What comes after the top of the world? That was the central query of The Final of Us, a panoramic 2013 online game set within the aftermath of a lethal pandemic that leaves america a cutthroat wasteland (so totally different from the America we see at present…). It was tailored, in 2023, for the small display screen and confirmed a pathway – a walkthrough, as avid gamers say – for the tough act of changing a beloved recreation into an exciting, poignant TV present. What, then, comes subsequent? How do you comply with up what adopted the top of the world? That is the duty for the second season of Sky’s The Final of Us.
5 years have handed since Joel (Pedro Pascal) saved Ellie (Bella Ramsey), the one individual recognized to be resistant to the hellish cordyceps virus, from the clutches of militants who needed to chop out her mind and switch it right into a vaccine. Since then, they’ve made a life for themselves within the utopian outpost of Jackson, Wyoming, the place Joel is the de facto chief of a neighborhood flourishing whereas the world ends. However not every part is as rosy because it seems to be. The mushroom people are evolving, and waves of migrants nonetheless wash up at Jackson’s overstretched partitions. “If our lifeboat is swamped,” Joel tells his lieutenants, “we go away them on the market.” Governing this neighborhood isn’t Joel’s solely, or hardest, duty. That honour falls to the act of enjoying daddy to an more and more surly teenage Ellie.
When an act of violence perpetrated by the mysterious Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) shakes Ellie out of her adolescent malaise, the sequence springs into motion. This can be a revenge narrative at its core; Ellie and finest good friend Dina (Isabela Merced) take a 600-mile journey by means of scenic Idaho in pursuit of Abby and her faction, the Washington Liberation Entrance (or “Wolves”). “A lot for joyful proud rainbow city,” Ellie observes, drily, as they enter corpse-strewn Seattle. Within the husk of the town, fungal foes are the least of Ellie and Dina’s issues. This can be a maze of “ranges”; totally different obstacles the duo should face of their pursuit of Abby, and justice. It’s the present’s online game origins essentially reasserting themselves.
The success of each Naughty Canine’s acclaimed online game sequence (though the follow-up instalment is taken into account one thing of a “tough second album”) and the primary chapter of the present was born out of its sense of vicious realism. The character of the virus and the disintegration of civilisation – quick in some locations, gradual in others – was exquisitely captured. The bond between Joel and Ellie was as shifting as any platonic relationship on the telly. Not one of the savagery of the world has been misplaced within the intervening half-decade: hordes of goofy undead nonetheless come sprinting at our protagonists, and brutal new factions emerge within the darkness. As travelling companions, cynical Ellie and luminous Dina have a relationship that’s extra romantically charged, however which retains that chalk-and-cheese dynamic. “I used to be simply attempting to sound like a badass,” Ellie tells Dina after delivering a trademark barb. “You don’t must attempt,” Dina reassures her.
Bella Ramsey – who reduce her tooth serving to to face down the Night time King in Sport of Thrones – has been acclaimed by critics in her position as Ellie, if not by the sport’s most rabid followers. As ever, the critics have it proper. Her character, right here, has developed beneath Joel’s clear tuition, changing into harder, extra stoical and but shedding nothing of that streak of innocence that immunises her in opposition to ethical collapse. This season’s important additions to the solid – Dever’s Abby, a damaged spirit; Merced’s Dina, a gregarious sidekick; Jeffrey Wright’s Isaac, a loquacious psychopath – add depth, even whereas Pascal is basically absent from the primary narrative. This can be a well-drawn world, and the inhabitants is increasing past its compelling protagonists.
Maybe it’s too fanciful to think about {that a} present of this scale and finances would get greenlit with out some current IP, on this case a online game sequence, to attract from. These origins are, at instances, a story drag. In any case, within the recreation, you’ll be able to die and die and die once more, that means each state of affairs includes near-certain demise. You simply reset and go once more. However right here, the percentages are, essentially, perpetually in our heroes’ favour. There are not any save factors in a linear narrative. And but the present should do sufficient to appease the ten.3 million individuals who purchased The Final of Us Half II, and whose costly Sky subscription is probably predicated on that fandom. And so, the narrative unfolds in a manner that owes extra to its supply medium than its vacation spot style – constructing, at all times, by means of paths of discovery, in the direction of a showdown.
Is The Final of Us an ideal TV present, or only a nice adaptation of a online game? In fact, it sits someplace between these positions. Its origins are an unstated constraint, however showrunner Craig Mazin (and Neil Druckmann, the architect of the sport, who co-creates this adaptation) have carried out a positive job translating for the display screen. The world has ended again and again, on screens huge and small, however it has hardly ever been as believable – or compelling – because the barbaric wasteland of Final of Us’s second season.
‘The Final of Us’ season two begins Monday 14 April on Sky and Now
