Right, I’ll be honest – when I heard they were making another TV show based on a video game, my first reaction was to groan and mentally prepare for another disaster like that dreadful Super Mario Bros film from the 90s. I mean, we’ve all been burned before, haven’t we? But this first episode of The Last of Us… bloody hell, they’ve actually done it properly for once.
I never played the original game when it came out – was too busy with my retro collecting and frankly, zombie games aren’t really my cup of tea. But my son wouldn’t shut up about it, kept going on about how brilliant the story was, how it wasn’t really about zombies but about people. Typical teenager exaggeration, I thought. Turns out he was absolutely right for once.
The thing that struck me immediately about this adaptation is that Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann clearly understand something that every other video game adaptation has missed – you can’t just copy the gameplay mechanics and expect it to work on television. What you need to capture is the emotional core, the character relationships, the world that made players care in the first place.
The opening sequence does something really clever. Instead of diving straight into action sequences or trying to explain the rules of this world through clunky exposition, it starts with something we can all relate to – a normal morning routine. Joel’s making breakfast, dealing with his daughter, worrying about everyday problems. It’s 2003, and everything feels authentic to that period. I actually owned that same model of mobile phone Joel’s using – took me right back to when life seemed simpler.
Then everything goes to hell, and the transition from normalcy to chaos is genuinely unsettling. The writing doesn’t rush this part either. Too many shows would have jumped straight to the infected attacking, but this takes its time building tension through news reports, strange behavior, that growing sense that something’s not quite right. It’s proper storytelling, the kind that respects the audience’s intelligence.
Pedro Pascal as Joel is absolutely brilliant casting. The man knows how to convey loss without overacting, which is harder than it sounds. By the time we jump twenty years forward, you can see that grief has fundamentally changed him into someone harder, more pragmatic. Pascal sells this transformation completely – the Joel we meet in 2023 is recognizably the same person but worn down by decades of survival.
The world-building in those post-outbreak scenes is exceptional. They’ve created this vision of collapsed civilization that feels both horrifying and strangely beautiful. Nature’s reclaiming everything, but in a way that suggests hope alongside the destruction. The quarantine zones remind me of those dystopian British sci-fi series from the 70s – that same sense of humanity clinging to order while everything falls apart around them.
Bella Ramsey’s Ellie is perfect. She’s got that teenage attitude that could easily become annoying, but there’s genuine vulnerability underneath the bravado. The chemistry between Pascal and Ramsey is crucial to making this whole concept work, and it’s there from their first scenes together. You can see why these two characters would matter to each other, even when they’re actively trying not to care.
What impressed me most is how the show handles the infected without making them the main focus. Yes, they’re terrifying – that first proper encounter with the clicking ones is genuinely disturbing – but they’re treated more like a force of nature than traditional movie monsters. The real conflicts come from human interactions, from the choices people make when civilization breaks down.
Anna Torv as Tess brings this practical toughness that grounds the early episodes. She’s not there to be Joel’s love interest or to explain things to the audience – she’s a partner in the truest sense, someone who’s survived by being smart and ruthless when necessary. The relationship between Joel and Tess feels lived-in, built on years of shared experience rather than forced dramatic tension.
The Fireflies provide an interesting moral complexity that I wasn’t expecting. Marlene isn’t presented as clearly heroic or villainous – she’s someone who believes the ends justify the means, which makes her dangerous in ways that pure evil wouldn’t be. These kinds of gray areas are what separate good storytelling from generic action adventure.
There are moments of genuine humor that don’t undercut the serious tone. Ellie’s wisecracks, Joel’s reluctant reactions to taking on this escort mission, the small details of how people have adapted to this new world. It’s the kind of humor that emerges naturally from character interactions rather than forced comic relief.
The production design deserves special mention. The attention to detail in showing how the world has changed over twenty years is remarkable. You can see the layers of adaptation – how military zones were established, how people scavenged and rebuilt, how nature has started reclaiming urban spaces. It creates this sense of a world that has a real history beyond what we see on screen.
I particularly appreciated that the show doesn’t try to explain everything immediately. The fungal infection that creates the infected is presented as a known quantity in this world without lengthy scientific exposition. The political situation between military zones and rebel groups like the Fireflies is shown through action rather than exposition dumps. It trusts the audience to pick up information from context.
The violence, when it comes, has proper weight to it. This isn’t sanitized action movie violence where people shrug off injuries and keep fighting. When someone gets hurt, it matters. When someone dies, it affects the other characters. The outbreak sequence is genuinely disturbing because it shows ordinary people – neighbors, families – being consumed by something they don’t understand.
What really sells the whole thing is the casting throughout. Gabriel Luna as Tommy brings this sense of idealism that contrasts with Joel’s cynicism. You can see the family resemblance but also understand how these brothers have responded differently to the same traumatic world. The supporting cast all feel like real people rather than plot devices.
The pacing of this first episode is nearly perfect. It establishes the world, introduces the key players, sets up the central relationship between Joel and Ellie, and gets them moving on their journey without feeling rushed or overly compressed. By the end, you understand the stakes and care about what happens to these characters.
This is how you adapt a video game property. You identify what made the source material special – in this case, the relationship between two damaged people finding something worth protecting in each other – and build everything else around that emotional core. The post-apocalyptic setting, the infected, the political conflicts, they’re all in service of that central human story.
I’m genuinely looking forward to seeing where this goes, which is something I never thought I’d say about a zombie television series. My wife even watched the first episode with me and didn’t complain once, which is practically unprecedented for anything involving the undead. If they can maintain this level of quality throughout the series, we might finally have a video game adaptation worth celebrating.
John grew up swapping floppy disks and reading Amiga Power cover to cover. Now an IT manager in Manchester, he writes about the glory days of British computer gaming—Sensible Soccer, Speedball 2, and why the Amiga deserved more love than it ever got.
