Editor's note: The below contains spoilers for Episode 1 of The Last of Us.
HBO’s The Last of Us continues to be an incredibly faithful adaptation of The Last of Us Part I and makes for a fantastic series for fans, old and new. Last week we highlighted some of our favorite Easter eggs in Episode 1. We’ll be looking at Episode 2's Easter eggs and spotlighting some fun details you might’ve missed! Let’s jump in and analyze The Last of Us Episode 2, "Infected."
Word for Word, Bar for Bar
Co-creator Neil Druckmann directed this episode of The Last of Us, so we can expect a ton of nods to the original game. One of our favorite types of Easter eggs is homages to the games, and Druckmann delivered those in spades. Our first big one is when Ellie, Joel, and Tess are making their way through the city. As they’re walking on the rooftops, Joel asks Ellie if the outside world is everything she hoped for when she simply replies, “The jury’s still out, but you can’t deny that view.” This wholesome encounter between Joel and Ellie is one of the first moments where the two are honest with each other, and the show captures it beautifully. It’s a small scene, but it highlights the HBO team's reverence for the original game. We have plenty of these moments throughout this episode — especially towards the end, where we meet our first Clicker.
Ellie Can't Swim
As Tess, Ellie and Joel make their way through the quarantine zone, they encounter a flooded building. They need to get across, but Ellie is reluctant because she can’t swim. Joel laughs because the water is knee-high. This small interaction is in reference to a major gameplay mechanic in The Last of Us Part I. In the original game, Ellie can’t swim, and it’s up to Joel (and the player) to find a way for her to cross sections of the map. It was a tedious and, at times, frustrating process. The show pokes fun at this idea by having Ellie walk through the water without Joel’s help.
Ellie’s Switchblade
The last episode, we briefly see Ellie holding her switchblade, but here we finally have a moment where Joel talks to her about it. In The Last of Us: Left Behind and the comic, The Last of Us: American Dreams, we learn that it belongs to Ellie’s mother, Hannah. We see Ellie use this knife as her primary melee weapon in both Last of Us games. In The Last of Us Part I, Joel’s melee weapons break very easily, and he constantly has to craft new ones. Ellie’s blade never breaks, and serves are her only protection against the infected since she can’t have a gun.
The Amazing Clicker Cameos
Actors Misty Lee and Phillip Kovats reprise their roles as the voices of the female and male Clickers in The Last of Us series, who are played by Olivier-Ross Parent and Samuel Hoeksema on-screen. Lee and Kovats previously did the motion capture and voice acting for the far-gone infected in The Last of Us Part I and II. As Joel, Ellie, and Tess encounter the Clickers for the first time, we hear their terrifying sounds as the trio tries to escape undetected. Kovats tweeted about his experience on set, saying:
Game-Accurate Set Design
We’ll keep this section relatively brief. We travel through the city and into the museum, a location players are familiar with. Once our main cast reaches the museum, fans will quickly notice that it looks exactly the same as the one from the game. This episode is largely based on the third chapter of The Last of Us Part I, "The Outskirts." The trio makes their way to the museum, where Tess gets infected and ultimately sacrifices herself to buy Joel and Ellie more time.
New episodes of The Last of Us premiere every Sunday on HBO and HBO Max.