[COLUMN] In the Second Season of The Last of Us, Nothing Remains Buried | by Darren Mooney

Note: This piece contains spoilers for “Future Days”, the second season premiere of The Last of Us. And for the whole first season. So consider yourself warned. That said, having seen the whole of the second season, it’s pretty great and well worth a watch. So feel free to bookmark and come back after you’ve had a chance to see it.

The second season of The Last of Us is about the things buried beneath the surface, which refuse to remain underground.

This is true in a very literal sense. The season opens in the immediate aftermath of “Look for the Light”, the first season finale. The giraffes are still wandering around Salt Lake City. Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) and her friends are gathered at the graves of those members of the Fireflies killed by Joel (Pedro Pascal) at the climax of the first season. A community is mourning its loss, with Abby’s grief metastasizing into a thirst for vengeance.

Some things are buried in a more metaphorical sense. The first season ended with Joel lying to Ellie (Bella Ramsey) about what happened in Salt Lake City. The Fireflies had hoped to harvest a cure from Ellie that would provide humanity with immunity from the deadly fungus consuming the world. However, this procedure would involve killing Ellie. Joel refused to allow that to happen, murdering everybody in the building to protect Ellie.

Joel kept the truth from Ellie, telling her that there was no hope of a cure and that the Fireflies had been murdered by “raiders.” The closing shot of the first season was decidedly ambiguous, leaving the viewer to ponder whether Ellie actually believed what Joel was telling her, or whether some part of her understood what had happened while she was unconscious. However, neither character acknowledges this tension. The two simply continue on their way.

Five years later, the second season suggests that these secrets have taken their toll on the relationship between Joel and Ellie. The two are at odds with one another. “Why is she angry at you?” asks Dina (Isabela Merced), Ellie’s best friend. Joel shrugs off the question, “I figure it’s normal. Her bein’ 19, me being her… what I am. No one likes their parents at that age.” However, it’s clear that this is not standard familial tension. “The thing is, I try,” Joel insists. “What did I do?”

To be fair, Joel is at least trying. The second season premiere, “Future Days”, reveals that Joel is in therapy with Gail (Catherine O'Hara). He is working on himself. He is trying to mend his relationship to Ellie. However, even when pressed by Gail, Joel is unable to admit what happened. He’s unable to articulate why Ellie might be upset at him, because he cannot acknowledge what he did and why he did it. Instead, that wound festers.

The Last of Us understands that, in order to heal, the wound needs to be exposed to air. “Future Days” contrasts Joel’s stoicism with Gail’s candor. During their therapy session, Gail is able to force herself to be honest with Joel about her own feelings. Joel recently shot Gail’s husband Eugene (Joe Pantoliano) after he became infected. It was a justifiable decision, one that protected the larger community, but Gail’s emotional response cannot be cold and rational.

“You can’t heal something unless you’re brave enough to say it out loud,” Gail admits to Joel. She acknowledges the anger that she feels towards Joel, even as she has a professional responsibility to help him, “You shot and killed my husband. You killed Eugene.” Gail urges Joel to acknowledge his own feelings, however unpleasant they might be. “Say it out loud,” she implores him. “No matter what it is, no matter how bad.” Joel can’t, and that means he can never reconcile with Ellie.

The five-year time jump between the first and second season is interesting, because it allows The Last of Us to reestablish a baseline of normality in this fallen world. Joel and Ellie have built a life together in Jackson, a makeshift community that has running water and electricity. Ellie’s messy bedroom looks like any other teenager’s abode, complete with her collection of cassette tapes and her own guitar. There is an attempt not merely to survive, but to live.

A large part of what distinguishes The Last of Us from so much postapocalyptic media is its sense of poetry and lyricism. It is a very literary take on the end of the world, a show that expresses its central ideas through metaphor and which places a much firmer emphasis on the psychology and the interpersonal relationships of its characters than it does on the larger mechanics of the world around them. For all the show’s scale and stakes, this is a story about deeply broken people.

The Last of Us is not afraid to explain its metaphors through dialogue. The second season reintroduces Joel sitting at a breakfast table talking to Dina. It is a nice character touch, reinforcing the sense of normality at the end of the world, emphasizing Joel’s career as a carpenter before the collapse of civilization. He has returned to that role, helping build out the infrastructure that holds Jackson together. He is explaining his craft to Dina.

However, the show makes the very pointed choice to have Joel explain the mechanics of a circuit breaker to Dina. “Now, this right here is the part that matters,” he tells her. “Bimetallic strip. Too much current runs through, heats up the strip, it bends, releases the lever, the circuit breaks. Otherwise, the wires get hotter and hotter, lights the inside of your walls on fire, there goes your house.”

It is not a subtle metaphor for the tension building between Joel and Ellie, which needs to be released before everything explodes. In some ways, Abby is a very literal manifestation of that idea, a walking embodiment of fire that threatens to consume the entire house, the inevitable consequence of Joel’s choice all those years ago stalking towards Jackson, ready to punish Joel for a sin that he cannot even acknowledge.

The show also uses Ellie’s immunity as a metaphor for the toll that secrets take on the people who hold them. Obviously, Ellie cannot acknowledge that she is immune to the fungus, because that would put her at risk from others who might seek to exploit her. There are only a handful of people in Jackson who know about Ellie’s immunity, including Joel and his brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna). These people go to great lengths to keep that side of Ellie hidden.

The show makes a thematic connection between Ellie’s immunity and her sexuality. Ellie is gay, and “Future Days” finds Ellie navigating a complicated dynamic with her best friend Dina, who has just broken up from her boyfriend Jesse (Young Mazino). Neither Ellie nor Dina can articulate their feelings for one another, which culminate in a kiss at a New Year’s party. However, even in Jackson, the pair are shamed for their attraction, with Seth (Robert John Burke) causing a scene.

Having to keep these secrets about herself, to protect her from the people around her, takes a toll on Ellie. When she is bitten by an infected person during a routine patrol, Ellie has to disguise the bite by cutting into herself with a knife to make the injury look more generic. The imagery is evocative. It is a teenager very literally engaging in self-harm as a way to deal with the fact that she is fundamentally different from the people around her. It’s a physical manifestation of the toll such secrets take.

It's another great illustration of the lyrical storytelling mechanics of The Last of Us, illustrating the way in which the series uses its heightened and pulpy framework to tell a very human story about the injuries that these characters carry around. It’s rare that a show with this sort of source material allows itself the space to deal with these ideas, let alone to explore them through metaphor and abstraction.

Even the fungus that drives so much of The Last of Us is itself a potent metaphor for the show’s larger themes. Towards the end of “Future Days”, as Abby approaches Jackson, there is a shot of the infectious and hungry fungus spreading through the underground pipes. The community believes that they are safe, isolated, insulated. However, danger is lurking and growing underground, where it cannot be seen or sensed. After all, fungus lives mostly in the dark.

However, the show understands that these things cannot remain buried forever. Eventually, these dark secrets find their way to the surface. When they do, the consequences are likely to be severe.