‘The Last Of Us’ Episode 2 Recap And Review: These Zombies Are Terrifying

In the second episode of HBO’s The Last Of Us, we get to finally see what life outside the Quarantine Zone (QZ) is like and what the world, after two decades of the Cordyceps pandemic, has become.

It’s at once beautiful and terrifying, a breathtaking look at human civilization’s downfall. Toppled skyscrapers, brick buildings overrun with vines and fungus, highways in ruin. Everything we built, abandoned.

Our trio of survivors, waking after a night spent in the wild of what was once Boston, is at a crossroads of sorts. Ellie (Bella Ramsey) awakens to find Tess (Anna Torv) and Joel (Pedro Pascal) scrutinizing her, clearly unsure about what to do next. They offer her a scrap of their jerky but she has sandwiches. She sticks with the sandwiches.

Joel, in particular, isn’t buying that she’s immune. But she explains that this was the entire point of the mission that Marlene (played by Merle Dandridge who also played Marlene in the video game) and the Fireflies were on. They were going to take her to some doctors out west who would study her in order to make a vaccine. Even still, Joel says he’s heard it all before.

Tess manages to convince him not to turn back. She doesn’t think it’s safe for Ellie. If anyone finds out she’s been bitten, they’ll kill her. Besides, this is their one best shot at getting a vehicle and heading west to find Tommy (Gabriel Luna), Joel’s brother who may or may not be in trouble.

So after some back and forth, they set out. The capitol building isn’t far, but the way is treacherous. The ways I should say. There’s the safer long route and the “we’re basically dead” short route, though it turns out neither is a safe option. They wade through a flooded hotel that Ellie instantly finds enchanting. She’s bubbly with delight. Have they ever stayed in a place like this? she wants to know. When she sees the front desk, she sloshes over to it and pretends to be the clerk checking guests into their room. It’s all fun and games until she finds a surprise skeleton.

The way ahead is blocked and when they finally do reach the upstairs balcony they look down on a grim scene: Hundreds of zombies sprawl out on the pavement below. They shift and move in ripples, and we discover that they’re all connected by underground fungal threads. The zombies of The Last Of Us are a hivemind. If one spots you miles away it can alert the horde—a grim foreshadowing of what’s to come.

So they go the short route through a museum completely covered in fungus. But Joel discovers that it’s dried up and the way ahead, he reasons, might finally be safe. But once inside, they find a freshly dead human, and they proceed silently. Unfortunately, the building is decrepit and falling apart. The stairs almost collapse beneath their weight. When they reach the upper floor, a new terror awaits: The hideously mutated, fungus-head ‘Clickers’—more dangerous, violent zombies that are blind but have extremely sensitive hearing. Any sound will draw them to you instantly.

They make a horrible clicking sound as they stalk the dark museum. Our heroes try to sneak by but it doesn’t quite work and what follows is a desperate fight for survival. Tess and Ellie run and are quickly separated. Joel shoots his revolver at one of the Clickers but runs out of ammo and has to reload. The whole scene is a nice dose of intense action and suspense, but the trio escapes almost unscathed. Ellie has another bite on her arm, right next to her scar from the previous bite. “Well, if it had to happen to one of us,” she says, reasonably enough. They cross a wooden plank bridge and continue their way outside to the capitol building.

When they reach the rendezvous, they find a bleak scene of death and violence. All the Fireflies are dead. Joel says it wasn’t an attack from bandits or FEDRA soldiers. Instead, it appears that some of the Fireflies turned and everyone got dead in the ensuing fight.

Here’s where things take a turn for the tragic. Joel, once again, argues that they should return to the QZ. Tess says she’s staying no matter what and then says that sometimes you just get unlucky. Ellie realizes what happened before Joel does. Tess was bitten by one of the Clickers—right between her shoulder and neck. At this moment, they hear something. The fungus in the capitol building has activated and sent a warning to the horde of zombies they saw earlier. We see the zombies lift up from the ground and start to run—fast. These are not walking dead. They fling themselves forward in a hideous charge.

Tess tells them to go. She’ll buy them time. The Fireflies have all their ammo, grenades, gasoline and other goodies stocked up inside, and she starts to dump it all, pouring out the gas on the ground, tossing grenades onto the floor. Without a word, Joel grabs Ellie and runs. She tries to fight him—she doesn’t want to leave without Tess—but he just pulls her with him.

The zombies burst into the building and run past Tess as she fumbles with her lighter. She can’t light it. One turns and sees her and must recognize that she’s already turning, because instead of racing toward her and biting, he approaches slowly. As she flicks the lighter, he opens his mouth and leans in for a grotesque kiss. Fungal tendrils grow out of his mouth and snake into hers—and finally the lighter catches flame. She lets go and it falls to the floor.

Outside, Joel and Ellie watch as the building explodes into flame.

Jakarta, Indonesia

This episode was laser-focused on Joel, Tess and Ellie which was great for a lot of reasons, but mainly because we got to know both Ellie and Tess a bit better, and just in time for Tess to die tragically. But the opening bit takes place an entire world away in Jakarta, where it appears the outbreak began. Recall, Joel, Tommy and Sarah all discussing Jakarta in the kitchen in the series premiere. Well, now we know why.

Soldiers track down an older woman in a restaurant. It turns out she’s a mycologist at the university and they need her expertise. They take her back to their base where they show her the corpse of a woman infected by cordyceps. As she examines the body, we see the tendrils start to grow out of the corpse’s mouth. She panics, fleeing the examination room in shock.

The general explains the situation. The woman worked at a flour factory and attacked her co-workers. She had to be killed. The mycologist asks if any other workers were infected, and learns that fourteen others didn’t show up for work. Their whereabouts are unknown. The news terrifies her. When the general asks what to do, she tells him to bomb the city. Bomb the city and kill everyone in it. There’s no cure, no vaccine, no way to stop this without mass destruction. Then she asks for a ride home. She wants to spend time with her family before the end of the world.

We learn through conversation between Joel, Tess and Ellie that bombing is exactly what happened across the globe to slow the spread. Giant craters pock Boston’s ruined landscape. It didn’t work everywhere, but in Boston it gave them time to establish a QZ.

I really enjoy getting this wider glimpse of the apocalypse. In the game, you really only follow the main characters on their trek across America. In the show, you get a wider angle of the global events, but also—as you’ll see next week—deeper dives into individual characters and relationships that were only mentioned briefly in the game. This helps to flesh out the story, the world and the characters.

I also really loved Ellie this episode. I’ve heard some people say they can’t stand her or think she was miscast, but I think Ramsey does a terrific job playing the spunky teenager. She’s curious, funny, hard-headed but not stupid. She knows how to survive and she’s not meek or timid, but also not too brash. We’re only just beginning to see her relationship with Joel develop. Next week, they’ll be on their own.

Finally, I really loved the Clickers! These aren’t your average zombie. Even the regular infected in this show are scary but the Clickers are terrifying—which is exactly how they were in the video games. I’m so impressed by the level of detail here and even though they are making some changes from the game, it’s close enough to the source material in my book. And that’s rare these days! Bravo, HBO! And bravo Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann for another great episode.

What did you think of this week’s episode of The Last Of Us? Are you a newcomer to the story or did you play the games?

Check out my video review of this episode below:

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