The Last of Us S01E02 Recap

Need to get caught up from the previous week? I have you covered. If not here is your The Last of Us S01E02 Recap. The monsters are very real this week.

We have flashed back 20 years to Jakarta at the beginning of the episode. Military officers come into a restaurant and ask about an older lady eating by herself. They put her in the back of a police vehicle and apologize for interrupting her lunch. She wants to know what she did wrong. They say nothing and they know she is a professor that studies mycology. My guess she is being brought in to look at the outbreak. They bring her into a facility and have her look into a microscope. She identifies it as ophiocordyceps. He tells her the sample was taken from a human. She says that’s impossible.

We now see the scientist in a hazmat suit. A voice tells her the dead woman she looking at was not well. The doctor starts to dissect a bite wound on the body. Inside the wound is a fungus. She then opens up the mouth and pulls out more fungus, long strings of it. This fungus is moving. She runs from the room.

Later she drinks tea and discusses where the woman was found. She was found downtown and she was a perfectly pleasant woman before going crazy. She was ultimately shot by the police. The good scientist wants to know who bit her. They want her help in developing a vaccine. She tells him there is no medicine that will stop it. He tells her what do we do then. She tells him to bomb the city. Bomb everyone in it. She is distraught and asks to be with her family.

We pick back up with Ellie. She was sleeping and wakes to see Joel and Tess with guns trained on her. They know of her infection. Ellie says Marlene tested her every day. She describes the tests and finally, Joel and Marlene let her pee.

Joel’s hand is probably broken. It looks not great. Now they are fighting about what to do with Ellie. Joel wants to leave her back in the QZ. Tess wants to continue with the plan. Tess wants to know what is so special about Ellie. Things get heated. Ellie is not playing nice or answering questions. Ellie tells them that there is a secret Fire Fly base with scientists and doctors and they need Ellie for something. Joel pushes back and argues they have heard it all before. Joel relinquishes reluctantly. They prepare to leave. They refuse Ellie’s request for a gun.

As they leave you get a crazy view of a city that has crumbled. Skyscrapers have fallen down as the green around them has reclaimed their stolen spaces. We learn that the city was bombed to slow down the spread. They have to take a long journey to get around the city. While they walk Ellie discusses how she got bit. We learn she is 14. There are a number of urban legends surrounding the infected and Ellie regales us with plenty of them. We hear a scream/shriek and the group speeds up.

Joel opens up a door and they appear to be in the lobby of a hotel. They have to pass through the flooded lobby. Ellie is definitely not into it. She has some fun with the front lobby. Only to be scared by an actual skeleton. Joel reacts quickly and they share a very tiny decent moment between the two. Further up the hotel, it appears that one of the floors has fallen through. Tess climbs up and over to find another way. Ellie and Joel finally have a semi-civil conversation. We learn Joel is from Texas and Tess is from Detroit. He also tells her that he has killed lots of infected. She wants to know if it was hard. Tess comes back she has found a new way.

She leads them around to a different way. on the balcony, there is a giant pit of humans all linked together through the mycelium. It’s a super fucked up thing to see but finally, Ellie starts to understand the magnitude of how much danger there is. They decide to go through the museum. The museum door is covered in fungus. It appears to all be bone dry though. They need to get to the top of the museum. So they carefully go in. Fungus covers every inch but it’s been cooked. There is a dead guy on the stairs. Like a fresh dead guy. He has been attacked. They think it might be one of the fungus zombies. They go silent as they creep up the stairs. The stairs threaten to fall down. There is next-level fungus on the second floor.

The fungus they maneuver around seems mostly to be desiccated fungus people. On the top level the group manages to avoid the stairs as they fall apart completely. The party starts to hear a series of clicks. There are two clicker-style zombies. Joel tells Ella they cannot see and that type of zombie can only hear and they use echolocation. The group gets separated as the two clickers attack them. One goes after Joel another after Tess and Ellie. Joel and Ellie hide and eventually, the group manages to kill the zombies.

They leave the museum but not before we see that Tess has sprained her ankle Patrick Mahomes style. Ellie has also been bit AGAIN. Joel and Tess tape up her ankle. She has had it with his pessimism. She is not in good shape.

As they walk the streets of Boston once again Joel fights the urge to worry about Ellie’s new bite. They arrive at the Fire Fly base. There are some very fresh dead bodies hanging around. There is a blood trail leading inside. Tess and Ellie go inside and there are even more dead bodies. Looks like bullet wounds. It’s a massacre. There is no one left alive. Tess frantically looks for a clue while Joel wants to give up. Tess is infected. She shows Joel the bite and the fungus is already growing. Tess wants Joel to take Ellie to Bill and Franks. She makes him promise.

There is a fantastically terrifying shot of the mycelium as they communicate from one of the dead bodies on the ground to a group of zombies hanging out a block over. A world-class new twist on zombie communication. Tess prepares the building like a bomb so she can sacrifice herself to kill all of the zombies as they break in. She lights the building on fire just as they start to. Ellie and Joel watch the building burn from afar.