‘The Last of Us’ S2E6 Precap: An Episode of Gut Punches, Plus, Co-creator Neil Druckmann and Writer Halley Gross

Hello, welcome back to the Prestige TV podcast feed.

I'm Joanna Robinson.

I'm Rob Mahoney.

We're here to talk to you about the penultimate episode of The Last of Us.

This is called The Price, and it is written by Craig Mason, Neil Druckman, Holly Gross, and it is directed by Neil Druckman.

And today on the podcast, we have a chat with Hallie Gross and Neil Druckman about the episode.

So, straight from the

non-shimmer horse's mouth is what you will enjoy on this podcast today.

So, Rob and I are going to do our usual thing.

We're going to talk about

the episode.

We have a lot of emails from you guys that we want to get to, and then we'll do the interview, and then we will at the end have a sort of look-ahead, spoilery

chat, earn our pre-cap title.

It sounds good.

Okay, so Rob Mahoney,

we had a ton of emails.

We sure did.

You sent a prompt onto the world.

We got a ton of emails.

Remind me where folks can reach us if they want to email us.

You know what, Joe?

They can always reach us at prestige TV at spotify.com.

But for the last of us specifically, I would encourage you to email thisisyourbrain on shrooms at gmail.com.

And yeah, I put out to our listeners last week that I wanted to hear non-gamers' impressions of Ellie this season.

We were hearing a lot from the gamers.

I have enough of those people in my life.

I know what they think.

I know what I think.

Boy, did our listeners deliver, Joe.

Thank you to everyone for writing in who's been watching the show, whatever you feel about it, about your feelings about Ellie.

We're not going to get to every email, but maybe we can start with.

We couldn't.

We simply couldn't.

We simply literally could not.

It would be terrible radio.

We're not going to do it.

But Joe, I want to kind of put those emails of non-gamers' impressions of Ellie from this season, people who don't have that anchoring bias of the Ellie they think they know,

into a couple of different buckets.

Cause I feel like they kind of hewed towards a few different categories.

And I want to hear your take on these.

I would say the biggest bucket by far was people who are fully on board with the version of Ellie that they're seeing on the show, who are appreciating a layered, complex portrayal of a teen girl in particular.

And this is an area where, you know, I think you're bound to hear some difference of opinion in any adaptive work between people who are familiar with the source material or not.

But I was somewhat heartened.

And maybe this is our audience within the Last of Us audience that people were mostly vibing with the version of Ellie they were seeing on screen.

Right.

I love that.

And I thought it was really interesting to get these perspectives.

And I'm really glad you put that prompt out in the world.

But yeah, like there's a lot of, we got a lot of just sort of like, I'm loving Ellie.

I love Ellie.

This is really interesting to me.

And again, this might be a select sample of not only people who are listening to this pod, but people who are motivated to write into the pod.

Sure.

You know, we're, you know, a little sampling bias at play, for sure.

Yeah, for sure.

But I thought that was really interesting.

As we sort of,

more and more, I am finding this to be

a consuming preoccupation for people as they discuss this show.

Because the question we're asking is like, can the show rest on Ellie's back without Joel?

And this is an episode which was full of Joel.

And so as we sort of talked about in our, maybe in our precap section at the end of last week's pod, this question of like, if this episode is a banger, which I think it is, like, will that then make people feel even more keenly the loss of the Ellie and Joel dynamic together versus Ellie alone or Ellie with anyone else?

So yeah, it was really interesting to read these emails.

Anything in particular that stood out to you in that regard, Rob Mahoney?

I would say from those viewers, it's a lot of people who are now shaken by this character who they liked or or they were enjoying following along with, like shaken by what Ellie has done to Nora specifically in the way that the story intends, right?

Kind of revealing this new side of Ellie.

We got an email in particular from Madeline, who's a psychologist who works with specifically with teens who are undergoing trauma, who said, Ellie's shift at the end of the episode reads like classic trauma fugue state stuff and clarified that this is something that like she has seen in person in treatment and is as terrifying as you'd expect.

And I think it's yet another one of those areas where you're seeing something on screen and trying to confront your preconceived notions about what that thing is.

And I would say that was another bucket is people who have a very specific idea of what they think grief looks like on TV or in movies.

And some of those people are bumping against the contrast of, you know, Ellie and these happy moments, specifically with Dina, these joking moments with obviously couching all that within this greater pain of losing Joel and everything else going on.

Yeah, I thought one email we got, and I'm so sorry I don't have that person's name in front of me that I I thought was particularly interesting was this idea that like cinematic grief or televisual grief, we're used to it being this all-consuming

24-7 kind of thing.

And that in reality, according to this person, I believe it was from Michael, that email.

Michael, that like you'll find yourself at times in

a grief state.

You will find yourself, you know, forgetting your grief or having a laugh or whatever, that this is actually like a very human way to process grief.

And I think that that can go hand in hand with this other concept of Ellie masking.

And this is something that, you know, you'll hear, hear Neil and Hallie talk about in the interview that we have today, but this idea that like that is a very intentional thing that they've done, this idea of like what Ellie hides from people, even inside of this episode with Joel, what she hides away from Joel and what she shares with Joel, what she hides from Dina, what she shares with Dina.

And so those

who is Ellie really that sort of like, I'm shook by what I'm seeing her do to Nora, that's real, like unmasked, unsmoothed over for public consumption Ellie inside of this.

And I, you know, I think it's interesting for,

you know, we've talked about this a couple of times, this idea of playing a game and being the person versus watching the person on a, on a, on your screen.

And

there are ways in which, as a gamer, one can say, I know exactly who Ellie is because I've been Ellie.

I know.

And you have just like an even stronger,

and every time I killed someone, I was killing them for grief or anger or whatever it is.

And I just think that's like a really interesting adaptive challenge that they have with this particular story.

And within that, I think like this larger point about the people who were acknowledging, the listeners and viewers who are writing in, who acknowledge, like, this is kind of what this looks like in real life, but is it what I want to see on screen?

Do I want to see the realistic portrayal?

How is my brain kind of wrestling with it?

And I think it's fair for people to feel like the balance is off with some of that stuff.

That's going to vary for every individual person.

Like, if this feels true, not just to life, but to some kind of core emotional experience, as you're trying to understand Ellie, I would say there was something similar happening, Joe, with people who wrote in about how they interpret and bounce off of or not teenage characters in general.

There was a big portion of these emailers who wrote in, and I would say multiple people classified themselves as members of the Van Lathan school of anti-pluck.

Of just,

they just can't handle it.

They can't handle younger characters being plucky, being precocious or not.

And I also say this with love.

We had many emailers who wrote in who did not classify themselves this way, who did not maybe even understand that they were bumping up against a teenage character.

And what I would say is very normal teenagers being teenagers

but as they described ellie it's very clear what they're bumping on which is right this is a 19 year old on television and you're annoyed that you're watching a 19 year old on television right uh it's fine if that if that 19 year old is like a sidekick to this you know 50 year old dude that i uh am invested in yeah it's it's it's an interesting question and like every time i get an email and i see the word plucky in there i'm like van strikes again he's he started a movement he's very sticky with his thoughts sometimes um yeah

I think that's, you know, and I think that's, again, I think there are unfair critiques and I think there are fair critiques.

And I think if people are like, hey, I thought I was watching a show that was centered in an adult experience,

this father who is grieving.

and finding new life in meeting and helping and protecting this young girl, et cetera, et cetera.

And now I feel like I'm watching a show where I'm following a teenage girl and her girlfriend in Seattle, et cetera, et cetera.

And

on the one hand, it is fair to say, hey, man, that's not the experience I thought I was signing up for.

And on the other hand, I think that's really

limited to a certain degree.

It's fine.

It doesn't mean you are like, you know, sexist or ageist or anything like that.

But it's just like.

The joy of storytelling is to lose yourself in stories that are not your own.

And so, yes, it's really interesting and important to see yourself reflected on the screen.

It is important

that,

you know,

young women, young queer women see themselves reflected on the screen.

It is important that, like, you know, perhaps dads of a certain age sees themselves on screen.

Well, they're famously underrepresented.

Often do, right.

But, like, there's so much to learn about.

And the whole point,

as we sort of glanced around, because this is a podcast where we're trying not to spoil all the facets of the game, right, in this beginning section, but like that is is the point of this game is to try to get you into other points of view.

Yes.

So if you're bumping on that, that's fine.

It doesn't make you a bad person.

But what I would hope that you would look for in your storytelling is a perspective that is not your own.

Completely.

That, you know, that's the ideal.

And I would say that was a substantial, and this is the last bucket of emailers who wrote in, or just people who love the Joel Ellie dynamic and are sort of reckoning with the absence of it in a way that the show is, that the game did did textually, metatextually, like that is the whole deal, right?

It's like reckoning with the absence of that thing.

I don't think it's an accident though, Joe, that this week's episode, I would say, is the best and most important episode of this season.

And what Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey have together on screen is really special and it's a hard thing to lose.

And very true.

How you wrap your brain around that?

Like that's a compliment to the episode, but it's a conundrum for the story.

It's like, how do you tell this story without Joel when this thing that's at the heart of it is so special?

And Marcus emailed us, and this is what he had to say.

When Ellie was with Joel, I felt like all her complexities and nuances were on display.

Without Joel, the show felt empty because of that missing Joel-Ellie dynamic.

And so you're seeing a different version of Ellie by herself with Dina in all these different contexts as she's going on her revenge tour.

But you know what you're not seeing is Ellie and Joel.

And there's always going to be a part of the audience and a part of within, I think, people who enjoy this story and this show who are going to love that and going to miss that whenever it's not there.

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What was your experience when you're playing the game?

You know,

Neil and Allie will talk about this a bit in the interview.

Certainly, they've talked about this elsewhere, and Mal and I talked about this, but like

these flashback moments are sprinkled throughout

a certain section of the gameplay.

And

so then you have like you are occasionally revisiting Joel and thinking about Joel and Ellie and stuff like that.

So as a gamer or and as a TV consumer and as a TV critic of, of a, of a kind, um, like that's very generous of you.

I am a basketball blogger, Joe.

I don't call myself a TV critic.

So that's why, that's the only reason why I said that.

I'm like, we're not really critics, but we are at the same time.

It's a complicated thing.

We need a new word for it.

But

the

like.

How does the difference in the cadence, I guess, sit for you, Rob?

You know, I was a little concerned about it.

And we talked about this some on last week's pod pod about just getting this, not dose, but potential overdose of, is this going to feel like too much of the flashback?

Happy to report, it did not.

I love this episode.

I thought it worked really effectively.

I think it's just a gorgeous episode that showcases what The Last of Us at its best can be.

And that's through this like longitudinal look at Joel and Ellie through all these different years.

It is, as you and Mal talked about in House of R, like a transposing of a kind of the sort of like Bill and Frank type of storytelling.

But what if we didn't do it with these side characters?

What if we did it with the two people you care about most in this world?

And we show kind of the gradual fraying of their relationship under the weight of this lie that Joel has told.

I thought it was incredibly effective.

And this is another area where I think the game and the show have just fundamentally different problems they're trying to solve from a storytelling perspective.

You talked about, you know, how it puts you into the character's head in a different way when you're playing them.

If you're Ellie walking through the Seattle or creeping, I guess, through the Seattle landscape, murdering people, killing infected, violence upon violence upon violence.

You need the flashbacks as like a palate cleanser, right?

Like you need moments where you're stepping out of the bleakness of her current circumstance into something that's maybe not light and cheery, but takes you back to a simpler time for Ellie or a different setting.

You need a little bit of light in that darkness in a way where the show, you don't have to break it up all that same way because the violence is naturally parceled out differently episode to episode.

I think that's really interesting.

And I think something that I'm sort of noodling on is this idea that, like,

because it wasn't super strong in the emails we got, but I was, I was seeing it a lot on this, on the Reddit boards this week is the critique has moved of Ellie as a character, has moved out of sort of the likability or maturity realm and into something that feels a little bit more legit, but I still have issues with it, which is

competency.

Oh, sure.

That Ellie in the game, because we see her murdering so many people as she goes through Seattle, feels like a more competent

person.

And that the Ellie in the show world,

that Dina feels like the more hyper-competent of the two of them.

And I'm wondering if

if I'm Neil Druckman and Craig Mason and anyone else who's working on the writing of the show, if my fear of losing the Joel and Ellie dynamic, which is not, you know, this is the story they want to tell.

They weren't like super afraid of it.

They were like, we want to tell the same story we told in the game.

But if they're thinking, okay, we knocked out of the park with Pedra Pascal and Bella Ramsey, and that's just an incredible dynamic.

Okay, our new dynamic duo is going to be Dina and Ellie.

So we need to make sure that Dina is someone that people are really excited to spend time with.

And the casting knocked it out of the park.

Absolutely.

Everyone has been saying all season, Dina, so good, charismatic, fun, blah, blah, blah.

And then in the writing, in terms of like making Dina

the one with her head screwed on a bit more or this, that, you know, is thinking things through a bit more, this, that, and the other thing.

I wonder if then accidentally they over-indexed

on like,

you know, and pouring all of the concern of building up Dina into a character we could invest in the way that we were invested in Joel in a short amount of time.

And then, in contrast, Ellie looks

a bit less competent than she looks in the game.

So, that's that's that's one thing I've been thinking about.

On the other hand, competency is not a requirement for me to

enjoy or be invested in a character.

And some of the something I got annoyed by this morning reading some of those Reddit posts was like, it just really bothered me that I felt like I was seeing the exact reverse of the arguments we heard around a character like Rey in Star Wars, who was just sort of like, she's a Mary Sue, she's too good at this, she's too competent.

You hear that all the time with like female characters.

And it happens to female characters way more than it happens to male characters.

And so it's just sort of like, she knows too much.

She's, she's too good at, at this, she's too athletic, she's too, et cetera, et cetera.

She's too overpowered, blah, blah, blah.

And so to watch Ellie like try and struggle and be and be, I mean, like, you mentioned this last week, Like, how did she get into the hospital, get to Nora, you know, get back out as we saw?

She's walking towards the theater.

So she got in, killed Nora, got out.

That's an extremely competent thing for her to have done.

Remembering season one, Ellie, who not only like made it out of David's clutches herself, but also like single-handedly like.

hauled Joel to safety and saved Joel.

So like we have seen this from Ellie.

It's it's maybe easy to forget if you haven't re-watched season one in a while, but like I get frustrated when I just feel like the goalpost constantly moves on like what

a female character or a young female character is allowed or supposed to be.

Do you know what I mean?

Completely.

I think especially a version of Ellie that would be more true to the games, which like just to kind of classify it, Ellie in the games is kind of a straight-up killing machine.

I think people would be bumping very hard on Ella, like Bella Ramsey, like cutting through

patrols of WLF soldiers at a time in the way that you kind of have to, or at least that you can in the game.

Like, it would be a whole different conversation, but you're right.

It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't, sort of balance.

And I think you're so right, Joe, to contextualize it as a character relative to other characters.

Like, all we know is who these people are to each other and relative to each other and what they're bringing to the table.

And so, yeah, the balance of trying to make Dina a little more fleshed out, a little more well-rounded, just giving her more to do in this story than she has to do in the game is naturally going to have trade-offs.

And I think the version of Ellie that we're seeing is a version that is a little bit more careless for sure.

And some of that is like naturally, you know, another emailer, Avani, you emailed us about kind of the teenage, watching teenagers on television dynamic, put it in a way of like, what teenager who has this natural immunity and thinks she's invincible, like wouldn't be overconfident, right?

Like, I think it's natural in specifically these post-apocalyptic circumstances in which you are not affected by the thing everyone else is affected by.

You're going to do some careless things.

You're going to do some reckless things.

You're going to get over your skis a little bit in a way that like Dina has to plan in a way that Ellie doesn't.

And so, yeah, you're changing the character a little bit maybe in terms of some of its complexion and some of Ellie's personality,

but the story is different.

Like she's traveling under different circumstances.

And so it makes sense to do that.

I think it's also really interesting that like, yeah, where that three month time jump is something that's easy to forget, but is such a difference from the game.

We're not leaving Jackson just in a completely raw state, but in a three months to stew and

think and process a bit differently

inside of it.

And I think also,

I think what's interesting about

Ellie that gets lost in these critiques is like,

like, Ellie's beautiful empathy.

Like, you know, when you see inside of this episode,

you know, Eugene, like

Ellie's act there, Ellie's like, wait, wait, we can do this.

We have time

is an act of empathy, right?

I want Eugene and Gail to have this time.

Now, what she does later in terms of exposing Joel's lie to Gail, that is vindictive towards Joel.

It is not, she's not considering Gail necessarily in that moment.

But Ellie thinking about Eugene, Ellie thinking about wanting to save the world.

You know, you like we talk about Joel's save your complex and Ellie save your complex.

That's all in the mix, but also like Ellie wanted to cure people.

Ellie is devastated that Joel mowed down a hospital.

Like, these are all things that are beautiful about Ellie, you know, a person who is capable of caring very deeply about other people.

Yes.

And, um,

and so I think that just gets lost in the shuffle of some of these other things.

Um, her insecurity, too, I find very

endearing to me or intriguing to me, you know,

her

doubt around Dina, all of that stuff, which is like a heightened, much more heightened in the show than it is in the game, makes me feel

for Ellie.

So yeah,

I'm invested to say the words of the character, you know?

It's different, but like, this is a great portrayal.

This is a great performance.

I like this Ellie a lot.

I'm also, of course, like.

conflicted about the shit that she's doing in the world and in terms of the violence that she's exercising, but like that's what the story is about fundamentally.

But how do you want to navigate this episode, Joe?

Because we're bouncing through time.

We got a lot to get through.

Where do you want to start?

I want to start.

I want to start by asking you a question, Rob.

If

let's say your lovely wife were to like, you know, wanting to cook up a beautiful birthday experience for you in the mushroom apocalypse,

What museum exhibit is she taking you, Rob Mahoney, to?

Great question.

I am an art museum guy over a science museum experience.

Unfortunately, I'm going to say she and I, and maybe me and other people, have very disparate museum experiences.

I would be terrible in a mushroom apocalypse museum because I am a linger in front of every painting, read every placard kind of museum visitor.

I worry about what that means when nightfall comes and the infected swarm and the animals and the raiders are about.

You know, it's not a great situation to be lingering.

Yeah, Rob, Rob caught staring at the master work, like the Dutch masterworks, and then dies by a mushroom zombie.

What are we here for, if not that?

And what a way to go, ultimately.

But you definitely want to go to like an art museum and not like a basketball, hall of fame sort of place.

We contain multitudes.

Yeah, you could, you can.

I do like the shooty hoops, but I also like the art museum.

Okay.

All right.

And then also...

Wait, hold on.

You didn't answer the question yourself.

I want to know what museum you're visiting in this sort of moment.

Yeah, it's a great question.

I mean, do I want to go to the Academy Museum in Los Angeles and like do movie history?

Is that what I want to do?

That might be really cool.

Especially like if you grow up, like you like the shooty hoops, but let's say you grew up on a mushroom apocalypse without getting to like getting the joy of getting to watch basketball all the time.

And so then you can like go to that museum and say, oh my God, it was real.

It was all real, you know?

And so similarly, if I'm living on the crumbs of whatever DVDs have survived the mushroom apocalypse, We're not streaming endless movies, you know, maybe wandering around the Academy Museum in Los Angeles, like, or going to the BFI.

Well, we can't fly, but can I get to the BFI in London, maybe?

Like, that would be cool.

So,

yeah, that's what I would pick probably.

Okay.

Another question for you.

Please.

Are you interested in hearing our

listener Adam talk about how one sources vanilla in the mushroom apocalypse?

I would love nothing.

I've been wondering about this myself.

Like, Like Tahiti is a very far way away.

Yeah, Madagascar as well.

So Adam says, there are, you see, two main sources of artificial vanilla flavor in the world.

Okay.

One is vanillin, which accounts for nearly 100% of all artificial vanilla used.

It can be manufactured in various ways, including for wood pulp, but given that manufacturing is involved, that's probably not where Seth got his vanilla.

Which brings us to the second source, almost never used in our modern world, castoreum.

As this name indicates, castoreum comes from mature beavers.

Castor means beaver in Latin and modern French.

Specifically, it is a secretion from their anal glands.

While it was originally used to substitute for flavors including strawberry and raspberry, it was most commonly used to mimic vanilla.

And whereas post-apocalyptic Wyoming probably doesn't have wood pulp plants or global supply chains, I'm pretty confident that it does have beavers.

Wow.

So

I learned so much about vanilla from Adam.

And do you think when Seth said of the birthday cake options, vanilla is easier, he was saying that because he was just like, can't wait to excrete the anal glands of the, I don't know what the group name of beavers is, but the pastel of beavers I have back there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What do you think, Rob Honey?

I mean, based on what we know of Seth, I think that has to be the case.

He's just a closeted beaver farmer at the end of the day, secreting those glands.

I'm going to say from an evolutionary standpoint.

Yeah.

I don't know how the beavers with the good-smelling anal glands survived as the fittest.

I don't really like the, the math on that isn't really mathing.

Why not?

Because wouldn't, wouldn't, like, if you're, if you're a, uh,

if you're, uh,

well, there's just no great way to say this.

If you're the female of the species and you're wandering around and you're like, wow, that beaver over there smells like vanilla extract

that I'm not procreating.

That part I understand, you know, from a smaller beaver mounting the bigger beaver perspective on the squirrels we get in this episode.

But wouldn't the same be true if you're also a woodland predator and you're smelling this amazing, like basically a vanilla scented candle beckoning you in from the beaver's anal glands.

Yeah, you're like bed, bath, and beyond.

Here we come.

Okay, great, great point.

Now all I can think about is Ellie just getting fistfuls of beaver gland secretions.

Everything you've said here is tough, and I led us here.

So let's go back to the very beginning of this episode.

We get this flashback to 80s, Austin, Texas,

and we meet Joel and Tommy's father, played by the great Tony Dalton.

And

this is not in the game.

This is a show-invented vignette.

And we talked about this a bit on

House of R.

Mallory and I talked about this in the context of Tommy as a dad, but I thought we got a really interesting email

from Sarah about how what it says about Joel's insecurity as a dad, right?

A lot to talk about on that front this week.

Saying like Joel is so insecure in his parenting, so constantly in need of validation from Ellie.

Did I do okay?

Did I do it?

Do you like it?

Did I do okay?

Do you like it?

Um, that's me, honestly, when I make like a meal for anyone or whatever.

We're among us, Frank.

Is that good?

Do you are you enjoying it?

Anyway, um, but this idea that Joel grew up with an abusive dad, who grew up with an even more abusive dad sort of thing.

And this idea of like when you come from an abusive home and have that as your

model for parenthood, you

fear that you will repeat those cycles or will not be able to deliver as a parent.

And Joel, especially when he has this concept of having failed Sarah, right?

This thing he says in season one, I'm failing in my sleep.

Like he thinks about that all the time.

I failed to protect Sarah, which was my job as a dad.

And if he has this model of his dad, Javier Miller, like, you know, what does this do to his insecurities as a a father?

I thought that was really interesting.

What do you think?

What did you think of this opening

scene, which was show original?

And what do you think of it as

a skeleton key to understanding Joel a bit more?

I mean, I think that element you described about Joel's insecurity is so central in this episode.

And the Sarah element specifically, like, that is kind of the seed of that idea within his actual fatherhood, right?

There's all of the specters of what his own father was that we learn in this scene.

I want to give a particular special shout out to whoever was doing the sound design work in this episode for the absolute sledgehammer force of Tony Dalton's fist hitting his hand as he's telling the story of his father clocking him in the jaw.

Holy fuck.

I agree.

It was startling.

Yeah, the boots were stomping and the and the like fist was slapping.

And you haven't

remind me, sorry, quick pause, not pause of the podcast, but pause on what we're talking about.

You were going to start Andor this weekend.

Did you manage to start and or yet?

Unfortunately not.

Life got in the way.

So Andor's still ahead for me, fortunately.

That's okay.

When you get to the end of Andor years from now,

think of our sound design question that we're talking about here.

It's so key.

Yes.

And it's so overlooked in a story like this.

So anyway, sorry, you were saying about this part of the story.

Just especially, we're just meeting this character, right?

We're just meeting Joel's father for the first time.

We're trying to get a sense of what he's about.

We know, we can see that teenage Joel is very intimidated by this prospect of having this conversation.

And so that you get that physical force as he is talking about basically why he does or does not hit his own children.

And you get this quick cutaway to Joel, like almost like shaking with anxiety at that, like that physical sound, at the kind of building menace in this scene.

And that we get, again, very quickly, like it's a very efficient, compact scene of emotional storytelling.

introducing this character, helping us understand what Joel's childhood was like, having his dad walk up to the line of explaining, like, this is why I am the way I am, and then basically tearing himself down and starting to interrogate, why do I do that?

When do I do that?

Like, what is the line between me and my own father?

And I think ultimately, using this scene as a launch pad to add another layer of complexity to the porch scene that we get at the end, which, you know, already is as emotionally dense as anything you're going to see on TV this year.

I think is just really, really beautiful storytelling, Like really, really incredible stuff that helps enrich a scene that I was already looking forward to at the end with something that I had no idea could possibly be coming.

Also, I'm interested in this concept of like non-apology across the episode, right?

Like

Javier talks about,

he talks about the context, but he doesn't apologize for what he does.

And he just says, I hope you do better than me, right?

And then there's a scene in the middle as part of Ellie's sort of teenage rebellion where she's like, I'm sorry about the pot.

I'm sorry about the tattoo.

I'm sorry about

except I'm not.

Only I'm not.

You know, and then when Joel.

Really in full effect in this episode, like Pinkerton poster on the wall.

Like she's living it.

And then we get to Joel in the end and he, you know, nods and shakes his head to confess what he's done.

Yeah.

And he doesn't say, I'm sorry, you know, he just says, because I love you,

you know, and I'll pay the price because you'll turn away from me, you know, like

there's no apology there.

He's just sort of like, and this is something, you know, Neil has talked about over the years and Craig has talked about since season one: this idea of like, it's an easy choice for Joel.

Yeah, it was an easy choice for him.

And it might be an easy choice for many of the parents who listen to this podcast or watch this show where they're just sort of like, this is the easiest equation I could possibly think of.

Of course, I would do this.

And, and even in the face of Ellie's devastation, there's no apology for it, which is,

you know, I'm actually not going to pass any kind of judgment on it.

I just think it's a very interesting human

conundrum of,

you know, she's devastated.

And he's like, yeah, I understand that I devastated you.

Yeah.

And that's it.

But I would do it all over again.

I think that to me is the magic of this story is we know these characters.

We know what they've been through.

We know the choice that Joel made, putting us on a track, emotionally speaking, where we're going to get to a place where because you're selfish and because I love you are kind of the same thing in their own way.

Like they're both completely true and completely earned and completely inarguable.

And these two people are in such fundamentally different places about understanding what that event and what that lie meant, but they're both extremely right.

And I love that we get there in the end with the porch scene.

I love that we get that sequence at all in this season, which we've been talking about in the spoiler section.

We weren't sure if that was going to be coming or not or when.

And we can unpack that whole sequence a little later when we kind of get to it in proper, but I was blown away by it.

Well, what do you want to say in the middle, you know, between in the,

you know,

Austin, Texas kitchen to porch scene, like the, the meat of the sandwich, what, what, like, stuck out most to you is

the thing, I don't know, that they either like nailed from the game for you or added to the game for you.

What, what really stuck out in the middle sections of this episode for you?

I mean, mean, nailed from the game, I think, is easy.

It's going to be the museum sequence that is almost not quite shot for shot, but as closely adapted from the game as possible.

It's perfect in the game.

And so no surprise, it's kind of perfect here, too.

I don't really see it as like even flattering the sensibilities of gamers.

I think there are times during the season where it's like, oh, that one's for us.

You know, like that, that's a little Easter egg.

That's a little moment.

Maybe even something like the Take On Me sequence hits me differently than it would somebody who hasn't played the game.

Although I think it works for a lot of different people, you included, if I remember correctly.

I think it's more like when you see them crouching, you're like, that works for the gamers.

That's also true.

When they're scrounging for spoiled milk

in the grocery store.

But like to me, this is not about flattering the sensibilities of people like me.

It's about like letting a different audience experience the thing that we've already experienced if you've played through the game, which is...

how amazing the sequence is.

And I think this is one of those moments in particular that really hammers home the fact that this show does miss Pedro Pascal.

Like, it does miss him.

It does miss Joel.

It's hard not to feel that when you see this guy pop off one single tier in the space pod.

Like, he's just on an incredible level.

I couldn't.

It's tremendous work.

I thought he, look, he and Bellarams are both so great throughout this episode, but you do get the feeling of how much you miss him.

You get a sense of like how special these characters are to each other.

And you, you know, as we were talking through the museum hypothetical up top, like of, you know, what would you do in this kind of post-apocalyptic space?

Like, where would you want to go?

There's something so magical about this museum sequence in the sense that clearly Joel understands Ellie at this point in her life and kind of what she wants and the things she wishes she could have experienced.

And he can take her to this museum to live through a version of some of those things.

And there's also the part of it where it's like, this is the sort of museum where people like Joel and Ellie would, in normal times, just be a father and a daughter, right?

Like, would just be normal people having a day out.

And the irony of that being that Joel and Ellie specifically would never be in this place together and would never have met if the world hadn't gone to shit.

And so, you know, these relationships that are forming and over the course of this episode, kind of breaking down or at least starting to show some fissures, like they are inextricable from the context that they live in.

I love that.

That's, it's so

the Petra Pascal, it's almost overwhelming.

Mallory and I were talking about this last night because we've just been sending each other Pedro Pascal at Cannes

Instagram posts.

Honestly, my Instagram feed right now

between the Eddington at Cannes stuff,

the materialist stuff is gearing up.

So we're getting like Dakota and Chris Evans and stuff like that.

You know, like that's all happening.

There's The Last of Us.

There's the Fantastic Four.

I'm like,

I am just like swimming in Pedro Pascal content.

Like, to my curated feed, he is the biggest star in the world.

Now, I'm not sure that that is true, but that is what it feels like right now.

And,

and so, yeah, to watch him effortlessly do what he does feels effortless.

I'm sure it's very efforty, but it feels effort.

It doesn't feel like that single tier that you're talking about.

I think I've seen so many other actors like

really

try, you know, to like even

get close to

what's just sort of, you know, beaming out of him naturally inside of that sequence.

It's so powerful.

And it's an incredible Ellie sequence, too, you know, like the way in which we are ported inside of Ellie's head, Ellie's experience, the lighting of the takeoff, fantasy takeoff sequence, like all of, you know, and to see her

so happy and so calm and to know where her story's going is devastating.

It's really, really good.

But we need those contrasts to feel that, right?

To feel the extent of that weight and that journey.

And I agree with you.

I think Pella Ramsey is wonderful in this museum sequence.

I think, really, they're wonderful throughout the episode, but really funny, really wounded.

Like, we see all these different sides of them.

The devious, sly smile when Ellie realizes she gets to throw the rock to break open the museum case is just pitch-perfect stuff.

Loved it.

All right,

What else in the meat of this episode do you want to talk about?

I want to zero in a little bit on birthday.

I guess this is number three of the cat encounter, all the teenage shit happening at once.

And really, I would say the aftermath of that, as Joel and Ellie are sort of unpacking.

That moment, what they are to each other at this stage, and specifically this, like,

this is my house, fatherhood stomping moment.

Yeah.

Not to like, you're not not my real dad, this thing out, but it's kind of what's happening here.

And I think,

I think this is something that I don't see explored very often in these sorts of like found family types of stories, which is if you do have a found family, as many TV shows turn out to be, and there is like a paternalistic figure, guess what?

You don't have any actual authority other than what those other people give you.

And so the kind of interchange here between Ellie's like allowed Joel to basically be her functional father in a lot of senses.

And they live together and that that balance is shifting under their feet.

But especially now that they're in the relative safety of Jackson, my man, you don't have jurisdiction here.

Like, you're not keeping this girl alive.

You're just wanting to be her dad.

This is such an interesting Mahoney take because you like you've said this a couple times over the pods of this season: of like, she's not, he's not her dad, which he's not.

He's not like,

but he is.

But he is because she allows it.

She, well, it's not just allow, it's like she she desperately wanted that.

Yes.

She wanted Joel as her family.

She was like cleaving to him in season one.

And so like, you know, to then say, my guy, you have no rights here, which like is technically true, but it's also like to, you know, it's got to be emotional whiplash for Joel to be like to have this little, you know, 14-year-old girl desperately want him to be her father figure and then to say, F you, you're not my real dad.

And like, that's a natural human thing for Ellie, but it's like a devastation for Joel.

And like, Joel handles it a bit better than I would say, oh, I don't know, poop on your friends and neighbors.

Look, different levels of emotional maturity happening, even for someone as closed off as Joel Miller.

Look, I totally agree with you.

And 14-year-old Ellie to me is just a fundamentally different proposition than 19-year-old Ellie.

Like, this is a, this is a woman, a young woman who is finding herself and is trying to find her footing in the world.

And as we find out over the course of this episode, has been encountering years of this man not seeing her in the way that she thought he did, right?

Like him kind of bringing up, like, oh, I thought you and Jesse kind of had a thing.

My guy, you got to know bros when you see them.

Like, they're just being bros.

It's not a big deal.

But yeah, like, and the moth thing, like, all these little elements of her life that I think Ellie probably took on face that, oh, this person knows me.

He would get this.

Right.

And some things he gets and some things he doesn't.

And so when it, when it comes time to like lay down the law, you don't really have a law here.

Like you have a relationship.

They are, they are obviously something to each other.

And very often it resembles father and daughter, but it's not quite all the time.

And certainly the older she gets, the less it's going to resemble 14-year-old Ellie and the guy protecting her in the wilderness as cargo.

It's certainly a

weapon that someone inside of a found family situation, or, you know, we usually hear it in a sort of like step-parent, step-child, you're not my real dad sort sort of dynamic.

The fact that this is a you're not my real dad, and also, and I learned it from watching you episode, just real, real tough breaks for parents everywhere.

But like that, that is a, that is a weapon that a child can use when they're trying to individuate themselves from this figure that they have, you know, in the best case scenario, received love and protection and all these other things from.

Okay, I

want to talk to you about the porch scene.

Please.

This was devastating.

This is one of the toughest things I've ever watched.

And then I watched it again and again and again and again.

And I just thought it was so beautiful.

Neil

will talk a bit more about sort of the where and whys of them putting it inside of this episode versus saving it for later.

But as someone, Rob, as someone who like wasn't sure we were getting it, are you glad we got it?

Do you feel like they nailed it?

Um, and a question: so, like, you know, we feel free to mention this because the porch scene is already in

the show, but this comes at the very end of the game, right?

Yeah,

is there a possibility?

I did not ask Neil this, but like, is there a possibility in your mind, Rob, that there is even just like a little bit more at the end of that porch scene that they could give us at the very end of

the series?

You know, because like she says, I'd like to try.

It's a beautiful end of the scene.

We don't need need more necessarily, but like

him handing her the guitar, her taking the car back into her room, you know, like there's, there's, there's just like a little bit of stuff there that could, that could still be in the can.

So anyway, what do you think of the porch scene?

What do you think of its placement?

How are you feeling, Rob?

I think it's wonderful.

Like I'm a sucker for, I would say, revisiting any sort of moment or scene from a different context, like a perspective flip, go back in time, like let's see it.

And I think starting with the dance, we already had the kind of like kicked puppy part of Pedro Pascal's performance once Ellie chews him out in front of everybody.

But knowing everything we know now, it just transforms that years-long deterioration of their relationship and the way things are changing out from under him in a, like, in a way he cannot get a grasp of.

And it is so painful in that moment that we then get the follow-up on the porch.

And Joe, I thought you made a great point on House of R about some of the discrepancies between, not, again, not to make everything game and show, but like Troy Baker's Joel and Pedro Pascal's Joel.

And so I think we get within this scene that already is very powerful, so many new and different wrinkles.

One, based on having that prologue with Joel's father and getting the cyclical understanding of who this character is and where he's been, but also like Pedro is so much of a more emotive Joel.

And this is a character who's still closed off, but like he is just borderline sobbing by the end of this thing.

Obviously can't articulate in the same way.

Like, you know, he is, he's choked up

in a way that I think changes that scene dramatically.

And I think is proof of how far you can change the texture with an adaptive work without changing like the fundamentals of what that scene is about.

Like, we're getting the same lessons from it, although some kind of

some shifts as far as the mechanics of the storytelling, but the emotions are very much the same.

But Pedro is bringing something to it that's totally different from what Troy Baker brings to it.

And I loved it.

I'm so glad you loved it.

I'm glad

it fed you in the way that one would hope someone who loves the game would feel fed by that.

Again,

I agree with you.

I think it's just encouraging us

to cherish the game, cherish the source material, and be open to

different interpretations.

If this Ellie feels different to you, well, this Joel is different.

Absolutely.

The game Joel, you know, I would say leans even more into the dad elements of Joel than the game does, which that's clearly part of the text.

It's always part of that character.

It's always part of the story, but there's something about Pedro Pascal's Joel that is even more needy dad than the game version.

Yeah.

All right.

Anything else you want to talk about in a non-spoiler way?

I would say just the reveal here of like the fundamental lie, which is different from in the game in terms of how Ellie confronts Joel about like, you have been lying to me all this time.

And specifically this idea of taking it from, again, what in the the game is like

an audio tape recording empirical proof kind of truth and transforming it into a character kind of truth is a really inspired touch.

And I think something that is telling us a lot about these characters.

And I think it's also delivering on

Joel's attempted session with Gail earlier in the season.

Like, I don't think Joel is ready to tell the truth in this moment if he doesn't have that half conversation with Gail in therapy about finally being ready to say the thing out loud.

And so to get the same thing.

Even though though he doesn't quite say it, he just shakes his hand and nods his head, but he nods along.

He's at least willing to acknowledge her saying it.

Therapy.

It works, guys.

You know, it does work.

You know, sometimes you need an Ellie.

You need an Ellie to give you like an A-B test.

Yes or no, I'm going to say these things.

You nod or you don't.

I'll also say Ellie to me is just like a natural redditor in this episode.

She's like, I have some plot hole questions about your story.

You know, let me, let me, what happened to the fireflies?

What's up with the Raiders?

How did we get out of there?

Let me, let me go A through D and you can answer my queries.

This is a classic

Reddit thread.

On that front, inside of that porch scene, something that we should clarify, you know, we've gotten some emails about this on both of the shows.

This idea of like, how can Joel say,

uh, you know, did they have a cure?

It would have worked definitively when they don't know scientifically.

And Neil has said in interviews this week, he's like, it is our intention that the cure would have worked.

He was like, now, are scientists at home poking holes in our science?

Sure.

Yeah.

That's fine.

But inside the story sense of the game, there would have been a cure.

It would have worked.

This is, this is the math.

It wasn't a maybe cure.

Save Ellie or a maybe cure.

It was a save Ellie or save the world

sort of choice.

That's what Neil wants to make sure is very clear inside of the game and show logic.

So

I think that level of certainty adds to that decision to me.

Like, I get why adding another layer of like cloudy maybe would enrich the story for some people, but I like the more direct trade-off of she will certainly die.

And you will, there will certainly be some tangible societal benefit to this.

Although, you know, you and I talked about the realities of vaccine distribution in these times.

Yeah, it's uh, it's thorny to say the least, but you know, unquestionably, it would be saving some people.

And really, what so much of this episode is about, Demi Joe, is this like power of assumption, right?

This idea that if you are Joel, you are assuming so much about Ellie in her life and assuming you know that person.

But what kind of what gives you the right to make the decisions that you are?

What gives you the right to prevent her from going out on patrol?

What gives you the right to dictate the terms of her life as she's becoming an adult?

And in the broader, like big decision and big lie sense, what gives you the right to take away the one thing she wanted for herself, which is for her immunity and her life to mean something.

And so there's, you know, you can almost throw out the question of like, is Joel right or not?

It's like, what gives him the right to even make that decision in the first place is such a key part of the story.

And I guess the right is like, that's just love or that's parenthood, you know, something that I don't personally have access to, but is something that, you know, we have heard from a lot of parents over the course of covering this show.

They're like, yep, easy decision.

What do you do?

Not a, not a question.

All right.

I want to go to our interview now with Neil and Hallie.

Before we do that, I just want to mention one thing that I promised foley the costume designer who we talked to last week that i would mention uh i talked about it in house of bar but i just want to mention it here um she sort of tees that her favorite costume of the season was inside of this episode oh episode six and um it's the t-shirt in the museum scene that they like sort of painstakingly replicated they had to like paint it and make it to make it the same because of it was like drawn for the game and it's sort of like they turned it into a real garment because it was very important to them that it be as close as possible to this game moment that's so important to people.

So great work from Anne.

Can I say one more thing, Joe, before we flip to the interview?

And I apologize for giving the short shrift.

Like we're flying through.

There's a lot to unpack here.

I know.

The Eugene sequence, I genuinely don't know how this show does this as far as like

introduce a character.

kill him 10 minutes later, and it feels like a punch in the gut when it happens.

Like creating these bonds so quickly, like Joe Pantaleano is a huge part of that.

I think he's amazing in this scene to a degree that makes me sad we don't get more of him.

But the stakes and the anguish of this world are so well articulated and so well understood that you can do that time and again and introduce us to new pockets in which we actually do feel things, not just like understand that this is a person in tense circumstances, but like that is a gut punch moment for a character that I, even playing the game, I just don't really care about Eugene very much, but now I do.

I think that this is something something that we should say about Craig Mason's writing.

Like, you know, Neil and Hallie and Craig are all credited on this episode, but this is something that Craig has done again and again in like various vignettes that we've seen on the show.

I just think he's a real master of a vignette.

Any of the cold opens we've gotten, any sort of like

seraphite vignette or whatever it is, like he's just incredibly good at the short story inside of even shorter than a short story.

Because I would say like Bill and Frank is a perfect short story, but like he does like fast fiction, flash fiction, sort of you have mere moments, mere minutes with,

you know, this doctor in Indonesia or whatever it is, and you're just sort of like all in and really, really

emotionally bound to it.

I just wanted that doctor to be able to finish her lunch.

She got rushed off into the lab with no explanation.

It's like, let this woman eat her lunch, please.

Yeah, and let Eugene talk to Gail on the walkie or whatever it is that we could have solved this whole thing with.

I I promise we're going to get out of here.

I think we have to address the walkie-talkie of it all.

I've seen this pop up.

The emails have been coming in.

Why don't you just hand Eugene the walkie-talkie?

I think it's a very practical answer to what, to me, is a very emotional question.

And it's kind of like illustrative of the whole thing to me, which is like Joel is operating from a very pragmatic standpoint.

These are the rules.

They keep us safe.

These people are speaking different languages.

Like what Eugene wants is not to tell Gail something.

And he even says that.

Like he wants this moment with the person he loves most in the world and all due respect uh to the reception of you know transistor radios and walkie-talkies everywhere like you're just not getting that like you're not getting what eugene is after overall something

it's it might not be like a slice a hand greedy handful of vanilla cake but it's like some crumbs a lick of frosting is better than no cake at all, right?

A couple of crumbs and a lick of a beaver's anal gland, you know, just everything he could be asking for.

He wants to to see her face, he doesn't get to see her face, but he wants her words for him, and he could have gotten them of the radio.

And we can't even like make the argument that they wouldn't have gotten reception because, how else do they radio in the like, you know,

incident in the first place?

So, like, I don't think it would work.

I just think it's not quite what he's asking for, if that makes sense.

It was definitely not what he's asking for, but it's like a compromise.

Okay, I can't take you back.

You're about to turn.

You're right.

Um, but at least you can hear her voice, and that's okay, whatever.

It's fine.

Like, I I said this on the Rewatchables.

Cell phones have ruined so many movies.

And walkie-talkies ruin the premise of this beautiful story.

So

I'm just willing to say all the batteries ran out at once and all the walkies.

And that's

okay.

Let's go now to our conversation with Neil and Hallie.

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I want to start by asking you about the decision to parcel out, instead of parceling out the flashbacks across the season, to sort of condense them all into one single episode.

Yeah, I think with a lot of these questions about differences, it will often come back to the differences in not only the medium, but the delivery of that medium.

So in the game, each flashback, you know, you're in it for a while.

So you get to like get in the flow stage, you get to be with Joel, you're like moving with him, he's teaching you how to swim, you're, you're entering the museum yourself as Ellie.

Those scenes, if we were to parse them out on their own,

I would worry they would be too short.

And so you wouldn't kind of get into them.

They would feel more disruptive.

And then I would worry that the episode would start feeling like a template of like, okay, what's the Joel sequence for this week?

So I felt it worked better in the game.

And I felt in our conversations and I agreed that it would have be more impactful to put them all together so you could see them side by side and feel the evolution of that relationship over the course of the episode.

Hallie, it's my understanding that you were sort of deeply involved in the construction, how to arrange the flashbacks in the original scene, in the original game when you put all the flashbacks together and the ordering of it.

I'm curious, when it comes to figuring out which ones to pick and choose or what to pick and choose for this episode, Was there something you felt the most bullish on that like this has to be in here or else I quit?

Listen, a million percent for asking.

For me, so for me, my, I have two favorite parts of the game.

One is not in this season because it comes later, but my other favorite part of this game is Ellie and Joel going to the museum.

I think, you know,

This show is so much about survival.

We need to be reminded, what are we surviving for?

What are we fighting for?

And

what are the memories that are keeping Ellie on this mission?

And so, having something that really brought a lot of lightness and joy and really the best day of their lives was super important to me.

And I also think it's super important to show that even on their very, very, very, very best day, right, Ellie still sees fireflies.

Ellie still can't get away from this lie between them.

So, to me, that sequence, you need that super high sequence so that we can navigate the real lows.

I love that.

Neil, do you feel the same way or is there a different moment that you felt most bullish about?

I know what Neil's going to say, Neil's going to say a dark moment.

No, no, no,

I agree.

It's

the space museum moment kind of,

well,

as I say that,

yeah, you're going to say the porch scene, aren't you?

As I say that, my mind goes immediately to the porch scene, which like to me, that conversation is at the heart, not only of this season, but this entire story.

Going backwards in time and eventually forwards in time, we will keep coming back to

this exchange between these two characters.

I know that you said,

you know, a lot of the answers to the questions about changes would come down to the same thing, but

that scene, that porch scene, comes right at the end of the story for game players.

And it is such a huge, like, revelation for game players that Ellie had this information.

Were you concerned at all about what it would do to the way you were telling the story to bring it forward?

Yes, because I'm neurotic and I'm concerned about everything.

But

it wasn't like a very tough decision because even when we were making the game, for a long time, that scene was at a different spot at the game.

And as we were finishing production, I'm sure Hellie, you remember this, it was just like kind of jumping around and we didn't know where it should should land.

And again, this speaks to just how collaborative all these things are.

It was the editorial team that like experimented with putting it at the end.

And I don't want to say the part that it ends up in because that's a big spoiler for people who are only watching the show, but it felt appropriate for that.

And this again comes back to how the story is being delivered.

It felt there's all these setups that get paid off in this scene.

And to wait years, potentially, to eventually see this scene would have been been too long.

And

we were all worried it would lose its impact, especially because it's required for

this Ellie part of the journey.

So therefore, it was a conversation.

We wrestled with it for a little bit, but we really quickly, like within a day of a conversation, said, yeah, it feels appropriate to leave it in this season.

Another interesting, the way that that porch scene is bookended by this opening sequence where we get young Joel's POV.

And I think, I thought that was really interesting.

I mean,

absolutely crushed me, killed me.

But thank you for that.

More heartbreak.

But

I think it's really interesting because so many of these Joel flashbacks in the game are positioned as Ellie memories.

And then we have this moment that Ellie was not present for, this Austin, Texas flashback.

And I was wondering, you know, if that changed the way you were thinking about this depiction, this story you were weaving of Joel, or what was the thinking behind including that cold open?

You make an interesting observation in that in the game, you are Ellie in those flashbacks.

So they're very much Ellie's point of view.

This episode, with some exceptions for the most part, is Joel's point of view.

If you look at, you know, even when the whole Eugene sequence, we're with Joel the whole time and only get Ellie's perspective much later.

This started with a conversation we had early on in the season.

I think...

If I remember correctly, Craig was like, oh, wouldn't it be cool to like be in like a playground and see Joel hit someone that was like bugging Tommy or something and and um

and and i thought that was such a fascinating

thought process of just because we've never gone that far back when in our discussions of joel but it makes so much sense because the story is about parents and children and unconditional love and the kind of I'm going to ramble for a bit, but you know, in the season when Joel dies, he's still with us because he's a part of Ellie now.

He's imparted so much of himself into Ellie.

And sometimes he comes across as he would be.

And sometimes it's her trying to be him, like when she tortures Nora, and she is not him.

And we will see the consequence of that

going forward, that to ask the question of like, well, where did Joel's programming come from?

And we started talking a lot about this dad.

And originally, this was a much longer sequence when we were with the two kids.

you saw the drug deal go down you saw the fight we even had versions where they get we saw the dad actually hit them and then we just kept stripping it down and stripping it down and stripping it down.

And then it felt like you could understand all those things without seeing them.

But this moment is important because instead of hitting his son, he's saying, this time it was different.

This time when you used violence, it was to protect your tribe.

It was to protect your brother.

Maybe now you understand me.

Maybe now you understand why I've behaved that way I did.

But he takes it even further because he says, I don't even know if I've done the right thing.

I just know I did it a little better than my dad.

At least I think I did.

And my hope is that you will be even better than me.

And that idea of not only generational trauma, but generational hope and repair was a really cool kind of concept.

And it really helped tie it to their final conversation on that porch.

Hallelujah, do you have any thoughts on that?

I mean, I agree with everything you said.

And my experience is being a dad.

No, I agree.

And I think.

Don't say you're a dad.

That's very controversial.

I know.

I don't even.

Yeah.

All right.

Yeah, yeah.

What's the drama?

No, I will just add that to me, I think a thing that it also really juices for us when you're looking at it, at the season more holistically and at the show more holistically, right?

It gives,

it loads Ellie with spiritual ammo, right?

It gives her this option that you can, Joel does rise above his programming and become a better person.

for Ellie, right?

Like you can't imagine Joel before Ellie going to therapy.

You can't picture him being willing to step outside of his comfort zone and take these really big leaps, but for his love for Ellie, he does, right?

And so as we're watching Ellie struggle and we know how strong a person Joel is, we know that potentially there's something in Ellie that could grow as well.

And so it gives us this

thing to root for, I think.

And

it was an excuse to work with the great Tony Dalton.

Tony Dalton.

I lost my marbles when I saw him show up.

I will tell you,

Holly, I don't know if you listened to the work that I do with Mallory Rubin, but I did text.

I was like, she hadn't watched the episode.

I was like, I need to let you know that Tony Dalton is in this episode.

Good, good.

Such a fan.

It's one of those things that I can't believe it has remained a secret.

I guess we're a few days out.

I hope it remains a secret until Sunday.

My lips are sealed.

Can you dig into

your interpretation of a line like Ellie's where she says, I think I knew already I knew this whole time.

Hallie, you're nodding aggressively.

Do you want to start?

Sure.

You know, we, as you pointed out earlier, we did restructure part of this sequence, and it is different from the game.

And so what you're experiencing at the end of the Eugene sequence is

Ellie's confirmation, right?

She gets this, she sees Joel lie and the ease with which he lies and she recognizes the face he makes, right?

And

oh my God, I just totally lost my train of thought.

May I jump in and please, thank you.

And then I'll interrupt you later.

Well, maybe my interpretation is different than Hallie's, but for me, it's like Ellie is so smart.

I don't think she's ever fully believed this lie.

I think she, yeah, she has known from the get-go.

She just kind of made this deal with herself.

I'm going to get past this.

I'm going to, I'm going to believe him.

I'm choosing to believe him and let's move on.

And over the course of

this episode, you're seeing that there's all this conflict, like her getting a tattoo, her wanting to go on patrols, like her with Kat, her wanting to move out.

And they get past all of it.

And the relationship still deteriorates because it's not about any one of those things.

It's about this lie that she just cannot get past.

It just keeps eating away at her.

And I'm sure every death in Jackson by some person that got infected is a reminder that, wait, if that's a lie, then this person could be alive.

I wanted to ask,

as the sort of body stack up at Jackson, I was thinking about this in terms of

watching them drag Eugene's body back to Jackson and the visual parallel of Jesse dragging Joel's body back into Jackson.

And I'm sure this is just standard operating procedure.

We wrap the body, we pull it by a rope, but of course, nothing's accidental inside of television.

So I was wondering, Neil, as the director of this episode, if you could talk about that visual parallel and maybe any other sort of visual parallels that you were excited to put inside of this episode.

Oh, let me see if I can remember.

For sure, that one.

And initially, when we thought of that one, they're like, oh, they would drag it the same exact way.

And then I'm like, wait a minute, we don't have snow.

There will be nothing but pulp by the time they arrive at Jackson.

So that's where we came up on the day or like a few days before shooting with that idea of that sled, but really wanted to mirror what we've done in 202.

This was Hallie's idea, but in that opening scene where we see Joel's dad, his watch is Joel's watch.

So there's a parallel there.

Oh man, now I'm blanking on the rest of them.

Good.

I'll pause there.

If more come to mind, I'll jump in.

Hallie, I am a massive fan of westworld i spent so much time thinking about westworld uh when i covered it for years um i love the episodes that you worked on in season one and i wanted to ask you um they have so much to do with the concepts of memory and ptsd and trauma and identity and i was wondering if you could talk uh about how uh if at all you applied your insights into those spheres into working on this game uh and how that feeds into this episode.

Sure.

Well, I have PTSD.

And so it's something that I've been reconciling with and living with for a long time and has some slightly inconvenient side effects.

And

what I have always wanted out of my work and what I try and bring to the projects that I work on and collaborate on is an authenticity to that experience, but also a

I think it's very easy for people to say bad things have happened to me and now I'm a victim.

And I think what we need to be seeing more in storytelling, and especially storytelling for women, but really for everybody, is

how do we

reframe ourselves as heroes through the difficult things that we go through?

Because so much of life is outside of our control, right?

And we do feel so powerless so often.

And I think PTSD is something that a lot of people can relate to, whether you have had like a single, very big trauma or if you've had

CPTSD, if you've had sort of long trauma.

But it is hard to be a person, right?

And so so much of it is

how we tell our own stories.

And so to me, that's something that I've been really trying to infuse in the characters I work on who exist in really traumatic spaces.

And I tend to work in stories that involve a lot of sex and violence.

So I find those characters frequently.

Neil, you brought Hallie on to work on the second game, the sequel of the game.

Was it a no-brainer to bring her on to work on the season of television?

What was that collaboration like for you?

To me, it was a no-brainer.

It was like bringing Gustavo Santo Lai on to do the music.

It's like Hallie's part of the DNA of the story.

She had to be part of the season.

I really missed working with Hallie because we hadn't written together since we wrote on the game on Last of Us Part 2.

And it was,

you know, she's read some of my work.

I've read read some of her, we've given each other notes and stuff just because we've remained friends, but I

didn't realize how much I missed it, how much I missed this collaboration.

It was, it was kind of really nice just going back into it and like

just almost reliving the trauma of making that game.

I say trauma just because I don't mean that.

It was just, it was a very difficult game to make.

It took a very long time.

And it was nice to revisit these characters, these moments that have just meant so much to us.

that's the nicest I've ever gotten.

That's it.

That's all you get.

I think it's interesting that you put it that way because we've been talking a lot about this idea of the way that this series gives you and Gustavo and other people who worked on the game this opportunity to sort of retell or rework elements of your own story.

And I'm curious what that process has been like for you, this idea of taking another pass at a story that you already told so masterfully and thinking about it all over again?

Yeah, I can say for me, it was really, really exciting.

You know, Neil and I filled the volume of the space we were given for the game.

We could have kept going.

We could have kept iterating.

We could have found more depth and more depth and more depth, but ultimately deadlines come.

And so it was really,

and because of the way that games are are built, you are locked into certain POVs, right?

You're locked into in the game, you're locked into Ellie, Abby, and Joel.

And so getting a chance to dimensionalize and see more deeply characters that we didn't get to experience in the same way in the game was really exciting.

I also think for,

I don't know, for me, like getting to work with fresh eyes with someone like Craig, who has so much experience with structure and brings so much experience to the table really allowed us to investigate the all of the ideas that we had on the table.

And Neil and I are really not precious about stuff.

Like anything that, anything is subject to being examined.

So it was just a really fun explore, I would say for me.

Neil, fun explorer for you?

Fun explorer.

For me, it's just, I like,

I love this collaboration.

I love what I do at Naughty Dog.

I get to be surprised every day by really talented artists and engineers, and they often plus things in a way that's much better than anything I could come up with on my own.

So, to have this collaboration with Craig, with a whole new set of people that many of which were fans of the game, and then to see how they interpret the material, how does Bella interpret Ellie?

How does Pedro reinterpret Joel?

And to me, when I was, especially when I was directing this episode, I think a lot about,

I tend to just not think too much about the audience because I find it doesn't lead to interesting choices.

But I think a lot about everybody that has poured their heart and soul into the game and the show.

And I want to make sure they are extremely proud of what we do.

But the two people I had like at the forefront of my mind, especially when I was watching that porch scene, were Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson because they were my partners in helping coming up with those characters.

And I wanted to make sure that even though now someone is like borrowing it from them, you know, it will always be theirs because they are the original versions of it.

And funny, I had just had lunch with Ashley and I was talking to her about it, but I was like, I hope when they watch it, they are as proud of it as I am.

I love thinking about it that way because I watched,

you know, right before we hopped on, actually, I watched the porch scene in your episode, then I watched the scene from the video game, and then I watched the scene from the episode again to sort of just really parse what was added and what was, you know, there's some things that are exactly word for word, but something that struck me was actually more performance-based, like that Pedro's,

Joel is so much more emotional.

Troy is emotional and then Pedro is like just this sort of open wound in that scene.

Can you talk about any conversations you had with him about that depiction of Joel?

Not too much because I tend to, those conversations sometimes are private and I like to keep them private, but it was it was really important for me to uh i didn't re-watch the scene before directing this i wanted to like almost like move past it as much as possible because i didn't want

for example one of the things i noticed right off the bat is how the way troy leaned on the railing and pedro didn't uh and those and i didn't i i i didn't want to ask pedro to lean on the railing even like something again it just felt a little off but i was like it was important that this is their version of these characters this is their version of this conversation of this conflict this is why you bring artists on board not to copy and duplicate this other thing like how horrible would it have been if heath fledger like copied jack nicholson or something right it's like they're both brilliant jokers just like i believe these are both brilliant versions of joel and i love that this version of joel was more vulnerable I love that this version of Joel actually says, I love you.

You get that from both of them.

And it's just those little differences, I think, that make it special and make it stand on its own.

I'm going to toss this question to you, Hallie, but either of you are welcome to answer it.

There's been this interesting conversation around this season about

Ellie's trajectory, emotional trajectory in this season.

And this idea of, you know, we've been talking a lot on the podcast of this idea of who Ellie is alone versus who she is around Dina and whether game players feel like this

is an Ellie that they they recognize or and then show watchers are like, hey, I'm really enjoying this evolution of this young woman.

And I was curious, Hallie, if you had any thoughts about either Bella's interpretation or the way in which you wanted to pace Ellie's progress through the story.

Yeah, I think, you know, as Neil said before,

we've been taking them as different

as different pieces, right?

So what was right for the game is not necessarily right for the TV show, and what was right for Ashley's performance is not necessarily right for Bella's performance.

What I find really moving about Bella's performance is

how much repression you can feel underneath everything, underneath all of these scenes, right?

But at the same time, you don't have this gameplay of depression, right, between these crackling moments of beauty that you have in the game.

You have to live in these short interstitial scenes.

And to me,

having Dina feel like this bright, beautiful, hopeful thing in Ellie's life is really, really important because it shows the audience the life Ellie could have if she can figure out how to heal in time, how to heal just enough, just in time.

And so you need, as much as Joel's death is devastating, you need to have that balance of lightness, right?

You need that museum sequence.

You need that moment of singing aha, because you need to believe that there are things for Ellie to fight for.

There are reasons for Ellie to heal.

You're also right in that this version of Ellie does a better job of hiding when she's upset, when there's the darker things kind of happening behind her eyes.

And you could see it in this episode.

When she sees the fireflies, you see her expression shift.

And then Joel's like saying, are you okay?

And she puts on this big grin, like nothing just happened and she walks on.

I think she's more afraid to just let people in, including Joel.

But that's why that porch scene is like, this is the characters that they're rawest and they're just letting everything out.

Yeah.

A way of expressing yourself

beyond actually being honest and vulnerable with your own words is through music.

And of course, there is an incredible musical moment.

I love any musical moment in anything ever.

But this incredible moment with Pedro the guitar, I'm not going to ask you once again to divulge any secrets of the conversations you had with Pedro, but what was it?

I know this was an important thing.

I know you were like, let's break the premise of the timeline of the universe in order to include this Pearl Jam song.

What was it like?

I think you guys refer to it as a space-time continuum.

Yes, I might have said that.

What is it?

What was it?

Why was it so important to have this particular song

sung by this character in this moment?

Look, I'm biased because Pearl Jam is my favorite band of all time.

And that song in particular is is a song that I used to sing to my daughter when she was very young.

So there's just, it's just already so charged for me for all those reasons.

But I try whenever I feel biased to say, let me ignore all that.

We have this different timeline.

I really don't want to honor this.

Let's go with a different song.

And then, you know, as we're getting kind of getting closer to shooting it, it just didn't feel right.

It just like, I'm like, okay, we got the technical part of our timeline right, but the emotional part doesn't feel the same.

And, you know, I started checking in with Hallie and Craig and even the actors.

And everyone slowly came around to like, it should be future days.

It's, there's something about the lyrics and just the feeling of the song.

It's a little on the nose, but it also works.

It also really works for like, you know, if Joel has to pick one song to sing to Ellie, it kind of gets to the core of what she was to him, which was like.

this second chance at being a dad, the second chance at having this daughter, and that idea of like, if he ever were to lose her, he would lose himself.

And he, you know, he lived throughout his life and he didn't lose her, but now she has lost him.

And is she losing herself in this process?

And, you know, that's TBD.

Hallie, as a father of daughters.

No, just kidding.

Call me daddy.

What did this musical moment mean to you?

Oh, I love this moment.

You know, I, yeah, again,

you struggle with the space-time continuum.

You, you want to be respectful, but I think there are certain moments to me in the game that are

are

really important, right?

That feel very loudly of the game and of the piece that we're adapting.

And that guitar scene at the beginning of the game is one of them.

It is this moment where Joel allows Ellie to look at him

without looking back.

I will say,

without divulging too much from my conversation with the actors,

Pedro was very nervous.

And what I told him from the get-go is is like, don't copy Troy.

This must be your own version.

And I like that he landed on this kind of Johnny Cash, more kind of spoken thing of it.

And he made it his own.

And it's equally beautiful and different.

My dad always used to call that Rex Harrisoning Your Way Through a Song, like Rex Harrison or My Fair Lady likes to talk sing.

And I loved it.

It reminded me of one of my favorite musical moments in television, which is Justin Thoreau singing Homeward Bound and Leftovers.

And it's similarly like it's so emotionally like technically not the most perfect thing you've ever heard, but like emotionally just like completely raw.

Can I ask you one last quick question before we have to go?

Absolutely.

You've already mentioned sort of

the nature of this game you've created is about engendering empathy and

video games, because you can play as the characters have this mechanic built into them that allows you to experience that and i'm just curious what's the best way let's leave the challenges aside what is the best way you've found to access that inside of the medium of television i i think there's one that's runs parallel to it which is point of view um that you know there's certain ways you shoot things and certain ways you reveal information that's more from one character's perspective versus another that generally you start like connecting with that character and rooting for them.

So that's been kind of in the back of our mind, especially as I know you've watched the second game, as you know where this is going, but point of view.

Hallie,

yeah.

To me, I'm going to take it from more of a narrative angle, but to me, the characters that get to me the fastest are the ones that,

and maybe this goes back to sort of the PTSD question, but the ones that

can't get away from their vulnerability or their shame and that you see that early, because that is such a human thing and that is the thing that we hide and that is like that is the the thing that we spend all day kind of protecting and so as soon as somebody

right it's like it's what hannibal lecter says to to claria starling it's like you told me about migs so we're good like as soon as you get to the to the truth to the vulnerable truth i think we are reminded that we're also similar

perfect place to end thank you both so much for the chat I really, really appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

Let's do it again and make it longer.

I would love that.

So welcome to spoiler section.

This is the spoiler section of the podcast.

You have been warned.

Here you are in it with us.

We have the finale coming up.

This is the end of the season.

We assume we know where it's ending, you know,

in the theater.

Probably Jesse's not going to make it out of the season.

Yeah.

They could flip it.

We could have a message.

They could change it next week.

Yeah.

They could change those trade-offs, the deaths, a little bit if they would like.

Yeah, it's true.

Um, okay, so

in the spoiler section, though, I do want to talk about uh a conversation that's been uh, you know, buzzing through the internet uh this week, which is this question of how many seasons should the last of us be?

Yeah, right.

Um, because Craig Mason gave an interview to Collider where he said, I'm not sure that it will necessarily be true for season three, and that he was like, This season is so focused on Joel's death, we couldn't really, we like did these little mini-side Seraphide story, mini-side WLF story, but like really wanted to keep it focused on Joel and Ellie.

Yes.

In season three, I think Mason is much more interested in

alongside, again, you're in the spoiler section, the Abbey storyline, the three days in Seattle storyline, et cetera, et cetera.

He's interested in fleshing that out with even more sort of serified information, etc.

Neil

said in a different interview

that the prophet is someone that they're extremely interested in sort of spending time and who was she.

Love that.

So more like Seraphite lore to sort of flesh out.

And if they do that, if they take Abby day one through three and also use that time to give us a bunch of Seraphite lore, is Santa Barbara, et cetera, all this other stuff a fourth season of the show.

I'm worried about, I mean, they both said almost certainly season three is more episodes.

Great news.

Love it.

Am I a little worried about dragging this out into a fourth season?

A little bit, but like maybe not if we're getting more of this, like Neil has said very firmly, we're not going beyond the end of the game.

The game ends.

That's where the story ends.

We're not going into the future beyond that.

That's it.

But fleshing out with more Bill and Frank-esque sort of storytelling along the way,

going down the profit path, et cetera, et cetera, that is interesting interesting to me, but like, I don't ever want this show to overstay its welcome.

Yeah.

Which is silly to say about three episodes versus four episodes.

What do you think, Rob, honey?

I love this game.

And I would say one of the fair and somewhat valid criticisms of the game is that like its themes are what they are and it hammers them and hammers them and it's kind of circling the same ideas from both perspectives.

And I think the reason the game works is because you're getting the variety of perspectives, but the more more you drag out that messaging, the more you risk it feeling repetitive for some people.

And so I would be in favor of a consolidated type of storytelling as far as the number of seasons go.

Or if you're going to do it, please, like, I never thought I would say this, squid game this shit and do like a six-month release window.

Like, you can call it two seasons, you can call it half seasons, whatever you want, but like parcel it out in a way where people are going to be able to revisit the story more quickly and not have to, not have to go Abby slash WLF slash Seraphite slash profit story and then ultimately get Santa Barbara as a distant season years and years from now.

I just, I don't know that the patience is going to be there for that kind of thing.

Yeah, I'm a little worried about that.

The prophet thing is very exciting, though, Joe.

Yeah, I mean, the fact that they changed the prophet mural

from like

an older white woman to like a slightly younger, looking to my eyes, like black woman.

Oh, I forgot that we'd already seen her.

To me, makes me feel like they have

someone or something in mind in that intentional change.

Uh, so I was always expecting that we would get some, but it seemed from what Neil said in again, a different interview, not our interview, it sounds like you know, we could get a whole like profit episode.

And so, a whole episode with a slightly different theme of like, not you know, the cycle of violence theme, but sort of like how does someone's good intentions of leadership, you know, mutate and corrode corrode into

the

strict,

violent

sect of the Seraphites that we meet.

You know, that's that's an interesting story to tell.

I would love it.

Yeah, I think we might need to get cracking on the wish casting front.

I don't know.

I don't know who the ideal prophet would be.

The first time you said it, before you nailed down that the demographics have changed, I'm like, it's got Laura Dern written all over it.

Like, give me Laura Dern in this episode.

Now it's like, like, what's Gina Torres up to?

You know, is she available?

Genuinely, I also thought Gina Torres, I really liked her.

Maybe she's not.

I want to say maybe she's played a similar, like, mysterious.

Are you thinking about Angel?

I think, yeah, I was going to say, I think an angel is.

What is she?

Is she a ghost?

She's some kind of like

wispy speaking in riddles kind of ethereal presence.

And I'm like, that tracks to me.

Yeah.

She might be, is she suiting right now?

Is she suits LAing?

Kentucky.

Is she in that show?

I don't know.

Not prestige TV, not concerned with it.

Gina Torres,

I'm sure Neil and Craig have someone brilliant in mind.

And,

you know,

I'm interested.

I am a little worried about fourth season

because

unlike I just always want things to end strong and

welcomed and not sort of stretched and strained.

So I'm sure they have a plan.

They've They delivered a banger episode this week, so I'm trying to doubt their

writing.

But

yeah, just on my mind.

Okay.

Well, let's

keep the premise on its head a little bit, Joe.

We asked earlier this season, how much Caitlin Deaver were we going to get this season?

How much Bella Ramsey do we get next season?

If we're going to do mostly Abby story with these kind of side,

side avenues, tales from the Black Freighter style.

Like if we're going to have all these little vignette stories, are we going to see much of Ellie at all?

Other than the few times that Abby kind of bumps into her,

I think maybe not.

And maybe Bella gets to go to like the Maldives and turn off their internet and just like enjoy themselves.

Good work if you can get it.

But again, all the more reason, like, please just like break it up however you want.

Shoot it.

Yeah.

Like write it, shoot it.

And then you can, you can distribute as you like, but like make it a contained thing, whatever the next stage of the story is.

Because like, I mean, and how

I don't want to hobb it up this story into three parts.

Like, I just, I fundamentally don't want that.

No one wants to hop it up anything, uh, Rob Moni.

Let's be let's be clear about that.

Okay.

Um,

well, that has done it for us for this week.

Uh,

ex

excreting anal glands and everything else.

Thank you for all of your emails.

Uh, this is your brain on shrooms at gmail.com or press htv at spotify.com.

We'll be back with your friends and neighbors this week.

Another poker face check-in at some point, probably.

And we've got some other shows on the horizon that we're quite excited about to check in on.

I've heard that Owen Wilson is playing golf for Apple TV and that thrills me honestly.

Like personally, I'm thrilled by that.

So

yeah, I was asking how much Bella Ramsey we're gonna get.

The question, Joe, is how much Tim Oliphant are we gonna get on stick?

That's that's really what my heart wants to know.

It's a great question.

As just like the world's number one tin cup enthusiast, I just am really excited for

disaster people playing golf.

It's a really, it's a really fun genre, and I'm glad that we're here for it.

We will see you soon.

Thank you to Donnie Beacham for his production work on this episode.

And thank you to Justin Sales always for, you know, being the daddy of the feed.

We appreciate you so much, Justin, and we will see you all soon.

Bye.