The Last of Us has a nihilism problem. The games are a bleak struggle through a fungal, post-apocalyptic valley of death, one that reached a heart-wrenching peak at the end of Part 2. When the HBO adaptation was announced, I had hoped that there might be some adjustments to this status quo. To the show’s credit, episode 3 provided a brief reprieve from the usual hellscape, giving us a hopeful and persistin🗹g queer love story in an otherwise ruined world.
While I’ve enjoyed the show, I can’t help but worry the series’ fascination with trauma isn’t going anywhere. Episode 3 made a bold change to the narrative, but it was followed immediately by a far more turbulent and personal plotline in episodes 4 and 5’s conflict between resistance leader Kathleen and her late brother Michael. In The Last of Us, loving🦹 others makes you a danger. To the people you care for, to yourself, or to your community. If even compassion leads us to destruction, why should we go on?
The Last of Us writes love as a kind of infectious emotion.▨ Characters are doomed not by cordyceps growing beneath their skin, but by growing attached to the people around them. Grief, or the fear of grief, makes this emotional fungi bloom, turning its victims into single-minded killers much like the shambling puppets that killed the world. That is, if they don’t succumb entirely. That’s not to say their motivations don’t make sense; they do, and I find them compelling, but it is nonetheless a pattern that I&𝔍rsquo;m finding hard to ignore.
Take Joel, for example. His grief over Sarah’s death has already turned him into a dangerous man, someone who killed to survive in the bleak and chaotic years that followed the outbreak. His grief presents a danger to anyone in his way, but it also endangers his paternal relationship with Ellie. He kills to protect her, and in doing so he sets in motion a series of tragic dominoes that lead to the horrors 🍌of Part 2. His choices harm both his connection to Ellie, while infecting her with the same urge to lash out.
Love in The Last of Us can also hurt the person you’re trying to protect. In Episode 5, Henry confesses to Joel that he gave up the former res💯istance leader, Michael, to the Kansas City FEDRA in exchange for medicine for his little brother. His love for Sam dooms not only the resistance itself, but it also irreversibly changes their methods. Under Kathleen’s leadership their revolution devolves into an orgy of violence and extrajudicial executions. At the end of it all, it’s horribly, cynically not worth it: Sam gets bitten, and Henry takes his own life.
Then there’s Kathleen and Michael themselves. Kathleen talks about Michael as if he were a holy figure, dedicated to dethroning FEDRA and establishing a fairer, more equal Kansas City. Yet eꦚven when she outright says “he told me to forgive”, Kathleen follows it up with a furious “what is the point of that”? Her fury is not an isolated incident, either. The entire movement feels the same, and they follow her on a manhunt that leads to t🦄heir downfall. The example Michael left doesn’t matter one bit – it is completely overrun by a need for vengeance.
‘The power of love’ takes on a very different mean♑ing when that same power has the highest body count. The Last of Us repeatedly tells us that those who want vengeance simply cannot control themselves. Violence is the expected outcome, a cycle that must be broken through great willpower, rather than a choice made by an adult with agency. It insists that v💟iolence is a natural result of caring, that grief will cause even more death down the line.
I adore this story, but there are so few cases across the games – and now the show – wh🌟ere a deep connection leads to anything other than destruction and doom. Even when the trend is bucked, as it was 🃏in episode 3, The Last of Us can’t resist an underlying threat. In the letter Bill gives to Joel, he writes: “That’s why men like you and me are here. We have a job to do, and god help any motherfuckers who stand in our way.”
I have no doubt that a prematurely bereaved Bil✱l would have made the world burn. His success in avoiding that is an exception in the narrative, not a rule, and even a love that strong wouldn’t have saved him from grief. In The Last of Us, you’re lucky if love just breaks you and leaves you alone – if it doesn’t, it’ll eat you alive, just like the fungus that ended the world.
