The Last of Us: Is Episode 3 really one of TV's finest hours of drama?
WARNING: This article contains spoilers for The Last of Us, episode three. Jonny Mahon-Heap is a Culture reporter for Stuff.
OPINION: In the early days of the pandemic, it was the wide, empty spaces that were the eeriest.
Shuttered airports, an empty Piccadilly Circus, tumbleweeds rolling through shopping malls – the world was a waiting room – and we found ourselves suspended in mid-air between two ways of life.
In The Last of Us, HBO’s new apocalyptic drama (which airs here on Neon and Sky TV’s SoHo) starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsay as a surrogate father-daughter duo making their way through an American wasteland in an alternate 2023, the show’s vast budget allows us to imagine that alternate world – one where a disease won – and a pandemic overwhelmed civilisation.
From the showrunner of HBO’s lauded Chernobyl miniseries, and co-written by creator of the original video game, The Last of Us has been called the best video game adaptation ever made – with The Guardian even going so far as saying that this week’s third episode might be the finest “you will see this year”.
So, were they right?
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Thus far, The Last of Us has felt like a good story, well-told – a familiar dystopia that presents an even more terrifyingly familiar portrait of a world descending into chaos, distinguished by the stellar work of leads Pascal and Ramsay.
The zombie creatures – fungus-faced monsters straight out of your worst nightmares – plague 2023’s scorched planet; but, as is the
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