Why The Last Of Us Won’t Be The Zombie Show You Expect
HBO’s TV adaptation of The Last of Us video games might include zombies, but this won’t just be another zombie show. For those unfamiliar with the franchise, it might be easy to assume that The Last of Us is an attempt to jump on the zombie bandwagon at a time when The Walking Dead’s main series has concluded and spinoffs are beginning. Just as The Walking Dead is an adaptation of graphic novels, The Last of Us is adapting video games (which also spawned their graphic novels), so some similarities might be expected.
Set 20 years after a zombie apocalypse begins, The Last of Us follows a smuggler, Joel (Pedro Pascal) as he transports precious cargo across the remains of the United States. That cargo is Ellie (Bella Ramsey), and Joel keeps his distance emotionally from her. Their journey carries them through areas filled with deadly zombies and arguably more dangerous groups of humans and they have to fight for their lives at every turn.
The Last Of Us Isn’t Really About Zombies, But People
Joel And Sarah share a moment in The Last Of Us
While HBO’s The Last of Us has many of the trappings of another zombie TV show, that isn’t really what the story is about. The first The Last of Us video game opens with Joel, Joel’s brother (Tommy), and Joel’s daughter (Sarah) attempting to escape from the initial outbreak and the government’s attempts to quarantine. The trailer (and the casting of Sarah) has revealed that HBO’s The Last of Us will include this tragic scene which sees Sarah shot by the military while trying to escape.
While zombies play an important part in The Last of Us, the central story is about Joel having never fully overcome the loss of his daughter. The relationship that he builds with Ellie is the true central part of the story. Secondary to that is Joel’s distrust of organizations and governmental structures brought about by the death of his daughter and the events he has witnessed since. The fact that zombies make up the backdrop of The Last of Us is almost incidental to the story and will make it so that HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation is much more than another zombie TV show.
The Last Of Us Knows It Isn’t A Zombie Show
Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal in The Last of Us
While trailers and previews might make it appear to be a zombie show first and foremost, The Last of Us, at its core, knows that it’s not a zombie franchise. One of the biggest indications of this is the games and TV show both avoid any of the word zombie. The “zombies” in The Last of Us are technically called cordyceps and are more commonly simply referred to as “infected.” The creatures are humans infected with a cordyceps fungus that attacks the brain and leads them to mutate over time.
The original The Last of Us game held hope for a cure that did include some more focus on the zombie trappings of the story. However, even that is incidental, and the follow-up game made that even more evident. The Last of Us: Part II deals with the human fallout of the first game, and questions how far anger and revenge can take people. The zombies/infected in The Last of Us pose a continual threat to humanity, but they are not the focus of the story, and the show will not just be one more zombie TV series.