‘The Last of Us’ Season 2, Episode 2 Precap: The Most Important Episode of the Show Yet. Plus, Composer Gustavo Santaolalla.

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Terms and more at applecard.com. hello welcome back to the prestige tv podcast feed i'm joyner robinson i'm rob mahoney we're here to talk to you about a very uplifting episode of television episode two of the last of us rob money how are you doing i feel great yeah really bright and sunny today.
I think overall optimistic about not only the state of the world, but everything we're going to talk about for the next hour. And the human condition, I think.
Here's how the show is going to work this week and going forward. We've got three sections for you today.
We've got an opening section that is sort of like a mailbag moment. Ramani, how can folks reach us for this particular show? Always at PrestigeTV at Spotify.com, but especially for The Last of Us at thisisyourbrainonshrooms at gmail.com.
We'll have that mailbag section. We'll have an interview, as we promised last week, and then we will have a spoiler section for you at the end with Rob Mahoney, who played the game long ago, can talk to us about sort of what we can expect upcoming or some ramifications of the changes that we've seen that we can't talk about in a spoiler-free way.
But a spoiler section that could not be marked more clearly, Joe. Post-interview, completely separate format.
Do not wade into those waters if you do not want to know what is coming in the story. Like, just don't do it.
You have so much time to leave uh i promise you okay yeah rob mahoney uh i just recently found out that you're a vinyl guy who do we have on the podcast this week i am modestly a vinyl guy i am a limited collection must-haves only vinyl guy one of these records i own is a four lp last of us of Us soundtrack by none other than the legend himself, Gustavo Santalaya, Oscar winner, composer, as I said, of probably the best video game score ever created to this point, and naturally, of the adaptation of that score for the show. So I am just beyond jazzed to have this interview this week, Jo.
We're thrilled to talk to Gustavo about The Last of Us, both on the game work and the show work and all of that. So that is our interview this week.
I'm so stoked to have it. And then I found out that Rob had the vinyl and I got even more stoked about it.
So tune in for that conversation. This is really the perfect time for it because it is the record you should own when you want to feel bad about the world.
You know, it's just like one of those days where you just want to stew in the misery. And that's when you cue up the musical stylings of not only Gustavo, but The Last of Us specifically.
Just some sad, twangy guitar for your thoughts and feelings. One more could we want.
I do. If people are watching this on video, which you can do on YouTube and on the Spotify app, I do have my record players right there.

So I am also a limited only vinyl person.

I'm a moderate vinyl guy sometimes.

Okay.

You don't have the, which I do, the almost famous mega box set thing, do you?

I do not.

I didn't even know that was on offer.

Okay.

I will share that with you off pod.

Okay.

So let's start with the

most important thing we sent a query out into the world yeah last week uh for for the gamer amongst the gamers amongst you to weigh in on the uh the debate that's ripping the nation apart and it is team bottle versus team brick yeah in these divided times uh Nothing could be more divided than this.

We got a ton of responses on this.

And guess what?

Very even spread against Team Brick and Team Bottle.

I want to read my favorite email, which comes from Tyler, who says, the three little pigs weren't saved by a house made of bottles.

Get a grip, Rob.

That's my favorite email that we got. About the Team Bottle team bottle versus team brick but so this is a question for the gamers you can pick up a brick or you can pick up a bottle inside of the game which one is the better one in the first episode this season there was a bottle moment that team bottle really felt like was a win for them can i just lay out what i feel like i from the many many emails we got about this can i lay out what i feel I feel like I've learned? Please, Joe, I would love to hear it.
Okay, correct me if I'm wrong on anything. It seems like Team Brick's main argument is that in a melee situation, you can stun someone with a bottle, but you can kill the shit out of them with a brick.
And so what would you rather have in a zombie moment? Okay. Team Bottles' main argument seems to be related to a Molotov cocktail.
I know Molotov cocktails are important inside of The Last of Us, but does the singular empty bottle, is that a required element for the Molotov cocktail? It's an element of the recipe. So you do have to have the empty bottle to then make the Molotov cocktail.
That's compelling. Fire versus bludgeoning.
I don't know. It's two great tastes that go great together, honestly.
I appreciate the pragmatism of Team Brick, especially the people who emailed us to tell us they were playing on Grounded difficulty in particular, which I have to tell you is one of the most harrowing experiences you can have in gaming. My experience with grounded was I played through the first game and I was riding high from the experience of playing it and I'm like I got it I'm going back I'm going back in at the highest possible difficulty and I'm gonna I'm gonna see what this is like uh it's very hard I am not equipped for it I got I would say roughly 15 into the game maybe 20 and I was just like I'm not built this.
I am not built to be picking up bricks left and right and beating infected with my, basically my bare hands melee style, but really bricks melee style. I want both the style and the substance of the bottle.
And because certain difficulties aren't amenable to that, then they're just not for ultimately. Like, I need to be in a bottled existence.

I'm going to leave you with this last thought on team bottle versus team brick, and thank you all.

I mean, you can continue to send us your thoughts and feelings to this is your brain on shrooms

at gmail.com, but this is what Dana wrote.

I think the bottle versus brick debate is overly simplistic, creates a false dichotomy,

and unnecessarily divides an already tumultuous fan base.

I believe the correct way to view this is not versus, but depends. Bricks are best when being used as a melee weapon or being thrown directly in an enemy.
Being harder than bottles, they do more damage. Bottles are a better choice when you need a distraction.
Being more prone to shatter than bricks, this would create a louder sound, at least in my head, leading to a better distraction. I believe the fandom could and should call a truce in this decade-long war and focus our ire on the true enemy, Neil Druckmann's inexplicable pretending that there won't be a third game.
So that is Dana's platform. And vote for Dana if you want to put this debate to rest.
So there you go. It is quite compelling.
I do want us all to come together in these trying times. And this episode, most of all, Joe, like let us weep, let us mourn together.
Let us celebrate the fact that Abby did not pick up a brick to beat Joel to death. You know, ultimately it's a different implement that we don't have any access to.
Sure. No one's team golf club, to be clear.
Okay. Definitely not.
Last but not least on the sort of like bits and bobs part part we did get a response to our query of what makes a horde from a couple people they cited this one magical system that was like really sweet that a number of our uh listeners went to this one uh heroes of bite and magic game that that classifies groupsly. A few is one through four.

Several, five through nine.

A pack, 10 through 19.

Lots, 20 through 49.

That's a scientific determination, lots.

Horde, 50 through 99.

Okay.

Throng, 100 through 249.

Swarm, 250 to 499. Zounds, 500 to 999.
And Legion, 1000 plus. So if you had to guess based on this taxonomy, what attacked Jackson Hole in episode two? This feels like a swarm to me.
I agree. or if if you really wanted to break it up maybe there are multiple distinct throngs in play two throngs at least but they're all joined by the same fungal hive mind so i i think it is a swarm swarm all right so we're putting horde to best a bed and we're picking swarm uh and that sounds right to me as well i agree um but i do love the word throng so thank you so much is your assessment you know mal and i had some confusion around this is your assessment that abby woke one throng yes and the uh the little tendrils in the pipes woke the other and then we saw them come together to form a swarm uh around jackson is that what happened in your mind i do not know i don't yeah i think the inciting incident of what is leading the infected to do what they do in this episode i don't know that i quite track yeah but i like the idea that it's like it's both abby and sure the internal expansion at Jackson.
It's like the outside consequences, but also the internal consequences of complacency or whatever you want to call it. Okay.
Quick question. Okay.
So this is like a big episode for the spoiler phobes versus the spoiler files versus the players of the game versus newcomers, et cetera, et cetera. Definitely.
One of our listeners, Charlotte, was asking, how do we handle spoilers in a quote, non-appointment viewing world? So if we're not all watching HBO Sunday night, and her argument is that we haven't done that in such a meaningful way since Game of Thrones, When should one feel safe to go on social media or, you know, whatever and not have an episode of the last of this spoiled for them? She was like, I've noticed an uptick around White Lotus. And now this where people just feel free.
And she was mostly sort of naming, I don't know, various culture outlets like Vulture or Variety or whatever and sort of dinging them for their tweets or Blue Skies or whatever. Do you have any thoughts or feelings? Do you have a philosophy on sort of when is it kosher to, you know, start chatting about a TV show that everyone's watching? I do think there's been a kind of a handoff between who the responsibility falls to.
You know, there's sort of a blanket pervasive understanding. If you are making content like this podcast, we have a response.
Like we want to withhold certain things. We don't want to put it so far out there that if you were trying to avoid it, you couldn't possibly avoid it.
That said, it's so much depends on your specific spoiler sensitivity. And mine is incredibly high to the point that I'm just not going online.
Like I'm just not going to be on social media until I have seen it. I am not going to I'm not even going to frankly, like be as responsive or reachable over text amongst the people who I know are watching it and might be texting me.
Did you see that shit? If it's something that I don't know what's going to happen. so it kind of does fall on you a little bit and fall on like how wounded you would be if you found out something you didn't want to know i actually had to do this recently on two uh ringer text threads i had to do it to the the sinner's text thread that you're a part of that i didn't see the movie i didn't see the movie until saturday so you guys were talking about it i was just like mute until later did me telling you that it fucking rips well the movie for you no that start but then like people started having conversations and sharing memes and i was like i don't know what any of this is and i refuse to look at it until saturday um so that's what i did and then you will note on saturday i started getting mouthy in there and then um chris ryan mali rubin and i were watching our Andor screeners.
And Chris and Molly were ahead of me.

And so I just muted the thread until I had caught up to them.

Because they want to talk about it.

Great.

I don't want to see it.

Great.

I have some measure of control over that.

It's tough when so many of us go to places like Twitter or Blue Sky or Instagram or whatever for, I don't know, actual news or interaction with pals or whatever it is.

And I got to deprive myself of that in order to not know what happened to Joel on The Last of Us.

The last shreds of human connection we have left in a mostly digital world, Joe.

And we are depriving you of it.

It's almost like maybe we shouldn't have isolated ourselves and just bottled ourselves up in our little homes and avoided all contact from the outside world unless absolutely necessary.

It's almost like it was a bad thing. Yeah, I prefer to say brick ourselves up into our own little homes, but you know, to each their own.
So yeah, I mean, it's a complicated question from our listener, Charlotte. I don't have a clean answer.
For Thrones, I did feel pretty clean. It's like stay off social media on Sunday nights if you don't want to be spoiled.
But I agree that it's a little harder now when the monoculture is as divided as it is and people are like, I don't want to binge watch three episodes of Andor on a Tuesday night. I don't have time.
Tony Gilroy, I don't have time. What are you doing to me? So this is your brain on shrooms if you have spoiler philosophy.
I think what's made it harder too is the number of kind of like bad faith actors out there has just escalated so dramatically, specifically on social media. But one thing I think we can all get behind is, say for an episode like this, a moment like this, posting clips and images from the episode specifically, terrible, terrible form.
If you want to make like your little jokes about it that are ambiguous enough that if you don't know about the golf club, you wouldn't be able to piece it together.

Maybe there's enough gray area there to work with, but you can't just be posting things directly from the episode moments after it aired. Dicey.
Very dicey. This is always a game like when I even when I was covering Thrones, this is always like a game I tried to play where I was like, you want to make your coverage and your headline exciting.
But like, how do you, so you, you wind up saying such hokey things like that moment or whatever it is. And it's so groan worthy, but I'm just sort of like, but I'm trying not to spoil people.
Anyway, no longer my problem. I know I'm a podcaster now.
Okay. Well, the title of this podcast is that podcast about that moment.
We are the definitive take among the five ringer podcasts covering the show and the infinite number of podcasts covering otherwise. But it's been three days, so you've had some time.
Okay, so listen, on the non-spoiler front, this is speculation front, which is fun for even a gamer like Rob, because we don't know what the truth is here. Our listener Dan asks, can you talk more about what happened between Gail's husband and Joel, Eugene? Is it laid out explicitly in the game or is it kept more ambiguous? This is actually like a massive game to show change, Rob, in that Eugene, they do go to Eugene's grow house.
They do find some information about Eugene. Eugene has died, but of natural causes.
It has nothing to do with something mysterious and awful that Joel did. So I guess my question for you, Rob, is do you have any theories? What did Joel do to Eugene that's so bad? You know, I didn't think I would get to theorize on this show, Joe.
So I'm thrilled to be back. I see only like two real possibilities here.
One, Eugene, who is a former Firefly himself, becomes aware in some way of what Joel did in terms of wiping out all the Fireflies in Salt Lake, saving Ellie's life, choosing her life over a potential vaccine. And Joel kills him to hide the secret, to contain the secret.
Right. The other possibility is some version of that happens, but it's maybe Ellie who ends up killing Eugene for some reason and Joel covers it up to protect Ellie.
But that would require like a more delicate dance and series of events to get there that I don't that seems overly complicated to me. It seems most likely that Eugene was never bitten in any stretch of the imagination.
He was just a normal guy who brought information to Joel that Joel did not like being information on the public and decided to take matters into his own hands do you do you have any other other alternative reads that could be in play here no i mean it's so mysterious because it's like people people die rod they die all the time so they certainly do like the thing that gail said was like it was the way you did it yeah and i'm like what did what were we drawn were we drawn and quartered was there gasoline involved what do you mean the way he did it you know i didn't even take it that way i took it as like we have evidence within the show to say that where you're where you are bitten kind of dictates how long it takes for you to become one of the zombies and you know if you're bitten on an extremity on an armor lake it can be as much as a day or more for some people i took gail's line line to be, why didn't, even if he was bitten out in the world, why did you not bring my husband back to Jackson so we could say goodbye? Like, why did you just take care of this as if this was your thing to take care of when this is a person who I love? That's been my read on it so far. Interesting.
Okay. Well, in theory, we'll find out because Joey Pants himself is playing Eugene and he's in the trailer.
So we know we'll get some sort of Eugene flashback and reveal. But this is a mystery for the gamers as much as it is for the show watchers.
Will we see him don the bong gas mask in the flesh? One can only hope.

One can only hope.

Okay, let's talk about Abby, which was sort like a a bone to pick that you had with with the show in terms of learning a bit more about abby before the killing than we do uh in the game and i i want to read so our listener adam wrote in thanks adam with my one of my favorite things to ever talk about, which is what Alfred Hitchcock once said about suspense versus surprise. And I'm not gonna read Adam's email, though.
It's great. I am going to read you the Alfred Hitchcock quote, because I've talked to you, I'm sure about it, Rob.
I bring it up on podcasts all the time. But I thought I would read the whole quote out because wouldn't you know it, Alfred Hitchcock puts it better than I do.
So here's what Alfred Hitchcock said about the idea of suspense versus surprise in a conversation with Francois Truffaut. He said, quote, there is a distinct difference between suspense and surprise, and yet many pictures, films continually confuse the two.
I'll explain what I mean. We are now having a very innocent little chat.
Let's suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, boom, there is an explosion.
The public is surprised. But prior to the surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene of no special consequence.
Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table, and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchists place it there.
The public is aware the bomb is going to explode at one o'clock and there's a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one.
In these conditions, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen, you should not be talking about such trivial matters.
There is a bomb beneath you and it's about to explode. In the first case, we have given the public 15 seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion.
In the second, we have provided them with 15 minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible, the public must be informed, except when the surprise is a twist, that is when the unexpected ending is in itself the highlight of the story.

So, end quote.

That's Alfred Hitchcock.

I think there's many cases

you and many gamers can make

about the fact that

the way in which Abby's motivations

are revealed in the game

is the story

or is part of the mechanic of the story.

And we'll talk about that in a second.

But I do think it's worth advocating for just a minute about what we do get inside of this episode, inside of the story. Knowing that Abby is after Joel and Joel's hand, as it does in the game, enters screen and it is Joel there.
And we know that Abby wants to kill him, not just kill him, but kill him slowly. and so we know when she hears his name, when Dina says it, we know that she wants to kill him.
When she said, let's go back to the lodge where my friends are, we know that those are a bunch of people who want Joel dead. And so that is a different experience than in the game and in many people's opinion, a lesser experience.
But it is a delicious kind of tension that is not necessarily evident uh in the game any thoughts about that ramahony i mean many many many thoughts uh i think for one this is the most important episode of this show to date and i think it's also one of the best and i think they really pulled this off despite my apprehensions and i'm sure many other gamers apprehensions like this version of Abby and this version of the story, I think does really work. That suspense, that element, it definitely plays.
And weirdly enough, I would say the, the Abby, Joel, Ellie stuff works for me better in this episode than the big battle sequence stuff does. But the existence of the big battle sequence, I think is really important when you already are telling us Abby's motivations up front.
Like you need the distracting, offsetting, counterbalance element to keep us in that suspended state of wondering, is there anything that could happen here that would convince Abby to not do this? That would convince her friends to have a moment of, there is a flaming city off in the distance. Like there something bigger at play than our personal revenge? Unfortunately for all of us, especially Joel, The Last of Us is a story about how our personal tragedies just bulldoze any societal human concerns in the vast majority of cases.
We are waylaid by our personal loss, first and foremost, more than what's happening to a city of people you don't know. And so the fact that they have that counterbalance, the fact that you do get all of this built-in suspense coming from this format, I think my primary concern was, is there going to be enough time for the suspense to build, right? Like if you're going to go suspense versus surprise, are you going to let it fester enough for us to really feel it? And I think I did really feel it.
I think I did really get there by the time that inevitably Abby and Joel do run into each other and you put them on the track that can only lead to one place, really. There's so much time from that moment until Joel's actual death for you to talk yourself in and out of exactly what's happening.
That to me is the suspense that really matters. And that's the reason this episode really works at a really high level.
I'm so glad to hear that. I know you were concerned.
And we talk more in the spoiler section about some of the larger game ramifications or larger show ramifications of this. But I'm really glad to hear that because I know that you were worried about that.
And I think that's one of the most compelling arguments I've heard yet for the inclusion of the battle sequence inside of this episode, which I was sort of like a little iffy on. So I think that's a really great, compelling point of view.
One piece of pushback that I've seen, not just to like the coverage that Mallory and I did in depth on House of R, but just across the board is I think people are bumping, and I think this is okay to talk about it in a non-spoiler way, equating in any way what Abby does here with what Joel did at the end of season one. The argument being what Joel did was in defense and protection of someone, and what Abby is doing here is just vengeance or her bizarre idea of justice or whatever it is um i don't know and i i don't know if i have a non-spoiler way to sort of push back on that um one thing i was talking to our producer donnie about before we started recording i was like well does it tip the balance of the skills in any way that joel's body count is 18 and abby's is one inside one inside of these two.
Both of them also have body counts outside of that, but like inside of this, inside of this particular, you know, comparison. Do you have any thoughts on that, Rob? Like whether or not that's a fruitful thing to talk about in a spoiler free way, or what do you think? I think it's fruitful to talk about.
I would say overall, especially to this point in the story, the point is that they're never going to be equal, that what happened to you is always going to feel different and always going to feel more powerful. And so it's not a matter of 18 bodies against one.
It's not a matter of revenge versus like protection. It's this person I love died or this person I love was at risk.
And therefore, I am spurred to action in a really compelling way that is always going to make sense to me, but may never entirely make sense to you. Although I will say, I think part of what makes, I want to talk about Caitlin Deaver's performance, especially in this sequence, but what makes Pedro Pascal's performance so effective for me is there is almost like a mutual understanding of, I am looking into the eyes of someone who is resolute in what they aim to do.
And the only other pushback I've really seen, at least in a really pronounced way about this sequence, is that Joel didn't try to talk his way out of this with Abby. That he didn't tell her about Ellie.
That he didn't tell her about the fact that this person he loved was going to die. He didn't try to set the scene or change her mind in any way, to which I would say it never really occurred to me that he would, that he is looking at something very familiar to him, which is like an agent of violence and like ultimately someone who is carrying out a very specific agenda that is not going to be dissuaded.
And so what you tell that person is not, oh, let me tell you my life story and make you sob with me it's can you

please hurry up like if you're gonna do this can you please get on with it um yeah and something

that um the the creators have said is that and mal and i talked about this in house of r but like

that a reason they put dina in that room which is an adaptive difference from the game is to make

joel more compliant yeah he's compliant because he's concerned about her safety if it were just him in that room perhaps he would be either mouthier or uh you know a more in a more of a berserker rage sort of space uh however much you can be after you get shot in the leg or anything like that um i actually before i get to next thing um i i want to i want to give you the floor as a fellow deaver believer what do you think what do you want to say about caitlin in this episode you know we're eating well joe our our backswing is looking strong i think overall we're just in a really great place as far as endeavoring to understand the range of what caitlin deaver is capable of because you know as as you and i and justified fans will know she's always been great at this sort of like hardened cynicism i've never seen something quite like this the kind of menace that she channels in this sequence i found really unique for the roles that i've seen her in and really really powerful and i think the heel turn that ab that Abby has here and this version of the character really works because Caitlin Deaver is selling us on Abby's satisfaction in this moment of getting to twist the knife, like relish, not only shotgunning Joel in the leg, but then taking the golf club to it, right? Like her getting to have this moment is what makes it so effective. And having version of abby that i would say overall is much talkier than the version we get in the game is and and this this feels true to this version of the story in general show versus game it feels to me like neil druckman and craig mazin have made a very conscious choice that they are not going to let the audience misunderstand abby or her motives that leads to a big speechifying scene here where she is laying out a lot.
Yeah. I think there's moments at which you err on the side of like over explicating things that could play differently if you wanted, if you wanted to do that.
And it's sometimes in the game do play differently. But I think this works because this is a version of Abby that doesn't just want revenge.
She wants to be heard. Like she wants to have this moment with Joel where she gets to tell him, this is how you fucked me up.
And this is how you ruined my life. And if she just shot him in the head, that version of the character doesn't really make sense to me.
But this version, as Caitlin Dever is delivering it, really does. Something one of our listeners, Mike, wrote in to say that he, for one, was more inclined to be accepting of changes because Neil Druckmann, the creator of the game, is also the kosher runner of this show.
I don't know that he mentioned Hallie, but Hallie Gross, who co-wrote The Last of Us Part II, is also a huge creative voice on the show. So the difference between watching something that someone has adapted from someone's work without their, you know, like, many Stephen King adaptations of Stephen King's like, what shit was that guys? I don't like it versus the creator themselves making the adaptation.
So making the choice. And you touched upon this a little bit, this idea that you you touched on last week about a second chance at a story that you've already told and told quite well.
And I think that really rings true for me because I'm always asking this question. Like, we were always in the coverage of Thrones and then House of the Dragon.
How much is George involved? What does George think about – what does George R.R. Martin think about all of this? Or is he busy, you know, resurrecting wolves?

Or with something like Station Eleven, which is one of my favorite limited series I've ever seen in my life based on a book I really, really liked, but it is very different from the book. Quite an abstract adaptation, right? Yeah.
But when Emily St. John Mandel said, I wish I had made this key different choice that they made, Patrick made on that show when he made that show, I was like, you can let go of all of your sort of, the book, but the book, you know, when the creator says that.
When you get to creator envy, like we're just at a whole different level of acceptance. So it matters me uh that the creator sort of like and often you know oftentimes because of you know various contracts they've signed creators will sort of grit and bear and say that they liked a thing when they didn't really like it but i feel like you can kind of tell and in this case there's no there's no mistaking it neil is the co-author of this particular adaptation of his own story and that makes a huge difference to me.
And to me, it's also a reason why we discussed this some in our spoiler section last time about like the timing of when this would happen within the season, because as you're making these adaptive changes, you can move things around in the timeline. You can stretch out how long Pedro Pascal is on your show.
I'm sure there's a lot of like very powerful reasons to do things like that. But Joel has to die.
Like I'm incredibly open-minded to those sorts of like postmodern impressionistic adaptations. There's so many cool things you can do reworking a story and reimagining a story beyond just going beat for beat.
Like we don't need to always go beat for beat. But at the point where Neil Druckmann is an executive producer, it is one of the the people running the show you get a sense that it's going to be fairly faithful to at least the core ideas of the story and joel dying is one of the core ideas of the story like what how this spurs everyone else yeah it kind it's such an important inciting moment that in order to like stretch it out or reimagine a version of the last of us where joel doesn die here but go on goes on to live a long and happy life growing his own weed in a 7-eleven somewhere it just doesn't make sense with the kind of story that they're trying to tell that would be so soulless and like I think that yes some compelling arguments I've seen from people who are not thrilled by the way the abby thing has been tweaked oh a word that a friend of mine used this morning is like it lacks some of the ballsiness of the video game and i'm like i think that's true i can kind of agree with that i can kind of agree with that if the pay if the trade off is uh the same thing doesn't happen to caitlin daever that happened to laura bailey the actress who played Abby in the game, I would take it if you can't be quite that ballsy inside of a TV show versus a video game because you don't have the tool of making someone play a character in order to act as sort of like an empathy machine, I can understand all of that.
One last thing I want to say, and then I want to make sure you have everything, you said

everything you want to say in a spoiler-free way before we go to the interview, is that our listener on beer wrote in something that I had never heard of that I absolutely love, talking about this idea of hope inside of a story and what it means. So to go back to that suspense versus surprise thing, given that we know what Abby is here to do, we can, to your point, still have some sort of hope that maybe Joel rescuing her from the throng or swarm is enough to make her change her mind.
Or to your point, maybe Jackson being on fire is enough to make her change her mind or something like that. There is a hope inside of, given that we know what's coming, there is a hope there.
What Abir says is, the ancient Greeks thought that the last little bit of hope was a final fuck you from the gods that no matter how bad things got, humans would keep foolishly yearning for something better and it would be a kind of torture. After that episode, I'm wondering if I'm sort of inclined to agree with the ancient Greek interpretation.
Does hope just make things harder in the end? Any thoughts about that, Rob? Hope is a final fuck you from the gods. It is a final fuck you.
It is what kills you. I think that the role that plays is so important in this version of Joel's death specifically, holding us in that moment in the way that they do.
I found incredibly impressive. Especially for someone who.
I know what's supposed to happen.

I know what previously has happened.

But there's been enough swerves along the way.

That I'm wondering are we going to take the same course.

I'm wondering are the character beats going to be the same.

Could Abby.

How resolute will Abby be.

As displayed by this version of the character.

And the fact that even I can have hope.

In a moment like that.

And any gamer can have hope that something might change. ever so slightly and then the story would go off on a slightly different course that's a fucking magical thing to be able to pull off and i i think really is a tribute to the performances to the writing to mark my lot's direction in this episode which like lingers just enough on all of abby's groups like apprehensions yeah i'm wondering like is one of them gonna jump in and be like this again like this city is on fire like there's something at stake here that's bigger than us and what we've been after but you never get that like you never get that hope you never get that release not you Manny but maybe Owen maybe someone okay certainly Mel Mel seems like she's ready to at least get out of there were you a sicko like me maybe you weren't um when i would watch things like thrones or house of the dragon when i knew things were supposed to happen in a certain time frame yeah i would sometimes scrub over the time bar to see how much is left in the episode were you like do you are you uh too absorbed in the story and not a weirdo like me? Because I could see someone watching this episode scrubbing over the time bar to be like, how much time is left? Are we going to drag this into episode three or does this have to happen here in episode two? Do you have any thoughts on that? This is how spoiler sensitive I am.
I'm spoiler sensitive even within the episode. I don't want to hit pause at any point in time because I don't want to see the time bar i don't want to i don't want to know how much is left and if anything if i'm wondering how much time is left then i feel like the show has kind of lost me a little bit i want i want to be in the shit buried in the snow up to my neck with the zombies just chilling out that's what that's where i want to be all right yeah just chilling covered by the the body of your dead brethren all right anything else you want to say spoiler-free way before we go to our interview? Just that I think the thing that occurred to me most by the ending of this episode, where we get all of the devastation in Jackson, obviously all the personal fallout for Ellie and Joel and Dina.
And somehow we haven't talked enough about Jesse, if at all, on this podcast. I fucking love Jesse.
Hopefully we'll have more of an opportunity to do that but we have not seen tommy's response yet to seeing his brother's death and as a as a brother of a brother i'm just like bracing for the moment uh not looking forward to that joe i gotta say not looking forward to it wow what a brave perspective from europe thank you okay um well i'm excited talk to you about some, I have some, maybe some Jesse stuff to talk about in the spoiler section. Let's go now to our conversation with Gustavo though.
Gustavo, thanks so much for joining us. It's really a pleasure to get to talk to you about the music of The Last of Us specifically.
And when you're writing music for this game and this series and this show, are there rules or parameters that you kind of set out for yourself? Like, are there things that make your music kind of of this particular world versus the other things that you write and compose? The question about what's the difference also, right, about, you know, writing for a game or writing for the show, or I always I always felt that I was never writing really for a game or I, I was always writing for this, for a story, for a great story, you know? And, and the way I work, even with films and stuff, I, in films in particular, I like to work from the very, very beginning. Hopefully I will get in even before they filmed anything, anything you know so from the script and from conversations with the director and that's how i started to write music so the the biggest example because all the score was written prior to anything being shot was broke back mountain you know the full score and and and you know and then ang obviously was his genius to say well i, well, I'm going to use this here.
We're going to use this here. We're going to repeat this here.
That was all Aang's decision. But I wrote inspired in the characters and in the story.
The game mechanics, you know, allowed me to do that perfect. Because as you know, in games, you know, know it takes like three years to basically writing from the story and and from you know the the told by by Neil and also you know some few drawings of the characters and that's about it but but basically you know I I again is I'm I'm I'm writing for for stories for characters not necessary for for a media in particular and I always it's my connection with the story and the characters that determine how I'm going to approach it you know there's always I mean that part that for me comes I don't know natural very natural that are you know the emotional connection and the emotional connection.
And as a matter of fact, I'm not a gamer. I'm a terrible, terrible gamer.
But our son, when I started working in the game, and this was like 10 years ago, you know, he was in his mid-teen years. And he was a very good gamer.
And so I enjoy watching him play.

So I will sit and just watch him play.

And I always thought, you know, the moment that somebody establish an emotional connection with a gamer, this is going to change.

It's going to change the industry in a way.

You know, it's going to be something very different.

So, you know, after the two Oscars, you know, was a i was approached by several companies one of them very big company with a big project and not only in terms of financially but also in terms of visibility and stuff but it was more of the same you know just you know the the combat and killing survival all that stuff the gymnastics you know and uh and i passed you know i mean i i i like to think also that whatever success i have achieved has to do not only with the things that that i've done but also with the things that i said no i'm not doing this you know and just waiting sometimes you know and that's what it was i mean i i wait i wait and then suddenly neil appeared you know which is funny because when neil proposed the thing he was told by somebody inside naughty dog no don't approach i mean he's not gonna do it he's you know he's not gonna do it you know but you know the person really didn't knew me because i i do sometimes small projects. If I like, if I reverberate with a project, I'll do it.
And if I don't, I won't. That's why I don't have anything that I need to hide from you, you know.
I don't have one project in my career, you know. My more than 100 albums produced and stuff that I need to know.
one no no no I some most likely some will will affect you and some will not or some will like because I did so many things and I have such a wide spectrum and of a taste in music but I've always been very picky about what I So when, when I met Neil and he told me exactly, I mean, he told me exactly those words. I want to do a story that connects with emotion.
And I, he told me a story. I said, this is it, you know? And then when we learned people were crying, playing the game, you know, it was like the perfect affirmation that, you know, we were in the right, the right track.
So it's a very, very special project for me because after, again, after the Oscars, after, you know, I have now lots of, I mean, 17 Latin Grammys, two Anglo Grammys, a Golden Globe, two BAFTAs, you know, I mean, all those, you know, if you feel that, that's it, okay, you know. And then this came, you know, this came that opened me to a totally new audience you know that now listens to to some of my other music and some of my other projects it's been wonderful it's a it's a project that I really really feel very close to I love to hear you talk about the way you're so intentional with silences in your musical composition.
Use this phrase, the eloquence of silence. I love that.
I'm curious if there's a silence inside of The Last of Us that you're particularly proud of. there's lots of yeah there's lots of them it's those spaces that I take you know

between notes

it's funny that you already

heard that because i always i said i just to to make sure that you know we know that we're talking about not silence as an absence of sound or of of uh you know but but silence that it's telling you things you know that's a silence that sometimes is louder than the note that precedes it,

you know, or the note that it's fine. And lately I've been, because I have a problem with my

mobility, not because, but I think it's funny that having that, I got very attracted to parkour,

not to do it myself, but to watch people doing it.

I'm a big fan of a British group of guys called Storer, and they do these great things, you know, jumping in buildings and between anything that you can imagine. and I sort of felt a relationship between their jumps and the silences

because I see when they're going to jump like between two buildings, you know, they run and they sort of measure the jump. You know, they go and they measure it several times before they do it, and then they do it, right? And it's just choosing the right speed and the right note that you're going to jump into that silence,

right?

And that's moment in times stand still, you know,

but it's full of content that moment, right?

And everything is there, right?

Emotion, danger.

And then the note that you're going to fall now, you know,

that is not good.

You're not going to crash, you know, you find a way to gracefully, you know, roll and stuff and continue, you know that it's not good you're not gonna you're not gonna crash you know you you find a way to gracefully you know roll and stuff and continue you know and uh i i feel that those moments when when the silence some of those silence come is it's like that it's like jumping into that like that you know nothing you know so you can fly or you can die. When I sent the music for Broadback Mountain, which was very funny because I sent it, I met Ang and just like less than a month after I sent the music.
And then I talked to James Seamus, which was the producer. And he said, you know, know that at the beginning I thought you were pulling my leg I thought that you know you went and there was nothing and I'm going this is a joke you know you know it's actually you know Angus thought that it was music that I've thought that I was sending as a sample of stuff

that I've done already, right?

And he said, you know, he was like pissed because, you know,

damn, you know, this could have been perfect for the movie.

No, no, this is the music for the movie.

Great and stuff, you know.

But I think, you know, the silence connects also with the introspective

Thank you. Great and stuff, you know.
But I think, you know, the silence connects also with the introspective thing of a character too, you know, the moment that, you know, when I broke back. I mean, those guys didn't talk that much really, right? I mean, they were surrounded by silence, inner silence and outside silence.
But it really, I also feel that somehow you are sucked into the story

and in those moments, you know,

that you're, it's like somehow it brings you

to the story and to the screen

and to pay attention, you know,

to what is happening.

Well, I think that speaks to this very difficult balance

that The Last of Us has to walk, whereas you're saying there's these silences, there's these deeply emotional connections with the characters. You also, both in the game and in the series, have to have a kind of music that marries with the activity of the show, of the violence of the show and everything that's going on.
That's where David does a great job. David Fleming, you know, who's also part of the show.
He brings that great and very coherent with what I do too. And, you know, he uses some of the sounds that I also have created and stuff.
So, I mean, we exchange. I mean, we're actually going to now HBO is doing like a presentation for tastemakers and I guess potential voters and stuff for the Emmys and other awards, I guess.
And we are actually going to perform together. We're going to play, you know, together the cues that, you know, we did together, cues that he did, cues that I did, but we're going to play.
So it's a great, I think it's a great combination of us to do the show, you know. How does that work in terms of your collaboration? That is mainly decided by Craig and Neil.
Tension is something that we both approach. So that mainly is a decision of Neil or Craig, who's going to to tap first into it but usually i mean action is something that goes to him and and anything that has to do with you know the emotion or the the person the more personal stuff you know action is more kinetic really stuff that that sort of accents the the action you know It's not so personal.

When we get personal, that's, I think,

that's when my role plays whatever part plays.

I don't know that there's a more deeply personal piece of music

in The Last of Us than the theme that I think has become

synonymous with the franchise, with these characters. Obviously, it is kind of transported to the show as well for the opening credits.
Could you tell us just about where the melodic ideas, the ideas for that theme kind of came together for you? Yeah, I always like to say that I'm a big

fan of developing a working discipline. I mean, you know, when I'm asked about what advice I will

give to, you know, people that are starting out, you know, kids that want to get into this and

stuff, the first thing that I said is, you know, the importance of the discipline of work.

I don't wait until, you know, a light bulb goes in my head, you know.

Oh, I feel inspired today.

I work every day and sometimes it happens just like that, you know,

and sometimes it takes more time and then the moment you connect and the moment that you connect is different than five minutes ago, you know, you can really tell that something happened, you know, but sometimes it happens immediately, you know.

So the main thing is something that happened like that.

I mean, I woke up and I went to the Ron Rocco and I don't know, I had the feeling that the Ron Rocco was going to be the guy to do this, this theme, you know, the main theme.

Thank you. I woke up and I went to the Ron Rocco.
And I don't know, I had the feeling that the Ron Rocco was going to be the guy to do this theme, you know, the main theme. And the whole basic core of the piece, it happened just like that.
You know, the middle section, when it opens and it goes to a more major kind of mode or something, you know, that you can see the space, you know, and the landscapes and all. That I added.
That was on another day. But the main thing, I don't know.
And the beginning, too. One thing that is really funny because I don't read or write music, right? But I see now sometimes in YouTube super academic musicians that analyze, you know, my music.
I love it. It's really funny.
And so a guy was analyzing. You see, you can feel the movement, the passage of time, you know.
And it's true. I'm going, yeah, right.
You know, I thought about that. And then he said, when I go to that note, he said, well, that note, he said, you know, that's the double interval.
That was in a certain period in time. The church was that note in that in particular interval notes function also in so so in the for the main tonality that note is what they call it you know the the devil's interval and you couldn't couldn't use it was forbidden to use that note of course i didn't have this i this.
I said, well, play backwards and you'll find more. I mean, I just, I heard that note because it, for me, was so spooky, you know, that they give that thing that, so all that came from, all that came really, really very like this, you know, and with the Ron Roc own rocco you know which has been such an ally you know ally can be very it's incredible i'm so so happy actually today we're releasing spitfire is releasing like a digital version of the instrument which you can do with all the nuances little nuances the hammerings the slides, all the intensities.
I mean, I did all the notes. I've been working on this for almost two years.
Oh, congratulations. That sounds incredible.
So very, very excited. I'm very happy about that because I mean, the story with the Ron Rocco is that I was recording things with Charango and with Ron Rocco.
is it related to the Charangos, the Ronroco, but the Ron Rocco is that I was recording things with Charango and with Ron Rocco.

It's related to the Charango, the Ron Rocco,

but the Ron Rocco really has a total personality of its own because of the range where the instrument is,

because it has sustain, which the Charango doesn't have.

The Charango is very high-pitched,

and also you can play a melody and comp with a Ron Rocco, you can.

And also, I mean, the music that I write with the instrument is not necessary music from the Andes Mountains, which is that instrument what it's used for, you know. So I was once called to produce a compilation of Jaime Torres.
I will explain Jaime Torres was, because he's not with us anymore but a kind of like a rabbi shankar of the of the charango right so i wanted to show him what i did with the charango and with eron rocco and stuff but i was very skeptic about what he was going to say because i finger pick i play with totally another technique i play things that are not necessary music from the Andes. I mean, I write things.
But finally, one day I took the time and I grew up singing on TV, you know, playing. And it was a big fan.
And I always played the charango. I always had the charango.
I use it in my band. And I always have this thing about identity and showing in my music who I am, where do I come from? And, but one day I given that to him and I said, well, you know, this is something that some friends of mine do, you know? And like three days later, he calls me back and he said, no, no, you're playing here, you know, and you should, you should say, well, because I don't play with your technique, you know, and it's not music necessarily.
No, no, no, no, no. I've been working all my life to bring, you know, the charango to another stage.
I did things with orchestras and stuff, you know. You should make this record.
And so the Ron Rocco album, which is the one that opened the doors to the movies to me and therefore to The Last of Us, it comprises 13 years of my life, that album is recordings of a span of 13 years that I, you know, because it just did for me, it was something very personal I put that out and it's on Michael Mann and then you know Amores Perros, In Yari to Babel and Motorcycle Diaries and you know, one thing to the other, Brokeback doesn't have Ron Rocco which is good too because if not it wouldn't have been just oh yeah he's only the Ron Rocco but it has been a very important instrument so important that it ended up being you know the main guy in the theme of the Last of Us I mean you know very very nice but you know there's other timbers in The Last of Us. I mean, it's, you know, very, very, very, very nice.
But, you know, there's other timbers in The Last of Us that I really like, I love. I use this unique guitar, not the guitar itself, but the strings that I use.
They're only made by a company in Argentina called Magma, and they're an octave lower than a guitar guitar and you can hear that in Unbound and in some of the themes you know in the first season and in the first game I use a six-string Fender bass which is comes from the 60s and stuff right which is it's lower than a baritone guitar it's a an octave lower than a guitar right this is exactly these strings are the same but for a classical guitar so for game two you can hear it all through the through through uh the show too i use quite a bit this this instrument too i think it's a very particular timbre to to the the show and also the banjo I introduced in the second. I'm not pretending to be a banjo player.
I use the banjo as a tool, as an instrument to create a particular sound that evokes something, but not pretending to be a banjo player. There's great, great players that do that.
I want to ask you, I know it doesn't always necessarily work this way in terms of how you prepare music for a project, but I'm curious with something like in episode two, this big climactic death scene for Joel, I was watching the video game version versus the show version and sort of trying to take note of the differences in the scores between the two. There's like a thumping, almost heartbeat percussive sound in the video game version.
You're gonna fucking die! What's going on?

Let him go.

And then in the show version, you have the moment where Ellie is crawling across the floor to Joel, which isn't in the game, it's just in the show. We have this really mournful, low-string part to it.
so I'm curious about your experience scoring that very famous scene for the game and then once again for the show really i mean it is really a very is a close collaboration with the directors and with craig and with neil i, yeah, he determines a lot of what, what I'm doing. And especially because they have the tools now, you know, where, you know, when they temp, when they do a temp, they already have so much music that I have created.
I mean, they have said that my music is part of the DNA of the last of us. Right.
So they have the DNA there, you know? So they play around with, and they kind of,

when we get what they're kind of imagining, you know, it's very much clear. Sometimes, you know, we can propose something different and it goes and sometimes not.
But usually, I mean, they know what they want and they're right. I mean, and I'm totally also aware that in that, in this game, right, metaphorically, I know my role and I have to really support the vision of the director, you know, not try to impose my vision because it's his vision and that's what I should do.
Because, you know, I come from Argentina and I'm a football, soccer fan, you know. I always say that, you know, sometimes, you know, I'm up there scoring the goals.
Sometimes I'm in the middle of the field organizing the game. Sometimes I'm the goalkeeper.
Sometimes I'm the coach. You know, sometimes I'm the physical therapist or sometimes I'm in the grades.
Just, you know, but I'm always in the match. I'm always in that match playing different roles.
And it's important to know what role do you have to play in that particular game. So that I have, we have very clear.
So it's really their vision. But they are also so in touch with the music, you know? I mean, one of the things that, for example, determined Neil to work with Craig was that Craig, he told me, Neil, Craig knows more about De Las Tobas than I do, you know? Yeah.
So, yeah, these people are very, very involved with the music the music too they really have made a part and one of the things also that some i've i will make a comment because i've been asked to and i think it's an interesting point is that uh sometimes we have used music that in the game perhaps played in one part but in seriously plays in other parts. You know, you can say, oh, I had this related to that moment.
And basically what it is, is that I feel that I write music that connects with emotions and emotions repeat, not necessarily. You have an impact situation in your life right that marks you or whatever and then you have some other situation that doesn't have anything to do with that but somehow there is something in your in your in your feelings in your heart that connects with that so it is finding also the things that connect with that emotion that doesn't necessarily have to be that's why i've never liked to write like themes for a particular character oh this is like old-fashioned thing that oh there's going to be a theme for joel and a theme for no yeah i mean this these are exchangeable sometimes like i said you can you can be experiencing different things different moments with different people but there's something that resounds and connects with an experience that you had a long time ago.
So that's part of the reason that we have this freedom to actually use the music that connects with emotion. The emotionality, the father-daughter connection is a lot of what drew you to the game, that sort of love story between Joel and Ellie.

There's also an element of inside of the game, and we know it'll come up in the show as well, this shared love of music. It's not a Ron Rocco, but there's this beautiful guitar that is a very important part of the game and of the show.
what is that like for you to work on a project where this idea of music and an

instrument and connection to music is so written into what's important? Very, very natural. It's like another stepping into one more layer that adds to the mix.
I find it very, very nice.

I'm about to, I'm not sure I can say, so I'm not going to say, but I'm about to embark in a project that has a lot of music already because of the characteristics of the project, of the film, but I'm also doing a score to it too. So it's always a challenge.
And in this case, it's going to be much more music coming from already in the movie, you know? But in this case, I think it's, I mean, again, you know, they are so precise in the use of the elements, you know? I mean, there's never an overdoing it, you know? Oh, yeah, that was like too long. Okay, yes.
But again, the guitar, you know what I mean? But no, it's the right moment, the precise moment where it should be. And I know, I can assure you, I mean, I know how incredibly hard they work.
I mean, we all do because it's all part of the team. But from their side, I mean, to get to the final cut of what they want.
And I mean, the show started Sunday and Friday. We were still working, not in the show for Sunday, but still working on shows for the rest of the season.
How does it feel to be on the other side of some of that sort of musical lineage? You know, like you can play other games and you can tell that their soundtracks are very much borrowing from your score for The Last of Us. You can, as you said, your own tracks are being used as temp tracks for the show.
I know a lot of people who are creators and creatives who love writing to your music. A friend was just telling me he loves writing to your album Camino.
I feel honored anyhow. It means that I have done something that connects with people.
That happened when I won my second Oscar. Because even with the first Oscar, you think, okay, it could be just this luck, whatever.
But when the second came, you know, maybe I'm doing something that connects with a lot of people, you know, it's, it's, it's a, it was a great validation to stop the fight, the inner fight with me. I'm going to think about that for a long time.
Thank you so much for being so generous with your time. I really, really appreciate it.
It's wonderful. Thank you guys for thinking that it's interesting what I do.
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Now streaming exclusively on Max. All right.
Now, what time is it, Rob? It is spoiler time. What else do you want to say in the spoiler warning section to drag it out for people so they can press pause on their podcast? I hope you're doing well folding your laundry, doing your dishes.
This is your opportunity. Dry your hands.
Take a moment of time. We're giving you every out possible to eject from this podcast.
Put the t-shirt you're folding yes press pause this is important tap your earbuds whatever it is you need to do do it you think that the big spoiler is already out there and in some ways it is like joel is dead we all know that together there's so much that happens in these games i don't want you to know anything about it. So please go away and come back next week.
Join us for the next show. Great job.
Okay. No, seriously, go away.
Like, do not listen anymore. I'm serious.
And if you are still listening, with love and respect, don't send us an email that you got spoiled by us. But you can.
But come on, guys. It's your time.
Okay. I'm going to start with sex.'re gonna start with sex.
I heard sex sells, so that's what we're gonna do. Just buried in minute 59 of this podcast.
There is a sex scene between Dina and Ellie in the girlhouse in the game that is not here because Dina and Ellie are are not together etc etc um so i have seen two different reactions to this around well i've seen many different reactions to this but but here's here's conflicting reactions that i've seen around the idea of like queer sex specifically okay there are some people that are saying hey and we got emails about this hey maybe they wanted to move the sexing between dina and ellie um away from the brutal death scene so that we didn't like bump up against the barrier gaze trope which is not quite what this would be but the idea that like anytime two queer people experience romantic or sexual joy something tragic has to happen okay you want to move the little death from the big death there you go love it love you for that okay um and then if uh so but then some people are like hey is not having get allowing them to have this moment before joel's death mean that if we get it later, which we almost certainly will, but meaning if we get it later, there will be a shadow of tragedy over it in a way that it would have been free of had it happened before the death.

So two conflicting ideas, both chasing sort of a pure form of queer joy and queer love inside of this story. So do you have any thoughts about that, Rob Mahoney? I really hope we get that scene, you know, some version of it.
Again, it would have to change if you move it around in the story. We might just realistically lose it, or it may be replaced with a different version of that kind of connection.
I was wondering this about the first episode, where we get this very dialed up version of dina that is just like a charisma bomb from from minute one that is i love the version of dina in the game but a little bit different is part of the reason we get that charisma bomb because they knew they were going to be taking this sequence out and so you need a lot of like fast tracking ellie dina bonding you need fast tracking audience dina bonding in a way that's going to shift some of the dynamics involved of everything going forward. And also, I think the other part of this too is while we're talking about interchanging the characters, giving Dina a stake in Joel's death is a meaningful difference.
And so, yeah, you're losing some precious Ellie-Dina time and it is precious to me. I love their relationship in the game.'m, I'm eager to see how they sort of adapt to this version of the story where they don't have that moment, but I'm, I'm hopeful that they'll find some version of it.
We got this, uh, to your point about sort of Dina's stake in all of this. We got this email from Coulter who said, there's a line from Dina in the game later that is hugely impactful quote, where you go, I go.
She's ride or die with Ellie and is so without us really knowing what the relationship between joel and dina was without establishing that relationship more post that relationship between ellie and dina more post kiss but pre-jole's death i'm worried about that dynamic so yeah the the showrunners have said putting dina in that room does give her a stake in this she She was there. She has key information.
All this sort of stuff. She goes with Ellie to Seattle.
Yeah. But to Coulter's point, that slightly changes.
Like, Dina goes to Seattle for Ellie. And now Dina's going to Seattle for Ellie, but also for herself and for Joel and for her own relationship.
And I don't mind that as a change, but it is a difference, right? It is. But these are really exciting adaptive changes to me.
This idea that Dina, Tommy, and Jesse right now in the story, the change has been pretty mild as far as little bits of character tweak, little bits of circumstances here and there obviously this big battle is a is a show invention yeah um so like there's kid is yeah tommy's kid that's that's a fundamental difference in circumstance but to this point in the story has not changed his behavior drastically but the fact that all these characters are exposed to trauma in a way that feels new to me means that even if they do all end up meeting let's's say, identical fates to where their stories end in the game, it's all going to feel so different. Like, I think making room for Dina to have actual feelings about Joel, for example, just it changes that character and it changes what her arc looks like, if it's anything resembling what it was in the game.
Someone, I'm hesitant to do sort of concern trolling about the popularity of various characters. People are going to feel whoever they feel about Abby, about Ellie, about Joel, about et cetera, et cetera.
And that's not really any of my business. You know, someone was like, am I supposed, someone, a friend of mine texted me this morning and she was like, am I supposed to feel sorry for Abby? I was like, that's up to you.
That's a you decision. That's a you journey.
Boy, is it, Joe. As the entire gaming community can attest, what a journey it's been.
But our listener, Mike, was thinking about this in a way that I hadn't considered about. Isabel Marcel, who plays Dina, her popularity and what impact that could have? Because he says, if Abby's story is continuing in the direction of us justifying your actions before Joel's death, I think that show fans are going to blame Ellie so much more for continuing her pursuit of revenge rather than settling down with Dina.
Basically because Dina has captured people's hearts so quickly. What do you think about that, Rob? I think it's a really important part of that counter counterbalance and so as we're talking about the adaptive changes that are making us potentially more empathetic to abby's point of view right like telling us her motive showing us a little bit of her pain through this dream sequence and i'm sure we're going to see more of that as it resembles the game you also need to do work on the other side which is we have so much baked in time with ellie and so much built-in attachment to ellie she does some horrible things in the games and in particular that decision to like basically turn away from what could be some kind of life with dina for the pursuit of yet more needless revenge like after she's already been rebuffed once and it's like you know what i gotta go back in pursuit of this thing that will never give satisfaction.
Is I would say the single most heartbreaking thing for me in the game, even more than what happens to Joel, even more than any other death or terrible moment in the story. It's the fact that Ellie can't let go of it.
And so, yeah, if you make Dina even more sympathetic, even more likable. Yeah.
Holy shit. Is that going to sting when that moment comes? The thing that i hope for people and everyone is on their own journey of whatever they can feel however they want to feel about characters but i hope that that feels like a tragedy and a loss and you feel for ellie that she just can't let go versus frustration or annoyance with her do you know what i mean but but that's again everyone's own decision that they that.
And I want to end with the Abby stuff, but I, I have one more thing I want to talk about before we get there, which is, um, the male pregnancy situation. I could not talk to Mallory about this cause she wasn't there in the game yet.
And, but she, she is, she texted me last night. She's almost there.
So we'll be able to talk about it next week on House of R, but they did reveal the mel pregnancy which wait wait hold on back it up mallory if you were listening to this podcast eject we are now spoilers within spoilers within spoilers do not listen bye um okay so they did not reveal the mel pregnancy at the beginning of uh the show game the way that they do uh owen tells abby basically's pregnant. There is this like, she's quite upset about that.
That is actually like an upset that pushes her towards this whole movement towards Joel inside of this moment. It is part and parcel of all of that.
There are some vibes in the room, but they held back the Mel pregnancy reveal. My question to you is, to go back to the old alfred hitchcock suspense versus surprise thing does this mean that perhaps when ellie kills mel which she will do and it is revealed that mel is pregnant but we already knew that as you already knew that as a gamer will it be a surprise moment for the audience versus suspense we know most pregnant but but uh ellie doesn't what do you think are we a thousand percent sure that she's going to be pregnant in the show no do you feel like you feel like maybe they changed that because it's too too a bridge too far it's for ellie to go look there's some things that are very tough to put on screen for audiences for example shimmer the horse gets shot in the head yeah will they show that on the show i i don't know i kind of doubt it because people have such a visceral response when it's an actual horse that's like being visited some kind of violence upon yeah uh not to compare pregnant women to horses i'm sorry for the clunky uh transition point here but like there are certain things that i just wonder as we've already seen the show pull some of its punches and as you alluded to like maybe not be quite as ballsy and daring in some of the storytelling are they willing to kill a pregnant woman like a quite pregnant woman is that something that they're willing to do or is the torture of other characters going to be as gruesome as it is in the game like those are the areas where i could see them pulling back a little bit where do you specifically since we're in the spoiler section are you thinking about like nora like what are you what are you thinking about in terms that you're thinking about the nora yes like like nora's death it has to be so gnarly that it fucks ellie up and i think you can get there i think you can get there with an hbo audience certainly i think you can you can push that line pretty far and still have us there with ellie like it you know the show and the story wants you to be in that place where even after everything we've seen you kind of do want her to have some kind of closure some kind of revenge up until the moment she starts torturing people and killing pregnant people uh some some tough beats along the way for ellie not like this oh oh no am i am i complicit in everything that's happening oh no am i the baddie you know what i will say this about my gaming experience i just wanted you to know my hands are clean joe um at the end of the first game the last of us when're busting through salt Lake, firefly HQ, you get to the doctor.
Yeah. I just sat there when I'm playing the game.
Like I had, I had no idea what was coming, but some, some modern games, if you just hesitate long enough, we'll reveal an alternate path and be like, Oh, you know what? I thought you had to kill the doctor. Well, so in the last of us, this is a hundred percent 100 true but in other like prestigy triple a type productions i'm like maybe if i literally just wait in this room long enough it will let me not kill this doctor uh-huh uh it did not it it forced my hand to pull the trigger and killed the doctor so i just want to be on record about that that this whatever this violence is, I am not a part of it.

No, but you are because the game forces you to be. That's the whole thing of that game is like you have to do that.
And then you have to be the one who do have done it. It's true.
On the Abby front, we got a couple emails about this. Caitlin, no relation as far as I know, not actually Caitlin Deaver.
But if you are, cheers. wanted to know where you Rob Mahoney think the seasons

are going to split no relation as far as i know not actually caitlin deaver but if you are cheers um wanted to know where you rob mahoney think the seasons are gonna split uh we alluded to this a little bit but this is a two season adaptation of one game and inside the game the last was part two again if you're listening to this while washing your dishes and you don't know this um in the last was part two your pov switches you do you do three days as la then you do three days as abby right and so uh a question is do they end the season right at the end of the la pov and then you would sort of talk to me about this i think off pod actually yeah when i mentioned that caitlin deaver is only a guest star this season, and you were like, makes sense. And maybe she will be the lead, the top actor of season three.
Where do you think that split is going to happen? I think there has to be more Abby in this portion of the story that we're about to watch in season two than there is in the equivalent version of the game. For all the storytelling reasons we've talked about, like that's a long time to not lay out exactly what her background is, exactly what she's been up to.
Like you need to see a little bit more of it and you need to see some of her circumstances present tense in order for this version of the story to work. So I think we're going to see some Caitlin Deaver for sure, but a guest star amount.
I think it definitely is the Ellie Revenge Tour, at least part one of the Revenge Tour from here on out, culminating in Seattle. Like everybody kind of going back to their respective corners.
And I say that in part because, correct me if I'm wrong, Joe, but I haven't seen any casting news about Yara and Lev yet. Have we seen anyone announced for those roles? I don't believe so, no.
Which leads me to believe that even though we're not going strictly Ellie's story, Abby's story, I think the bones of what they're doing is still going to be withholding the vast majority of Abby's story for later, specifically the part that, you know, gets real culty. This is what Caitlin wrote.
Are people going to care about Abby's relationship with Lev after they've had a year or two to stew on their hatred for that character? Are they going to buy into the idea that she's just another person in a shitty apocalyptic world who doesn't always make the best choices if they have to make it through a few episodes to get to know her better? So, yeah, it's a it's a great question, especially like given how long and we understand why we love we love a well done special effect. But a long a long time between seasons these days.
All right. But I think that's the goal right like by the end of this season you want to get to a place where ellie is kind of the maniac and abby ultimately is like the you know an agent of a kind of all at that point not just revenge but justice lily on the on the abby physique front does have like a story oh this is my favorite front this is this is my favorite subject for all of us to dive into is critiquing the physique of video game characters as it really i'm kidding i'm kidding i'm kidding on this or any other podcast what she says is from the game i loved how abby's fitness is a story element tied to her trauma she has to work out to the point of exhaustion every day so she doesn't have night terrors of her father's death.
I'm excited to see how they incorporate that into the adaptation. My speculation is instead of lifting, she uses cardio like running or swimming or parkour exfit.
That way she can still show the physical consequences of her trauma through her speed, endurance, and tactical fitness rather than through brute strength. This can allow the show to keep that interesting story element without needing Misdiver to have Abby's video game physique.
So Lily's not saying how dare they, but she's saying- How dare they make a woman buff? There's a story element pegged to Abby's physique. Which again, I feel like a broken record.
I feel like I'm battling straw men out here, but it's like part of the reason

I feel so protective of Abby as a character

is in the moment,

the backlash was so severe in a way

that was oblivious to elements like this, right?

Like there's a reason within the story

why she has the physique that she does.

And it is rooted in the pain of everything

that Joel inflicted upon her.

And so that she can't sleep and ends up working out.

And I love the CrossFit potential like substitute.

I think that could be a really smart way to go with this.

I think that's a good question. the pain of everything that Joel inflicted upon her.
And so that she can't sleep and ends up working out.

And I love the CrossFit potential like substitute.

I think that could be a really smart way to go with this.

I also think there's versions of that that just aren't as physical,

like the torment that she's experiencing.

And we're already seeing, you know,

like whispers of the nightmare.

And I'm sure we'll see more of it.

And establishing some of these like flashbacks

and memories and nightmares

is a really important part of the structure of the story going forward for The Last of Us, for both Abby and Ellie both. And so I love that we're getting that.
I love that we're going to get a new twist on that version of the character. I would just say, even game-wise, it was all there.
There was a reason for Abby to be doing all the things that she did. It's just people couldn't wait for it.
And also women don't need a reason to be buff, okay all right so but you don't need you don't need trauma to buff up uh it helps i'm sure okay so listen uh that is it for this podcast uh we really appreciate um gustavo coming on and talking to us we really appreciate donnie beaton for his work on this podcast always might have had some extra hands we're not sure who they are yet so we will make sure to thank them at a future podcast putting this all together this week uh thanks to justin sales always for his tremendous work on this feed uh we'll be back with your friends and neighbors we are doing another your friends and neighbors episode this week because people demanded their ham so we'll serve it up piping fresh and hot later this week and we'll be back with the last of us uh episode three next week. This is your brain on shrimps at gmail.com.
We really serve it up piping fresh and hot later this week. And we'll be back with The Last of Us, episode three next week.

This is your brain on shrimps at gmail.com.

We really appreciate your emails.

They're the best.

Definitely.

We think you guys are the best.

Rob Mahoney, anything you want to say before we go?

Just I can't wait to talk about that tragic death on your friends and neighbors this week,

Joe.

Who is it?

I don't know, but we're going to talk about it.

It's CrossFit, not XFit. Thank you so much.
We'll see you soon. Bye.
week joe who is it i don't know but we're gonna talk about it uh it's crossfit not xfit thank you

so much we'll see you soon bye