There are a couple of storms on the horizon in “Future Days,” but the one most harrowing within the first episode is one of resentment and longing. Parents and their children naturally experience a period of uneasiness when both entities don’t understand one another. A mother and/or father is inclined to protect their children from all the evils in the world – but the day will come when their child will want to cut the chord. With Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Joel (Pedro Pascal), there’s a different dynamic: they spent much of The Last of Us’s first season just trying to survive the trek from Boston to Salt Lake City.
Through loss and peril, they naturally bonded, and there lies THE CHOICE Joel made, with the final moments of “Look For The Light” kicking everything off. You can tell that Ellie knows Joel is lying, and it will be long debated if he made the right decision. Do you save the person you care about at the expense of the world and thus take that choice away from her? Would the cure even work? These thoughts are still ruminating within Ellie and Joel five years later in Jackson, Wyoming. They are part of this community in body, but pieces of them still feel like outsiders. Everyone knows the tension between them, but they don’t know the ultimate secret that Ellie and Joel won’t even confront.
The Last of Us / Photograph by Liane Hentscher/HBO
It’s an interesting dynamic because right after the intro scene, the show briefly shows an angry and emotional Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) who knows all of Joel’s vitals, down to his being “handsome,” and is on a quest for revenge with the surviving Fireflies. Even if the settlement in Jackson feels insulated and somewhat modern in a time of apocalypse, forces are pushing against it. The threat of the infected is always looming (and shown later in the episode, evolving). They are running against time to create spaces for people tied with dwindling resources and labor to build it all. Looming in the background of winter are the Fireflies in search of retribution. “Future Days” did well in foreshadowing all the possible troubles coming while peering into an insulated story.
Joel and Ellie are unable to make things right with one another, so they have surrogates to fill those voids. For Joel, Dina (Isabela Merced) fills that void a bit. She says hi, asks him to show her how to repair a breaker, and even watches movies with him like an older daughter would. But even Dina can tell there’s a void as a go-between being Ellie’s best friend. Ellie is on patrol and carries out the combat skills she learned while traveling with her pseudo-pops Joel with Tommy (Gabriel Luna) and Jesse (Young Mazino). She is in full-on rebellion mode, ready to jump headfirst into killing the infected with reckless abandon.
Much of that is trying to escape Joel’s hold on her through other people. When Ellie is doing hand-to-hand combat, people are pulling punches. Tommy thinks it’s a good idea for her to fall back from the patrol because Ellie doesn’t do what she should. She goes off the beaten path and acts on a slightly titled form of an unlimited health cheat code. But the problem is that you can’t act that way when working with other people for the good of the community. Aside from showing how deep Ellie and Dina’s friendship is during the patrol scene, the first glimpse of “the stalker,” a new kind of infected person who can think and lure, is a good “reality” moment for Ellie. Sure, you’re immune, but you can still die.
The Last of Us / Photograph by Liane Hentscher/HBO
Thank goodness the Jackson settlement can access therapy because Joel needs to talk to someone. The finest moment within “Future Days” is the conversation Joel has with Gail (Catherine O’Hara), who is not your typical therapist in the slightest (payments in weed, slight alcoholic beverage choice during sessions). It’s a double whammy for Gail because it’s her birthday and marking a year since she lost her husband of 41 years, Eugene. Oh, and Joel was the one who killed him. Imagine being tasked to give someone mental stability when they are guilty of taking a loved one away from you. Gail’s propensity to try to “make things right” with Joel this way will require honesty on both fronts and, frankly, big of her. It’s in staunch contrast to how Abby feels. Joel is not quite there yet (much credit to Pascal’s acting) with explaining what happened. He tears up and says, “I saved her,” knowing it’s slightly more than that. Gail is correct in saying that 19-year-olds act this way, but not every teen on the cusp of adulthood is a potential cure for the end of the world.
Joel never got to experience this age with his daughter Sarah, so it feels like he’s lost two daughters. While losing Sarah to circumstances beyond his control, he’s even more protective of Ellie, which makes things worse. The moment between Ellie and Dina at the New Year’s dance was perfectly recreated from the game, from the pacing to the dialogue to the staging. Joel was in the right for standing up to some obvious homophobia, but Ellie’s reaction showed how far their relationship has fallen.
“Future Days” sets the table for the world now and the main issue between the two main characters as many things descend upon them. Throughout the first season, there was always danger from factions of humans to the infected themselves because you were constantly on the move—but what about revenge when you’ve found respite? Can you do something to someone else, retreat to an enclosed town, and expect nothing to happen to you afterward? We will find the answers to those questions, and these characters will never be the same.
