REVIEW: ‘The Last of Us’ Season 2 Episode 4 — “Day One”

The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 4, “Day One,” opens with some new characters. It’s 2018 in Seattle, and a group of FEDRA soldiers are in an Armored Personnel Carrier (APC), joking about a FEDRA soldier named Greenburg brutalizing “voters” for disseminating pamphlets. One of them tells a story about Greenburg, who doesn’t know what the word “disseminate” means, knocking one guy’s teeth out. Everyone laughs. Finally, one of the new guys asks why they call them voters.

Nobody knows or cares but their sergeant, Isaac Dixon (Jeffrey Wright), informs them that they call them that because they had their rights taken away, and someone decided it would be funny to mock them by calling them voters. When a bunch of civilians approach the APC, Isaac goes out alone because, as he says, “you’re all Greenburg.” ACAB, except maybe Isaac, and maybe the new kid, who he invites out with him to learn something.

Here, Isaac tells the soldiers under his command that he’s just going out to talk. What actually happens is that he meets a woman named Harahan (Alanna Ubach), shakes hands, then turns around and tosses a couple of grenades into the APC and seals the door so none of the FEDRA soldiers, his own men, can get out. When the driver escapes, Isaac kills him, too. After Harahan welcomes him to the fight, he tells the new kid to make his choice.

This scene is great for The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 4. You only have to spend about 30 seconds with the FEDRA soldiers, listening to the Greenburg story, to want them to get theirs, but it also establishes one of this episode’s clear creative choices: all of this is bloodless. We see smoke from the grenades, but not what happens to the people inside. We don’t even watch Isaac shoot the driver; we just hear the gunfire and watch the kid react. Given how brutal all of this is, it’s an interesting choice made for television, not one that I’m sure works.

Jeffrey Wright makes his Last of Us Season 2 debut in “Day One.”

Once we’re done with our trip to the past, it’s back to the present, and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Dina (Isabela Merced) are raiding a pharmacy. When Dina sees something on a shelf, she decides she needs to use the restroom. If you’re familiar with the events of the video game the series is based on, or know what a woman throwing up in situations when she normally doesn’t in modern media signifies, you know where this is going.

From there, The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 4 pulls out a couple of funny sequences while Dina and Ellie explore Seattle. They don’t get what all the Pride memorabilia is about, which is extremely funny given that they kiss one another full on the mouth in the Season 2 premiere, and somebody throws a slur at them for their trouble. I guess there’s nobody around to teach the kids about Pride in the not-zombie zombie apocalypse.

But somebody was around to teach Ellie about Apollo 1, which she compares to the charred bodies she finds in an overgrown tank. There are bodies scattered around Seattle, all FEDRA, but instead of fighting the infecter, it looks like they were fighting each other. “Assholes killed by other assholes,” Ellie notes. It’s another line that shows that the show is terrified you’ll miss someone, not notice the parallels, not connect the dots. At some point, it would be nice to be trusted to figure this stuff out.

Our heroes also see a satellite dish with WLF printed on it. Ellie’s ready to run off half-cocked, because she never seems to learn anything, but Dina, who is the brains of this operation, informs her that’s probably dumb (If you make a sign that big, you want people to know you’re there), and they should wait until nightfall. Luckily, there’s a music store nearby big enough for Shimmer.

After browsing the rack for some records and watching Dina attempt to play drums, Ellie goes upstairs and finds a bunch of guitars. One of them’s in a case, near mint, so Ellie tunes it up and plays “Take On Me.” This draws Dina up there, who stays to listen. Ultimately, this is a sweet scene, and it makes Dina cry.

She’s surprised Ellie’s so good at playing. But we know (and Ellie admits) it’s because Joel was a good teacher. The Last of Us isn’t subtle — it always feels like it’s afraid the viewer might not understand something — but sometimes it’s good at showing us what these characters have lost. Dina offers to make jerky. Our girls are hungry.

The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 4 continues to trample over subtlety.

There’s a clever cut to Isaac working a stove, monologuing about the value of good cookware and cooking to impress women. It’s obvious to the audience that this is an interrogation long before he admits it to the camera. He killed those FEDRA guys without much of a word, but here he’s basically pulling a Syndrome. The dude he’s going to torture? He has a scar, letting us know he’s one of those cultists we met last episode.

Isaac wants to know where they’re going to attack next. But this guy is a true believer. Even when Isaac places the burning hot copper pan on his hand, he refuses to talk. They argue over who started this, who is to blame (parallels!), but once again, The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 4 shies away from the actual violence. We only see the aftereffects of Isaac scalding the Scar’s hand, not the burning flesh as it happens.

Even through the pain, the Scar believes they will win, despite the WLF’s superior firepower, because the Wolves are defecting. We know this is true because of Isaac’s anger when he brings it up. Isaac threatens to burn every part of his body until the Scar tells him what he wants to know, and the Scar, in a nice moment of silent character-building, holds out his other hand. Isaac shoots him.

Again, we don’t see this, either. The only reactions we see are from the two guys guarding the room. One of them is the kid Isaac pulled out of that APC. So at least we know where he ended up, even if his importance is still up in the air. Turns out Isaac, and the kid he saved, are bastards, too. Live long enough steeped in conflict, and you’ll become everything you hate.

But what bothers me here is the lack of violence on-screen. Not because I live to see people get burned and shot on TV, but because The Last of Us is obsessed with violence. So far, we’ve only really seen it in an uncompromising way a couple of times, most notably when Abby killed Joel. The Last of Us Season 2 clearly wants to talk about how violence is cyclical, but it seems afraid to show us how brutal it is unless it wants to elicit a specific emotional response from one of the main characters. It’s an odd choice that does the show no favors.

Violence begets violence in “Day One,” even if the showrunners don’t make it explicit.

Speaking of cyclical cycles of violence, Dina and Ellie wait until nighttime to break into the WLF building they found earlier and decide to kill any Wolves they find. That certainly won’t make anything worse. What they get is more than they bargained for. A WLF soldier is filled full of arrows, and several of them are disemboweled and hanging from the ceiling in the next room.

Ellie and Dina quickly figure out that the Scars are the ones who did this), but the episode again shies away from showing how brutal this actually is (it’s easy to miss that these Wolves have been disemboweled, because the camera only ever shows it from a distance). Dina throws up again in case you missed it last time, but our girls’ bad luck is just starting. These kills are relatively fresh, and a group of Wolves show up to investigate, promising to kill anyone they find. It’s like poetry; it rhymes.

Ellie manages to sneak upstairs, but she gets caught. She’s handling one Wolf when another shows up, and Dina dispatches him from behind. This is, again, sanitized. From the angle, we can assume Dina shoots him in the head, but there’s no blood, no splatter. There’s just… nothing. When Ellie stabs the Wolf who attacked her in the throat, the shot does as much as it can to obscure it.

They shoot out a window and escape into the now-pouring rain. Our girls make it into a subway tunnel but don’t get away clean. The Wolves have followed them, but they’re not the only ones. Once both groups are inside, Ellie and Dina are hiding, the Wolves are hunting, and we realize they’re not alone. There are Clickers.

In a great, small moment for The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 4, Dina starts counting off on her fingers. One, two, three, four, five Clickers, and then a whole horde bursts through. The Wolves open fire. Once again, we don’t really see what happens, but these cats are the deadest dudes who ever lived. Ellie and Dina run into a subway car, chased by dozens, maybe hundreds, of Clickers. They kill several, and manage to get out through the roof’s emergency exit, but a smart Clicker watches them go in a “We’ve been trying to reach you about your horse’s extended warranty” kinda way, and the chase continues.

It wouldn’t be a Last of Us episode without Ellie in the middle of a big setpiece.

Ellie lets the clicker bite her to save Dina when they get stuck on a turnstile before Dina shoots the Clicker (again, we barely see this). Dina’s devastation here is obvious. She doesn’t know Ellie is immune, and you can see her thinking, “All right, I gotta kill her, and I’m gonna be sad about it.” While Dina stands frozen in the rain, Ellie finds them a place to hide, but the scene works because Merced does a lot of emotional acting as Dina with just her body and face.

They’re barely inside when Dina pulls a gun on Ellie, and Ellie desperately tries to convince Dina not to shoot her. It’s a great scene and Merced sells the entire thing without saying a word, and you can see Ramsey realizing she’s in the most danger she’s been in in a while, not from the infected, but from another person.

This is one of those “The Last of Us is really good when it slows down and stops being a video game adaptation and starts letting its scenes and characters breathe” moments. The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 4 wisely lingers her for a while, even after Ellie wakes up from her nap, and Dina still isn’t sure if she needs to shoot her. The decision to have Dina be silent here is poignant because when she finally does speak to Ellie, it’s to announce that she’s pregnant. A secret for a secret. And then the last wall between them breaks, and they allow themselves, relieved, saved for just a moment, to finally be with one another in the way they’ve always wanted to.

The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 4’s best decision is to let us stay here once they wake up, in this new relationship, touching each other’s faces, vulnerable, honest, and happy. It makes us aware of what they’re risking, and what they have to live for. Dina admits she wants to be with Ellie and have a baby, and Ellie admits she wants that, too.

Then there’s a weird shit to expositon as Dina explains that she’s wanted to be with Ellie for a while, but her mother had insisted that she had to like men, and she was still working through that. Despite its heavy exposition, this moment works mostly because Merced sells it. However, it’s followed by an incredible gag where Ellie asks Dina how she knows she’s pregnant, and Dina pulls several pregnancy tests out of her pack. Turns out, she tested because she got sick. Yay, foreshadowing! Ellie’s excited “to be a dad,” even if it means she has to share with Jesse (Young Mazino). But this is The Last of Us, and things don’t stay happy for too long.

Isabela Mercad’s Dina sells every emotional moment she’s on the screen.

Our heroines overhear a radio conversation about falling back to Lakehill to see Nora, a name they both know. What is it with The Last of Us and someone overhearing somebody else’s name leading to terrible things? I mean, it’s ironic that this is what puts our cycle of death back on track, but it’s also kind of hard to believe that anyone would talk like that on a radio at just the right time, too. But the plot demands it, so here we are.

Ellie and Dina race to the roof to get an idea of where Lakehill is, and once they figure it out, Ellie tells Dina she can stay here. It’s different now, you know. Dina says they’ll go together. Roll credits.

The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 4 was… odd, because not a lot happens in terms of plot movement. That’s fine, for the record. We learn a little more about the cultists and their war with the WLF, and we meet Isaac and the as-yet-unnamed kid, but mostly we’re in the same place where we started when the credits roll. Ellie and Dina are still looking for Joel’s killers, they just have a better idea of where they’re going, they’re officially together now, and we know Dina is pregnant and Dina knows Ellie is immune. This is more of a setup and character-building episode.

The issue is that The Last of Us season 2 feels like a video game, and not in a good way. Here’s some exploration, a character-building moment, a sneaking section, a big set piece, another character moment, and then here’s what’s next: see you next week. It often feels like we’re either watching a cutscene or “playing” an action sequence. That kind of storytelling works in a video game, but it’s a bizarre way to make television.

Mostly, these sequences feel like they need to be here because we need an Action Setpiece, which has kind of been Season 2’s calling card. Still, it’s weird because The Last of Us wants very badly to comment on how pointless and cyclical violence is while shielding us as the audience from the violence that the characters are committing.

If the showrunners want to critique violence, it’s important for the audience to see what it looks like, especially when it’s happening to someone the lead characters don’t care about, like the Wolves Dina and Ellie kill without much of a thought. HBO has never shied away from violence or its consequences, but The Last of Us often feels like it’s pulling punches.

It’s even weirder when you consider how heavy-handed all of this is. Ellie and Abby’s mutual quests for revenge mirror what’s happening with the Scars and the WLF. And that’s the thing about violence, about revenge: it escalates.

Why do the showrunners keep cutting the violence just short of making impact?

Joel shot Abby’s dad in the head, so she damn near blows his leg off with a shotgun and then brutally beats him to death with a golf club. The WLF kills a group of cultists, so the cultists break into a WLF compound, kill some Wolves, disembowel and string up their dead bodies, and leave a message in blood. And nobody, anywhere, not Abby, not Ellie, not the WLF, not the Scars, seems to realize that there’s only one way this ends.

The smartest thing Dina and Ellie could do would be to get on Shimmer, leave Seattle, and raise their kid. That they don’t realize this after several near-death experiences when they know they’re outmanned and outgunned is baffling. They’re going to (somehow) kill everyone who has wronged them because this is a video game, and that’s how video games work. The odds don’t matter. There’s nothing to live for outside of the violence, because that’s the part you play, the part the characters exist for.

And maybe that works as a video game. As a show, especially one this heavy-handed, it makes everyone involved seem insane. We’ve seen enough to know how this goes. And nobody on this show, no matter how much they kill or how much is taken from them, seems to be able to figure that out. So next week, we’ll watch Dina and Ellie attack a hospital, doing the exact same thing Joel did to start all of this, because that’s all there is to do. Everything else is just a cutscene between all the killing.

The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 3 is streaming now on MAX (formerly HBO Max) with new episodes every Sunday.

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