'The Last of Us' Season Two Trailer Reaction
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Greetings, and welcome to House of R, a Ringerverse podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Mallory Rubin. She is here to save who she can save. It's Joanna Robinson, my favorite yearning tendril. Oh, baby, we're back. The mushrooms love, too. We've never talked about Last of Us in person together. Oh, my God. I know.

Thrilling. Such a treat. Such a joy. We are here because we have the privilege of talking about a new trailer for the impending Last of Us Season 2, which is a mere five weeks away. We are five weeks away from the April 13th premiere of the seven-episode second season, which will, not enough, begin to adapt the fabled second game.

We're getting... Yes. The much-discussed Last of Us Part II. Indeed. We're going to dive into... We're going to go kind of just quickly through the chronology of the trailer and go beat by beat here. Let's do a quick little bit of context for people before we start. No spoilers coming on the second game because... We haven't played the game. We have no spoilers yet. I very much look forward to playing the second game. I loved playing the first game when we covered the first season together. That was such a joy. I can't wait to play the second game. I am, like, frankly...

and delighted that I have not had this spoiled to me. It feels like every... I was talking to Steve before we started. Every, forget week, day, like minute I wait, I am tempting fate and risking stumbling into a spoiler mine on the internet. But so far, I have remained pure,

And that's a wonderful feeling. So we do know things like character names, groups that will play a key part, stuff like that. Vibes. Vibes, definitely. A lot of grim essence. Yes. Tattoos. Yes. Guitars. Guitars.

Guitar emblems. Moths. All sorts of stuff. So we have some like vague sense of the players involved. Yes. But we don't know the beat by beats of what happens in this story. We're excited to find out with all of you when we cover it on House of R this year. House of R. Last of Us. Deep Dives. Every fucking week. Should I wear my Joel jacket every week we pod? Yes. Even though I think we'll be back to remote podding by then and I would just be wearing a jacket in my home. Should I get like a mushroom hat?

You should. You know, Joel has different outerwear on in this trailer, but it won't dampen my enthusiasm for that jacket. I think that means you need a new jacket. Flint and Tinder. Yeah, maybe that is probably what it means. Yeah, I have an addiction to outerwear, as you know. Joanna, any other big picture thoughts here or quick table setting notes before we dive into the trailer? This is our second trailer.

that we've gotten for this season, but sort of much more revealing, I would say. Yes, we got that incredible electric teaser trailer that was set to future days, Pearl Jam,

We just made clear that we have not played the second game, but even we know that that is like the song in the universe. And I think when they might not be able to use because they changed the timeline of the show versus the video game. I feel like they're not going to be stopped by that. And I hope they're not stopped by that. OK, like let's just pretend that in the universe of The Last of Us with this altered timeline and the TV scape versus the game scape, any better put out future days at a different time. Let's just go with that. Sure. Sounds great.

They can at least use it, even if they don't use it as, like, something that someone plays on the guitar or sings necessarily. Yeah. They can use it on the soundtrack. That's true. In a way that will really impact, definitely, players of the game. We love this show. Even, like, Mallory played through the first game. I did, like, a watch through because I don't play video games that much. But, like, I really – this is just, like, an incredible, incredible show. One of our favorite things that we've ever covered. Genuinely. Yeah.

we're so excited for season two and I'm so excited for both. I know that there are images in this trailer and the previous trailer that people who play the game are like, oh my God, I know exactly what that is. But what we're also really excited about are all the adaptive changes because that was some like...

the best stuff in season one was the stuff that they added. So... And Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin as collaborators on the television show, obviously Druckmann is the overlord of Game Land for Naughty Dog, are so...

incredibly open and candid about their collaborative process and their creative process and did such a fantastic job in season one taking us into the thinking behind A Given Change and it's just not only a fascinating insight into how they work together but how

how Mason's thinking about making a show, how Druckmann is thinking about what works in one medium but maybe needs to be tweaked or shifted in some way to live in the prestige TV era. So the conversations around Last of Us as a television show were, I thought,

genuinely like intellectually and creatively stimulating. Obviously the conversations around the last of us video games are their own behemoth. Live wires. They're very hot and spicy, but like I love that

It's something people care deeply about. Especially, again, as I understand it, the various excitements and controversies around season two or part two of the game, that means it's like a story that takes big chances that people are, you know, having huge feelings about. I would really recommend, in addition to listening to everything we're about to say, because, you know, it's going to be wonderful, Adam Verri has two great pieces up on Variety, both about some of the new cast members that they just announced this week. Good.

Joey Pants. Joey Pants. Patron saint of Rewatchables and The Ringer. I'm thrilled. Is in...

The Last of Us Season 2. He's in this trailer. I know. Alana Yubak, who I love, is also, she's not in this trailer, but she's going to be in the show per that Variety article. So he's got that one. And then there's another one that's linked inside of that one where he has a long conversation with Mazin and Druckmann about this idea of like when to be very faithful to the game and when to take sort of big swings. And that's, those were really great to read. Yeah, it's genuinely like interesting not only to think about

what choices you make and why, but the candor that they have when discussing that. We should say, too, you mentioned the teaser trailer. There was like another about minute-long little glimpse of the season that came after that. But in terms of that teaser trailer, not only was that set to future days, but that opened with a pretty long, given the total runtime of the trailer,

Catherine O'Hara, Pedro Pascal sequence. And that is a, as we understand it, Catherine O'Hara is playing clearly Joel's therapist and a character who is new to the world. So that is not as present in this trailer, but we just wanted to remark upon it because we, I think it's fair to say that we consider Pedro Pascal and Catherine O'Hara two of the most important people who have ever lived. Best in show. What a movie. Yeah. What a film. We love it.

Anything else on the big picture front, we should mention that there's a time jump before we dive into the trailer. Five-year time jump. We are picking up with our pals. We are picking up with the cordyceps infected.

Five years after the harrowing events of the season one finale. It's always interesting when time has passed, especially given where we left Joel and Ellie at the end of season one. Quite an emotionally raw moment for them and the world at large to not pick up in the instant after. To see where their lives are half a decade later. Right. Sometimes creating an ad campaign can feel like you're talking on mute.

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Shipping to many countries worldwide. See details at 8sleep.com slash ringer. All right, so let's do it. Let's dive into the trailer, which begins with a pair of feet walking. And then we see Ellie decked out in winter gear. Yeah. Again, we love a coat.

We do. Wig watch, coat watch. Love a beanie as well. Accent corner. Love a boot. And as Ellie moves among the shelves, we see, let's just say it, a frankly terrifying, crawling skitter. Here's the thing I know about you. I hate a skitter. You abhor a skitter. Yeah.

And we're starting the trailer with a skitter. So perfectly timed. Like she's just cleared the shelf. We're like, OK, no scary things. And then just like in the far background, we see a skitter. Yes. And I we're going to go chronologically through this. But I just want to say that like later we get a shot of a crawling infected that kind of looks like it's in the same location. So I would imagine it is the skittering thing. Mm hmm.

And it's got this like mushroom crown, like the tendrils are in this like crown formation. Beautiful. And it's stalking Ellie in a very like purposeful seeming way. We saw stalkers like, you know, thinking of yearning tendrils, you know, in season one, like we saw some of the infected make like purposeful moves. And I'm just curious if there's any sort of like

It's one thing to, I guess, kiss Tess and turn her into infected because the mushrooms love to the tendrils, urine, all that sort of stuff. So that moment sparked basically half of the vernacular that House of Ari built on. So but like I remain grateful for it. There's like lumbering zombies and then there's like purposeful zombies and purposeful zombies are so much scarier. Who are you missing more on the infected stage front? You like longing for the runners. You've always been a clicker head. I hate a clicker. And the bloater is the least scary to me.

what just because it's like a big lumbering thing and it's like either we'll blow it up or we won't I have just like it's not trying to like personal trauma from how hard it was for me to beat the game and so it's like a little thing that can bite you and it's fast is way scarier to me than a big lumbering thing that is not going to chomp on me necessarily I see a bloater that's a

I see a bloater and I am ported back to a moment in time. We talked about this a lot in season one. My husband sweetly, but also cruelly sat next to me. He had previously played and watched me play. And the bloater stretches in particular. He was just like, you are, I mean, you are wasting your Molotov cocktails. You just need a different strategy here. And I was like, do I? Eight hours later. Okay. Here's what we see next.

Broken watch. The broken watch. This is a great kind of image in general in a story, something that ports you so effectively across time, across bonds. This is the watch that Joel's daughter, Sarah, fixed for him. And then it broke in the moment of her death. And he never repaired it. So he wears this broken watch. Freezing him forever in the moment that he lost his

First child. And I think what's interesting about this watch imagery is in that first teaser that we talked about with Catherine O'Hara is there was the egg timer on concept on that teaser that it just ticked. She sets it at the top of the teaser and then it ticks all the way through. So this idea of like time, passage of time, time running out, all of that sort of stuff is prevalent here. And first of all, you know, I love a show or a movie on a clock draft day.

Severance season one finale. Yes. Thematically, how can seeing Joel's broken watch, how can that egg timer not make us think of one of our favorite shared moments from season one? It wasn't time that did it. Like the role of time holding these characters prisoner and hostage in their own pain and their own emotion and their own loss. And then the thing that pulls you out of it

being another person, right? It wasn't time that did it. It was Ellie. And then where did this, which is beautiful, but then where did that lead Joel to? What did that lead him to do? Our favorite thing that Mason and Druckmann talked about in season one was this idea of like,

Tribalism and love and then the sort of like the negative side of that, the underbelly of that. Also, that's not where I thought you were going to say when you said our shared favorite moment. Long, long time. Yeah. Oh, my God. Dude. So when I when I opened when I opened The Last of Us on HBO Max, it was just amazing.

on that moment I guess I recently went just to rewatch that moment I don't know recently but probably when we were doing like our top moments of the year must have been yeah must have been I like to think that just every few months I'm like you're just like clocking I actually do do that on YouTube sometimes but I probably did it actually on the app at some point okay here's what we see next

We see what is apparently a graveyard. We see a lot of crosses. When you see that many crosses together in the dirt, it's a graveyard. And we see hanging from one of these crosses, Joe, a firefly pendant. Our old pals. You love them.

You adhere to every aspect of their philosophy, their worldview, and their approach. Oh, I thought you meant my old pal Pendence. I do love a pendant. You love a pendant. Yeah, you weren't really Firefly high. You were more Fedra high. Cool. Way to besmirch me. Love that. You love Buck Cashman? Check out our Daredevil coverage. I do love Buck Cashman. I'm going to own that. Okay, here's the deal. But you do love a pendant. You do love a pendant. I do love a pendant. The Firefly pendant's on the grave markers here.

These are obviously, we know them from season one. Also, they are a big like thing, an item in the game that you can sort of collect. Right. So, yeah.

Where would we find perhaps a mass, if you want to call it, grave of fireflies? Could it be near where Joel killed a bunch of fireflies at the end of season one? Seems completely reasonable. And the pendant has the name of each firefly that kind of function as like the firefly dog tags, right? So if that is the gravesite of all of the people who Joel slaughtered in Salt Lake City...

That seems like a pretty good guess. Seems like a reasonable deduction. Speaking of fireflies, I misidentified this note. Obviously, it's daytime. We've got Ellie in the woods. She sees these floating things. I originally wrote down fireflies, but then when I rewatched, I was like, it's daytime. So are these spores? Spores?

We talked a lot about the spore shift in season one. They sidestepped the spores in season one. Are they going to evolve things and give us dangerous spores? Because we see spores later in the trailer. Yeah. Are we going to get dangerous spore transmission in season two? I...

I think that the airborne pathogen when the season one of this show came out, I just think would have been unbearable for people. Right. You know? And so not that it isn't now, obviously, but yeah, maybe the spores are about to enter the chat. It also makes me think of, we loved the opening to episode six in season one.

And the tension, but also the comedy. You know, they're looking. They're trying to find Tommy. They're trying to find Jackson. We're going to talk about all that in a second here. But they're like, they're Firefly people. They're Firefly people? Great stuff. Maybe it's all just a protracted joke. On the flashback front, this is Joel and Ellie in the woods. Yeah.

On Hair Watch. This definitely looks like an earlier. This looks like a flashback. Period in time. Because Joel has longer, grayer hair. I have. Exquisite. Zero notes. We love it. Yeah. But

But this looks like a shorter, darker... This looks closer in time to where we ended season one, for sure. And also, you know, how much time is season two, these seven episodes, going to cover? Just in terms of weather watch as well. Jackson is very snowy in most of the shots in this trailer. There's a springtime in the woods. T-shirts, sunshine, nary a snowflake in sight. Okay, we get some text, and then boom, here we are in...

Jackson, our beloved community that we made our way to at last. Joel, great payoff of Joel's hunt for Tommy. Like, I came here to save you. And he looks around and sees this beautiful, robust life. Meeting Maria, learning, of course, that Tommy and Maria were part of a community of, at that time, 300 in season one.

How many now? This looks much more bustling to me. Not like huge because they still want to keep it inside the walls contained, but it looks a bit more vibrant even than it, because there was like a lot of construction in season one. So this looks like a bit more done, a little bit more vibrant as you would expect from five years later. Also a huge thing that, you know,

Joel was like, got to find Tommy to save him. And then he's like, oh, wait, he's doing fine. And a big rift for them around that was finding out that Maria was pregnant, which is a departure from the game. Something that they added to sort of make it more emotionally, I think, conflicting for Tommy.

And also more unbearable for Joel to see Tommy starting a new family. Tommy's going to have a kid when Joel is stuck in time when he lost his daughter. One of the most painful moments for viewers of season one was watching the way that at the bar, Joel responded to Tommy saying, not just sharing the news, but saying like, I think I'll be a pretty good father. And Joel took a shot of whiskey and said, we'll see.

Like that was just absolutely agonizing to watch. In terms of the size of the community and the development of the community, I'm fascinated to see how the citizens of Jackson have navigated that balancing act of making this, continuing to offer safe harbor and refuge to people who are trying to stay alive in a world that has not been cured because of the choice Joel made. But like,

Where did Joel and Ellie first run across Maria? It was out when they were cornered, and it's like, our dog is going to sniff you to see if you're infected and maybe tear you apart. Like, they're choosy about who they let in. And that tension with Joel and Tommy and Maria initially of, like, are we the wrong sort? So have they relaxed any of their vetting standards, or is this just, like, the slow build of time? Yeah. I think that something that is worth noting, then, is that we get...

We get what is clearly Tommy and Maria's kiddo sitting on Joel's lap. So whatever issue that he had, he has sort of worked slightly to the other side of that. We see Miller on a mailbox outside of a house, right? So we have settled somewhat here in Jackson, right? And to your point about keeping people in and keeping people out, we have this call and response between Joel and his nephew, which is like,

Who is inside people who's outside monsters. Yes. And the thing that I immediately wrote down in my note is a reference to one of our favorite shared shows, Station Eleven. Yes. To the monsters were the monsters. Yes. Like who is the monster inside of this world?

inside of a story where you're like, we found a safe harbor. How many people can we make it safe for? How monstrous do we have to be in keeping people out of this safe environment? How cold hearted do we have to be? I haven't played this game, but I've watched several seasons of The Walking Dead. And here's what I can tell you. Anytime the outsiders find a safe community and they enter it, by the end of that season, that community is done. That's one of the interesting things just conceptually about the time jump. Yeah.

You know, when Joel and Ellie are making their way at the end of season one, the end of the first game, to Jackson, there's that terror in your heart as a Walking Dead viewer or just a consumer of genre story of like, are they about to bring the end with them? But we know whatever happens in the future, we don't know, but we know at least that half a decade has passed and they are spending their time here. Not only the uncle-nephew cartography lessons with the map, but...

We get a scene in this stretch as well of Joel passing this guitar to Ellie. This is, again, whether or not you've played the game, you have absorbed via osmosis surely at some point that there is a lot of musical heft and focus in the second game. We've seen a lot of this imagery in the trailers. And whether you have the knowledge of what's to come or not, we have the knowledge of the past. And when they were talking with each other, Joel and Ellie, about

What did they want to be if they somehow made their way into the future and Joel initially had that, like, old farmhouse, some land, a ranch, some sheep. When he updated it, as they wrote out, as he decided to not send her with Tommy but to go with her. Right. And he said, like, you know, I...

Actually, when I was a kid, I wanted to be a singer. Right. And then she said, well, you're singing for me later. I'm going to save the fucking world, man. It's the least you can do. And then in the finale, when Joel finds the guitar in the RV and Ellie is coming out of the absolutely horrifying events of episode eight. Yes. And Joel is like, are you OK? You're quiet. One of the things that he says to her in that opening stretch is I was thinking maybe I could teach you.

I bet you'd be great at it. You want to learn how to play guitar. So we get, you know, the imagery of like, we see the moth emblem across the trailer and just, this is going to be incredible. Tattoo on her arm. Tattoo. It's the moth emblem, as I understand it again, it is, has become like iconography for the game as well. Yes. This idea of being attracted to the light. Yes. And,

The light looking like spores, all this sort of stuff. They have gone really deep on sort of this moth imagery and what it means. Speaking of music, we also we get a shot of what looks like a dance. Yeah. And we've got Ellie here, but we've also got a new character, Dina, played by Isabella Merced is here and they're dancing here. And later in the trailer, they're a smooch. They sure are.

So, yeah. Dina's here. Dina was a character... Again, we haven't played the game, but I remember in season one, when they first go to Jackson, there was like a girl peeking around and people were like, oh my god, is that Dina? And I'm like, I don't know. Who's Dina? So, it's not that girl. It's played by Isabella Merced. And...

here she is. This is really cool too because part of what was difficult for Joel and Ellie after their travels and also at that time us as viewers or players to confront when you get to Jackson the first time is like, movie night? Yeah. What? Normal life? A dance?

So the idea of a town dance. Yeah. It's a portal into a different moment in time and a shared experience. So, like, it's wonderful to think of Ellie finding that relationship. How can we not think about Ellie losing Riley? And them dancing and all of that together. Yeah. So beautiful. And just, like, you know, one of the...

ways that Joel was imploring Ellie at the end of season one was like, if you just keep going, you can find something new to fight for. And even though we do not have the full context yet for what this relationship is, the idea of forging connection, period, right? Of building that with somebody else. Community, family. Ellie finding something new to fight for is just really beautiful. And seeing Joel, hopefully, at like the heart of this, who, you know, we spent so much of season one watching him just

staunchly build the walls around himself. You know? Yes. Brilliant. Joel. Okay. We see the next few shots are things we've already talked about. We see the very alarming crowned crawling. Scary. So scary. We hear the rest of that what's outside monster stretch that you mentioned. And then what do we see after that, Joe? We have a sickle. Scraping on a tree trunk. I'm scared. I don't know what that means.

I am concerned. On like a video game brain front, again, I don't know what this means, but like, I wonder if a sickle is like a weapon that you can play with. Do you know what I mean? Like the Molotov cocktails? Uh-huh.

Um, something like that. So if that means something more to people than it does necessarily to us in this particular moment, we get, that strikes me as a shot that's there specific, like for, for the gamers and that they know exactly what that is. And I'm like, the lingering camera following the dragon. And everyone's like, like Steve is listening to us right now. Like these wait, just wait, just you wait. Oh, I know what that means. Um, and this is a really dark, both, uh,

literally dark, but also in terms of the intensity stretch of the trailer, because the next shot we see is seems to be somebody being hoisted up on a rope in the woods. That's worrying. Very upsetting. We also have military tanks. Yes. The Washington liberation front is here. So just for folks who haven't played the game or don't know anything about this, there are like a couple of groups that we do know about the, the Washington liberation front and,

The acronym is WLF. A little wolf. You love a white wolf. I love a white wolf. I feel like I'm not supposed to love these guys. Probably not. But I love them.

So Washington Liberation Front, WLF, Wolf, the Wolves is what they're called. And I don't know. After our brush with Fedra, I would say any sort of militarized organization is something that I'm nervous about. Always have to be worried about a militia in the apocalypse. Then we see a shot, Joanna Robinson, of five people.

traveling through the snow. Yeah. And they don't look happy. I would say they look driven by purpose. They are holding guns. And at the front of this group is Abby. Caitlin Deaver. Now,

You don't have to have played the game or watched the show to know that Abby arriving here is a big deal, that Abby is a huge character in the game and a character who has sparked quite a lot of discussion in the game. This is a performer who we both adore. We love Caitlin Dever. Across a number of... Deverites. Deverites, a number of shows and films. And so I just absolutely... I could not be more excited. Something I really love that people have pointed out in terms of like, you know, that

there's been constant discussion about who looks like what in terms of their character in the game versus the character on the show. Yeah. A lot of that is uninteresting to me. What I do think is interesting is people pointing out that Caitlin Deaver, and I agree with this bears a passing resemblance to Bella Ramsey. So this idea of like Abby and Ellie as sort of physically resembling each other in a way that they don't necessarily in the game. And this idea of like a, I don't know,

dual foil mirror sort of stuff. I'm interested to find out. Very much so. Also interested to find out what brain fungus does in the snow because our next shot is of a... Cordyceps in the snow. This is kind of a... You think you're just seeing the top of the head and then the scream. And...

We're heading into something terrible here. That seems clear because there is just a full-on... Hard home? Yeah, very hard home-y. Full-on assault. On Jackson. On Jackson here. Now, when we arrived at Jackson in season one...

A lot of time, as we've already mentioned, was spent like not just talking about the fact that it is a safe community, but on how they keep it safe. Right. The way they took a gated community and extended the walls, the way they vet who comes and goes, the way they leave dead bodies as warnings for people who might seek to disturb them. But a specific thing that Tommy talked about was he called it a turkey shoot. Right. In terms of like the openness. This is part of why this is an ideal location to survive or had been until the events that we see here. Right.

It's so open. You can stand. And Joel's like, fuck off. You can't shoot from that far. They've got the high ground. They've got the high ground to be able to just, if a couple clickers are coming your way and you're up in your crow's nest, you can take them out. This is more than a couple. That's my observation. This looks incredibly perilous. I would call this a horde. When you see this, you see this community that has been a safe harbor under threat. It's impossible, I think, not to think of like,

Marlene's lasting indictment to Joel right she lives in a broken world that you could have saved now we want this is the great genius of the end of the first game in the first season like we want Joel to save Ellie we want Ellie to be okay but he made a choice that she would not want it right would not have wanted him to make and then lied to her about it and she knows he's lying to her and they have to move forward without before the end of this trailer before the end of the trailer and like look look at what's about to happen here not good

We have, I don't know if this is a flashback. I mean, we've got Tommy on the wall, but we've got horse riding on the way to Seattle. Is this Shimmer? Remember that moment when Ellie met Shimmer in season one? The brief little encounter with Shimmer. I have to assume that this is Shimmer, but I don't know. Could be. Sweet Shimmer.

Sweet shimmer. Love a horse. I don't know what the horse lifespan is in the hard conditions of this time. I mean, in general, I think the prospect of longevity for a human or beast in this universe is probably pretty poor. So I'm trying not to get attached. Joe, take us through what we see here in this next stretch. We see some specifically costumed animals.

carrying bows and arrows walking through the woods. And there is a signature marking, the cheek scars, which tell us these are... The scars and the shaved head and the bow and arrow let us know that this is a group called the Seraphites. They're also called the Scars because of the scars. This is like sort of a primitivist cult. Mm-hmm.

And the scars are sort of these Glasgow scars or this is sort of like religious thing that they do. So we've got the militarized organization, which is one reaction to apocalypse. And then we've got a fanatic religious cult like.

I'm sure everybody is getting along. Everything's going to go well. Really wonderfully. I think everything's going to go fine. We've got an older man. We see them run. Like, there's several of them, right? But, like, the shaved head, older man. Then we see a young girl with a crown of braids. And, again, I'm afraid to Google anything. Yeah, of course. Because we don't want to spoil anything. So, I don't.

I don't know. But we do know that these are the seraphites. If you see a symbol, which you do in the trailer of like it's a fish. Yes. On the back of the jacket. That's their symbol. The next we have another new character here. We see Jesse. We get a glimpse of Jesse and Ellie here. Shout out beef hive.

I loved Beef. So excited for young Mazzino to join. I really am. I thought he was so good in Beef. I just can't wait to see him here. Then we see the kiss that you mentioned earlier. And why don't you take us through here, Joe, the tattoo? Because we get a shot here in short order of Ellie showing Joel her iconic, as we understand it, tattoo. So this is the tattoo over the bite mark. Mm-hmm.

And it was designed for the game by a tattoo artist, Natalie Hall. And it was something that they came up with. They've got the like fern imagery. They went through like a bunch of different ideas of what the tattoo should be, but they want to do something very like organic and natural. The moth being drawn to the light, which kind of looked like the spores is something I mentioned earlier. The moth is on the guitar as well. But this idea of sort of like,

I don't know, wearing her scars like armor, turning something sort of like scary into something beautiful. And then a way in which to like cover this thing that could expose her. Yeah, the practical element because Joel, everyone throughout season one, like Tess, they're going to think she's infected. No one's going to believe you that she's immune. Though, of course, Joel tells Tommy it's good. It's good.

word is spreading, but... Too many people, honestly. Covering the bites so that people are not freaked out and seeking to harm her with something so emotionally rich is just like an awesome touch. Over the stretch of the trailer, we are hearing something as well. We are hearing Jeffrey Wright, who is reprising the role that he will voice in the game, Isaac, saying, by the time the sun comes up tomorrow, there's a very good chance you'll be dead. Not great. Here's what I love about...

Again, the idea of having things that are so closely adapted. Jeffrey Wright is playing the same character in the game, in the show as he did in the game. And then all these wild variations on top of it. Like, you can have it both ways. Yeah, absolutely. We see, before we see Jeffrey Wright, which we do in a second here, we see Ellie running, gone out,

We see a shot fired there. And then we get to see Jeffrey Wright. He is. He does always. He is torturing somebody who we had seen previously in the teaser trailer as well. Naked, bloodied, chained, saying to his torturer. Shaved head. Shaved head. You're going to lose. Woo! Down to our last few shots here. We get some spores coming out of someone's mouth. Some spore action. Some charging shots.

Again, more hard home energy. Very much so. Some charging of a wall. This is the climbing of the ladder to evade the pursuit. And then here we get Joey Pants. Fantastic stuff. Eugene. So this is an example of an expanded character, right? This is a character we hear about in the game, but we never meet. Yes. And I can't imagine that they're hiring Joey Pants to just do something brief and uneventful. I...

I love that Joey Pants is coming to town to expand some canon. Get the best guest actor Emmy already pre-engraved for Joey Pants. Yeah. I love it. Joel pointing a rifle and then we enter a stretch and we had seen similar imagery in prior trailers. I will describe it as a Daredevil-esque scene.

Baved in red light. It's like a subway. This is set up. This red light is recurring imagery across these trailers. The flare at the end. Bathing the logo in a red light. Some more scaling here. This all seems very alarming. Joel in the snow. The luscious mane, as you noted, is just incredible. And then what do we hear?

Don't you know what he did? And that is something being said to Ellie. Correct. In this red glow. Correct.

Have to assume that he is Joel and have to assume that we don't know. We are just using context clues that the thing he did is decide to let the world continue to die and be destroyed by the Cordyceps outbreak and killed everybody in the hospital finding a cure so that Ellie could live. Have to assume it's about that. Maybe not. It could be anything. It could be anything. It's probably that. Don't you know what he did? What movie he picked? Jackson Knight?

at night? Don't you know that he didn't do the dishes? Also, in the previous teaser, Catherine O'Hara was like, what did you do? What did you do? Did you hurt her? And he said, no, I saved her. Joel working through his trauma and guilt is something I truly cannot wait to see. Joel slamming a door here, hopefully not on the emotional depths waiting to be mined, but on this literal space. Another hoisting via rope in the woods here. Incredibly troubling. Some kicking feet.

Some screaming, some firing of guns. Tommy going head to head with a bloater here with a blowtorch. That's exciting. Outside of a mailboxes, et cetera. Mailboxes, et cetera. They don't exist anymore. You need it in every community. You know, even in the apocalypse. So this is a nice vintage mailbox. I used to work at a mailbox. Oh, delightful. I love knowing this. And then we hear.

At the end of the trailer, before we get that red flare in the rain over the logo, Ellie's saying to Joel, you swore. They don't look happy. Looks like they're working through something. This, of course, ports us back to the end of season one. Swear to me. Swear to me that everything you said about the Fireflies is true. I swear. Oh, God.

Also, another tagline that we see in this trailer is every path has its price. So that's something to think about. I'm really curious to know what new themes they want to mine and then how they want to expand on some of the rich themes that they have.

for us in season one. Yeah. And the leaning into the complexity of that decision has obviously always been the point. What would a parent do for their child? I remember Druckmann describing it in the like bonus at the end of the episode as the easiest choice Joel had ever made in his life. Yeah. And so it's not like he would have made another choice, but what do you have to carry with you then? How they want us to be rooting for him, but then also just feeling like...

Oh, we wanted Joel to do that and then we doomed the world too. Incredible. I can't wait to cover the show with you again. It's going to be great. It's going to be huge. So I'm really thrilled. Last of Us, season two, coming to HBO, to House of R, to the Midnight Boys. Pew, pew. Second week of April. Can't fucking wait. This has been a delight. A joy. You're earning tendrils. Make mushrooms your bitches.