(courtesy IMP Awards)
SNAPSHOT
“You can’t stop this.” After a global pandemic destroys civilization, a hardened survivor takes charge of a 14-year-old girl who may be humanity’s last hope. Five years after the events of the first season, Joel and Ellie are drawn into conflict with each other and a world even more dangerous and unpredictable than the one they left behind. The Last of Us is a series developed by Craig Mazin (writer of Chernobyl, The Huntsman: Winter’s War, Superhero Movie) and Neil Druckmann (head of narrative on The Last of Us and Uncharted video games), who also executive produce and wrote the screenplay. With additional writing by Halley Wegryn Gross. And featuring episodes in Season 2 directed by Kate Herron, Nina Lopez-Corrado, Mark Mylod, Stephen Williams, Neil Druckmann, Peter Hoar, Craig Mazin. Executive produced by Carolyn Strauss, Evan Wells, Asad Qizilbash, Carter Swan, Jacqueline Lesko, Cecil O’Connor. Made by PlayStation Productions, Word Games, Mighty Mint, and Naughty Dog (creator of the video game series). (courtesy First Showing)
Honestly, humanity do you even deserve to survive?
That’s been my thought more than once when watching all manner of end-of-the-world shows – and when watching the news since sometime in 2016 or so – when in the face of civilisation falling and the society as we know it crumbling into seemingly irretrievable dust, people have, rather pulling together in an act of necessary collective survival, turned on each other.
It’s a recurrent theme in many an apocalyptic show and prevalent as the hungry undead in zombie-filled series such as The Walking Dead and now The Last of Us, and while you can understand why the world would become like it, it’s exhausting in the end to watch.
Great, we get it, things are awful, but as books and shows like Station Eleven show, humanity is endlessly tenacious and resilient, and while initially things may get horrific, they also eventually may not be.
It looks like The Last of Us, which based on season one at least, is a very fine, beautifully written and superbly acted show, intends to double down on the awfulness of it all, and while I get that, you’ve got to ask at what point does hellish bleakness wear out its welcome and all you want is some glimmer of actual burgeoning hope?
Let’s see how much of the former and the latter we get when The Last of Us S2 debuts 13 April on HBO in U.S. and in Australia on Max.