Man, I’ve got to be honest here – when I fired up The Last of Us Part II back in 2020, I thought I knew what to expect from the HBO adaptation. I mean, I’d been through the emotional wringer with Joel and Ellie already, right? But watching episode two, “Infected,” I realized the show was gonna hit me in ways the game couldn’t, and not always in the ways I expected.
Let me back up a second. I’ve been teaching high school for over fifteen years now, and one thing you learn about teenagers is they think they know everything about survival and apocalypse scenarios because they’ve watched The Walking Dead. So when The Last of Us show started airing, half my students were suddenly experts on zombie lore. Except these aren’t zombies – they’re infected, and there’s a huge difference that the show nails perfectly.
The episode kicks off with Joel, Ellie, and Tess making their way through Boston’s ruins beyond the quarantine zone, and immediately you can feel how different this is from your typical post-apocalypse setup. See, most zombie media makes the mistake of thinking more gore equals more scary. The Last of Us gets that the real horror is in the quiet moments, the constant tension of knowing something could go wrong at any second. As someone who spent way too many hours sneaking past clickers in the original game, watching Pedro Pascal navigate those same streets brought back all that anxiety I felt holding a DualShock controller.
The museum sequence – and oh boy, this is where things get intense – showcases exactly why the infected are so much more terrifying than your standard shambling corpses. When they encounter their first clickers, the sound design alone had me gripping my couch cushions. I remember playing this section in the game probably six times because I kept getting spotted and having to restart. The clicking sound those things make… it’s burned into my brain from hours of gameplay, and hearing it reproduced so faithfully on television gave me legitimate flashbacks.
But here’s where the show does something the game couldn’t quite pull off with the same emotional weight – Ellie’s reaction to seeing infected up close for the first time. Bella Ramsey captures something that’s harder to convey when you’re controlling a character versus watching one. In the game, you’re focused on survival mechanics, stealth indicators, resource management. In the show, you’re watching a fourteen-year-old girl process the reality that these used to be people. That’s a different kind of horror entirely.
The revelation about Ellie’s immunity gets handled really well here too. I’ve seen some fans complain that the show telegraphs certain plot points too obviously, but honestly, I think that’s missing the point. This isn’t about shocking twists – it’s about character development. Watching Joel’s disbelief transform into reluctant acceptance, you can see Pedro Pascal processing what this means for his character’s worldview. The guy’s lost his daughter to this infection, and now he’s faced with a kid who might represent hope for humanity’s future. That’s heavy stuff, and Pascal sells every moment of internal conflict.
Now let’s talk about Tess, because Anna Torv absolutely crushed this episode. I’ll admit, when they first announced the casting, I wasn’t sure about her in the role. I kept thinking of her Fringe character, which was so different. But watching her final scenes in this episode… man, that hit harder than the game did. In the game, Tess’s sacrifice feels somewhat inevitable from a narrative standpoint. In the show, Torv gives her this fierce determination that makes the sacrifice feel like an active choice rather than a plot necessity.
The way they handled her death scene deserves special mention. Instead of just showing infected overwhelming her, they give Tess these final moments of defiance. She’s not just buying Joel and Ellie time – she’s making a statement about what she believes in. As someone who’s analyzed countless character arcs in both games and television, this felt like a masterclass in adaptation. They kept the essential story beats but enhanced the emotional impact through performance and direction.
Speaking of direction, having Neil Druckmann himself behind the camera for this episode shows in every frame. The guy knows this world inside and out, obviously, but more importantly, he understands what made the game emotionally resonant. There’s this attention to small details that you only get when the creator is directly involved. The way infected move, the specific sounds they make, even how the overgrown environments look – it all feels authentic to the game’s vision while working perfectly for television.
One thing that struck me watching this episode is how it handles the relationship between Joel and Ellie differently than the game does at this stage. In the game, their bond develops more gradually because you’re spending dozens of hours with them. The show has to compress that timeline, but instead of rushing the relationship development, they use shared danger to accelerate the bonding process. That museum sequence serves multiple purposes – it introduces the infected as a serious threat, it demonstrates Ellie’s immunity, and it forces Joel to see Ellie as more than just cargo.
The infected themselves deserve their own discussion. As someone who spent probably too much time studying the visual design of video game creatures, I can appreciate how faithfully they’ve been translated to live action. The clickers especially – those sound effects are pulled straight from the game’s audio files, and the visual design captures that perfect balance of disgusting and tragic. These used to be people, and the show never lets you forget that fact.
What really impressed me about this episode is how it balances action with character development. Too many adaptations think they need to choose between faithful recreation and good television. The Last of Us manages to do both. The museum sequence is almost beat-for-beat identical to the game version, but it works perfectly as television because the character relationships give it emotional stakes beyond just “will they survive this encounter?”
The episode’s ending, with Joel and Ellie continuing their journey alone, sets up the central relationship that drives the entire series. Tess’s death isn’t just a tragic moment – it’s the catalyst that transforms Joel from reluctant escort to protective guardian. You can see it in Pascal’s performance, the way his entire demeanor shifts once it’s just him and Ellie.
Looking at this episode from my perspective as both a longtime gamer and someone who teaches literature, I’m struck by how well it works as both adaptation and standalone television. Students who’ve never touched a video game could watch this and understand everything they need to know about this world and these characters. But longtime fans of the game get all these extra layers of appreciation for the details and references.
The themes of sacrifice and survival that run through this episode hit particularly hard right now. Teaching teenagers during a pandemic gave me new appreciation for stories about people making impossible choices to protect others. Tess’s final stand resonates differently when you’ve spent years watching real people make sacrifices for their communities.
If I had one criticism of the episode, it’s that some of the dialogue feels slightly too polished for a post-apocalyptic setting. These characters have been surviving in brutal conditions for twenty years, but sometimes they sound a bit too articulate. It’s a minor complaint though, and the strong performances more than make up for it.
This episode solidified my confidence that HBO knew what they were doing with this adaptation. They’re not just copying the game – they’re translating its emotional core into a different medium while respecting what made the original special. As someone who’s watched way too many failed video game adaptations over the years, that’s exactly what I was hoping for.
The Last of Us episode two proves that video game adaptations can work when they’re handled by people who understand both the source material and the strengths of television as a medium. It’s a masterclass in how to adapt interactive entertainment for passive viewing, and it’s got me genuinely excited to see where they take Joel and Ellie’s story next.
Joe’s a history teacher who treats the console wars like actual history. A lifelong Sega devotee from Phoenix, he writes with passion, humor, and lingering heartbreak over the Dreamcast. Expect strong opinions, bad puns, and plenty of “blast processing.”
