The Last of Us

Pedro Pascal brings Joel to life in "The Last of Us," HBO's adaptation of the beloved, critically acclaimed video game. Liane Hentscher/HBO.

“The Last of Us” doesn’t necessarily reinvent the post-apocalyptic genre, but “The Walking Dead,” this is not. Oh, and sensitive viewers, beware – “The Last of Us” can be deeply sad. [ “Mandalorian,”](https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/30/media/the-mandalorian-season-2-disney-star-wars/index.html) “Narcos,” “Game of Thrones”) as Joel and breakthrough performer Bella Ramsey (also of “Game of Thrones,” “Catherine Called Birdy”) as Ellie. Joel and Ellie are still our protagonists, and most of the series is dedicated to their relationship (albeit with some attacks by fungus-monster-people interspersed). That might rattle “The Last of Us” players used to destroying fungus-faced monsters between cutscenes, though there are still scares. [“The Last of Us”](https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/10/entertainment/the-last-of-us-review/index.html) is now widely recognized as one of the best video games of all time. [bleak “Chernobyl” miniseries](https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/22/entertainment/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes-review/index.html). (In its original 2013 interview, IGN called their rapport “one of the great highlights” of the game.) He’s an often relentless smuggler with a deep-buried paternal side; she’s a parentless teen with the mouth of a sailor and a dangerous secret. From its heart-wrenching story to its celebrated cast, here’s why fans of the game and prospective new viewers can’t wait to watch “The Last of Us” when it debuts Sunday night. What’s so unpredictable about “The Last of Us” is how deftly it balances engaging gameplay with compelling, often heartbreaking storytelling. [ “The Walking Dead”](https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/21/entertainment/the-walking-dead-series-finale/index.html) had concluded its third season, [“World War Z”](https://www.cnn.com/2013/06/21/showbiz/celebrity-news-gossip/world-war-z-review-ew/index.html) was expected to be a summer blockbuster and “Resident Evil” was still perhaps the best-known zombie-starring video game. But “The Last of Us” also always prioritized the relationship between Joel and Ellie.

HBO's The Last of Us airs tonight; the TV adaptation of the popular video game stars Game of Thrones alums Pedro Pascal & Bella Ramsey.

[drop us a message here](https://wikiofthrones.com/contact-us). R. George R. ET), which you might remember as the time slot occupied by House of the Dragon last year on HBO and HBO Max. Watch the trailer right here: HBO is one of the leading networks in the world of television.

The HBO drama, based on a video game, works best as a post-catastrophe travelogue, teasing out the ways survivors rebuild mini-societies with new alignments ...

Multicolored fungi bloom across the faces of the infected, leaving intact the mouths and teeth with which they attack, as they join a teeming, growing army that appears to know no natural death, and only lies dormant, waiting. Scott Shepherd is as terrifying as any of the spore-heads in his role as a soft-voiced pastor who preys on his followers’ need for solace and guidance. Between the monomaniacal militias and the self-cannibalizing cults, a deserted preschool classroom, constructed underground, stands as a brightly muraled testament to the blind hope that many parents still nursed for their children, while a heavily guarded commune risks the messy ideals of equality and coöperation even in the face of existential peril. A fascination with panicked brutality links “The Last of Us,” co-created by Craig Mazin, to his previous series, “Chernobyl.” On the autumn night in 2003 that the cordyceps arrive in Austin, a construction worker named Joel (Pedro Pascal) attempts to flee in a truck with his teen-age daughter, Sarah (Nico Parker), and his younger brother, Tommy (Gabriel Luna). “Station Eleven,” the defiantly optimistic portrait of a Shakespearean theatre troupe wayfaring through a post-pandemic Midwest, is another precursor, in images if not in tone; the Ozymandian sights of nature’s reclamations in “The Last of Us”—ducks and frogs swimming blithely in a flooded hotel lobby, or a herd of roaming giraffes seemingly escaped from a zoo—conjure that same beauty of perseverance amid desolation. When the mutation is first discovered, in Jakarta, a petrified mycologist advises, “Bomb this city and everyone in it.”

Here's a sentence that I never thought I'd type: The Last of Us airs its first episode tonight on HBO and HBO Max. It's a surreal feeling.

Neil, Craig and the production team took this opportunity to weave in new characters, themes, and locations — only where they felt true to the characters and the world, the “soul” of The Last of Us. As you can imagine, I’m extremely excited (and extremely nervous) for PlayStation and Naughty Dog fans to dive into the first episode and experience for themselves the love the cast and crew has poured into this adaptation. I can’t wait for the world to experience their portrayals and the rest of these unforgettable characters in an entirely new way.

Inspired by the Naughty Dog video game, the new HBO Max series stars Pedro Pascal as Joel and Bella Ramsey as Ellie — here's when and how to stream.

[Best Buy](https://howl.me/ciVCIgP6lUk) [Best Buy](https://howl.me/ciVCHNjQWvd) [GameStop](https://go.skimresources.com?id=87443X1644750&xs=1&xcust=THR--watchthelastofus&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gamestop.com%2Fvideo-games%2Fplaystation-4%2Fproducts%2Fthe-last-of-us-part-ii---playstation-4%2F217700.html&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hollywoodreporter.com%2Flifestyle%2Flifestyle-news%2Fwatch-the-last-of-us-online-1235300059%2F) [GameStop](https://go.skimresources.com?id=87443X1644750&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gamestop.com%2Fvideo-games%2Fplaystation-5%2Fproducts%2Fthe-last-of-us-part-1-playstation-5%2F344866.html&xcust=THR--watchthelastofus&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hollywoodreporter.com%2Flifestyle%2Flifestyle-news%2Fwatch-the-last-of-us-online-1235300059%2F) Alternatively, you can subscribe to [Prime Video](https://www.amazon.com/hp/video/offers/?_encoding=UTF8&tag=hollywoodre01-20&linkCode=ur2&linkId=af95329876de6cd89bca85bb435cbc9e&camp=1789&creative=9325&asc_source=web&asc_campaign=web&asc_refurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hollywoodreporter.com%2Flifestyle%2Flifestyle-news%2Fwatch-the-last-of-us-online-1235300059%2F) as a standalone service for $9 monthly. Prime Video is access included with a membership to [Amazon Prime](https://www.amazon.com/amazonprime?linkCode=ll2&tag=hollywoodre01-20&linkId=7a0b52b2d6b8dc93380cf3ea9b3f836c&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl&asc_source=web&asc_campaign=web&asc_refurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hollywoodreporter.com%2Flifestyle%2Flifestyle-news%2Fwatch-the-last-of-us-online-1235300059%2F) ($15 monthly or $139 annually), offers a 30-day free trial for new members. While it’s not required to have survived the action horror game to understand the show, see below to find out where to shop The Last of Us video games and comic book spinoffs online. A remake, The Last of Us: Part I was released last September for PS5, and it will soon be available on the gaming platform [Hulu](https://go.skimresources.com/?id=87443X1644750&xs=1&xcust=THR--watchthelastofus%7Cxid%3Afr1673812277529gbh&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hulu.com%2Fhbomax&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hollywoodreporter.com%2Flifestyle%2Flifestyle-news%2Fwatch-the-last-of-us-online-1235300059%2F) or when they add the [HBO Max channel](https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/storefront?contentType=subscription&contentId=hbomaxus&benefitId=hbomaxus&linkCode=ll2&tag=hollywoodre01-20&linkId=d6388faa4314532058c2c7786b263e46&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl&asc_source=web&asc_campaign=web&asc_refurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hollywoodreporter.com%2Flifestyle%2Flifestyle-news%2Fwatch-the-last-of-us-online-1235300059%2F) on Amazon’s Prime Video, which both offer seven-day free trials. PT/9 p.m. Once bitten by one of the infected, the teen’s immunity may hold the secret to a cure for the virus that has wiped out most of humanity. The TV adaptation of the popular post-apocalyptic video game debuts Sunday exclusively on HBO Max, and brings together a slew of fan-favorite stars from the studio’s other hit series.

In HBO's The Last of Us, Pedro Pascal plays Joel, a character who the creators say they changed to translate the game and the ending to TV.

The Last of Us premiered on HBO and HBO Max on Jan. “I found him to be a very hardened person, and not somebody who reflects on his own feelings, even before losing his daughter or the world ending before his very eyes. “And that was part of the casting of Pedro Pascal as Joel. “Pedro is so charismatic, and there’s like a pull — he’s funny, he’s a genuinely funny guy — that to suppress all that when you watch him on screen, it feels like there’s something missing from this guy, and you want it to come out,” Druckmann says. And viewers who have played the game might spot key differences in his TV counterpart: He’s no longer dealing weapons like he does in the game, but trying to hunt down a battery for his car so he can go find Tommy. [The Last of Us](https://www.polygon.com/reviews/23547254/last-us-review-hbo-tv) looks [a lot like the video game that inspired it](https://www.polygon.com/e/23314881), but don’t mistake that for damning it with faint praise.

Now, HBO is bringing Joel and Ellie's post-apocalyptic journey to the small screen with stars Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian) and Bella Ramsey (Game of Thrones), ...

Clint Barton](https://gamerant.com/disney-plus-hawkeye-series-logan/) (Jeremy Renner) — is there to save the day. The [duo has great comedic chemistry](https://gamerant.com/best-marvel-comics-duos/), and Clint comes to see Kate as more than just a kid with a bow, but a worthy peer. [James Mangold](https://gamerant.com/hugh-jackman-wolverine-deadpool-3-logan-james-mangold-response/)’s Logan (2017). The [Adamantium-clawed Laura](https://gamerant.com/marvels-wolverine-x-23-role-potential-spin-off-good/) is one of several children Transgien birthed using mutant DNA, in the hopes of creating mutant weapons. [Clem is the heart of the story](https://gamerant.com/telltales-the-walking-dead-anniversary-2012-2022-clementine/), the player’s moral compass and reason to keep fighting. [a Wolverine who’s been beaten down](https://gamerant.com/logan-wolverine-death-explained/) — who’s watched as his chosen family and friends were hunted down. This Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) series opens with a flashback to 2012: New York is under attack and the Avengers are battling Loki’s (Tom Hiddleston) Chitauri fleet. What could have been a long and winding escort mission turns into [something deeper](https://gamerant.com/last-us-2-ellie-vs-walking-dead-clementine/). [Robert Kirkman’s graphic novel series of the same name](https://gamerant.com/walking-dead-comic-clementine-telltale/), the episodic video game raised the bar with its character-driven narrative and focus on player choice. [The Last of Us](https://gamerant.com/tag/the-last-of-us/) is composed of Part I and Part II as well as the side story, Left Behind, which fills in some gaps in Ellie’s story. [The adventure will take her to parallel universes](https://gamerant.com/hbo-drops-trailer-dark-materials-season-2/) and deep into an epic war that's centuries in the making. Lyra pulls together a ragtag crew, including the [exiled armored bear](https://gamerant.com/best-bears-in-movies/), but Iorek is reluctant to join Lyra, a young and weak human, on her expedition north.

"The Last of Us" creator Neil Druckmann and the HBO adaptation's showrunner Craig Mazin spoke to Newsweek about bringing in the game's voice actors to the ...

"They're both terrific and lovely people, as somebody that is a fan, and the game means so much to me, it's easier with Troy because he doesn't talk with Joel's voice, but Ellie's voice is Ashley's voice! "From my point of view, as somebody that was working with Troy and Ashley for the first time, they are awesome," Mazin said. The Last of Us premieres on Sunday, January 15 at 9 p.m. on a dangerous mission that just might save the world from its current post-apocalyptic state, but they'll have to fend off the infected humans that now roam the country killing anyone in their path. Baker and Johnson were also given different, but important, parts to make their own. "Troy and Ashley were such a part of realizing the story for the first time, they kind of define who Joel and Ellie are in many ways and they will forever be the first versions of Joel and Ellie, and we really wanted to honor that and make them part of the show," Druckmann said.

Este 15 de enero se estrena una de las series más esperadas del año: la adaptación de HBO Max del videojuego 'The Last of Us'.

Pascal es un aliado y defensor de la comunidad LGBTQ+. “También es artista y me ha servido de guía. En 2015, apareció en el video musical de la cantante Sia para la canción ‘Fire Meet Gasoline’. A los once años, Pascal comenzó a participar en campeonatos estatales cuando su familia residía en Texas. José Pedro Balmaceda Pascal nació en Chile, pero a los nueve meses de nacido emigró con su familia a Estados Unidos gracias a que les dieron asilo. Pascal protagoniza el video junto a la modelo Heidi Klum.

It's too soon to say whether HBO's big-budget video game adaptation will become a zombie classic. But it delivers one heck of an opening catastrophe.

So as I write about the show, I will be focusing on how it works as a television series, and not on how well it does or does not adapt the game. With a well-thumbed volume of “The Billboard Book of Number 1 Hits” by his side, he waits to hear specific songs that signal whether it’s safe to venture beyond the Q.Z. Besides, I believe this show is a work of fiction, given that we don’t live in a 2023 where half the population has been taken over by fungi. [Bella Ramsey](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/11/arts/television/bella-ramsey-the-last-of-us.html)), a feisty 14-year-old who is the only known person to survive an infection — and, hence, could be the key to saving humanity. (In 2023, they are called “FEDRA,” for the Federal Disaster Response Agency.) And he smuggles drugs with his business and romantic partner, Tess (played by the magnificent Anna Torv, beloved of science-fiction/fantasy/horror fans from her days on “Fringe”). Set in 1968, the prologue features a TV interview with a scientist who explains that his greatest fear isn’t a “global pandemic” (a term that, in a moment of dark humor from Mazin and Druckmann, is defined by another guest for the blissfully ignorant ’60s audience) but rather a mind-controlling fungus that could one day thrive on a warming planet, turning humans into fiends. Beyond establishing the miserable conditions of 2023, Mazin and Druckmann must introduce the show’s other leading character: Ellie ( (“They’re coming to get you, Barbara!”) Or think of the 2004 remake of Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead,” or the first episode of “The Walking Dead,” both of which begin as the heroes wake up in a nightmarish world that collapsed while they were asleep. But I’ll say this for the series’s creators, Craig Mazin (the Emmy-winning writer and producer of “Chernobyl”) and Neil Druckmann (a creator of the video game): They do deliver one heck of an opening catastrophe. We see during the escape that Joel is willing to ignore other people’s suffering, or even to inflict harm wantonly, in order to protect himself and his family. And we discover that the government’s response to this crisis can be as destructive as the crisis itself. Most of the Texas scenes are from Sarah’s point of view, too, although there are sly hints throughout that something bigger is happening.

'The Last of Us' set a gold standard for video-game storytelling. The adaptation's premiere makes it clear HBO doesn't want to screw that up.

She also learns that Marlene does not like being called a terrorist, particularly when she knows she’s working for a greater purpose and Ellie is essential to the cause. Meanwhile, Joel and Tess plot payback on the battery dealer who ripped them off, a pursuit that eventually brings them to Firefly headquarters, or what’s left of it. These include, of course, FEDRA soldiers, including Joel’s painkiller customer, who seems willing to bargain with them for their escape until Ellie stabs him before he can see she tests positive for infection, after which Joel murders him with his bare fists (after a brief flashback to Sarah) as Tess and Ellie look on. But that doesn’t get in the way of her expressing her resentment with defiant sarcasm. After Sarah joins Joel and Tommy in a pick-up with a quarter tank of gas, the three speed across the outskirts of Austin only to find the highway choked with traffic and the fields filled with soldiers. There’s kindness in the way the soldier tells the girl, “What if I told you that after we gave you some medicine, we’re going to find you your favorite food to eat?” but it’s a lie. When Joel and Sarah encounter a soldier, it quickly becomes apparent he’s going to kill them, presumably acting on orders to take extreme measures to contain the spread of the infection. When Tess finds herself in the middle of a FEDRA-Firefly street fight, she does her best not to get involved. The series begins in a slightly different place, opening with a scene set at the taping of a talk show in 1968 in which a smug interviewer talks to two scientists. (Could the sirens she’s been hearing all day have something to do with it?) And she’s helpful with the Adlers, the family next door with the nice dog and a senile, wheelchair-bound mother named Connie who never talks. [PlayStation 3 game in the summer of 2013](https://www.vulture.com/article/the-last-of-us-hbo-adaptation-review-non-gamers.html), The Last of Us drew breathless praise from reviewers, but that’s not particularly unusual. But the show also feels like its own creation, in large part because the series, and its well-chosen cast, emphasize the emotions at the heart of the game, including an interest in what place morality has in a brutal postapocalyptic world and a sense that it is connections between people that make life meaningful, even when surrounded by monsters.

HBO's super-sized series premiere saw Joel (Pedro Pascal) navigate trauma and find new purpose in Ellie (Bella Ramsey), plus some video-game callbacks.

People don’t love that sequence because it’s two minutes of CGI forming different shapes; they love it because it’s two minutes of CGI telling a story of sorts by establishing the geography of the series as a whole and of individual episodes, changing periodically to introduce new spots on the map or prepare us to return to little-visited places like The Pyke. While the idea of the spores rising into something resembling a city — i.e., a metaphor for how the world as we know it has been consumed by the mushrooms — is clever, it’s still ultimately just a bunch of shapes, and not interesting enough to go on for as long as it does. And we discover that Marlene needs Ellie to get to her other Fireflies out west because Ellie is somehow immune to the infection. Ellie is not as in command of the situation as Tess was, but we also quickly see that she is not afraid of being shackled to a wall by armed people who won’t explain why they want her. Then purpose arrives in the form of Ellie, a girl close in age to Sarah who needs passage out of the city. He is emotionally closed-off and efficiently brutal, and when his new charge Ellie is threatened by a soldier late in the episode, he has a PTSD flashback to Sarah’s death and turns absolutely savage in the way he beats on this man. [zombies](https://www.rollingstone.com/t/zombies/), though we do get the disgusting imagery of a dead body absorbed into a wall of fungus when Joel and the others traverse an underground tunnel late in the hour. (We are introduced to her surrounded by armed men after a beating, yet it is clear that she is in command of the room the entire time, and would likely have found a way out of her predicament even if a conveniently-timed Firefly bomb hadn’t given her an escape route.) He is existing rather than living, haunted by the loss of his daughter even more than the loss of everything else he knew, with few goals beyond getting through the next day. Before we get to that violent escape from Boston, we first have to establish the state of America 20 years after the zombie uprising. So I’ll be discussing this episode, and all the ones to come, solely on the basis of how it works as a television show. But before that, we have to watch civilization fall in the way it tends to in so many dystopian shows and movies. Instead, creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann are using those scenes to establish emotional stakes for Joel, and to make us deeply feel at least some of the pain he experiences when Sarah is shot by a panicked soldier on the night the world is wrecked.

Vanity Fair chronicles all the similarities between HBO's post-apocalyptic adaptation 'The Last of Us' and the video game it's based on.

From that point, both the show and the game’s versions of the scene play very similarly to one another, all the way down to the dialogue. The Last of Us TV series and video game open differently from one another, with the HBO adaptation presenting a wholly original scene set during a 1968 TV interview. The story of Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey), survivors of a society-shattering plague fighting to, well, keep surviving, requires very little invention, due to the original game’s cinematic nature.

The laughter from the studio audience dissipates as the epidemiologist gravely explains how a parasitic fungus can do more than simply kill its host. As science ...

The sight of a gun pointed at a young girl reminds Joel of the soldier that killed Sarah, and in a rage he rushes the soldier and beats him senseless. Marlene promises that if Ellie is delivered safely to the State House, the Fireflies there will provide him and Tess with everything they need to track down Tommy. Tommy, we learn, is a Firefly, too, and this was a major cause of tension between the brothers. Robert, apparently, was going to sell the battery to the Fireflies instead of Tess. The Fireflies detonated a car bomb and are trading bullets with the gathering FEDRA forces. But Marlene ( [Merle Dandridge](https://ew.com/person/merle-dandridge/)), the leader of this area's Firefly faction, appears confident that she's healthy. A filthy child wanders through an empty park overgrown with weeds, staring down the blasted ruins of Boston, where slumping highrises and the vestiges of infrastructure are choked with suffocating vines and wads of dirt-crusted stone. The trio's offroading leads them to a downtown in disarray. Ambulances and police cars blare in the streets, jets carve the clouds, and the radio reports of unrest in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta. [Pedro Pascal](https://ew.com/person/pedro-pascal/)) is the single father of Sarah (Nico Parker). A smirking host speaks with a pair of epidemiologists about the possibility of a pandemic. Joel and Sarah's quiet night celebrating his birthday is disrupted when Tommy calls to ask his brother to bail him out of jail.

It has been described as "comfortably the best adaptation of a video game ever made" that has been able to "break the curse" on gaming-TV crossovers.

"Through Ellie, we see its wonder. "Through Joel, we feel the heartbreak of this world," its chief television critic said. "The design is stunning: vistas of deserted, bombed out metropolises are matched by sprawling, Western inflected, shots of rural America." All this to an audience who may not traditionally engage with games. [there's some stand out acting in the series](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/jan/11/the-last-of-us-tv-finally-has-the-perfect-video-game-adaptation) acknowledging "it's a bold statement to make" but episode three "might well be one of the TV episodes of 2023". [gave it four stars, saying](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/reviews/the-last-of-us-review-pedro-pascal-hbo-b2258847.html) it's "undoubtedly a new landmark in the seemingly impossible task of adapting video games".

The zombie apocalypse depicted in the popular video game series and newly adapted HBO series “The Last of Us” derives from a mutation to a type of fungus ...

The zombie apocalypse depicted in the popular video game series and newly adapted HBO series “The Last of Us” derives from a mutation to a type of fungus called cordyceps. This should probably come as no surprise, though: Unlike in the games and show, cordyceps, as we currently know it, will not turn you into a zombie. Cordyceps is real, and some

The opening scene shows two epidemiologists speaking on a talk show in 1968, speculating about significant viral threats to human existence. One says viruses ...

We wanted to give us much reality as we could because the realer that is, the more we connect to the characters that are in that space playing around.” The game had spores in the air and people had to wear gas masks, and we decided, early on, that we didn’t want to do that for the show,” he said. Druckmann added: “With the more recently infected, we had a lot of conversation about what that vector could look like because there are certain things from the game that we took away. Mazin continued that the audience is more knowledgeable about pandemics these days than they were when the game first came out in 2013. This scene is pivotal to explaining how the outbreak in The Last of Us begins. The disease that wipes out most of humanity in The Last of Us is a fungus—a mutated microorganism known as cordyceps, which actually does exist in real life, but it can’t infect humans. “There’s a fungus that infects insects, it gets inside an ant, travels through its circulatory system to the ant’s brain and then floods it with hallucinogens, thus bending the ant’s mind to its will. The airborne spores that required gas masks to navigate are gone and instead, we have tendrils (which, by the way, will make your skin crawl from a visual perspective), potentially given the real-life COVID pandemic wherein a mask helps slows transmission. “So, if that happens—” the talk show host begins. [devour its host](https://stylecaster.com/watch-the-walking-dead-online-free/) from within replacing, the ant’s flesh with its own, but it doesn’t let its victim die. How did The Last of Us outbreak start? But in the end, we always win,” he explains, adding that fungus will be humanity’s undoing “in the most dire terms” and alludes to how it might begin.

While The Last of Us is deservingly praised for its human drama, the cordyceps help the franchise to also stand above other horror zombie productions.

In The Last of Us, human neurology is also altered to make the host more aggressive and more likely to bite and spread the fungi to new victims. While The Last of Us is deservingly praised for its human drama, the cordyceps help the franchise to also stand above other horror productions focused on zombies. But in the case of cordyceps, the result is terrifying. Since the planet's average temperature is rising, mutations that turn species more resistant to heat become more adapted to the environment. All the stories you heard about zombie ants eaten from the inside out by fungi are true, and the cordyceps are to blame. But there’s another reason why The Last of Us is such an exciting show.

Writer-producer Craig Mazin fact-checks the HBO premiere's eerie prologue ("It's real…"), plus discusses that perfect song choice at the episode's end.

And I needed it to have context. I needed to have be foreboding, and ideally, without being super on the nose, give me a comment. I needed to be meaningful. I need it to be a song that I kind of know but I haven’t heard in a long time. — from a purely scientific point of view, would they do exactly to us what they do to ants? “It’s real — it’s real to the extent that everything he says that fungus do, they do,” Mazin says. I needed to start a particular way so we can show that radio turning on. It was so upsetting to say to people, ‘We knew about this, it’s been there, now we’re gonna show you the night it finally happens.’ Not suddenly, but finally.” “And they currently do it and have been doing it forever. “If the world were to get slightly warmer, then there is reason to evolve,” he said. The Last of Us got underway Sunday night with an eerie cold open prologue that’s set on a talk show in 1963. An epidemiologist (played by the wonderful John Hannah, of The Mummy and Spartacus fame) gives a dire warning to an incredulous host (Silicon Valley’s Joshua Max Brener) about the looming fungal threat.

We zip forward to 2003, ten years before the opening of the game, and get a really nice sequence with Joel (Pedro Pascal), his brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna) and ...

In this case, the writers and producers had to condense a 15-hour game into a 10-hour season of television. It doesn’t always work out (many movie adaptations of video games aren’t exactly great), but things can’t stay always precisely the same as they were in the source. Deviating from Joel and Ellie’s story to tell another one in this universe — something that wouldn’t be possible for the game to do — is an exciting change. I enjoyed the first Sonic the Hedgehog movie, which is nothing like any of the games, and I’m interested to see how the Gran Turismo film shakes out, given that it’s about someone who’s very skilled at those games becoming a real-life racing driver. In the same way, a movie that adapted any of the core Mario games exactly would quickly fall flat. We get to see some of what Sarah’s day-to-day existence is like in the hours before the outbreak occurs. Changing how the infection spreads from spores to fungus, for instance, means that the actors don’t have to wear masks in some scenes. They hit the story beats they needed to while changing things up enough to surprise fans of the game and, at least in some places, make the narrative work better in another medium. Things that work in a novel may not in a film, and retelling a game beat-for-beat in a TV show doesn’t make a lot of sense. The cold open is a scene from a ‘60s talk show, which is immediately a new twist. Thanks in part to some of the different paths it takes, HBO’s adaptation of the 2013 game is off to a stellar start. Even when it’s a game that’s as cinematic as The Last of Us.

The first episode of HBO's The Last of Us recreated an iconic but horrifying moment from the games.

Tommy, of course, has seen a lot of death in his experience, and I think that what I was trying to get across was that I know what’s done; I can see this wound and I know what’s about to happen. But what I could see on the monitor and the way we were handling it, we were being really, really true to the game. In their fight to escape the horrors, they end up in the crosshairs of members of the military, who gun down Sarah. That heartbreak is a key component of the opening of the video game, so for those familiar, it should come as no surprise that the first episode of The Last of Us realizes those horrific moments in live-action. If you've yet to watch the show, head over to HBO Max now and see for yourself what happens. Anyone who's spent time playing the Naughty Dog game series knows that The Last of Us isn't your run of the mill zombie apocalypse story.

The first episode of The Last of Us on HBO establishes a new world for the video game series, with plenty of differences and similarities.

The two make a plan to find Robert and confront him in order to find out where the battery ended up. In the chaos, the guard points his rifle at Ellie, and Joel jumps in between them, unarmed, to try and talk him down. - There’s a clear shot of dust in the light in the first scene in Joel’s apartment. Fortunately, as it turns out, the guard is the one Joel provided pills to earlier in the episode. Tess escapes to see that a FEDRA vehicle has been bombed, and that a sniper is on a nearby rooftop, firing on FEDRA soldiers. A guard notices the child, and rushes to assist as he collapses. As Joel tries to explain that neither of them are infected, the soldier radios for instructions on how to handle the situation. Just as the monster is about to pounce, it’s shot by a soldier, who then keeps Joel and Sarah at gunpoint. As Sarah gets outside, Joel and Tommy careen onto the scene in their pickup truck, and Joel kills the infected woman with a wrench, without hesitation. Joel is painted as being forgetful and preoccupied with his work and his need to keep his family afloat, though has a clear lighthearted side, and is very open to playfully jesting with Sarah and Tommy. Post title credits, the episode then jumps ahead to a suburb of Texas in 2003, where single father Joel Miller (Pedro Pascal), a building contractor, and his teenage daughter Sarah (Nico Parker), are starting their day. One of the guests begins to talk about the very real concept of parasitic fungi – organisms that infect, kill, and control the body of their host to further spread their existence.

Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey lead this white-knuckle adaptation of the survival-horror gaming classic. Plus: Maternal is a fast-paced and stressful new ...

The scheming mayor’s young ward, Atari, flies to the island in search of his pet, and falls in with a canine pack voiced by the likes of Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton and Bill Murray. The second of three shaming films by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein reaches the outbreak of war and unambiguous news of Nazi atrocities against European Jews. This new series of the compelling documentary strand was filmed last spring but even then – as paramedics respond to cardiac arrests, epileptic seizures and nasty falls – waiting times were stretching out alarmingly. This catchup revisits the venue a year later to see how Covid affected its attempt to attract a new clientele and balance the books. Last February, the BBC aired a charming documentary about a struggling Clacton working men’s club, which was attempting to modernise thanks to the proprietor’s daughters. It’s essentially a post-apocalyptic drama, but thanks to its origins, the story has real white-knuckle jeopardy.

The "zombie virus" introduced in HBO's The Last of Us is unlike any you've ever seen before...

What’s so terrifying about this infection is that while we typically think of zombies as reanimated corpses that have been killed and then brought back to life by some sort of virus, the Cordyceps fungus technically keeps the host alive through this entire process, even though they aren’t conscious or in control. This stage of Cordyceps can occur anywhere between two weeks to a year after infection as the fungus takes further control over the host’s body. The next stage of infection is the Stalker, categorized by fungal plates that have begun to grow over the eyes. With that said, let’s dive into the different stages of infection we could see in this season of The Last of Us. Even though a newspaper found in the prologue of the game shows that the FDA tried to slow the spread by issuing food recalls, the incubation rate is so fast that hospitals quickly became overwhelmed at the onset of the outbreak. In this world, the Cordyceps fungus has mutated to infect the brains of humans, turning them into violent and bloodthirsty creatures intent on spreading the fungus as widely as possible.

Naughty Dog's Neil Druckmann was working on it to make sure it was faithful to the game. Chernobyl's Craig Mazin was writing it. It was on HBO. And when early ...

Fanboys made a big deal out of a quote where she said she was told not to play the game, implying that would make her performance unfaithful. While everyone remembers the breakout performance she gave in a few scenes as young Lyanna Mormont in Game of Thrones, she was a somewhat unknown quantity here. Hell, even one of the same actresses shows up to play the same role she had a decade ago (Marlene). HBO, even going through massive cutbacks in the David Zaslav era, has clearly unleashed the floodgates to give The Last of Us whatever budget it needs. Even getting my hopes way, way up ahead of the premiere of The Last of Us last night, even counting the series as one of my favorites in video game history, it actually exceeded my expectations. Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann was working on it to make sure it was faithful to the game.

A gold-domed building stands at the end of an overgrown, apocalyptic street. It's one of the first images in a trailer for "The Last of Us" and it's ...

In its first 25 minutes, the HBO adaptation of 'The Last of Us' achieves an energy the game longed to emulate.

For those with a strong attachment to the original work, the last decade was essentially building up to this moment, and what transpires in the TV adaptation is something close to a (The remake with more modern tech, released last fall, is only somewhat better.) Since this is a game, it’s also a sequence with a fail state. It’s really something to see a prestige TV show literally translate a scene from a game that was, in its own way, already emulating a prestige TV show. The plane crash, for example, is an invention for the show; in the video game, Sarah and Joel are knocked out when another car slams into theirs. The HBO remake of the outbreak sequence is striking in how it fully realizes what the original work was simulating. Playing the game, you can feel The Last of Us strain to use its elemental tools to achieve the kind of cinematic storytelling it’s going for, even as it’s ultimately successful. The camera assumes a view from the back seat, mimicking Sarah’s perspective as the family tries to get out of Dodge. (Though one could possibly argue Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men, which does a ton of world-building through background elements that the camera often glides by, came quite close.) The very first character you control is Sarah, whom you guide through a splendid sequence that evokes the feeling of being a child alone at home. John Hannah plays the more portentous of the duo, laying out the mechanics of what will eventually drive the apocalypse in this universe: mind-controlling fungus, previously a phenomenon contained to the insect world, pushed by climate change to evolve such that it makes the jump into human beings. As someone long familiar with the source material, the choice is exciting: the HBO version places a premium on leaving room to breathe. This wasn’t necessarily the case in the source material. However, back in 2013, the game was still doing its best with the tools it had within the context of its medium.

The zombifying fungal infection that wiped out humanity in The Last of Us is based on a very real set of parasitic fungi that hijack insects and compel them ...

Though not confirmed, fans widely [expect](https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/01/14/will-naughty-dogs-next-game-be-the-last-of-us-part-3/?sh=3d9fa9907d0f) Naughty Dog will announce a third title in the game’s main series in the future and Druckmann has openly stated he feels there is “more story to tell.” [said](https://collider.com/the-last-of-us-cordyceps-infection-explained-neil-druckmann-craig-mazin-comments/) was taken to avoid actors having to wear obstructive gas masks for large portions of the show. This is a major departure from what happens in nature, where zombie fungi actually steer well clear of the brain and manipulate behavior with chemical signals, Hughes said. This discovery was made fairly recently and after the first game had been released. Presently, details are scarce, though a small amount of Araújo said it was a “shame” fungal spores have been removed from the show, a decision showmakers Since its release it has been remastered, remade and spawned a sequel, The Last of Us Part II. Though based on a game, viewers don’t need to have [played the game](https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/01/15/do-you-need-to-have-played-the-last-of-us-to-watch-the-hbo-show/?sh=3fba09355f95) in order to follow or appreciate the show and it [is](https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2023/01/10/hbos-the-last-of-us-review/) reportedly a [faithful adaptation](https://www.theverge.com/23550842/hbo-the-last-of-us-neil-druckmann-craig-mazin-interview), albeit with some significant differences. [concept art](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-last-of-us-factions-multiplayer-gets-new-concept-art/1100-6510286/) has been released. The first episode of HBO’s The Last of Us was released on Sunday. The first game, released in 2013 by studio Naughty Dog, is one of the most De Bekker said it was great the infected are shown as living beings—rather than the less natural “undead” commonly deployed in the zombie genre—but that their aggressive behavior is not in line with what infected insects do.

"The Last of Us" showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann explained the opening scene on the official HBO podcast.

"One of the things that the opening does is place everything also within the context of a longer time span," said Mazin. This is part of the natural cycle of the planet. "I thought it was important to say to people, we are not a show that's asking you to share some of your own personal horror about the viral pandemic with us. "There was also a chance to address the elephant in the global room, which is we all just went through a viral pandemic," said Mazin. Starting the series this way has the simultaneous effect of keeping fans of the game on their toes and giving important context to newcomers to The Last of Us. [The Dick Cavett Show](https://www.youtube.com/@TheDickCavettShow), which is the scene that ends up in the series. It's a scene that's not present [in the game](https://mashable.com/article/the-last-of-us-hbo-game-vs-show); the cause of the Infected is explained through the game's opening credits news coverage montage and through various dialogue in cutscenes. The idea of this foreboding interview came from director Mazin, who spoke about the scene on Speaking with host and original Joel Miller voice actor Troy Baker, Mazin unpacked the cold open and how he had pitched two ideas for it to his fellow showrunner, The Last of Us creator Druckmann. Schoenheiss (played by Christopher Heyerdahl), who explains that fungal infection of this kind, though real, is not present in humans. And in the [HBO](https://mashable.com/category/hbo) adaptation, showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann kick off the anticipated series with an extra introduction to the game's context to really hammer this mushroom foe home alongside the idea that disasters don't just happen overnight, somebody always sees them coming. Neuman (played by John Hannah) speaks on an interview show about the prospect of a viral pandemic.

The Last of Us's Fireflies, led by Marlene, are freedom fighters and one of the main political players in HBO's post-apocalyptic drama.

The Fireflies also partner with smugglers and criminals to get the supplies they need to fight their war, ultimately putting innocent lives at risk. What makes The Last of Us such an exciting story is that, so far, there’s no absolute good or evil in the show. While the Fireflies fight for democracy, they don’t refrain from playing dirty to get what they want. This military organization is more concerned with the ends than with the means, leading them to crush the survivors and impose brutal restrictions on individual freedom. Episode 1 introduces us to Joel ( [Pedro Pascal](https://collider.com/tag/pedro-pascal/)), Ellie (Bella Ramsey), and Tess (Anna Torv), teasing their journey across a destroyed version of the U.S. [The Last of Us](https://collider.com/tag/the-last-of-us/) justifies all the hype surrounding HBO’s highly-anticipated zombie apocalypse drama.

Warning: This post contains spoilers for The Last of Us' premiere. I knew Pedro Pascal's Joel and Nico Parker's Sarah for all of, what, half an hour?

On a less lachrymose note: I enjoyed the extended peek into Joel, Sarah and Tommy’s life before everything went to hell. I do not love emoting and downright hate doing so in the presence of (most) people. And if that premiere was any indication, as the TVLiner who’s writing about the HBO show this season, I am in for a rough time.

SPOILER ALERT for TLOU Part I and Part II ! Only watch if you've played the games. Hope you enjoy! Like and comment below what you think of the show so far!

The trailer also spotlights Anna Torv, Nick Offerman, Storm Reid, and more. Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey as Joel and Ellie in The Last of Us ...

Merle Dandridge’s Marlene had previously teased Ellie’s relationship with Riley (Storm Reid) and the character appears in the trailer as well. Some of them include characters teased by the codes from Joel’s radio like Henry (Lamar Johnson), Sam (Keivonn Woodard), Bill (Nick Offerman), and Frank (Murray Bartlett). As we look forward to the next episode, HBO has released a trailer teasing what comes next for the trio, and how Joel and Ellie’s relationship will develop.

Pedro Pascal is Joel<p> Game of Thrones/The Mandalorian's Pedro Pascal stars. 20 Images. Bella Ramsey as Ellie<p> Game of Thrones' Bella Ramsey plays Ellie ...

And in the game, while we may have seen her give the fixed watch to Joel, we didn’t see the thought that went into heading to the city to get it repaired. And it also gives Druckmann, the writer behind all of this, the chance to improve upon his own work from a decade ago, an opportunity many writers would kill for. But that question perhaps hangs heavier over this adaptation than others, as The Last of Us’ story is one that could very easily be transferred to television without many tweaks and still be riveting. As Sarah, she’s constantly relatable and charming, and the tear that escapes from her eye as she struggles to remain calm while Tommy and Joel rush them out of town is a brilliant little touch. As with any adaptation, one of the main questions facing HBO’s The Last of Us has been how much it will deviate from the source material. And that shot of the elderly Adler, Connie, subtly showing symptoms in the background while Sarah reads a DVD box? From there, we see her going through the day-to-day motions – attending school, heading into the city to get Joel’s watch fixed, reluctantly spending time with the neighbors, and watching in horror as the pandemic begins to unfold. Of those 34 minutes, only about 10 are spent directly adapting scenes from the game – specifically, when Joel, Sarah, and Tommy (Gabriel Luna) are booking it out of town, and staying true to its source to the point of showing Joel electing to keep driving past a family begging for help. Firstly, some context for the virus that the characters are about to face, with a talk show clip from 1968 that has doctors explaining the threat that a certain type of fungus could pose to the human race (interestingly enough, the game saved its snippets of panicked news reports for after the initial intro, placing them over the opening credits that follow the title card). The end result – Sarah dying in Joel’s (Pedro Pascal) arms – is the same, but the journey to get there is a key example of how adaptations can build upon their predecessors while staying loyal to them. It’s one of the things that made The Last of Us the touchstone that it is, establishing an integral part of our protagonist’s motivations and setting the stage for one emotionally grueling game. In fact, it quite literally doubles the runtime of the intro;

This desperately moving drama set in a zombie-ravaged US is a phenomenal blend of horror and heart, with a cast that could not be more perfect.

Yet it manages to find humanity in the ruins – and that makes it worth the hardship. It is a gorgeous detour into the wider world; as many critics have said already, it might be one of the finest episodes of TV you will see this year. The fact that it manages to resist a sentimental approach and yet still finds such soul is a real achievement. What is left of society is in the hands of an authoritarian military regime fighting rebel groups classed as terrorists and it is bleak as hell. The Last of Us is violent and maudlin. That is the terrifying premise of The Last of Us (Sky Atlantic), another post-apocalyptic prestige drama in a TV landscape that, for understandable reasons, is stuffed with game-over scenarios.

Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for the first episode of The Last of Us.The harrowing opening to the acclaimed video game, · When Sarah ( ...

[The opening part of this first episode](https://collider.com/the-last-of-us-episode-1-recap-when-youre-lost-in-the-darkness/) is given more time to breathe and ensures the way the loss that tears through everything hits harder than it ever did before. Where they are united is in an emphasis on the small details of life that play out even when characters are unknowingly on the precipice of an event that will consume all they know. As will become even more profoundly felt throughout this first season, this is what matters when all else has been lost forever and what Joel will spend the rest of his life trying to recover. It is an understated way of reminding us how the quotidian details of a life, while commonplace when part of our daily rhythms, become something we ache and yearn for when they are ripped away from us. While the show is very much about the moments of spectacle, it devotes time to the minutiae as well. This emphasis strikes a better sense of balance and command of tone that will be familiar to those that have seen co-creator In addition to going a long way to distinguishing itself early on, it signals the beginning of a refreshing willingness to get more wrapped up in storylines that the game had only begun to scratch the surface of. [calm before the coming storm](https://collider.com/the-last-of-us-video-game-choices/) that we are allowed to float in for just a bit longer. Nothing would be more obnoxious than adding in scenes to an existing story that merely serve to wink to the audience and over-explain backgrounds that would better stand alone. The series takes that a step further in a way that feels earned as opposed to being just about providing exposition and backstory. Rather, it adds a texture that brings the world to life that much more even for the characters who won't survive to see it. [Nico Parker](https://collider.com/the-last-of-us-image-sarah-nico-parker/)) meets her end, it still is as painful and brutal as it was in the game.

Pedro Pascal stars as Joel Miller, a rugged black market smuggler who is tasked to transport precocious 14-year-old orphan, Ellie (Bella Ramsey), across a post- ...

[IGN](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Me0EadJQPvQ) recently created a comparison video that highlights the similarities between [The Last of Us episode 1](https://screenrant.com/last-of-us-sarah-miller-episode-1/) and original scenes from the video game. As The Last of Us continues on HBO, audiences can see how the show honors the beloved video game. Although the show's creators promised a faithful adaptation, trailers have shown new story elements not originally in the iconic video game. Even specific lines of dialogue are pulled directly from the video game. IGN's video uses side-by-side comparisons to showcase how faithful The Last of Us' premiere episode was to the original game. [The Last of Us](https://screenrant.com/tag/the-last-of-us/) television series, a comparison video shows just how game-accurate episode 1 truly is.

It's early days, but this video-game adaptation about the world being overrun by fungal zombies is expertly done. Newcomers and original gamers will be ...

I want to try to keep comparisons and mentions of the video game to a minimum and treat this as a separate entity – it has to work as a standalone, not just for fans of the game who know what’s coming – but so far, this series has done an amazing job of transporting the characters to screen. They accepted the mission, only to encounter the Fedra soldier Joel had sold pills to earlier in the episode. After Joel smashed their neighbour Mrs Adler’s head in with a spanner, he, Sarah and Tommy tried to escape the area in their pickup truck as all hell broke loose around them. Boston, 2023, and the world is wrecked. We heard about a disturbance in Jakarta on radio – ominous – and learned Joel works in construction – handy. Hello and welcome to The Last of Us episode recaps.

Phillip Kovats, who voices the male Clickers, is the Director of Sound at PlayStation, so it is no surprise that he was able to create the horrifying noise.

Now, it seems like the pair have reprised their role to voice the Clickers for the HBO adaption of The Last of Us. This includes Ellie’s voice actor, Ashley Johnson, taking on the role of Ellie’s mother, Troy Baker, the voice of Joel, becoming a member of David’s group and finally Merle Dandridge, who has reprised herself as the Firefly leader, Marlene. It is no easy task to find voice actors who can match their voices to the horrific appearance of the Clickers – but it appears as though these two nailed it.

Trouble never sounded so awesome. Pedro Pascal in The Last of Us Episode 1 Image via HBO. Editor's note: The below ...

The objective of the whole operation is to take Ellie to the State House, located outside the QZ. We soon find out what that means when Ellie tells Joel the radio came on while he was asleep, playing "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" by Wham, and he reacts with concern. So Ellie will be safe, as long as she remembers that they are the ones in charge and that she must obey and follow their lead. "I'm taking a ride with my best friend / I hope he never lets me down again / Promises me I'm safe as houses / As long as I remember who's wearing the trousers / I hope he never lets me down again" "We're flying high / We're watching the world pass us by / Never want to come down / Never want to put my feet back down on the ground" In the first part, the song tells of two people going on a journey together, the singer hopeful that this time will be better than the last: "I'm taking a ride with my best friend / I hope he never lets me down again / He knows where he's taking me / Taking me where I want to be / I'm taking a ride with my best friend"

The final scene in The Last of Us' first episode draws closer ties between Ellie and Sarah and their relationship with Joel.

It’s been known, as it has been said in many interviews by primarily Mazin and Druckmann, that the show will expand and alter the story in certain ways, and it’s clear from this scene alone that those changes are also going to be happening early on between This makes the scene even more intense, as we see Joel try and calm him down and barter with him in hopes of him letting them go. [the FEDRA soldier](https://collider.com/the-last-of-us-fedra-explained/) that Joel sells drugs to earlier in the episode. One of the more important additions is the connection that’s drawn between the FEDRA soldier that points the gun at Ellie and the one that ends up shooting Sarah. Most importantly is that this comparison can’t be drawn when talking about the original game, as there’s never really meant to be a line that could be drawn between that moment and Sarah’s death. While some of the changes in the premiere were more overt, there are a handful that many can point to as thoughtful expansions on the already great narrative.

This car sequence follows the trajectory of its analog in the video game but adds little moments of terror that accrue into something even stronger.

This car sequence follows the trajectory of its analog in the video game but adds in so many little moments of terror that accrue into something altogether more terrifying. A swarm of infected and panicked people burst through the window of a nearby movie theater (one whose marquee reads "Midnight Madness" in a bit of dark comedy). This prompts Sarah to suggest that there might not be anywhere safe, and that the infections could be happening everywhere. Viewers are not provided that level of certainty in the show, and that only adds to the suspense. Mazin's knack for heightening the uncertainty of the situation and peppering each moment with disorienting, chaotic violence makes this sequence all the more harrowing. Joel urges Tommy to drive south, the only direction without a clear obstacle, and he begins to plot aloud that they might be able to cross the border and find safety in Mexico. Joel concurs and suggests that this is probably why they got infected, implying that the Millers are likely safe, as they have not spent much time in the city. After a moment of consideration, Sarah recalls that their neighbors, the Adlers, would take Nana into the city so that she could go to the hospital. Just like in the game, Tommy wants to stop and help some stranded pedestrians, but Joel tells him to keep driving. This is not the case in the HBO version. [The Last of Us](https://collider.com/tag/the-last-of-us/) video game's prologue is the getaway drive during the initial outbreak of [the cordyceps fungus](https://collider.com/the-last-of-us-cordyceps-infection-explained/). Joel takes her by the shoulders and informs her that, "It's not just the Adlers," suggesting that whatever's happening is widespread.

Pedro Pascal plays Joel, a construction contractor turned hardened survivor, when a zombie apocalypse shatters the world. He winds up escorting Ellie, played by ...

But the real secret sauce of "The Last Of Us" is its storytelling style. Part of the reason is 19-year-old English actress Bella Ramsey, best known as Lady Mormont on "Game Of Thrones," who gives a star-making performance as Ellie. It's the best adaptation of a video game I have seen yet. The fungus starts to direct the ant's behavior, telling it where to go and what to do like a puppeteer with a marionette. A popular video game about surviving an apocalypse has been adapted into HBO's newest adventure series, "The Last Of Us." The zombies aren't created by a virus or pathogen but by a fungus.

The zombie apocalypse depicted in the popular video game series and newly adapted HBO series "The Last of Us" derives from a mutation to a type of fungus ...

In fact, the fungus has a long history of being used as a medicine, and has been utilized in a number of health supplements, including as an ingredient in Gwyneth Paltrow’s $200 smoothie. In the game version of “The Last of Us,” it is similarly transmitted by spores, though bites from infected zombies also transmit the infection. In HBO’s show, however, bites are the sole method of transmission for the fungus, removing the threat of airborne spores. Cordyceps ultimately kills its host and grows a tendril-like stalk from the corpse of the infected that can take weeks to grow in full. The zombie apocalypse depicted in the popular video game series and newly adapted HBO series “The Last of Us” derives from a mutation to a type of fungus called cordyceps. Cordyceps is a parasitic fungus that grows on, in and, later, out of insects.

From 1993's Super Mario Bros film which regularly features on lists of the worst films of all time, to the three Lara Croft Tomb Raider films released from 2001 ...

When a video game adaption is trading on the brand and reputation of its source material, not winning over the original fans and players can leave them with few other audiences. The characters and overall narrative were deemed too dissimilar to their original video game sources, leaving viewers frustrated. When the game was released in 2013 for the PlayStation 3, it received unanimous critical and popular acclaim and is considered one of the greatest video games of all time. Human civilisation has collapsed and is contained in quarantined zones after the spread of a highly contagious fungal infection that transforms victims into mindless and aggressive monsters. However, HBO did a lot of things right. A film was announced in 2014 before falling through. All the ingredients, you would think, needed for a television or film hit. When HBO announced in 2020 a television series was in the planning stages, this was met with some scepticism. It’s a long running joke just how terrible film and television series based on video games inevitably are. IGN – the list goes on. Frustratingly, there is no reason for this terrible track record. However, to say video game adaptations are often awful is an understatement.