“I was never afraid before you showed up.”

There is not a force in the cosmere quite as strong as love. This force, this… need, this drive, is the cause of all great wonders... as well as all great atrocities. Love for a partner, love for a people, love for a cause. Depending on which side of the line you stand, one person’s love can look a lot like hate, vengeance, and selfishness. These feelings – these strange distortions of reality – are what Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin have brought wonderfully to life through their adaptation of 2013’s horror adventure, The Last of Us.

We follow Joel Miller through the waking nightmare that is the end of the world. After suffering a great personal tragedy, Joel takes on a job to deliver a young girl to a team of rebel researchers for reasons he’s not entirely sure of, and doesn’t entirely care to know. He’s in a bind, she’s a way out. Through the horrors of what the world has both become and always been, Joel and his young charge, Ellie, grow closer, leading to ever toughening decisions about the end of their journey.

The Last of Us is one of video-gaming's greatest narratives. I say “one of” only for wiggle room but, gun to my head, I would tell you it was #1. It’s one of the rare stories where you find yourself unsure of where you stand on the unfolding events... Mostly because you’re not sure if you would do any different were it your own life on screen even though you know that you’re objectively “wrong”. It is a poignant, dramatic, grounded, and difficult tale to experience, and a very brave one to tell. Where the narrative stands at #1 for what it is, so does the show. There has never been a better video-game adaptation ever made.

Neil Druckmann wrote the original game, and it stands as a shining example of why creators should be given artistic power over the adaptations that follow. It helps that the original narrative is so tightly written, but the show manages to add things that [mostly] don’t feel out of place, and expand upon the world in such a way that, if you didn’t know it was a video game, you wouldn’t suspect it by the end. This show is a true accomplishment in bridging two different worlds of entertainment culture together.

Featuring a stellar soundtrack from the game’s composer, Gustavo Santaolalla, incredible creatures that bring back the golden eras of monster design, and landmark performances from leads Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey, the show does struggle with certain aspects of its design. Namely, its pacing.

Starting with a bang, Ep1 and 2 fire us out of a canon into the terrifying world of cordyceps, Fedra, and the Fireflies. Then we’re led through a moseying and meandering journey through the next two-and-a-half episodes where the show seems to lose all sense of flow or focus. It’s a difficult slog of hyper-myopic motivations, shallow world-building, and missed opportunities that are, unfortunately, wrapped up in some very interesting, very well-intentioned, and very empathetic characters. The series is 9-episodes long, and that’s one or two too many. There are a few other areas of the show that suffer from this as well, but the middle 3 episodes are the ones that stand out as the most egregious.

All together though, The Last of Us is a great feat of television adaptation and one that I hope paves the way for follow-up productions of equal quality. This is a show that will move you, make you angry, and force you to question what love means to you, and what its boundaries are when it comes to your larger responsibilities. If you find that you’re losing your way after the first couple of episodes, I highly encourage you to stick with it as the final two are some of the best that television has to offer.

“I got you, baby girl.”