Episode 1 - “When You’re Lost in the Darkness” | The Last of Us Podcast | Max

foreign because you have a greater purpose than any of us could have ever imagined welcome to the official podcast for HBO is the last of us I'm your host Troy Baker first a little setup to help contextualize these conversations The Last of Us is a new original series from HBO based on the critically acclaimed video game of the same name this game was made by the studio naughty dog and originally released in 2013 I'm joined by showrunners Craig Mason hello and Neil druckman hey Troy and as showrunners Craig and Neil have remarkable insight into how each episode was made and what went into shaping the key moments that were going to unpack but each of us have a unique perspective on this series because of our involvement with the game Craig writer and directors approaching as a fan who was so moved by his experience that he wanted to adapt it for television Neil co-president of naughty dog was one of the creators of The Last of Us and myself an actor who played Joel in the game now this is a weekly podcast which airs after every episode airs so this will be a very spoiler heavy conversation so we definitely encourage you to watch the episode and then join us for the conversation afterwards before we get too into the weeds maybe we could help kind of set up Neil your involvement and the games that we'll be referencing yeah so my name is Neil chuckman I was the creative director and writer on the original Last of Us game that came out in 2013. the genre was a Survival action game it's a story that takes place in a post-apocalyptic world that has been ravaged by A cordycept outbreak and we follow Joel Miller in the Boston quarantine Zone where Joel is a black market Smuggler and he gets tasked with transporting Ellie who's special for some reason across the United States we wanted to make an experience that really explored the unconditional love a parent feels for a child how can we construct a story that through its interaction through its characters through the relationship through music through everything we have at our disposal make you feel the wonderful and horrible things that can come out of love yeah you know when we wrote that show Bible show Bible is just a long outline basically right there on the front page I think we said this is a love story and that's not good because what we wanted to dig into is the theme that came out of the game that mean Naughty Dog Neil's company made The Last of Us they made The Last of Us Part Two they made Left Behind which came out in between those two games throughout those games and I think throughout our series we will continue to come back to the notion that love conquers all and that's problematic that we think of love as this solely positive thing a beautiful thing and it is but love especially the love that a parent has for a child is primal and it can lead to the most intense fear and the most intense fear can lead to the most intense Behavior including violence and if you scratch the surface of tribalism racism xenophobia you will find love is not always good and when we talk about the shown as we go Episode by episode we're gonna meet people that love each other over and over and over and we're going to see this Dynamic play out over and over and over what brought this about was this kind of the agents talking to each other was this a Twitter romance like what what how did this come to be actually it's our uh mutual friend for all three of us Shannon Woodward so while working on last of us too she's one of the cast members of that game she made an introduction for me and and Craig and you know at the time I'd already had one failed uh version of trying to adapt this into a movie where it just to put simply it was too big too big for a movie script and no matter how hard I tried I just could not crack it so there are still conversation about is there no way to approach it a different way and so that conversation is happening and then I eventually watched Chernobyl and I'm Blown Away by it it's one of the best TV shows I've ever seen and then I found out oh it's this guy that Shannon introduced me to that I haven't had a chance to have lunch with yet so I immediately want to meet Craig now that I've seen Chernobyl after I played The Last of Us I was just in awe of the game I was in awe of Neil I didn't know him so he just seemed like this mysterious Sage on a mountain somewhere that I could not approach but as the years go on I become friendly with Shannon I hear that she's working on the Last of Us Part Two I'm obsessed and she says you know you and Neil would be best friends and I'm like awesome how do I do that and she goes well well you know he's sort of shy he's kind of hard to get through to him and he's really busy and I'm like okay well I would just love you know at any point to just sit down with him and just tell him how much I love what he's done and at the same time Sony had been talking to me about hey here are all these games we have which one of these do you think could be a good game to adapt and I'm like um I don't see The Last of Us on here and they're like that one Neil's doing that one I'm like I get it and then around the time that Chernobyl came out the adaptation rights for The Last of Us reverted back to naughty dog and Neil and he saw Chernobyl and it all just kind of came together uh and we meet up for lunch next to naughty dog and we just chat and compliment each other I get to gush about his work and then you know he's just I'm really curious about the process of how he was able to make this TV show at HBO I'm a huge HBO fan like the wire The Leftovers the six feet under some of my favorite shows of all time uh so I asked them just like offhandedly you know let's just assume we wanted to make this as a TV show at HBO what would that look like and he said oh it'd be very easy we go across the street and we meet with them and I tell them I want that to be my next project and we make it my next project so I'm going to this meeting not knowing what to expect so I just kind of sit there and I let I I follow Craig's lead and he launches into a pitch for the story for for the executives that are in the room and then I'm like okay do I jump in do I help out I was like What if I don't what if I just lean back in my chair and watch someone else pitch the story that I've pitched a million times and I'm finding that he's going through it beat by beat and first I'm impressed just how well he knows it I'm being moved by a story that has become so wrote to me at that point because I've I've told this pitch so many times and I'm I'm paying attention to this emotional reaction I'm having and again I feel the passion this guy has for the material and then he finishes the pitch and then uh Casey stands up and he's like well Craig I told you whatever your next project is has to make you float this is clearly it and they turned to me and he's like it was a pleasure meeting you let's make this show and we all shake hands right then and there and then We're Off to the Races making this TV show let's talk about the cold open and uh Dr Newman you're also an epidemiologist I presume the prospect of a viral pandemic keeps you up at night as well no no no all right well that's our show no mankind has been at war with a virus from the start sometimes millions of people die as in an actual War but in the end we always win but you uh just to be clear you you do think microorganisms pose a threat or in the most dire terms bacteria no you like saying no yes not bacteria not viruses so fungus yes that's the usual response fungi seem harmless enough many species know otherwise because there are some fungi who seek not to kill but to control who came up with the idea of doing this it was Craig okay when you pitch that to him yeah are you going well I pitched it twice okay shifted twice the first time I pitched it he was like or we can you know we can do the video because there's this great video you can see it on YouTube it's planet Earth you can watch this beautiful demonstration of how cordyceps Works how it takes over an ant it's quite horrifying and it tells you everything you need to know so what we had decided to do was make our own little video like that which is interesting but not necessarily compelling it was a bit of an intellectual argument okay you're being kind it was kind of boring it was a little boring it was a little boring it was a little boring to watch and it was a little bit like oh we're in social studies class and I had written this thing actually like early early as if I had found a transcript of an old Dick Cavett from 1969 yeah and I remember showing it to neoni was like this is a little weird and then we we go make the whole show and we're about I don't know three or four weeks away from rapping and I'm like dude I am not thrilled with this opening and so I sent it to him again and this time he was like seeing the final version seeing it edited I loved it as a fan it catches you off guard and and already signals to you everything you think you know about this right you don't know about this yes and and I thought it achieved what we were trying to achieve with that other opening in a much more effective dramatized way that starts giving you clues or like theories of like maybe this is how it started we're not saying definitively but it's a pretty good theory yes because then you're going to these like quote unquote mundane moments with the Miller family and this elevated all those scenes because now because of that opening there's a tension that's just like hanging in the air so when they're having breakfast it's tense when a driving school it's tense when she's in that watch shop everything became more tense and more captivating because of this opening you contextualized it yeah yeah and there was also a chance to address the elephant in the global room which is we all just went through a viral pandemic and 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 we're not drafting off of it we're here to tell you there's actually something much worse that Viral pandemics uh will happen again they have happened before there will be millions of people who will die again this is part of the natural cycle of the planet but what has not happened yet is a fungal pandemic and if it does it is we're not making that up it's going to be terrible and possibly unrecoverable because fungi are far more complicated and far more integrated into the life and death cycle of the earth than viruses are so we wanted to sort of acknowledge that everybody went through this and then dig in a little underneath it and say sorry to tell you but there's something worse behind it viruses can make us ill but fungi can alter our very Minds there's a fungus that infects insects gets inside an ant for example travels through its circulatory system to the ant's brain and then floods it with hallucinogens thus bending the ants mind to its will because you're making this for two audiences right there's there's two people that are sitting down and and so this feels like it's taking people to have no idea what the story is about and and helping to contextualize what the story is really about but then also saying to the people who have played the game get ready yeah be on your toes yeah and I think that it is value added for people who have played the game because I've played the game and I was always sort of on alert for that you know if something comes in that's wildly different and new would it feel to me as somebody played the game like I'm getting to see awesome new stuff as opposed to just different or pointlessly different one of the things that the opening does is Place everything also within the context of a longer time span it was important to me that this opening take place many many decades before cordyceps comes around because I like the idea that these things that come and get us don't just show up when we need them to because we're starting to air a television show somebody knows 30 40 50 years it's a slow burn today happens to be the day it finally happens but it was waiting out there and we were told and that's a very you know kind of Chernobyl thing that I'm obsessed with is the idea that we know things and we all agree that they're going to happen and then we pretend they're not for what this show is really about you really took your time to show a single infected you know what I mean yeah like the first time that you do see someone infected it's it's the wonderful you know Neighbor Next Door yes Nana which was horrifying good and the the thing to me that was so horrifying is this is to me it's not a cliche it's a very useful tool When Animals pick up on stuff before we do yes that moment with dog it's just terrifying I remember experiencing the prologue of the game and when that neighbor shows up and Joel has to shoot him it's terrifying and we thought well we have an opportunity to to meet that person first if you know somebody and you see them smiling and talking to you and then you see what they look like it's that much more scary and then the question is well what's scarier than a middle-aged next door neighbor guy how about an incredibly elderly person who can't even move right because once the fungus gets inside we like the idea that it could just simply root around whatever had gone wrong in your brain and led to Catatonia or Parkinson's or any of these kind of neuromuscular disorders and essentially started to animate her again that seemed the scariest of all there's a contradiction of like the infected being beautiful and Incredibly scary at the same time and here's the weird contradiction of like it's fixing her yeah and it's fixing what's broken inside of her right but it's taken her mind with it yes that this person who essentially was the kind of you forget about them right then she tries to feed her Jello why am I talking to her she's deaf she's kind of comic we made point of making this sort of joke about how she couldn't even eat biscuits all right by the way a lot of little details are going to come back around we don't want to give spoilers but I will say this careful viewers of this episode will be rewarded repeatedly because little bits of breadcrumbs have been planted that are going to pay off later in interesting ways both of you have a separate attachment to these characters and for you Neil this is a story that you helped create you helped shape these characters how do the two of you create a new story that remains true to the one that brought you Victoria right now so Craig and I started working while we uh we are at Naughty Dog finishing Last of Us Part Two so Craig would come over for lunches and we would start breaking the season and I think one of the first things we did is just talk about what stays what are the things that like we should absolutely keep and like the outbreak being from Sarah's POV that felt like an important thing to keep and I think we just started putting a bunch of pins and things and then you started looking at well where are the gaps where are the things that we felt like the game is doing something that would not work on the show and usually it was surrounded with a lot of action because for the game you need that kind of gameplay and you have to have enough gameplay to understand how it works and works on an instinctual level to create certain emotions that you just cannot create in this other medium but there's a lot of other Pros that you could do you could expand on things like when we're saying you're going to be with Sarah for a while right you could really stretch that out and get to see more of the Dynamics of this family in a way we could not do in the game but you're coming in it as a fan yes right so how do you take the story and translate that story into a medium that it was not originally intended for I really enjoy playing stealth based action games always have and The Last of Us provided some really cool stealth based stuff and then obviously there's sequences where it's just full on crazy and then completely separate from that was the experience I had of watching what I I hesitate to use the word cutscene because it diminishes I think what you guys did which was to create a passively experienced work of art with narrative and character relationship that I could watch like a show or like a movie it's more than a cut scene is a non-interactive moment in the game where you get to watch like a TV show a sequence that's played in front of you cinematically usually it's one to five minutes long yes so when I sat down with Neil part of that process of like okay what do we keep was really to me it was all about figuring out what I experienced passively that I loved and the very first thing I remember Neil and I talking about that was okay let's step aside from the the way the game works and let's just talk about what we would do and I remember we were talking about how to quickly and effectively dramatize how different Joel was after 20 years we meet him we see this traumatic event occur we jump ahead in 20 years how do we show in this the most visceral way unburdened by teaching people how to walk move jump and crawl right how do we show how different he is and that's when we came up with this notion that After experiencing his daughter dying in his arms and how broken that made him 20 years later he's the one who has no problem picking up another dead body of a child and dumping it into the fire because he's closed off completely the mirroring of that for me when I'm watching the episode because you go from a father holding the child to the 20 years later you start on this boy walking mindlessly almost seeking Asylum what if I told you that after we gave you some medicine we're gonna find you your favorite food to eat would you like that and then we'll get you some new clothes and toys as many as you want to play with it's just a little needle you're safe I thought we did a really good job there because there's all the stuff we want to teach people just like you know in the video game you teach them but you have to teach them in a different way because they need to move around here we're not moving around we're watching and we wanted to show that fedra was not an easy villain but also certainly not the good guys we wanted to establish the scanner because that scanner comes back later just a little simple practical thing like that matters a lot when you're watching to show what it means when the light turns red and what the cost is when the light turns red right yeah this is actually a great example of a change made from the game because the equivalent of the scene in the game is right after the 20 years later you you are walking around as Joel and you see people lined up right getting scanned and want them test positive and gets shocked right which lets you it tells you a lot about how fedra operates and what the scanner is which also again serving similar functions but in a more immersive way that that feels it feels like something you could miss as well as also because you'll just walk you can't just walk past her it is something that is happening as you're moving it is a pedestrian borderline banal thing like people get lined up people get pulled up people get test positive people get shot which is a tonal thing yeah because the other thing is the when you are playing a game I I can't necessarily explain why but somebody getting shot in the street in the qz and then other people going move along and people move along feels acceptable when you are shooting live action with people people it if someone gets shot in the street people are going to scream and there's going to be blood and brains and horror and It's upsetting and children are going to cry and people are going to run it it's just a different thing so we have to start to think also about violence because violence in video games is far more palatable I think yeah one thing like if we want to talk about things we didn't get right yes um what this episode one used to be episode one and episode two that's right 100 like it used to just end on the 20 years later and seeing the kid and seeing Joel throw the kid in the fire and that was it that was episode one why the change well HBO I think correctly and this is where you want good partners at the network right like I always feel like the best network executives are there to honestly represent the audience that's what they can do best they're not supposed to write things for us they're supposed to tell us how they feel and we we are supposed to have faith in their proxy ability and in this case our proxies there Casey blois and Franny orsi were saying it's not necessarily going to make me want to come back right like the whole season the whole story of The Last of Us is about Joel and Ellie well if we only get like a little glimpse of her at the end of episode one we don't bring them together and we don't understand their journey and it just ends with a kid dying and then another kid dying and then credits people may just not want to come back and it was important for them because they loved the show right and they were like we need we it will hurt all of us in our hearts if they don't want to come back and in hindsight the feedback makes complete sense they were right um right because like we we had like a version where we we ended on Ellie and looking out the window and you see that she's changed like oh there's a mystery here but like we haven't established why you should care about this kid we care about this kid because we know where this journey is going how important this kid is and it's like I remember when I worked on the game this was always like a test for people I would be like what's the inciting incident and then be like oh when Sarah dies obviously I'm like nope it's when Joel runs into Ellie that's the thing that changes his life right and and I'm like oh we didn't get to that moment we have to get to that moment that's the start of this journey so that's why I get in hindsight that feedback makes complete sense and the episode is so much better for it yep I mean the plot of our show obviously is going to relate very closely to the plot of the game and if you you want to boil the plot of the game down to its simplest it's man takes girl from A to B I I could even the log line is I need a battery is so the question is like we really did in the game because you're spending so much time in the beginning learning how to play the game could not put plot on you if they put a bunch of plot on you it would have felt like oh my God I but I'm still learning how to duck I'm still learning how to listen and throw a bottle we didn't have that constraint and we felt it was important to create an urgency for our protagonist that was not at all connected to Ellie that meeting Ellie was something that interrupted this urgency right and that that urgency in which in this case was it was sort of a simple invention but I think it works pretty well he talks to Tommy via this we created this kind of like uh you know work of YES Network of ham radio operators which made sense to us it felt realistic and Tommy and he would exchange messages and he hasn't heard back from Tommy in three weeks and he's panicked and he needs to go save his brother because and that even of itself is an interesting thematic choice for Joel that gets paid off but in his desire to get a truck battery to put in a truck to be able to drive to get out to Wyoming he gets thrown into the path of this essentially this crime that occurs between Robert and Tess and Joel what do you want I want you to forget this ever happened done don't do that what it's just a truck battery I paid you for it you sold it to someone else and you spend my money I mean you think I've never done [ __ ] like that my guys [ __ ] you up you're so discipline them it cut off her finger or whatever the [ __ ] you want I don't care that you're [ __ ] guys from the onset you have different characters Robert is different yep test is different test is different yep of course he's played by Anna torf there's a hardness to her yeah that really really speaks to this version yeah there was one woman that we have in the game where you can see that Tess is the one who's leading Joel and Joel is the muscle there's some stuff that makes me angry that that Pedro does because it's so good even his reaction when Tess says he got the battery look that's lost then [ __ ] like this is gonna happen now we just shake it off and we go get our cards back or the battery I need the battery test truck's no good without one and if I don't get to Tommy soon he's gonna die out there his reaction sells the desperation of a simple thing I need you to take a breath who do you sell it to don't know well where is he don't know yet but we're gonna find out quietly understand now I promised Robert that you wouldn't hurt him but I would very much like for you to hurt him so let's go hunt that [ __ ] down and get our battery and our truck and then we'll go find Tommy all right she's kind of treating him like a child and that makes him feel so dangerous and I I love that I love that dynamic between him like she's one of the few that can control him I'm so glad he's a Joel Whisperer that was that was that scene was Anna's first day oh Jesus and and I was directing and she was very kind of like anxious and Hyper and she kept telling me this is this is just first day Anna it's first day Anna and and I thought well first day Anna is is pretty damn good because she nailed exactly what Neil's talking about the notion of Joel as a little bit of a Frankenstein monster uh it is more dangerous to know that there is something volatile in him that if she doesn't calm him down he will go out there and hurt people now this is not the same man we saw at the beginning of the episode something profound has changed what is interesting about the relationship as it progresses and we will see more next week when hopefully people return to watch the next episode that Neil directed that relationship is more complicated than we think but the way she gently took control of that situation tells us everything we need to know she is smart she is insightful she cares about him clearly there's a love there which is quite beautiful and she is the only person that ultimately I guess she's been sort of using him uh when she wants to let the genie out of the bottle she lets you she says I would very much like for you to hurt him well that's how you know that when the time is right and she's going to release him and that was a command yes so here's what I want you to do yes we're working our way kind of towards the end and there's there's another Divergence speaking to of four we just kind of stumble upon Ellie yep we really get the opportunity to establish Ellie well beforehand we see this unique relationship that Marlene has and and the involvement there so can I go no I won't tell anyone about any of this I swear where are you gonna go back to Federal military school you that anxious to be a soldier you think I chose that place they put me there when I was a baby it's for Orphans they didn't put you there I did I'd love to talk a little bit more about where that came from and sure why not just stumble upon Ellie like we did in the game part of the reason we would have had to wait that much longer to see Ellie yes and also there was something in the game that felt natural about discovering her in this process as Joel because you are Joel in the game but we are not Joel watching the show yes and so it felt almost diminishing if we just happened to just land on this kid we wanted a chance to meet her alone and we also thought we had an opportunity to explain something interesting that Neil couldn't have done in the first game because he hadn't done left behind yet um yes so here's the sudden so what happened to Ellie and who's Riley and why was Marlene the person that found them and also how does Marlene even know her name and what does this mean that Marlene put her there there's this Rich history that we are hinting at that will become perfectly plain and clear as the season goes on and the relationship between Ellie and Marlene in the game was sort of like look just take this kid I need you to take this kid it's important here you get the sense that Marlene has this profound connection to Ellie which will be something that we're going to pay off and pull on quite a bit later on one of the biggest changes between the game and the show is the game is hardcore that everything you're experiencing everything you're seeing is either completely from Joel's perspective Ellie's perspective or for a tiny bit Sarah's perspective right that's it in the game Tess tells you that she got jumped by Robert Smith here you get to see it it's hinted at the in the game that there's a romantic relationship between Joel and Tess and here we see her crawl into bed with him like again we don't explicitly say it but it's like it's pretty much there right you know that at some point Marlene found Ellie and she found a particular circumstances here you get to see more of that of like okay how was she held how did they decide to eventually leave with her like you're coming into the game post all those things here we get to dramatize and see them so in a way this is doing like it's making the game richer because these events that are referred to offhandedly you get to experience what they were like the way the fireflies show up in this series is very different than the game so let's let's talk about let's talk about the fireflies for a minute well I would drive Neil crazy with my questions I mean I would like okay how does how do you join the fireflies how do they know who to trust how many are there where do they live is there one building is there multiple buildings graffiti inside if they exist outside all of these questions I'm constantly asking these questions often we I can refer to facts like for example we had some information of how Riley was recruited so we could talk about that I'm like and then I would tell them here are things we've talked about while making the game but never made it into the game so that's that this was our thinking this was our internal logic and here are actual facts of what we saw in the game so whenever we could we would lean into the facts and then whenever there was a chance to elaborate or make something even more grounded we would jump at that opportunity so we have to talk about Bella Ramsey who of course plays Ali you know we always said like Neil and I said we know the character of Ellie as it was inspired by the game we have put that into the page we are going to put that into our actors as we direct they will perform they don't need to play the game and see it they probably shouldn't and yet they just had elliness that combination of wisdom and Sass and fear you guys go out there a lot I guess when was the last time maybe a year what's it matter but you know where to go so we're gonna be okay so what's the deal with you anyway you some kind of bigwig's daughter or something like that but I love that scene because when he wakes up she's afraid she doesn't want to show him she's afraid but she asks questions that indicate that she's afraid which catches him and this is where Pedro's amazing leaning forward to put her at ease because no matter how closed off he insists he is he's not well he's a dad and he will always be a dad always be a dad it just kind of comes out right there's this he can't help himself but he's certainly not gonna be demonstrative about it he's certainly not going to go over there and say listen it's going to be he's not going to be okay comfort her this is as good as I'm getting and if he had she would have been like oh hey right who the [ __ ] are you but of course then after he does that she turns around and gives him [ __ ] because she's Ellie and and she's paying him back for him being a jerk when he walked in the room in the first place there's another moment specifically between Joel and Ellie right towards the end they come out of the tunnel you're going to be [ __ ] me okay let's talk this out turn around yeah get on your [ __ ] knees hold on what I [ __ ] tell you man I said stay the [ __ ] home get on your knees Ellie pulls at the knife she stabs him the use of flashback is is a really dangerous it's a dangerous trap yes right most people I think use a flashback as a cheap way of exposition right that's not what this was the flashback was a flashback you you need to see what's happening inside of his head like a like a traumatic flashback like a proper one and you see that this band is PTSD yes and he doesn't get angry there's no even sense of survival it is pure rage well it's it is pure rage when it manifests but right before it's pure rage if you look at Pedro's face and he's so wonderful in this moment it's this crushing sadness before the anger is mourning and grief you can see his heart breaking all over again and in this he's very close in the frame and I remember on that day we had gone through a bunch of those things and we were still you know kind of finding Joel because it was early you know in the process and making this first episode and one of the things that I kept saying to him was was because you're so naturally tough and Gruff and masculine and Joel the more you can show me a scared sad frightened kid inside of you the more I will connect with you and feel everything else and he that was the moment where he came to me goes I got it I got it I got it that's it there's Joel right there it's that moment before he goes crazy and then when he goes crazy I understand why it's not to punish this guy yes it's because his heart is just blown open then there's also the moment after and then there's a moment after to me the moment is I did it again yep that's almost look of apologetic and realizing I just did this in front of a girl and he looks and then there's the look from Ali yeah it's my favorite that's my favorite any 14 year old girl yep would be mortified by what she saw and she's leaning in yep look earlier in the episode when Joel hits the old lady in the head with the wrench Sarah is horrified and cries even though that woman was trying to kill her basically and she says you killed her she can't believe what she just saw she just saw her father murder someone Ellie sees something that isn't one swing and he and that guy wasn't even threatening Joel's life no and he beats him to death over it like punches him over and over and over and Ellie is activated and this is going to Echo forward this is something that Neil and I talked about a lot which was understanding where Ellie goes and understanding what the connection is between Joel and Ellie that there's a thread between them that is more than just I used to have a kid and you're also a kid there's something else that there's the connection already between Joel and Ellie that is different from his connection with his own daughter and perhaps potentially stronger and certainly potentially more dangerous right there's a a looking up to what this man is capable of yeah that Ellie wants for herself I want to pick on one one last thing and Neil I know how much music means to you with this story specifically so we end the episode on the Depeche Mode yeah never let me down again yeah never let me down again there's a couple of different things throughout this this series that people will see where music plays a part and there's different versions of it obviously we established there's a Code of music which is really cool that again I love that Ellie picks up on the fact that this is this is what this means and she kind of tricks Joel into thinking that I love the juxtaposition of a song that's 80s and happy it's signaling something we're moving this thing horrible where did that song Come From There is a grand tradition of 80s music in The Last of Us and The Last of Us Part Two and 80s means trouble I love that line because one of the things that Neil has done so beautifully in the work at naughty dog that he does is hurt you for the things you love and taking things that are bright and beautiful and cheery and optimistic and getting this dark undertone and a lot of 80s music is Chipper and fun but never let me down again what I was looking for was an 80s song that felt at least initially like oh it's an Up Tempo 80s song but lyrically had a Darkness to it yeah and what it's about is I'm taking a ride with my best friend now what he was singing about was drugs right it was a song about addiction well Ellie's about to take a ride with her best friend and Joel is a dangerous man and Joel's about to take a ride with his best friend he doesn't know if she's his best friend yet and she's a dangerous little girl and the whole point is you're never going to let me down now they are going to let each other down and then they're not and then they are and then they're not and that that I thought was a really interesting weigh in we are going to hear that song again I won't tell you when or how but it will be in a very different way and in a very different context we are just at the start of their journey together the music comes up and this episode ends with the huge reveal that Ellie has a bite mark she tests positive on the fedra scanner and she may not be showing signs of being infected now but Joel and Tess know that it's just a matter of time so wherever we're going we're definitely heading into trouble which I can't wait to talk about in next week's episode Craig thanks a million man for being here thanks Troy and of course the same to you Neil goodbye we will talk to you both next week [Music] this has been the official podcast for HBO is the last of us I'm Troy Baker joined as always by showrunners Craig Mason and Neil druckman you can stream new episodes of the HBO original series The Last of his Sundays on HBO Max and then this podcast episode will Air after that episode airs and you can find that wherever you listen to podcast please like and follow HBO's The Last of Us on Instagram Twitter and Facebook and remember when you're lost in the Darkness look for the light this is the official Companion podcast for HBO's The Last of Us hosted by Troy Baker our producers are Elliot Adler Bria Marriott and Noah camuso Darby Maloney is our editor the show is mixed by Hannis Brown our executive producers are Gabrielle Lewis and Barry Finkel production music is courtesy of HBL and you can watch episodes of The Last of Us on HBO Max

Channel: Max

Views: 598,479

Keywords: hbo, hbo max, hbo max movie, hbo max series, hbo youtube, hbo max youtube, hbo max trailer, hbo trailer, hbo video, hbo max originals, the last of us, the last of us hbo, the last of us game, pedro pascal, bella ramsey, joel, ellie, mutated fungus, fungus, post-apocalyptic, cordyceps, tess, the last of us series, the last of us show, the last of us live action, the last of us podcast, the last of us explained, the last of us interview, Craig Mazin, Neil Druckmann

Id: -SEYmfA1GSY

Length: 43min 37sec (2617 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 15 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/slowmosloth]

Hosted by Troy Baker (Joel's voice actor in the game), and today's episode featuring showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann (game director).

I'm personally really looking forward to these podcasts and listening to the behind the scenes stuff going on. Really interesting to hear how Craig and Neil met and pitched the show to HBO.

[u/AstroZombie1]

Oh awesome I fucking loved the post episode podcasts on Chernobyl.

[u/Yummie23]

Just finished the episode and as a massive fan of the game, I have to say you guys absolutely nailed it out of the park. Truly incredible work. You managed to actually pull off a video game adaptation and not make it cringe and lame.