Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for the first episode of The Last of Us.The harrowing opening to the acclaimed video game, The Last of Us, is one that is built around an inevitable path toward unimaginable tragedy. The loss of not just the world as the characters knew it to be but the life of the person they hold closest is what gets dashed in an instant that will reverberate through the rest of their lives. The stunning new television adaptation is a work that, while recreating much of the later scenes beat for beat, also takes us a bit deeper into its emotional underpinnings in its reimagining of this opening. In addition to going a long way to distinguishing itself early on, it signals the beginning of a refreshing willingness to get more wrapped up in storylines that the game had only begun to scratch the surface of. Characters, even ones that we only get small glimpses of, feel richer and more developed here in a way that is surprising as the original story had already provided a strong narrative foundation. The series takes that a step further in a way that feels earned as opposed to being just about providing exposition and backstory. Rather, it adds a texture that brings the world to life that much more even for the characters who won't survive to see it.
When Sarah (Nico Parker) meets her end, it still is as painful and brutal as it was in the game. There is no escaping the devastation of her death as her father, Pedro Pascal's Joel, holds her in his arms. The desperation and agony felt in his voice at what he knows is coming rips the air right from you in similar fashion. What marks a distinguishing element is that Sarah, who had mostly been defined by her death in the game which is then used to inform Joel’s own journey, is given something more here. The game dropped us right into the final moments that the two shared together where she gifted him a watch that he would then hang onto for the rest of his life. All of this is still in the series with lines lifted directly from the game, but there is a greater sense of their relationship that is felt. These aren’t just two people we’ve only barely met as we get moments sprinkled throughout, each feeling like a small gift that is tempered with a tragedy that is still bearing down. While the game wanted the death of Sarah to be sudden for the purpose of catching us by surprise in introducing us to a character only to rip them away almost immediately, the series already manages to be more measured.
Sarah and Joel's Life Illustrates the Calm Before the Outbreak
While some of this is the nature of the different mediums, such an opening wasn’t necessarily something they had to do. That they did, ensured we were fully drawn in, representing the first of many sharp and somber choices that the series keeps paying off when you least expect them to. For Sarah, this initially takes the form of morning moments that she shares with her father where they gently tease each other. It is the type of playful roasting that reveals a familiarity with a natural ease. Much of this comes from both actors fully inhabiting their characters without ever overplaying it, as can often happen when modeling a performance off a previously existing character, but it also comes down to the nuances of the writing itself.
Nothing would be more obnoxious than adding in scenes to an existing story that merely serve to wink to the audience and over-explain backgrounds that would better stand alone. None of that is taking place here as it instead feels ordinary and grounded in how it focuses on more simple scenes. It is the calm before the coming storm that we are allowed to float in for just a bit longer. In the game we had never gotten to get moments where the trio of Joel, Ellie, and Tommy (Gabriel Luna) were just able to be together that wasn’t dictated by the frenetic pacing of a crisis. Though that comes, it is haunting to just sit with characters and see them inhabit what will be the last day of morning routines that they get to spend together.
Looking at the Small Details of Sarah's Life Emphasizes Her Presence
It also extends beyond this as well to see how Sarah goes about her day, creating what is almost a slice-of-life short film that just takes the time to observe her in the quiet moments she has away from her dad. Though her ending is fixed, this adds dimensions and allows us to see her life outside of her death. The particulars of how she went about getting the watch fixed for Joel could easily have been glossed over as extraneous in an adaption narrowly focused on getting to the next big moment of action. Yet that is not how life works. While the show is very much about the moments of spectacle, it devotes time to the minutiae as well.
In just allowing the seemingly mundane moments of her last day to linger, it instills every single action with a melancholic undertone. It is an understated way of reminding us how the quotidian details of a life, while commonplace when part of our daily rhythms, become something we ache and yearn for when they are ripped away from us. This emphasis strikes a better sense of balance and command of tone that will be familiar to those that have seen co-creator Craig Mazin’s outstanding previous series Chernobyl. The subject matter could not be more different with one being about a zombie apocalypse and the other recounting a historical disaster. Where they are united is in an emphasis on the small details of life that play out even when characters are unknowingly on the precipice of an event that will consume all they know.
For Sarah, this means going to school, briefly zoning out in class, taking the bus, paying a local business to fix the watch, visiting her neighbors, and doing her homework. In isolation, these makeup what could be an otherwise unremarkable day. When taken together in contrast to what comes next, they are the precious moments of life that we take for granted and can't fully appreciate until they are gone. We come to wish Sarah could have had a lifetime of such days defined by being with those that cared about her more than anything else in the world. As will become even more profoundly felt throughout this first season, this is what matters when all else has been lost forever and what Joel will spend the rest of his life trying to recover.
The series sitting with Sarah and letting us come to know her a little bit more brings us further into what life is like without her. While effective in its own way, the game felt like it had only just managed to introduce her before getting swept up in the chaos. The opening part of this first episode is given more time to breathe and ensures the way the loss that tears through everything hits harder than it ever did before. It works because of a willingness to strip away all the noise and just take a few, fleeting moments to wander through the closing chapters of Sarah’s short time in the story that is now defined just as much by how it was that she lived.
You can watch the first episode of The Last of Us on HBO and HBO Max.