think unfortunately fans the flames of a fandom conspiracy that I find limited in thought and counterintuitive to the wider themes at play within the series. Reddit has posts spanning at least a decade about the possibility that Prim’s name being drawn in the 74th Hunger Games was a rigged occurrence, an intentional way of punishing Katniss before Panem even knew her name. The more expanded explanation of this idea relates to Prim only having one slip of paper with her name on it, making it unlikely for her to be picked, and Katniss’s illegal hunting activities, which some argue is worth punishing despite its minimal impact. Then after “Ballad”, her similarities with Lucy Gray and Serjanus added to the idea. Now her confirmed blood relation to Lucy Gray Baird broadens the target on her back for those who dabble in the conspiracy. Snow’s blatantly expressed disgust for the Covey in “Sunrise” makes it clear he hasn’t forgiven or forgotten Lucy Gray’s actions in “Ballad”, even after 40 years, and it’s easy to imagine some assuming that Snow is still out for blood when it comes to Lucy Gray during the 74th Hunger Games.

While there’s a poetic beauty in Katniss’s father passing on “The Hanging Tree” song to her, her singing it working in the same manner as the mockingjays that torment Snow in some of his final moments in District 12, part of what makes Katniss’s position within the wider story so impactful and crucial, I think, is found in the randomness of it all. This isn’t Harry Potter. Katniss Everdeen is not the Chosen One, a prophecy foretelling of her coming before she’s even born. No one is expecting her to take down the Capitol. She’s a girl from the Seam who wants to save her sister and is ultimately taken advantage of by various bodies of power in her pursuit of achieving that goal. She’s a rebel, not a revolutionary and that difference is an important one to make. The “Prim was reaped on purpose” angle rips that reality apart and casts it aside in favor of the appeal of conspiracy, which honestly feels like one of plenty of similarities that can be found when comparing real world societal habits to that of the Capitol citizens.

So that’s one little detail that sometimes feels more like a coy name drop to me. I carry a lot of respect for Suzanne Collins as an author though and none of her work has ever alluded to that sort of tendency so I’m choosing to believe there’s more genuine intention behind intimately tying all her characters together the way she chooses to here. The easy, and perhaps most obvious, reason for these sorts of revelations falls into showcasing that revolution takes time to succeed. The overthrowing of an authoritarian government needs room to take root and build up in order to succeed, it can’t be done overnight often because of the existence of implicit submission within a people and in “Sunrise” that truth is made especially clear throughout Haymitch’s Games.

Beetee, Wiress, Plutarch, and Mags’ involvement in Haymitch’s experiences helps illuminate that reality further. The seeds of revolution have been planted within the depths of Panem for decades and it’s interesting to find out at least one attempt at destroying the Games was made before the success of the 75th Hunger Games by the same group of individuals. The network necessary for a successful disruption is not fully in effect in “Sunrise” though, making the attempts both more valiant and tragically ineffective.

I really like the inclusion of most of our previous characters, with the exception of Mags. I love that little old lady but she feels a bit more like a nothingburger here than the others. Naturally, part of this comes from Haymitch’s perspective of her as a person. Collins has such a distinct way of presenting each of her protagonists’ perspectives and how, to an extent, each of them is an unreliable narrator. Katniss’s perspective is often shaped by her strong opinions and inability to see beyond her personal frame of understanding. Snow’s perspective is built on a calculative manipulation that is working to outsmart even the reader wherever possible. Haymitch’s perspective is frequently influenced by those around him, whether they be individuals he loves or hates, and his genuine opinions are often at odds with his submission to the Capitol.

For Haymitch, Mags is “someone you cry around” and while she provides some beneficial advice as one of his mentors, I find there to be almost no depth to her presence. Plutarch’s role as an instigator and infiltrator speaks for itself. Beetee’s guidance is essential to Haymitch’s direct involvement in the attempts at breaking the Games and is a clear link to how he operates in “Catching Fire” and “Mockingjay”. Wiress’s presence as an able-bodied, quick-thinking mentor here is a striking difference compared to the Wiress we meet in “Catching Fire”. But for Mags, who is unable to verbally communicate with Katniss in “Catching Fire”, “Sunrise on the Reaping” was the only possible time to see her as a more fully realized individual and I don’t feel like the book ever offers that opportunity. She cares, she provides comfort, and that’s about it. Does Mags mentoring Haymitch make Katniss’s adamant assertion that they ally with her in “Catching Fire” more emotionally profound? Of course. But I think this is the one moment of dramatic irony that still feels a little on the cheaper side to me after finishing the book.

On the flip side, the expansion of Maysilee Donner as a character is one of the greatest surprises and her actualization is certainly one of the most satisfying to come from the book. Her steadfast fight for dignity, her snarky cruelty, her intelligence, her compassion, it all bleeds together into a wonderfully realized presence without which I don’t think the book would be half as good as it turns out to be.

But the greatest emotional payoff of “Sunrise” might come in all the ways Haymitch and Katniss are now further linked. The original trilogy does an excellent job of developing their relationship over time and exploring the similarities present in their characters and how they grapple with their roles within the fight to take down the Capitol. “Sunrise” succeeds in furthering those similarities in abundance and makes certain exchanges between the two painfully poignant. For example, after winning his Games, Haymitch is kept in a literal birdcage during the afterparty whereas Katniss becomes the Mockingjay in the wake of her own victory. A lot of other moments to point out in that regard but one that really struck me came in the demise of Haymitch’s Ma and brother, Sid. Burned to death in an intentional house fire, the two were found cradling one another, and that image brought a moment in Mockingjay Chapter 9 to my mind. Katniss and a team return to District 12 after the District has been firebombed to shoot a propo (propaganda spot) and that’s when we get the following quote:

It's not until we land in the Meadow that I realize Haymitch isn't among our company. When I ask Plutarch about his absence, he just shakes his head and says, “He couldn't face it.”

Katniss acknowledges a paragraph later as she takes in the scattered, charred bodies that she understands what he means given the devastation of the District, but the similarities now drawn between the fate of his family and the fate of the District as a whole paint a more emotional image that adds additional depth to his unwillingness to return. It’s not just anguish over the present circumstances, it’s the ghosts of the past still haunting him.

One of the things you hear the most about Suzanne Collins is that she only writes a new Hunger Games book when she feels like there’s something worth saying. The buzz of that was practically ringing in my ears while reading “Sunrise”, which comes in an especially volatile time politically. In an interview with Scholastic, Collins says that if the David Hume’s quote,

Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular.

is all readers take from the book, it will have been a success. This quote works as the starting point for much of Haymitch’s arc and for understanding the position of Panem citizens as a whole, while also providing a bridge to viewing these experiences outside of their fictional setting. The release of the latest Hunger Games book coinciding with the second Trump term, over a year of the Israeli government committing a genocide funded by the US, and a worldwide rise in fascism, all supported by rampant propaganda, feels painfully apt.

Many moments within “Sunrise” draw real world comparisons. Plutarch makes a reference to the manipulative and deeply dangerous realities of generative AI. Haymitch marvels at the internal anguish of having the numbers to fight back but the lack of willingness to breakout of submission that reads now as a fair nod to the experience of many US citizens as Trump and Elon Musk butcher the federal government and its social programs. Near the end of the book, Haymitch imagines a list of things that could be done to Lenore Dove while she’s imprisoned by peacekeepers that reads, “Confined. Starved. Tortured. Raped. Murdered.” It is, to my knowledge, the first time the word “rape” has been explicitly used in one of the Hunger Games books, which feels especially pointed given the current trend on social media and now, unfortunately, the real world where people self-censor themselves when using words like “rape” (grape), or “suicide” (unalive) due to a perceived threat of censorship, implicit submission in action in an self-proclaimed democracy.

With an uptick in the violence the US government is enacting against its citizens, it’s also notable how much more explicitly violent “Sunrise” reads in comparison to the other books. This series is no stranger to describing its blood and gore, but in previous stories, that violence is mostly fast-paced, or often occurring elsewhere to be recounted rather than directly witnessed. Haymitch’s games involve a more frequent, prolonged, and detailed account of violence. His allies are all brutalized in a more aggressive manner than many of Katniss’s, at least within her Games. Louella, Lou Lou, Ampert, Maysilee, Wellie, Ma, Sid, Lenore Dove, each play a vital role in further exploring the brutality of the violence committed against citizens and in how their deaths are manipulated by the Capitol to perpetuate their propaganda surrounding the Games and their control over the Districts.

One other aspect of the book that stuck out to me and has me wary is how some of the earliest chapters read almost as though the order the books should be read in is changing. Before the Games begin, a fair deal of Haymitch’s narration incorporates details that read as though they’re meant to be an initial introduction to what the experience of the Reaping and the Games are. Terms and concepts are explained as though we’ve never heard about them before. An odd sensation given the fact we’re presented with all of these same explanations in “The Hunger Games”. After the epilogue concludes, my copy of the book also included the first chapter of “The Hunger Games” with a teasing sort of hook that read, “The story continues in…” that certainly perpetuates this sense that the order of the books is changing to where “Sunrise” should be read before the original trilogy. It makes sense if we’re looking at the books in timeline order, but reworking the book enough to ensure it becomes a new starting feels at odds with many other aspects of the book that rely on previous knowledge of the original trilogy. The epilogue especially reads poorly if this is the intended change, undercutting the emotional weight of the final paragraphs. Maybe I’m imagining all of that, or maybe I’m just old and resistant to the idea the way the series is experienced is being changed for a younger audience, but either way it was notable enough to be a bit distracting at times.

I’ve rattled off a lot and I simultaneously find myself feeling as though I’ve covered the most important bases and like I could write a thousand more words on the book. I had my early moments of incredulity, but to be fair, I had a similar experience with “Ballad”. With that and with “Sunrise”, the more I’ve sat with the story and how it perpetuates a larger conversation about the necessity of fighting against government authority, the more I love the work. It’s also just nice to fully understand Haymitch as an individual outside of Katniss’s biased perspective. His selfishness is given layers, often used in a manner of self-preservation. His insights about the Capitol fueled by a far better understanding than we could have previously anticipated. The sewn together pieces of the Hunger Games books has created something satisfying and worthy of inspecting on both a macro and micro-level and I appreciate just how much Collins offers to us as readers to explore.

One final, final thought. Some of the last lines of “Sunrise’s” epilogue read as follows:

Lenore Dove likes it best there, and I’m content where she’s content. Like the geese, we really did mate for life.

RIP to all the Haymitch x Effie shippers. We had a solid run thanks to the films, but Collins has seemingly lain that one to rest for good with this.

Thanks for reading!!! Desperately needed to get these thoughts out of my head and onto some semblance of a page. Might have more to add later on, might not. Who knows. Please share your thoughts about the book too if you so please, I would love to gab about it.