The Last of Us

Our Review

HBO’s prestige treatment of Naughty Dog’s masterpiece: Joel (Pedro Pascal), a smuggler twenty years past the cordyceps apocalypse, escorts Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a teenage girl immune to the fungal infection, across a ruined America — and the show understands the game’s core: the plot is the road; the story is what the road does to two people learning to love again.

The adaptation choices are superb: the Bill-and-Frank episode (Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett’s hour — one of the best episodes of television this decade, full stop) expands the game’s most affecting subplot into a complete love story; the finale’s Joel’s choice — the lie that defines him — lands with the game’s full weight. Season 2 (adapting Part II, the most controversial sequel in gaming) divides exactly as the source did, with Kaitlyn Dever’s Abby arriving under the weight of a discourse storm the show handles with dignity.

Verdict: Watch it. The best video game adaptation ever aired — until the argument starts about which one is.