SPOILER ALERT: In this note we will address some very explicit details of the plot of the final episode of The Last of Us by HBO, as well as the original game and even some elements of the second title. So we recommend discretion if you have not seen the chapter.
The inevitable moment has arrived, HBO has finally released the final episode of the first season of The Last of Us, a situation that had enormous levels of expectation for everyone.
Both those who are just discovering the plot through this series, and those who have already experienced it in the PlayStation game, went through a week of high uncertainty.
There was a big question about how they would resolve everything and how long it would take them to narrate all the pending elements after the closure of the final events that we saw in the episode 8.
Those who already know both games even had the firm doubt about whether they would alter the sequence of events, and therefore the emotional impact of certain revelations, in order to set the direct background for what follows in the second season.
But in the end, the last chapter was a carbon copy of the last 40 minutes of the game, for better and for worse.
The ending of The Last Us explained
It could be said that in the end the video game ended up achieving a better closure than the series with its first season. All because of a critical detail that altered the dramatic punch of it all.
Episode 7 of the series, Left Behind, slightly altered the sequence in which the viewer discovers Ellie’s past, it was necessary to address that passage, but it ended up diminishing the volume of the final minutes.
For those who knew the plot through video games, all those facts of the mall with Riley were known until a year after the game was released through a DLC.
So, in the final sequence, when Ellie confesses to Joel how she killed her best friend when they were both infected, it’s a huge revelation.
In the game, the viewer is just assimilating all this when Ellie returns to the dialogue demanding that Joel swear that everything he told her about the Fireflies and that they stopped looking for a cure is true. Giving rise to that ending as heartbreaking as it is abrupt.
In the case of the HBO series, the experience is a little different, since the events of the DLC are narrated in episode 7 and the revelation of Riley’s existence loses both force and dramatic weight for the same reason.
In the same way, the hospital sequence offered the opportunity to mark the exact point of connection of a decision that Joel makes there and that will trigger all the events of the second season.
But in the end it was decided to emulate frame by frame the original ending of the game.