‘The Last of Us’ Season 2, Episode 3 Precap: Every Road Trip Needs a Dina, Plus Gabriel Luna

Hello, welcome back to the Prestige TV Podcast Feed.

I'm Joanna Robinson.

I'm Rob Mahoney.

We are here today to talk to you about The Last of Us season two, episode three.

That is the plan today.

We've got, just in case you're joining us for the first time, the way we're covering The Last of Us on this feed is we're breaking every episode into two, two, three sections, actually.

We've got a discussion at the top that's kind of a mailbag sort of situation.

We'll talk about that in a second.

A Socratic seminar between us and all of our loyal listeners who are emailing Joe, we should say, to thisisyourbrain on shrooms at gmail.com.

Or if that's too complicated for you, prestige TV at Spotify.com.

Perfect.

So that's the first section.

Second section is an interview.

Rob, who do we have on the podcast today?

Gabriel Loon is joining the show this week.

Very excited to have you all hear from him.

Was very excited to talk to him.

And we talked, you know, about Tommy, of course, who's, I think, taking on like a pretty different life from the version of the character that we see in the game.

We also work through, I would say, the whole range of emotion that goes into playing Tommy this week in particular, from saying goodbye to your dead brother to crushing beers at a t-ball game.

Tommy gets to do it all.

And then last but not least, we will have a spoiler section.

Rob played The Last of Us, the game

years ago, and

so has a gamer's insight into

the story yet to come, perhaps, or some adaptive changes stuff that we can't talk about in a spoiler-free way.

So don't put that on our business card, Joe.

Just Rob Mahoney, and then in quotes, a gamer's insight.

Would that be okay with you?

Is that how you think of yourself, chiefly?

I don't know.

But I think as I am becoming a more compartmentalized professional, I have my basketball stuff.

I got this prestige stuff with you.

Clearly, I have this offshoot kind of gaming career that is now becoming quite lucrative for me, it turns out.

I just want to be able to market myself to all of the appropriate parties.

So you're

a ball knower.

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you.

A TV watcher

with a side of gamer's insight.

So that's

okay.

Great.

I mean, look, we'll have you work up the website, but that sounds great on the copy.

Oh, you don't want me on your website.

Okay, so

that is the plan today.

Just FYI, in a larger sense of the feed, Rob and I are going to be continuing to cover your friends and neighbors, perhaps on a week-to-week basis.

Time will tell, but for right now, we're still in it with John Hamm.

So we'll be back later this week to talk to you about that.

There's also coverage of the rehearsal.

I heard rumors that there might be a check-in on the studio and hacks and poker faces coming up.

So

that's all the

delicious stuff waiting for you on the Prestige TV podcast feed.

Rob Mahoney, can I share with you,

speaking of like specialities, can I share with you my Joanna Robinson NBA podcaster moment that I had earlier this week?

You simply must.

Okay.

I was after I went to the Thunderbolts press greeting on Monday.

And after that, I went to that parking garage.

It's by the Metreon.

And I was like getting into the elevator to go up to my car.

And there was a guy waiting next to me at the elevator.

And it's a place where you kind of want to be on your guard of like what's going on around you.

Yeah.

Um, and so he was just like, he was watching something full volume on his phone.

Um, and we got into the elevator.

He didn't look up, got into the elevator, still watching.

And I was like, and I could hear it.

I was like, oh, who's playing?

He's watching a basketball game.

I'm like, who's playing?

He's like, Warriors.

There are seconds left.

Yep.

It's 107 to 106.

It sure is.

And I was like, got it.

You, you can't look up.

I will, but for,

I will help help you.

He was like,

but you know,

and the Warriors won, right, over Houston?

They did.

I mean,

what you're describing was a seminal Draymond Green moment, just absolutely huge defensive stuff.

And I will say a crucial assist by you, Joe, in hitting that elevator button and not letting this guy miss a second of it.

I thought you'd be proud of me.

All right.

Absolutely.

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Let's talk about episode three.

Speaking of gamers insight, Rob,

I want to know how you feel about this comment that I found on the subreddit.

Which was this.

I'm just mad that Ellie got a horse with saddlebags full of supplies.

I had to search 8,000 drawers to find that stuff.

Rob, did you feel similarly jealous and resentful of how easily Ellie got all those supplies or Dina, rather?

Yeah, I was about to say, let's be honest about who packed those saddlebags and who's responsible for all of the goods.

Would scavenging make for good TV?

I go back and forth on this.

Is it exactly earned by Ellie?

No, because as this poster alluded to, we had to dig.

all of those supplies out from every drawer between not Jackson and Seattle per se, but literally everywhere else around these respective towns.

glad, you know, you know what?

Here's what I'll say: we get this big traveling montage.

Could we not have gotten a scavenging montage in there?

Could we not have gotten a rapid-fire Ellie opening roughly 3,000 drawers and 3,000 cabinets to find supplies?

Is that not a thing that we're entitled to?

Oh, you want a drawer montage?

Is what I would love one.

Would you set it to like a jaunty pop song, or what would you upgrade?

But yeah, I'm trying to think what the number.

I mean, it's really like you get to get high BPMs on that, you know?

Yeah, it's going to get a little repetitive.

Yeah, yeah, if you can synergize it, Don't Stop Me Now, Sean of the Dead style, to either crushing zombies or just the percussive opening of drawers, then I think we're really getting somewhere.

You read my mind.

I was like, this is an Edgar Wright moment, if ever we saw one.

We need just like drawers and cabinets opening, closing.

Okay.

I guess what I'm most interested to know from you, this is a largely like a departure from the game kind of episode.

The creators talked about sort of wanting to build in this three-month window

and take this moment to breathe and grieve for Joel before we hit the road to Seattle.

So I guess my question in a non-spoiler sense, Rob, is can you share with us your favorite change and your least favorite change if you can talk about it in a non-spoiler way inside of this episode?

Great question.

I think my favorite change is probably just the expansion of the mournful, quiet moments that we get in Jackson to grieve as an audience and as characters to grieve Joel before we leave.

And that's, you know, there are bits and pieces of that certainly in the the game, but it is blown out in a totally different way.

And I think the time spent is ultimately so much more impactful.

Like these are, these are the reasons that I watch and love this show in particular, right?

Like things like Ellie getting to have an extended moment in Joel's bedroom, which again is kind of extrapolated but expanded, getting this

another kind of expanded sequence in terms of her getting to visit Joel's grave.

And overall, I think my biggest payoff and part of the reason we wanted to have Gabriel Luna for this episode is Tommy getting to say goodbye to Joel.

And that is, like, I think it's a really remarkable scene.

And Tommy's carrying it all on his face.

And it's, it's right there.

It's in his hands.

For some reason, the little detail that really got me was they're kind of like dual, very similar watches as he's cleaning Joel's arm.

Really, really got to me for some reason.

But I think Gabriel Luna is fantastic in that scene.

And you just get, I think you get both the very personal, devastating consequences of what's happening.

And then you get to juxtapose it with the slow zoom out of this is a full morgue that, as Gabriel will tell us in the interview today, is actually the same room where he gave the big speech about preparedness.

And so having that sort of juxtaposition of small stakes and large stakes, at least relative to the perspective of a town, I found to be really, really effective.

Is it also the room where they have the town hall meeting?

Like, isn't it?

I believe so.

It's just like

the bar, the bar, the restaurant.

You know, does Jackson Jackson not have multiple restaurants or bars?

I don't know, but this is the one.

A lot of stuff caught on fire, Rob.

Okay,

something that I, and then did you say least favorite?

I will say, I'll say my least favorite.

Honestly, I don't have a lot of least favorite for this episode, other than I think

creating more of a travel, the montage that we've already talked about as far as the opening the drawers go, turning the travel sequence from Jackson to Seattle into a montage-y event.

I was left a little disoriented, Joe, as far as like, I have literally no idea how long this is supposed to take these characters.

And so I felt a little bit tossed about as we're kind of having these just like scenic walks, gallops, uh, trots across the countryside, and then also some, you know, more intimate moments between Ellie and Dina.

But I'm I was a little mixed on that because on the one hand, it felt very like fast-travel-y in a video game sense.

Like, all of a sudden, you're just kind of there, which would be fine, but stringing it out in a cursory surface-level kind of way left me a little bit wanting.

Okay, that's interesting.

I think for me,

not having as long of a time to sort of cherish the game storytelling as you've had, so I take my sort of objections more lightly, but like I do not.

Dina, I do think this line, and we talked about it elsewhere, but I think this line where Dina says to Ellie in the game, where you go, I go.

And we might yet get it in the show in a different context, perhaps, but like

that, that just felt like a core sort of Dina game moment to me.

And they're parceling the Dina Ellie stuff out a little differently in the game, and we'll talk about all of that.

On the Dina front,

Rob, I thought you might be able to add to this podcast, not just a gamer's insight, but a baker's insight.

You have been known to bring baked goods in a Tupperware to

Curry Favor with people.

Well, okay, let's be honest honest about what's happening.

It's not currying favor.

It's that if I don't get rid of them, I will eat them.

And so I need to get rid of roughly one half to three fourths of every batch of baked goods that I make.

So it's, I think it's strictly a practical affair.

But that can't be what's happening with Dina here because

cookies seem rare and precious here.

I was just wondering if you had any thoughts about the conversation we had on House of R about a potential chocolate shortage in the time of mushroom apocalypse.

Is this a carob chip situation?

What are we doing?

What are we doing here?

I do have thoughts.

This is 100% dried fruit.

There's no chance of chocolate.

It may not be a raisin.

It could be a dried cherry.

It could be any number of things, but that is definitely a dried fruit cookie.

That's that's just what you've got in the post-apocalyptic world.

I mean, maybe a craziness not for me personally, but I respect everybody out there who's living the crazin life.

Okay.

If you're from Jackson, Wyoming, and you want to let us know what kind of dried fruit you're most likely to find in your local flora and fauna, let us know.

If this is a dried cherry cookie, I...

It's not a bad thing.

Oh, well,

it's not for me.

Simply not

for me.

So you're anti-hot fruit.

You're also anti-dried fruit?

No.

Well, okay, I'm sorry.

This is a Last of Us podcast.

But

I'll eat a dried fruit, but then you put it in a baked good and it kind of gets rehydrated and like it gets closer to baked fruit.

Does that make sense?

I've just learning that you hate fruit.

No, I love raising.

It kind of sounds like you hate fruit.

I don't know what to tell you.

That's deeply untrue.

We talked so much about pineapples very recently.

I hope you know that.

Okay.

What do you think?

Okay, so Gail is an additive character in the show.

We've got several emails from listeners

just wanting to point out

what a bad, sort of HIPAA violating psychiatrist Gail is.

Straight up.

Just very, very bad at the professional aspects of her job.

Granted, this is a lawless space.

You know, you can go around murdering people without legal consequences.

So, you know, what's a little doctor-patient confidentiality?

So, maybe not a good psychiatrist, more the only psychiatrist in town.

So, that's what we're dealing with here.

Or perhaps she was great before, oh, I don't know, the world ended around her and she's like, you know, fair, fuck my professionalism or whatever.

Our, let's start.

So,

a common sort of pushback I saw from some gamers on this episode was that they felt between some of the Gail scenes where she is sort of, you know, psychologically analyzing characters and the town hall scene where we get

dueling speeches about the nature of revenge and mercy and morality and all that sort of stuff like that, that we're making a lot of the themes of the game more explicitly stated

rather than it's up to the gamer gamer to sort of figure this out as the story unfolds do you feel like the show is holding hands uh a little a little bit more than you would prefer or do you feel like it's a different medium so these things need to be told differently in that space my personal preference as a viewer or a gamer or anything is i i I want as little hand-holding as possible.

I want to be able to make the connection for myself.

And so, yes, similarly to how we talked about Abby's big speech.

There are elements of the season that are just over-explicated in a very different way than not just in the game, but than what you might find in other prestige TV fair, right?

Like characters are overtly saying their motivations up and front, front and center, like leaving no room for misinterpretation as to what's happening in some of these things.

Some of that I like.

Some of it is obviously misdirection, right?

Like Ellie is saying a lot of things in this episode.

I don't know how many of them are true.

She's just saying a lot of stuff.

Gail is where I am concerned.

And yeah, we did get this email from Natalie Joe, who talked about how not only is this hand-holding, but it's sort of like potentially protecting the show from the similar kinds of backlash that the game received around some of these plot points.

Bad faith interpretations

from

that we've talked about in the past.

Like bad faith or willful misinterpretation, I would say, of The Last of Us Part 2.

And so leaving no room

for those kinds of

points of view.

Yeah.

I think that's interesting.

You can do that.

I just think you then have to create ambiguity in other areas of the story, right?

You just don't want anything in a Last of Us type of storytelling to be so cut and dry.

Like, we need room to question characters' motivations.

We need room to question

who are the quote-unquote good guys in these various scenarios, who are the people who are seeking violence versus trying to protect themselves from violence.

Like, those are all worthwhile conversations to have.

Gail, to me, is ground zero for a lot of these concerns.

And it's one that I've started to have, I would say, especially with this episode, because even though I love Catherine O'Hara, I love seeing her on screen.

I love what she brought to the character, especially initially on our first meeting with Gail.

That is a character.

In this episode, she's sort of recast as the woman who sees things other people don't.

And that's not a character.

That is a device.

And we talked

before about this,

our reticence around therapy as device in TV storytelling in general.

Well, Ellie has similar reservations.

She wants no part of it.

I guess it depends how much I think I'm going to reserve my feelings and depending on how we use Gail going forward.

I agree this episode felt like a lot, but we are on the road to Seattle at this point.

And so I'm not sure

how much more space there is for like therapy hour with Gail.

For sure.

It's also why I'm really eager to see kind of what the show has in store for Eugene's story, right?

Like that's a thing that fleshes out Gail as a character and tells us a lot about her life and her circumstances and makes her more than just the person telling us to watch out because Ellie is violent.

On your sort of quest for moral ambiguity, which I think is at the heart of what has made The Last of Us both so compelling for people

and

open for those misinterpretations.

I wanted to ask you about this, the group of people that we meet on the road outside of Ellie's story.

They've got bows and arrows, they're armed with hammers, they've got scars on their faces, etc.

We see that they have been attacked later.

We don't know, and we should say this is additive, this scenario is not in the game.

We don't know for sure.

Ellie feels like she's sure she knows who did it.

She's quite sure.

We don't know who did it, but

I thought it was interesting.

I hadn't thought about this, but this idea that like Abby, when she

is talking to Joel, she talks about the code of the WLF and the code being,

we don't kill people that can't defend themselves.

And so when you see these people who are armed with bows and arrows and hammers, and yes, literally that little girl has a hammer in her hand when she died, but would you call her someone who can defend herself?

So if this was the WLF, if these were the wolves, whether it's Ellie or other members that we see tromping down the street at the end of the episode,

do you feel like the show is trying to say that code is bullshit?

Or

Abby is, or an Abby is so far gone from the code that it doesn't matter?

What do you think?

I think I interpreted this scene as being much less about potentially Abby or potentially the WLF, who we, again, we should say, we have no real connection to say that those people or anyone involved with the WLF was there other than Ellie and Dina find some random gun casings and are like, this must be them.

Well, and the guy, Jacob, being pretty sure it's them, right?

When his daughter's like, is it demonstrated?

Oh, sure, sure.

Yeah, they do call them the wolves.

And so I guess we do have that connective point for sure.

I think for me,

it's less to me about whether Ellie and Dina are right or wrong in going out for revenge ultimately to find Abby, and more that they are like looking for further justification of what they're doing, right?

Because if they find all these bodies, enough bodies in horrible enough states that Dina is vomiting from the sight of them, then what they're doing is not revenge, it's righteousness, right?

Like they are, they are on the right side of everything.

And so I'm learning more about Ellie and Dina from this scene than I am necessarily Abby or the WLF, in particular, just because we've seen so little of them other than, you know, the splendor of their tanks and their ultimate like their heart their war hardware at this point splendor you love war let's let's uh

famously very hawkish yeah let's hear from our listener catherine who says watching this episode and seeing the military the tanks all the soldiers all i could think is how much gasoline is there left in this world these big cars are not fuel efficient shouldn't we save bullets for infected so catherine has the same concerns that the people of the world of mad max fury road do

she's wondering about bullet town and guzzling

We're mapping to Seattle.

We should be mapping to Bullet Town.

Yeah, we really should.

Any thoughts?

I mean, like, it's not up to me to figure out how to logistically have an army in the mushroom apocalypse.

No.

But here's what I think is interesting inside of, I mean, it's a funny email, but like, here's what I think is interesting inside of Catherine's question.

And it gets to the heart of

something that I think the show and the game have on their mind.

We're fighting each other and losing sight of the real threat, which is the mushroom mushroom zombies, right?

And so we're spending bullets on each other when we should be saving them for mushroom attacks, etc.

Completely.

And so, you know, and something that, sorry, really quickly, something that,

you know, the show, the show has this information from Eugene via Dina that like the WLLF is one of several sort of splinter groups.

And wouldn't it be better if they all banded together?

But once again, if they banned it all together, they're banding all together against Phedra, which is still human on human violence and not

all of us together versus the mushrooms, you know?

I think it's very tempting, especially with a show like this, to say, like, why aren't these people operating in a logical way?

And the answer is that they're in an apocalypse.

Well,

beyond that, they're human.

That's the thing.

Yeah.

Like, we are fickle, emotional creatures.

And the idea that, look, Given where we are in human history right now, I'm just, I'm just putting myself in our current world.

The idea that somebody would be distracted by something streaking by real fast that's another group of humans with another like ultimately like perspective on the world as opposed to the grave existential threats facing literally everybody.

Who could possibly relate to such a thing?

You make great points here.

Yeah, I wasn't saying that like

this is so beyond the scope of

understanding.

This is just like, this is just, again, something that the show has on its mind.

For sure.

It's just like

the way in which our little tribes, our little definitions of us

put us in more vulnerable positions than we might be if we could think of the larger us, which we often in our current situation and when there are mushroom zombies knocking at the door have trouble keeping in mind.

Even to the point we talked about last week of Tommy, like pillar of the community, General Tommy is like, Actually, fuck the larger scale battle.

My main priority right now is distracting people from my wife.

Like that, that's that's my us that I'm zooming in on in this moment.

So, um, I just thought that was interesting.

I think that's a lot of where we are right now.

And it goes to the town hall sequence and so many of the themes implicit and explicit of this episode is like, what happens when push comes to shove?

When you really have to make compromising choices over the, the collective good versus what you want, where are you going to fall on those things?

And clearly, Ellie has a very defined worldview as far as what is important to her in these moments.

And it's mostly fuck all y'all.

I'm going to do my own thing.

And if I can bring 16 of you along with me, all the better.

But if not, I'll do it myself.

Or at least attempt to against a tank and an army.

We return now to our conversation already in progress about the bottle versus brick debate.

And we did get another piece of information from our listener, Eli, who wanted to point out that the bottles in question that you use to distract from zombies are not the same bottles that you use to construct a Molotov cocktail.

This is true.

So

there is no inherent advantage to the bottles in terms of storage or craft, says Eli.

Suffice to say Team Brick.

So Team Brick is another

push from

Eli.

Yeah, I misstated that the bottles were one and the same, but counterpoint, do we not get the whole bottle family?

Oh.

Like, are we not entitled to multiple kinds of bottle?

Thanks for handing me that transition.

Our listener, Sarah, wrote in on our group name question to suggest that we should refer to the zombie horde in terms of like how we talk about mushroom groupings.

I love it.

So here are some possibilities.

Clusters, rings,

patches, and beds.

Oh, bed of mushrooms.

You don't want to be in a bed of infected.

That's for sure.

I don't want to be in any of these, but I think I would have the best chance with a cluster.

A cluster of zombies, I think I can handle.

You think you can handle a cluster?

Oh, no, I can't handle one, but

if I have any chance of surviving, it might be against a cluster.

All right, what else do you want to talk about inside of this episode in a spoiler-free way that we haven't yet?

Joe, I would love to talk about the fact that every road trip needs a Dina.

Very important.

I think there's a logistics versus execution thing happening between Dina and Ellie that in some ways makes them a good team.

Oh, you mean in preparedness?

Oh, yes.

Okay, I thought you meant in coming up with fun car games.

Well,

you meant

like the airport dad situation that Dina is presenting here.

Let's go games first.

If you are going to be the person responsible for the vibes, the games, the aux, whatever your version.

Yeah, yeah, whatever your version of that thing is for your trip, I would recommend something other than let's just go letter by letter through the alphabet on whatever our chosen theme is.

Like, you got to jazz it up a little bit.

By the time you get to Q, you're like, we're in trouble.

And it's queen.

But, like, the, the, like,

Dina, I mean, she immediately pivots to a really fun game.

Just tell me about Dina.

She's adaptable.

Yeah, yeah.

Just really light and breezy stuff that Ellie engages in in full faith.

Okay, but in the non-game sense, what do you want to say about Dina?

Well, I mean, for one, I think it highlights a couple of things about Ellie.

The fact that Dina has to be the one to come into Ellie's house, into Ellie's plan, and say, I know you think you're doing this, but here's what you actually need to accomplish your goals.

For one,

Ellie is a top-line thinker who has at this point one priority, which is I need to kill this woman with the braid.

Like, that is basically all she wants to do, Has not really put together the question marks in between set out and goal.

And Dina is the only thing that I would say is actually keeping Ellie alive as far as the execution of that plan goes.

There's also the element of like there are ways in which Ellie is such a self-reliant person and a really capable person who's out there on patrol wiping out infected, like very, very capable.

Yeah.

And in some ways, she's still the naive teenager.

in the Chucks who doesn't know better than to like doesn't know to put boots on.

And I love that at this point in the story, like she's literally engaging with those ideas as she's walking through Joel's house and seeing her old room.

And she's like so much caught between the ideas and the realities of who she's supposed to be.

Yeah, like 19, I think, is a perfect age for that.

To quote the philosopher, Brittany Spear is not a girl dot yet a woman.

But like, I think, I think, um,

I think her plan of step one, converse in a pile of guns, step two, yada, yada, step three, profit is, um, yeah,

um, gonna get her further than me on the road to Seattle, but not

very much.

Yes, I think so.

I also think to Dina's credit, Operation, let the WLF folks get where they're going before we pursue them.

I actually think it has some merits.

I think this is a reasonable perspective to hold for two 19-year-old people who are themselves not trackers.

Like,

if you're Ellie, you know, clearly she would have preferred all the information, and she has been denied it many times in the history of The Last of Us.

I get it.

Say she had set out the next day looking for Abby and her friends, or several days after, as opposed to this three-month time jump that we get.

How, if you are not someone who knows how to track people, and granted, maybe she has some basic skill in that department as learned from Joel or Tommy or whoever.

How are you expecting to find five random ass people you don't know in the great American West?

Yeah, vibes.

Straight up.

Like, not even a compass, just like I'm sensing animosity from this general direction.

I'm just gonna like follow

a route planned, none, she's never been that far west, nope, you know.

So, yeah, that's a great, that's a great point.

So, three cheers for Dina, who remains one of the greatest characters on television right now,

played by a tremendously charismatic actor.

And I'm really excited that we have Dina on this road trip.

But this is a lot of pressure for

when Craig Mason said in the official podcast, this is our us, this is our twosome now, Gina and Ellie.

And that's just, I think Isabel Merced has done such a good job, like an incredible job.

Yeah.

And she has to fill the Joel Miller boots for the audience.

And that is, that's tough for anyone.

Peter Pascal is just like, everyone wants a piece of Peter Pascal right now.

He is like the person everyone turns to to be your leading man.

And you're asking someone to sort of like be joel miller 2.0 even though she's actually a little bit more of the uh the ellie in this dynamic it's true but i would say especially important because even the other people that ellie is ostensibly close to you know like people like tommy and jesse for example she's kind of keeping them at arm's length too like dina is really the only person she's trusting to the extent that she is with

something resembling close human intimacy.

Everybody else, it feels like, you know, to the point about her being a liar that Gail raises, she's telling a lot of people what they want to hear.

And, and, or at least what she thinks they want to hear.

I think that's ultimately a reason why her plea to the town hall is like falls so flat is anyone who knows her knows that it's like real rich that this girl who doesn't want anything to do with us is all of a sudden talking about what's good for all of us.

It just, it doesn't ring true at all, even though technically speaking, from like a, you know, a speech writing standpoint, the pathos note is here.

Like we get it, but it just doesn't track for the person that she is to the point that like, I almost believe homophobe Seth more than I believe her.

Like what he's saying makes sense for who he is.

I think that, like, Dina, Dina is someone who will not accept like Ellie saying, I'm just going to bed.

And Dina being like, I don't think that's where you're going.

Like, will not accept the bullshit that Ellie is, even though Ellie does lie to her inside of this episode.

We see it happen when she tells the story of the kid, Brian, from Kansas City.

Um, that is

half-truth at best.

Yeah.

And Dina has no way of knowing that necessarily.

But Dina is a really good BS

like meter in general.

And so a lot of her reactions, a lot of her like, uh-huh, sure,

I think is

really interesting for that character.

So for her, sort of like in the same way,

and we're going to talk about this a little bit more in the spoiler section, but in the same way that Ellie, Ellie's role was to crack Joel open, when Joel is like, you're just cargo, like, you know, you know, I don't want you, I don't want family, I don't want any of this.

And Ellie had to relentlessly, you know, reach out for a connection to him in order to form that bond.

That's true.

And here is Dina in that role for Ellie as they hit the road here.

So

anything else you want to say?

Let's keep it moving.

Let's go to our chat with Gabriel Luna.

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I'm joined now by Gabriel Luna, Tommy himself.

Gabriel, thanks so much for joining the show.

Thank you, Rob.

Thank you.

Well, I mean, why don't we go straight to the emotional anguish portion of this interview?

I mean, could you tell us about

let's just go right, just dig right in.

Tell us about your experience first learning that Joel was going to die in the season of The Last of Us and what that was like for you kind of seeing it play out on screen as well.

Well, that was the

best and worst kept secret of

the entire kind of Last of Us story.

I was aware of it, and it's such a critical part of the second game.

It's what allows Ellie to

grow and

figure out who she is as a person without his protection and his love.

So I always knew, or I had always

just kind of expected that to be the case, having played the game and knowing this kind of story.

So

when it happened, you know,

we kept having to avoid it all before you know before the show came out avoid talking about that scene everyone would ask you know there was i think there was a lot of people who had played the game that went through that trauma already once before that hoped that we would be rewriting history in a way and um

but uh

It's such a critical element.

It had to happen.

And

that's the truth of life.

People die, you know, and

to make people face that is what the story is a huge kind of inciting incident and really what makes the story what it is you know having just a fallout dealing with the abrupt departure of somebody you love so much so I knew it was always going to take place

we did a good job of keeping it secret even though the game has been out since 2020 and anybody who who has an internet connection could have found out that that possibly would be happening But once again, that's a tribute to kind of Craig and Neil keeping everybody on their toes because there was still the possibility that maybe we do change it.

Maybe it does happen in a different way.

But yeah, I always knew it was going to happen.

And, but still, was still as devastated as everyone else

when I saw it because I kept telling everyone, you know, watch the show with someone you love.

And then my dumbass watches it alone.

Oh, no.

After getting back from WrestleMania on Sunday.

And my wife was already in bed.

And she's like, we're going to watch it tomorrow, right?

And I was like, yeah.

And then I ended up watching it alone in the middle of the night.

And it was just a

horrible idea.

Well, Tommy has his own version of that moment and kind of getting to see Joel's body alone and in complete solitude, you know, this send-off for his brother to help wash him to kind of start to say goodbye.

For you as a performer, like, where do you go emotionally speaking to create that kind of moment for Tommy?

Well, you know, I did a lot of kind of thinking about it and preparation, anticipating it.

It was equally as important as any of the action that happens in the second episode.

This reflection, this fallout of the events was

something that I had, you know, certainly bookmarked ahead of time and knew once that night came that it was going to be

It's going to be kind of a heavy load.

And, you know, I was so kind of charged up for that scene.

I remembered going into rehearsal and rehearsing it and already bursting into tears the moment I say the words,

give Sarah my love.

And then having to check myself and recalibrate and try to reset in a way that gave myself kind of somewhere to go.

Because

we, of course, had a whole night of shooting and many different setups and a lot of different covers we were trying to get.

And,

you know, you didn't want to go all the way right at the top in rehearsal.

So I did ask Peter, our director, Peter Hoare, to

start with the close-ups

because I was kind of already there and

would stand outside

on streets that were previously teeming with stuntmen and dogs and fire.

But to stand on that street alone by myself

was really kind of powerful.

And the moment I kind of walked onto the set, because we were in the Jackson set, which is a whole town.

And

where the makeshift morgue is is the restaurant restaurant where I did the big meeting where I was telling everybody the plan, you know, and now it's just riddled, you know,

strewn with bodies everywhere.

And the, and so I walk in and I see the body there who was,

it was actually a body devil named Philippe, really nice guy who went through full makeup so that I could have something kind of visceral to respond to.

the moment you know the moment we were in it you know i stopped thinking about what i had hoped the moment would be or what i what I was planning on it being, and it just became what it was.

And in my mind, I had thought very,

I started having visions of my grandfather's wake and how

he had lost both of his sons, my father, my uncle David, and I was his only

immediate family member.

He had divorced my grandmother and, you know,

and his second wife.

And so he was, as far as immediate family goes, when they they allow the immediate family to view the body before everyone else comes in,

I was the only one.

So it was very easy to

remember what that was like and to

try to bring that experience into the scene.

I mean, what is it like to tap into a memory that's that personal for you, that deep for you, in this really emotional, raw place?

And then you look up and, yeah, you have a body double under a sheet in front of you, but you're surrounded by cameras and crew.

Like, it's it's a lot that's being put on your shoulders as sort of the sole performer in this scene.

And yet, you have all this, even though it is a well-built set around you, a lot of artifists around you.

Yeah, I mean, it was, it was tough because it was, um, I remember, you know, kind of getting to that emotional place and having, you know, my eyes well up, and but also being outside with flame bars going off all around me that were drying up all the tears.

But it,

we, we have an incredible crew very respectful crew and um

very dedicated and very invested in the story and so

you know these moments are

are as precious to them as they are to us and and so um

you know it was easy to to put myself into that kind of waking hallucination that that one has to

you know, put themselves into to

believe the imaginary moment.

And

so

it was

once it was in there, I mean, it was

you could hear a pin drop.

And that's just kind of, that's just the nature of our crew and how respectful they are of the source material and of the writing and of the moment.

And I mean, in us getting that moment with Tommy and Joel is sort of the trade-off of one of the bigger changes from the game, which is, you know, not having Tommy there at the moment of Joel's death.

Right.

When you read that in the script and that kind of departure, I mean, how, how did that hit you?

And kind of, what do you, do you see that as having an impact on Tommy as a character, the fact that he wasn't there in the room?

Like, how does that change Tommy's reception of this moment?

Yeah, no, that was, that was a big change in the, from the game.

And that was one that I had

planted kind of the seed of with Craig and Neil the first season.

You know, we, we,

we talked about that and I, and I had told them, you know, I mentioned to them how

it, for me, it didn't make sense that Tommy would be so trusting of this stranger, especially how well-trained he is.

And especially having lived in this, you don't survive, you know, 20 plus years in this world that we have of the last of us by

trusting everyone you come across and telling people your name, you know?

So for me, it just didn't really ring true.

And that was something that kind of always kind of.

you know, kind of, kind of irked me about the

scene.

And then the fact that this capable warrior, this person who loves Joel so much, is completely incapacitated when this is all happening,

unable to do anything about it.

And

so Craig took that to heart and came to me, you know,

before we started, before he, before he, when he was breaking the story for season two, him and Neil Druckman and Haley and said, you know what, we thought about it.

And he sent me a very long text about what the new plan was, which is I would be in Jackson protecting the city with Maria and the townspeople, fighting off two or three bloaters.

Originally, it was like two or three bloaters that we were fighting.

Lots of action that we shot that was all kind of cut just for because we had to.

That whole scene could have been 20 more minutes long with all the stuff that we had shot.

But you know what?

It creates, as you mentioned, it creates a new dynamic and it creates a whole well of guilt that's just sitting there in his heart having not been there and having not been able to protect his brother.

It might, you know, some choices that he may make going forward are informed in a different way because of it.

And that's

all

really kind of rich,

new,

you know, territory and ground to tread.

And not only for me as a performer and all of us as the performers, but for, I think, for Neil and for Craig.

It's just, this is

an opportunity for them to

change things, maybe do things that they wish they had done, Neil wishes he had done in the game, you know, to

come up with new and exciting ways to keep themselves kind of on their toes.

So yeah,

I think it's, you know, just all of the guilt that Tommy must feel

makes it

you know, makes his choices down the road

are just shaded a different way.

Well, I mean, you mentioned the big battle sequence you get to be a part of as a performer instead of the emotional kind of death sequence in the room.

One bloater or three, that's a huge production to be a part of.

I mean, you've got flamethrower in hand.

You have extras all over the place.

There's a lot happening.

What goes into the production of a big battle sequence like that that maybe people watching or people outside of the industry wouldn't expect?

How much fun I had with all of the infected,

like all my friends, you know, Andrea and Mike and all these, all these different Keanu stunt or fight coordinator and

J Day, one of our my townspeople, he's used to be a UFC fighter, Jason Dave.

He once fought Michael Bisping and

fought him really well for a couple rounds.

You know,

it's everybody

coming to work and giving their heart and working 15, 16 hours just to, just to

try to make it real, man.

I mean, Danny Virtue, who was our horse wrangler and all of his team, I mean, just incredible stuntman.

Denton Edge, Glenn Ennis,

we just

Ty Provost, my stunt man,

we just, we, we, we did it all together.

And it was,

you know, fake blizzard surrounding us, hundreds of, hundreds of stunt people, hundreds of background,

you know, weapons, blanks being fired everywhere.

I mean, huge, massive pyro explosions

that, you know,

it's just, it was insane how much there was, how much was there and how much we did practical.

And I loved how

ready HBO was to

be able to plant the seeds, the events, so that Alex Wang, our, Alex Wong, our VFX coordinator, could, and his team and all the how, and Weta and everyone else who helped us

already had so much to go on, man.

I mean, that's, that's, that's, that's really, that's really the brilliance of it is how

interlinked our special effects and our visual effects were, how tightly woven they were.

And I think that that's what kind of lends itself to the realism.

It's just,

you know,

you mask the seam so well because so much of it was there.

And then you don't have to jump far into the kind of computer generator world.

It was absolutely incredible.

And

we shot it for two and a half weeks.

And then I did an additional four or five days on second unit.

So Mans Manson, our second unit director, I must tip my hat to him and his team.

And then Mark Milot, of course, who never who never left us feeling overwhelmed and unable to accomplish and to make the day because he just had such a strong focus and a great plan.

And every single day he communicated so clearly his vision in the morning.

You know, he'd get on the God mic and we'd all be hundreds of us sitting all around and during a safety meeting.

And he just broke it down.

This is what we're doing, this part, this part, this part, this is how we're doing it.

And

said it in such a charming British accent that everyone maybe foolishly believed that we could possibly do it.

But it turns out we could.

Turns out you absolutely pulled it off.

And I think overall, the Jackson sequences of the show have been a lot of fun, seeing this town from the inside out and seeing that Tommy, who we know to be a joiner, getting to see him have this sense of community that's really evolved and really expanded within the world of the show.

I mean, he's on the council, but he's also a father.

And where are you seeing those sorts of elements of Tommy's personality coming out at this stage of the season in terms of this is a community that he's kind of ingrained himself in?

Yeah, I keep bringing this up because everyone takes Joel for his word in that first season that Tommy's a follower and he's a joiner,

which is, I think, more

is that is colored more through his lens.

Tommy is a joiner and a follower of others as he's drifting from me, I think is the, is the way of phrasing that, or at least that's how it's happening in Joel's mind.

Yeah.

I think to Tommy,

Tommy is in service, and

that's who he is.

You know, that's why he joined the army.

That's why he joins the community of Jackson is to serve serve others.

And

it's not blindly following.

It's more of a,

you know, it's more of a gift of his, you know, to, and to give the gifts of his strength and his knowledge and his ability, right?

And so

I think you see that, and I think you get to see that in its kind of,

you know, its mature form.

His,

you know, I think being a father, of course, I think really kind of reframes everything and restructures how he

likes to live, you know, how careful they are on patrol, you know, the protocols in place, all the TCPs that he puts in place for

his team

and

how they are to engage the

whatever threats they face.

And so

that's, that's, you know, that's, that's evident in just what you see and just kind of the way he, the way he composes himself and just a little bit more kind of put together, but love still loves having fun and loves, loves to see his niece, Ellie,

succeed and to grow and to, and to hone her skill.

And I think he's more able to

do that.

than Joel was, you know, because he can keep that distance.

But then after Joel's passing, I think you start to see the strain that is on him and, you know, what,

you know, there's a moment where he kind of lashes out at Eddie.

You know, his cool kind of facade breaks when he tells Ellie, you know, don't talk to me like I didn't know him, you know,

kind of putting her in her place in a way that he, you know, didn't have the position to do before, I think, you know, because that was Joel's responsibility.

But now it's his.

And, you know, I think that there's other moments where, you know, there's a full embrace of his responsibility.

I mean, I think there always is with Tommy, but I think,

you know, I was talking about this in another interview where when Gail kind of calls her a liar, there's a quick,

you know,

there's a quick defense.

He runs to the defense of his family.

She's not a liar.

People lie, but she's not a liar.

But Gail, you know, she's very intuitive and very perceptive and she sees things and others don't.

That's why I'm there talking to her.

And so it's, yeah, it's just, it's really exciting to

play this version of Tommy because

much of this is exclusive to the show and

to,

you know, and to, I guess, into my individual contribution to what this thing has become.

And, and, and then, of course, the collective and everyone else who's built this beautiful story around us.

So

yeah, it's, it's been a lot of, a lot of fun.

And, and I'm really excited where we're, where we're going to keep going.

Yeah, I mean, you're right about the different version of Tommy, and you've played, I guess, like as many as three, maybe more different versions of Tommy so far.

We get the glimpses of him with Joel and Sarah kind of before the world goes to hell.

We get him after the world has fallen apart, but at least reunited with his brother.

And now we're seeing him, you know, start to cope in a world without Joel.

And for you, just in terms of how you're modulating those performances, what are the biggest differences you see in how you play those versions of Tommy?

Yeah, you know, that, that first, when you first meet him, that youthful, you know, I kind of played a character that was closer to my own age a bit.

And,

you know, that was just

play him as the kind of

firebrand that he is and just kind of, you know, just the impulsive, the, the, the young, the kind of

guy that'll, that'll get into a bar fight and get thrown in jail kind of guy.

But, um, but also one who still very much under the under the thumb of his brother and uh

and then i think that second version you see is is him branching out on his own but still um finding his way and and uh

and this and starting to kind of accept his his uh his role and this kind of more

becoming a slightly more serious person but i think uh

I think upon the arrival of Joel, there's like this regression back to little brother and

the influence of Joel and

his ability to kind of get what he wants out of Tommy.

And then, you know,

I think you start to, you see him in this year, you see him in kind of a form, a shape,

someone who has his own agency, who

is

still very much one who serves and serves his wife, who is our leader and

his community and helps his brother build whatever needs to be built and has this like great place, a place, position that he could be proud of.

And then that all gets torn apart.

And so where he goes from now is just a whole other,

a whole nother story.

And the story really just started.

But I think it's

You know, I think, I think, once again, I mean, I always have to kind of tip my hat to just the way it's written down.

And

it makes sense to me.

And all all of the evolutions are there and it's just uh

kind of try to tell the truth of that and

and then maybe give myself a you know craig's always laughing i'm always training and working out trying to stay fit for the job and he's like you know you're not supposed to be in shape you're old now you're 55 you're supposed to just be and it's like well i can i'll do the i'll do that with acting

i can't be out of shape running around in cowboy boots

obviously the last of us is a pretty bleak story even on the version that we've seen so far on TV.

It's also a story where you can give us Catherine O'Hara in the outfield of a t-ball game guzzling beers, and the two of you have this wonderful scene together.

I'm going to need you to tell me everything about the filming of that scene and that experience.

I mean, it just really popped off the screen in episode three.

Well, yeah, I think it's probably just my

glee at being there with her.

But not only being there with her, but being there with her again after 16 years.

I got to work with her.

We weren't in the scenes together, but we were in in the hair and makeup trailer together on an HBO film called Temple Grandin 16 years ago.

And

I took a photograph of us there back then, and then we recreated the photograph here 16 years

in the future.

And

I actually posted them today side by side, and everybody's freaking laughing at how much of a baby I looked.

like back then but uh first of all she's a genius she's an absolute genius and like like many of the best dramatic actors,

she has this great comedic sensibility.

So there is a,

what that creates, and what I said in the past is it creates this kind of

this unpredictability about her and this wide range of extremes.

to which she can go to the furthest extent in both of those directions.

And

so there's so there's like so many more incremental kind of nuances that exist between that and that she has that.

And so it's just,

there's this mischief in her eyes.

I mean,

that is always there.

And

so I just, I mean, I just soaked it all in.

I just kind of just sat there and we got to just sit there and share a couple of fake beers and watch these little kids fall down.

Meanwhile, having this really kind of deep philosophical question about, you know,

can people be changed or can they be saved from themselves?

And

as much as I'm talking about Ellie in that moment, I'm kind of talking about myself.

You know,

can I call off the dogs that are kind of barking in my soul, you know?

And so it's just, she's just brilliant.

And I was so

thankful for that day.

I was looking forward to it the whole year because we had crossed paths in the hair and makeup trailer and different scenes and things.

but then finally to have that scene together was really fantastic i had my guitar with me as i do at every with every job i do and i was playing take me out to the ball game all day

yeah limping around because i had pulled pulled my muscle pushing sleds at the gym oh no because uh because we had wrapped uh

we had wrapped all the action sequence from episode two but i didn't and then my whole legs were super tight you know they're they're really very sore especially my calves once again running in cowboy boots and uh and then i went to the gym man and wasn't you know didn't adequately warm up because i was like oh i'm good you know i stretched just a little bit but then i was pushing sleds and pulled my left calf and and then so the whole day i was i remember just hobbling around and it was like from the trailers to the to the baseball field was

i mean it was it was a long walk

that's your true commitment to character you know you were you were you were a little too in shape and so you had to create a limp for yourself there you go yeah that that's it that's exactly it i i do lean on these old football injuries and training injuries and stuff my my bum shoulder my dislocated patella all these football injuries i got back in the day i kind of lean into those when i have to play old

well i mean i feel like as an audience you know we love seeing scenes like that between gail and tommy and seeing scenes in jackson and like our characters that we care about in a relative kind of safety but we're also drawn to the idea of them in turmoil and the the whole season obviously can't stay within the city walls.

I'm curious, from your perspective, as you think about the delicate balance of this show, how do you walk the line between putting these characters in dangerous situations, putting them out on the frontier, challenging them in new ways, but also giving us the quiet sort of character moments where they can express things and be themselves, and we get to know the kind of the emotional core of those characters?

I mean, I wish I knew what goes on in Craig Mason's mind.

And I

I wish I had that ability.

I mean, I guess I have it in my own kind of focused individual perspective, but he has this incredible ability to

be everyone, you know, to be everyone's voice.

But for all the voices to be so distinct and for all of us to remember our histories and to keep our histories and

to have those paths and the way that they have crossed in the past past still reverberate and resonate in every present moment and every discussion.

And it's just, he's incredible.

And that's what makes him the writer that he is.

You know, I think that that's why you get these kind of cool little nuanced moments among characters is because they know each other.

So Craig knows them all so well.

And he also knows how they all bounce off of each other.

And

so we can we can do what we need to do

and sensationalize the moments that we need to have

in the show to keep people excited.

But then what really keeps them coming back is just the quiet, cool moments like the discussion with Gail and

or all the beautiful scenes between Bella and Izzy and with Ellie and Dina's stuff.

They have so many cool little

just little looks and little, you know, kind of

in this last episode, I just watched it last night and I was just so just so impressed.

And

there's such a sweetness there

in their discovery of that love.

And, um,

and you know, that's, that's kind of where we are with our show and the way our camera ops work and our DPs, Cassinia and Catherine, and our directors, and

and just the show as a whole.

It's, it's all these moments that we shouldn't be seeing, you know, and we feel like we feel so close to the characters.

So, so close.

And, and,

And it's just these amazing, insane, you know, these really amazing moments and really funny, funny stuff that plays out, especially between Bella and Dina.

You know, it's like the whole discussion about the kiss and how kind of,

you know, how Bella's trying to play cool.

And, and then, of course, playing cool on the horse later on, which is really funny.

Like, I keep saying my favorite, my favorite line.

It's just completely thrown away.

It's been the whole, it's just like, you know, it's quiet.

Oh, no, it's too quiet.

You got to do it.

If it's right there, you got to take it.

And I just love, they love those Curtis and Viper movies so much.

Joe loved them.

And

they've inherited this love of Curtis and Viper.

And they mention it so many times.

It's like the only, and I can resonate with that.

Because when I was a kid, I had one VHS tape that had the movie Breaking,

The Last Dragon, and

Return of the Jedi.

And so I.

That's quite a triple feature, I got to say.

Yeah, dude.

The Last Dragon is great.

If you've ever seen it with Bruce Leroy, it's a great movie.

But the,

so it's just those three, you know, I can totally see that these kids, they only have Curtis and Viper and have watched it, you know, a million times.

And so they were like, you know, who says that, Curtis or Viper?

She's like, both in all four movies.

And I was just like, God, it's so good.

It's just, you know, shared histories.

Gabriel, thanks so much for your time.

This has been a total treat.

Yeah, thank you, Rob.

Appreciate it, brother.

Appreciate your thoughtful questions.

Hey, anytime yeah we're really enjoying the show that was an incredible chat um that i've definitely uh already heard and really insightful you can take my word for it gabriel was a delight oh i mean i he is a delight so i'm i'm jealous that you have to talk to him okay so this is the spoiler section how can we make it any clearer i don't know but these are where game spoilers are fair play yes so that is what we will be talking about we will say things that if you are just watching the show you do not want to know this is your fair warning like i i really don't know how much more clear we can make it i want to give you appropriate time to turn off this podcast right now okay

i'm trying to think of like what's the uh what's the least sort of uh abrasive way i can start this just in case they're being slow let's talk about the jesse question So we had this conversation where Dina is talking to Ellie in the tent about Jesse

and his sadness.

And

I'm curious, you know, this is, I'm curious what you think this is laying track for with Jesse because it feels like it's an attempt to deepen our understanding of this character that I quite like in the game.

But like,

what do you think?

What do you think they're up to here with this?

I honestly don't know.

And it did strike me as kind of an odd line because, yeah, Dina's saying, you know, if.

If I can't come up with the reason why he's just organically sad, then it must be me.

And girl, maybe it's the apocalypse.

Like, everyone is pretty bummed out.

I don't know what to tell you.

We don't have chocolate chips anymore.

We have to put dried fruit in our fucking cookies.

Maybe.

Just a bizarre framing of his entire deal.

But yeah, I don't really know this idea of him as a sad, like a fundamentally sad character, or one at least that we know is kind of lost within his relationship with Dina, right?

They've broken up and gotten together a bunch of different times.

It's just one of those things.

And clearly, something about that is not satisfying to him.

I will say that part makes sense, given what we do know about Jesse from this portrayal in particular, which is, you know, not only was Joel kind of a member of this community, not only is Tommy really a pillar of the community, Jesse is like present and future tense leadership, right?

Like he is kind of being groomed in this role to, as now a member of the council, as somebody who's really important, as somebody who is picking up that hammer and just building shit, just really, really making things happen.

And

I'll just say it, looks positively yoked in the process.

I didn't know that Henleys came in short sleeves, but Jesse knows.

Young Mazzino knows.

His workout regimen knows, that's for sure.

I think that's really interesting.

Okay, so like, I think a job that this episode does,

you know, I saw plenty of people say this felt like a filler episode.

I once again implore you to

look up what a filler episode is.

This is not what this is.

But I think a lot of what this episode is showing is sort of like what is at risk.

So to highlight Tommy so much here, okay, let me quick pause.

Do you think Tommy is in front of them on the way to Seattle or do you think he's going to follow them to Seattle?

I think he's going to follow them.

And so I did talk to, you know, you haven't heard that chat yet, Joe.

I did talk to Gabriel a little bit about kind of Tommy's motivations within this story.

And we purposely, purposely did not get into what is going to happen in the show.

Right.

But most importantly, this idea that how him not, how Tommy not being present for Joel's death changes the way he experiences that event and processes it right like it would hit him in a totally different way feeling like I couldn't even be there even as opposed to I was there and got clocked and knocked out and all of a sudden my brother is dead and so I think there's I think any version of Tommy game or show would go after any version of Ellie if they found out that this was the case.

If Ellie and Dina went out on their own, I do think Tommy would go,

especially given everything that they've both just been through.

Right.

But now it comes, it would come at a totally different cost with Tommy being a father, right?

This idea that he would be willing to risk his life for his surrogate niece, even at the risk of leaving his kid fatherless.

Right.

So we should say in the game, in case you're listening to the spoiler section and you haven't played the game, that Tommy takes off first

in the dead of night, basically to prevent Ellie from.

Like straight up the next day after Joel's death, basically.

Like no three months, like he is off on the road, and then Ellie and Dina are in pursuit of Tommy

following like oh yeah yeah yeah dead bodies and other things on the on on the hunt for him the trail but their their job ostensibly is to bring Tommy back that's kind of like why they are sent out is to bring Tommy home bring my husband home yeah okay so um all of that's true so

seeing so much of Tommy in this episode this is just like a great Tommy as a member of the community episode seeing Jesse's role inside of the community and then the third element I will say there's been some question or pushback on the rollout of the Ellie Dino relationship.

Like, why, why are we doing a sort of like slightly slow burn?

Well, they won't they, instead of they're already a thing, they have sex and, you know,

before Joel dies, et cetera, et cetera.

I think what we're really building here is a what was lost on the road here.

So

to go through it, Tommy,

if he gets his same ending as he does in the game, Tommy sort of like losing his, like, losing everything, we need to understand what Tommy is to this community.

Jesse dying,

presumably before this season is over.

I think so.

Timing-wise, that would make sense.

What that rips out of Jackson, like what Ellie's quest rips out of Jackson, which is his future leadership, right?

And then Dina and Ellie, again, if I mean, they have to have the same ending, like their relationship not working out in the end.

We have to see how hard one that was for ellie in the first place how hard it was for ellie to form that relationship how many how many of her insecurities she had to battle through how much like uncertainty and doubt how

good we'll feel when these two like you know

figure it out and and get together and then how devastating it will be to lose that.

So I think watching the work

that goes into these two young women figuring it out together, I think will ultimately pay off in the loss of it later.

That's how I'm choosing to interpret it.

I thought you also made a great point, Joe, on House of R about the way that when you do the time jump, and I'm not sure what the order of operations is.

Like, did they decide to do a time jump and then had to kind of reverse engineer some of the stuff around Dina's pregnancy to make that timeline make sense?

Or did they later add the time jump because they wanted some other different story changes?

I think we'll have to see kind of as we go.

But that change in the timeline, given that Dina is pregnant, kind of has to happen if you're going to have this sort of time jump.

I also think, like, so that could be some of why Dina is being a little bit cagey, a little bit will they, won't, they, a little bit frustrating in terms of her conversations with Ellie.

Like, that stuff tracks and makes sense to me.

I also think moving the conversation from, again, this whole conversation that Dina and Ellie have about the kiss originally happens in the game while they are on patrol before Joel's death when they're kind of like snowed in to the grow house to Eugene's grow house moving it from there to here when they're on the road I think changes the stakes of that conversation a lot because if say they're at the grow house and that conversation goes a little sideways it's kind of a fraught talk I think Dina has a lot of indications that Ellie is into her but sometimes you can have every indication and things still get super weird yeah Worst case scenario, you go back to Jackson, you go to your respective corners, you give each other a little space, everything could be fine.

Dina doesn't have that luxury here.

Like if this conversation goes badly or goes poorly, or all of a sudden they are alienated or putting distance between each other, like that is that could be like life and death consequences because they are all that each other have right now.

That is such a good point that this is the us.

Yeah.

And

if we have, if we have a breakup before we even get started moment on the road, it's like, what do we even do here?

All of that said, I did like this version well enough of the like rate the kiss conversation.

I think I was was missing some of not to be the like but the games but the books guy.

I was missing like some of the Snowden intimacy of that scene of the original.

Tent's not doing it for you.

A little a little lamplit tent, a little severance moment for you.

You know, I don't think that's a moment.

I don't mind a lamplit tent.

I think what I'm missing is like there's something about that original scene where because they're out on patrol and they have to duck into this random convenience store that turns out to be Eugene's Grow House.

Like

there is like a teenager teenager sneaking a private moment when they're supposed to be at work kind of thing that's like very sweet and endearing.

And I think you just lose with some of this, like, oh, we're just like, we're just adults on our own out on the road.

It just gives it a very different vibe that I can appreciate on its own terms and certainly like the way these characters are developing in more of a slow burn way, but it's, it's tangibly different for sure.

Dina pregnancy watch.

I mean, this, this was like, I guess, a vague question mark of like, are they actually going to do?

I just don't know how you do this game.

Oh, she has to be pregnant.

Pregnant.

Yeah.

So we get her throwing up in a, I think, a very clear clue of we are definitely doing Dina's pregnancy.

Why wouldn't we?

At least I think that's well hidden within the bodies.

Yes.

No, I think if you watch that scene, you don't know.

I think vomiting at the sight of a pile of bodies in the woods is

legit.

And some of that is character-based, too, of this idea of like Ellie has been, we know Ellie's history.

We don't exactly know where Dina was brought up what she's been exposed to like clearly anyone who's

so far yeah clearly anyone who's lived this long in the world of the show has seen some death but that doesn't mean you've seen a whole crew of people and children slaughtered by bullets right because in this section of the game um

where dina asks about the first person they killed yeah she tells a story about like her mom and protecting her mom and stuff like that.

So we hear some of like Dina's, what Dina has had to do to survive this long.

She wasn't like brought up in the confines of Jackson.

No, no.

Okay.

On the Ellie and Dina future front, did you ping the way that some other game players pinged on the sort of

waving wheat of the graveyard?

Did it look similar to the farmhouse setting to you?

It does look quite similar.

I honestly didn't make the connection in real time, but you're absolutely right.

And the kind of like broad landscapes, I think like the vastness of all of those scenes at the graveyard definitely call back like the farm and kind of where we're ultimately going to go.

And, and sort of this idea of the us, right?

Like of, you know, that is Ellie and having a moment with Joel all alone.

Like there is no one else around other than, I guess, a bunch of dead bodies in the graveyard and Dina kind of waiting respectfully on horseback a little ways away.

And like part of what is so serene about the farm is that it's like, it is Dina and Ellie's like little enclave

off by themselves.

Like they are kind of removed from everything else.

And so that kind of thematic callback, I think, is probably on, on the creators' minds.

Yeah.

And I'm wondering if they're setting up like a future visual parallel they can draw of like

Ellie leaving Dina and Ellie saying goodbye to Joel.

You know what I mean?

Like,

um, okay, so on that front, um,

and this, this, I think, is, I think it's so clear that Ellie is lying to Gail when she says she didn't have another conversation with Joel before he died.

Is there ambiguity about that?

Some Some people are wondering if we'll get A, we'll get the porch scene at all, or B, if the porch scene is just in Ellie's mind, a wished-for conversation.

Guys, we're going to get the porch scene.

Yes, I agree.

But on the flip side, I will say, do you think the coffee beans that she leaves there,

which has, you know, been a longish running, you know, Joel conversation, but do you think that's a reference?

Because there's like a line in the game where Joel is drinking coffee and he's like, says he's embarrassed to tell her what he traded for the cup of coffee.

So it's like one of the last things that they talked about was like how much he would give anything for a cup of coffee.

So is that so?

So people took that as like confirmation that the porch scene was going to happen.

I don't know that we need confirmation.

That scene is going to happen.

Everything that Ellie tells Gail is a lie.

Yeah.

So why would that part not be a lie?

Exactly.

I agree.

What are you most looking forward to

in next week's episode?

Based on me, did you watch the trailer for the week?

Yeah, Yeah, I watched the trailer.

I mean, I'm most looking forward to, you know, to our previous conversation about where we're prioritizing the bullets and all this.

Like, one of the most exciting sequences of the game in the sense that you're kind of pinned between the WLF and the infected.

And you're having to kind of toggle these threats back and forth and leverage them against each other.

And clearly, two 19-year-olds in the middle of a city they don't know surrounded by an army is a pretty dire situation.

And so, like, how they want to portray that chaos within the world of the show, I'm really excited.

But, like, this is a show show that even though it's very sparing in its violence and action, usually really pays off with the suspense and ultimately the terror of those moments.

I'm really looking forward to see how they manage that.

We know from the Trello that they're doing the Subway sequence, which is like particularly

harrowing.

It's not fun.

So really tough.

And then anything, I guess, I want to talk to you about the Seraphites in a second,

a group that you did not want to name in our spoiler-free section.

But like,

is there anything?

I guess for the rest of the season, is there like, what is your most anticipated moment?

Do you have one?

Not knowing, we don't know where we're going to end.

Yeah.

But like, do you have a moment where you're like, I can't wait to see what they do with this?

I think I just can't wait to see.

I mean, the pregnancy reveal, Dina's pregnancy revealed to Ellie is one I'm definitely looking forward to.

I would say really the future of Ellie and Dina's relationship within this portion of the story, given how much has been reconfigured to this point.

And so we're still like, you know, there's this stray part of this previous conversation that wasn't there.

Did it get excised or is it being repurposed and moved around here?

Like, I'm kind of waiting to see some of those things.

And in particular, as Jesse kind of gets caught back up into the story and how they're going to manage that, given everything we just said about how important he is in the community, and he's being pinched in a way that Ellie is being pinched and the way that Tommy is being pinched, right?

Like these very personal costs versus whatever debt or whatever they think they owe to kind of Jackson as a society.

I love Jesse as a character.

And I honestly love him in the show even more than I ever did in the game, where I think he's like, he's a good like vibes-based addition in the game and such like a necessary antidote of humor.

Yeah.

I think they're really building him out to be something that, as you alluded to, like.

highlights what is at stake here and what these characters have to lose and what we kind of like the broader society of Jackson has to lose.

I was thinking about that a lot as we're kind of going through this episode and we go through, you know, the the vote at the city council and it's eight to three, and people have already started kind of reverse engineering, like, okay, who voted for what?

Yeah.

It never occurred to me for a second that Jesse would vote for Ellie's plan.

I just don't think, like, for as much as Ellie means to him, that's someone who cares about the city, who cares about the safety of everyone there.

And like, this is a city that's still licking its wounds from a massive infected attack, that a number of them are dead.

They're like fewer than ever in terms of the people that can actually protect that city.

And you want to take 16 of the most able-bodied people in Jackson on a revenge road trip?

Like, that doesn't seem like something that this version of Jesse would be down for.

What about some of, like, what about mid-body people?

Can we take some of the mid-tier people on our revenge road trip?

Are you going to tell them that they're mid?

Like, are you going to put them on an evaluation?

What's happening?

If you pick the top tier, you've already implied who the mid-tier is.

You know what I mean?

You got to go some top tier, some mid-tier so they think they're top tier.

Yeah.

And a couple of lower tier, but who have very specialized skills that might be important.

Okay.

Sound like a forager, someone who knows poison plants.

If you can find a truffle,

you're coming with us.

Okay, Ron's taking a pig on the road to Seattle.

Or even, frankly, like Seth on one leg.

I don't care.

That guy knows how to make a steak sandwich.

Like, we need him out there.

And he's got a lot of anger inside of him.

He certainly does.

Okay.

Seraphite intro.

This is, oh, I will say for me, what I'm most looking, what I'm most curious about

is

given, you know, we get

other than a sheet wrapped body, no Petra Pascal in this episode.

We get, you know, no Joel mushroom figure in the opening credits, all this sort of stuff like that.

We do know that inside the game, there are some flashbacks.

We have seen in the trailers that there are some flashbacks.

How much

restraint are they going to have around that?

How often are we going to go back to that well?

You know, if it were me and I had Peter Pascal in my back pocket, would I be able to resist putting him in like a little bit of him in every episode or a lot of him at once?

Like, what would I, what would I do

for the rest of the season?

So that's, that's something I'm interested in.

I do want to give

Craig Mason and Neil Druckman credit of a firm salute for this episode in particular for not.

having any Joel in this episode other than his body under the sheet.

Granted, all those flashbacks exist and many of them are quite important.

Like getting the science museum flashback has to be there at some point.

Getting, of course, like the confrontation between Joel and Ellie about what's on the recorded tape, kind of revealing the truth of what Joel did, that's really important.

Those things have to happen at some point over the next two seasons or season and change.

Having him out of this episode is the only way that it works.

And it's the only way that like all the twists and turns of The Last of Us, like they only pay off because you can feel the weight of them.

And you only feel the weight of it in this episode because of that feeling of absence.

And because you're seeing all these characters coming to terms with what life without Joel is for them, in whatever respect that might be true.

And so, yeah, it's tempting to have like little flashes of Pedro here and there because everyone wants to see him and wants to see Joel back on screen, even if it isn't a flashback.

But I'm a little worried we're going to get into just by the nature of how many are still left on the board and how important they are.

Like, are we going to get one an episode the rest of the way?

Is he just going to be like a series regular even though he's dead?

Um, must be nice to collect series regular pay.

Um,

Did you see it?

As part of the Entertainment Weekly cover story that they did, and they did the photo shoot with Caitlin Deaver

at Bella Ramsey and Petro Pascal.

And Caitlin and Bella were talking about

how tricky it was going to be to navigate people's feelings about this and blah, blah, blah.

Sure.

And Pedro was like, so glad I don't have to deal with it.

He was like, sorry.

I'm out of the junket.

That's really funny.

Okay.

So on your request in the spoiler-free section for moral ambiguity, I think we can find no clearer case than the introduction of the Seraphites in this episode.

Uh, we meet the Seraphites on the road, um, and this is uh perhaps like a splinter group, uh, you know, given that they

give this little girl a weapon, which seems, you know what I mean, seems counter to the

more

uh extremist versions of of the seraphites.

So this idea that like hashtag not all seraphites or whatever it is that we're trying to learn from this group on the road, is does that feed your

desire for ambiguity in terms of who's the who are the good guys, who are the bad guys here?

Definitely.

I mean, especially because we get so much of a counterpoint of that for the WLF, right?

Like there are members of the WLF who are well-meaning in their way or have these codes, have these regiments, like believe in a cause.

And then there are people who are like, you know what?

I think we probably just need to kill whoever we need to kill.

If they're seraphites, if they're children, if they're prophets, like whoever it needs to be.

Like, sometimes you just got to take people off the map.

And so, there are these clear divisions between these groups.

So, it's like, why wouldn't the Seraphites, why wouldn't you expand the sort of like apostate idea or this idea of like the people who want to get out or believe in some teachings, but not all?

That tracks is a very human thing to me.

I think that it's really interesting that the only member of the WLF we see in this episode that we know is Manny.

Manny, who's like the most bad batitude of all

of Abby's crew, right?

We're not checking in with Mel or with Manny and he's being a dick as he always is.

And so it's just sort of like, if, if you're watching at home and you're not ready to have more empathy for Abby and her crew, you get to spend time with Manny and the Space Needle.

Honestly, at least it's scenic up there.

It's a great job.

It's a great spot.

Good for Manny.

It's good detail.

I'd be really excited for that gig, but my question is,

I mean, well, no, they have electricity, obviously, but like,

is that elevator working in the in the space needle or are you climbing?

It's a great question.

I think in the game, you do a lot of climbing.

Yeah.

And they did seem like, especially in the show, they seemed kind of wowed and impressed by the level of electricity and the generator and the sophistication of the infrastructure in Jackson.

I'm guessing like the WLF compound that we're going to see in the show or kind of the...

the base ultimately that we see in the show, the fob is, I mean, it is more, it's more of a tent city, right?

It is a little bit more provisional than everything we see going on in Jackson.

I'll come back to this thing I was alluding to in our spoiler-free section: this idea that, like, if Ellie is in the Joel position and Dina is in the Ellie position in this Twosome, and Dina's making a bid for connection, intimacy,

then we're watching, we watched in season one

Joel succeed to a certain degree.

There's complications here, but to succeed to a certain degree in terms of finding community

in a way that Ellie is going to fail.

There are major differences, obviously, across these two characters, not the least of which is like Joel isn't tracking down who killed Sarah.

He doesn't have this like clear target

preoccupying his

brain and heart space.

But

I think that's an interesting study in contrast,

which

both the game and the show are so interested in pursuing.

Well, let me circle back to that right there.

Do you think Ellie fails in finding that kind of community with Dina?

Because

I think what makes her course so tragic is that she kind of does have it she's just so blind to it because of all this rage that she doesn't know what to do with we did get an email from our listener Joey who was sort of like pushing back on this idea that like you know he he was talking about Ellie removing herself from the family unit almost like for them to if you want to interpret it that way.

A fail is too judgmental a word.

It's not one I actually really want to use, but like

isn't able to

have a, at least, you know, have a happily ever after with Dina in a way that Joel maybe could have

if

you know the consequences of his own actions hadn't come knocking, you know?

So I think it was an active pursuit of, right?

Like Joel had reached a level of peace in terms of at least his relationship with Ellie and kind of what he was, the family he was trying to rebuild.

Right.

Ellie keeps getting diverted from that idea in terms of like,

even though at this point in the, in the show, like, Dina herself is a little wishy-washy in terms of what she's after and her motivations, and I guess her sexuality in general.

Um, and so, like, all of that is kind of up for grabs in the world of the show, but ultimately, if it's following the path of the game, which I expect it will, like, they have a relationship and it's a really meaningful one, and they're going to have really like important bonding moments over the next couple episodes, probably, until Dina has to go back.

I'm not saying their, their relationship is unimportant or not beautiful in many ways and stuff like that.

It just, in terms terms of like,

I don't know,

though, I guess, I don't know, a reckoning comes for both.

It's true.

Ellie and Joel just in different ways.

I guess maybe that's a different way to do it.

I think Ellie in some ways at this point is even more closed off than Joel was.

Like, I found it really telling.

You know, she has that conversation with Dina on horseback when they're talking about the first people that they killed.

And it's like, Ellie can't even comprehend.

that Dina would feel sorry for the fact that Ellie had to shoot someone.

She's like, why are you feeling sorry for me and not the person that that I killed?

Like the fact that she's that closed off from even her own pain and her own emotions, I think really speaks to where she is at this point in the story.

Anything else you want to say here in our spoiler section about episode three, Ramahony?

One final note, Joe, about the Seraphites.

I actually do think, you know, we talked about the balance of the moral ambiguity that they're introducing with that group.

I also think it's just a really deft play of the casual sort of expansion of this world as we're being introduced to like this pocket of characters we don't really know that's going to die within the episode.

What does that mean in all the different senses?

Like there's clearly the WLF versus Seraphite part of that.

There's also just this introduction of this idea that for one, things are a little stranger out west than Ellie and Dina may be used to, right?

Like there's these whole pockets of people that they don't know and don't understand.

And also that there are just so many ways to live out here.

And we've seen the version of that where you try to make a little town for yourself.

We haven't really seen the version of that where you try to make a weird ass cult for yourself, but I look forward to seeing it more more on screen.

I mostly agree with you.

I was thinking about that.

I just,

you know, I never want us to forget Cannibal David and his weird Bible-based community last week.

That's almost more like Jackson adjacent.

Like, it's kind of a town, it's a straight-up town.

It's true.

It's just a cannibal town.

It's true.

There's Bullet Town and there's Cannibal Town.

They're neighboring counties, but they both get it done.

The apocalypse sounds like a delight.

It sounds so fun.

All right.

Well, that does it for us here.

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

We'll be back, of course, again with episode four of The Last of Us next week, where we'll have more exciting interviews.

I'm really excited about our interview next week.

And

thanks for listening.

Thanks to Tonny Beacham for his work on this episode and Justin Sales for his work on this feed.

And we'll see you soon.

And thank you to Gabriel Luna for joining us for this episode.

Absolutely.

And we'll see you soon.

Bye.