‘The Last of Us’ zombie kiss explained (it’s a lot scarier than you think)

In the HBO Max series “The Last of Us” an apocalyptic fungus (which exists in real life) has wiped out civilization after spreading across the world and infecting people’s brains, transforming them into a kind of zombie.

During the first episode it was possible to see that Joel and his daughter did not become infected by pure luck, as the fungus is found in flour food and eating it transforms people, aside from being bitten by the infected.

Already with the second episode, more was explained about the origin of the infection in Jakarta, Indonesia, how the fungus is transmitted and how all the infected are connected to each other.

But one attention-grabbing detail was like in an intense part of the episode: an infected person does not behave violently, and instead of biting or attacking a person, it kisses him mouth to mouth with tentacles of the fungus coming out of it.

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‘The Last of Us’: Episode 2 zombie kiss explained

The scene takes place after Joel (Pedro Pascal), Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Tess (Anna Torv) arrive at the rendezvous point with the Fireflies to deliver Ellie to them, only to find that they all died when one of them became infected.

Tess, who was bitten in a previous encounter, knows she doesn’t have much time to live and makes Joel realize the importance of Ellie being the only one immune to the fungus, making him promise to keep her safe.

After sensing the trio’s presence, Joel and Ellie escape and Tess stays behind to blow up the building they’re in. There an infected person sees her and calmly kisses her, inserting his tentacles into her mouth.

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“The Last of Us”: why a tainted kiss to Tess in the second episode

The scene where the infected kisses Tess and puts the fungus tentacles in her mouth is terrifying because of the calm way one of these creatures behaves and invades a human body.

These tentacles are not part of the original video game, although series creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, (who wrote the PlayStation classic) explained that it makes sense in-universe and from a scientific approach.

Speaking to Variety on January 22, 2023, the creators said that the idea of ​​mushroom tentacles in the mouth of the infected came to be as far removed as possible from the common idea of ​​zombies.

However, in the case of the infected person’s kiss to Tess, Mazin explained that this is all because the fungus itself is not violent and only seeks to spread, but when someone refuses to be infected, then it attacks them.

The creator said that this is how they decided to give the kiss scene, to show that in addition to bites and violence, fungus is disturbing and transgressive.