Entertainment Season 2 of The Last of Us ends with confusion and a fake -winging hook for the characters and creators carry this chapter of Serie A an end of Season Deatisfactory by writing

In a way, call this the end of the second season of The Last of Us It seems an inappropriate definition. Yes, it is the last episode we will have this year-or possibly, according to the co-creator Neil Druckmannfor over a year. But it does not sound, by any way, as a conclusion of anything, except this period in which Ellie It was the main character from the point of view of the series. There is a silly hook, where it seems that Abby shot and killed Ellie – A classic case of what TV writers call “schmuckbait”(Bait to Muggle), where only someone who doesn’t understand anything about narrative or television would believe what apparently just happened – and then the story comes back in time for the day Ellie and Dina They arrived at Seattle, but now we are following Abby as a member of WLF

. The season does not end itself; She simply stops, abruptly and somewhat confused.

When we rediscover Abby at the stadium, she is holding a copy of town of thieves, David Benioff’s novel, co-creator of Game of Thrones, about two young Russians who, during World War II, are sent behind enemy lines on a useless mission. It seems appropriate, even if they were looking for eggs (at the request of a military officer who wanted a cake for his daughter’s marriage) and not revenge.This is the inherent risk of dividing the source material into several movies or TV seasons. When it works, we have the two recent movies of Dune where it seemed that Denis VilleneuveI really needed all this time to properly address the important material of the book. When you can’t, as at the end of the original series of

Hunger Games it may seem just a blatant exploration, stretched to the point of pleasing only to the most obstinate fans. (And not always them.) With only seven episodes, compared to the nine of the first season, this The Last of UsIt doesn’t look exactly stretched, but incomplete. Yes, serialized dramas are built so that stories overflow from season to season. But usually there is a clear character of character and/or narrative arc each season – be it completely resolved inside it, or reaches an important turnaround at the end. This is not the case here. There are four episodes (discounted opening chapters and flashback Joel ) Ellieseeking revenge against Abby with several people suggesting why this can be a bad idea, all culminating in a

bang literal and then in the change of perspective. It seems that we are receiving only half of the story – because that’s just that – not knowing how long it will take until the other half comes. It is a profoundly unsatisfactory way to start a prolonged gap, regardless of the problems that already existed before. Even if it is accepted that the series needed to tell this story of revenge, no matter how much the chemistry between Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal has raised this series above being just a The Walking Dead intelligent, the execution was inconsistent – sustained more by the intensity and magnetism of the performance of Ramsey than for anything they have given to

Isabela Merced to do. To begin with, there was the way the season framed the decision to Ellie and Dina to remain in Seattle after not only found that the Wolves they were much larger, more organized and dangerous than they had presumed, but they also knew that Dina I was pregnant. If the series had shown one or both as ambivalent about the idea of ​​being a mother – either generally or specifically in this broken and frightening world – then the idea of ​​staying there would make more emotional sense. It would be a way of postponing reflection, or even letting fate decide for them. But from the moment Dinatold to Ellie It was clear that both were radiant with the possibility. And yet they refused from. Only at the beginning of the final episode, after Dina gets hurt – and after Ellie finally tells the whole story about what Joel did, because Abby went after him, and that Ellie I already knew most of it – is that

Dina Finally it acts as someone who regrets coming here and putting herself and pregnancy at risk. After that – and also after a long and implausible explanation of how Jesse managed to track Ellie and Dina In a vast urban environment that he had never visited before – our heroes begin to plan how to fall out of there and catch Tommy on the way back home. Jesse scold it a lot Ellie for being selfish. Maybe we should be on her side – after all, she’s the protagonist, and he’s a guy we barely know “But nothing he says sounds unfair or unreasonable.” In a reality like this, when Maria and company managed to build a relative paradise like Jackson, the decision toEllie

from this crazy mission has implications that go far beyond the risk to itself and for

Dina . In addition to the Flashback episode illuminating how much the series lost by killing Joel, he also highlights how disappointing the work of the season was to establish many of the new characters, such as Jesse, and even Dina. She was present all season, and he appeared in more than half of her. And yet neither of them seems as well developed at this time as Joel and Gene’s father went in a few minutes in the last episode. Part of this is the merit of more experienced actors such as Tony Dalton and Joe Pantoliano, who can do a lot with little. But Young Mazino and Isabela Merced did well with what they received; They just didn’t give them as much material to explore as their veterans colleagues.When the trio leaves to find Tommy We came across another great structural problem of the season: we know so much and less about the other Seattle characters. If Druckmann , Mazin and company had decided to show things only according to Ellie discover them – seeing the Serafites only when women found their tracks or corpses, without knowing Isaac or any Wolves that did not directly cross the path of Ellie and Dina “So that would seem a disorientant in an interesting way.” And it would make sense with the plan to change to the perspective of AbbyFor a while. Instead, we received a context that the protagonists of this season did not have, but not enough to really understand the conflicts between Wolvesand Serafites or even within the factions of the WLF. Elliebe captured by

Serafites and only be spared from quartering because everyone needs to run to deal with an attack by Isaac It would be even more distressing if we knew as little as she are about who these people are and why they are doing it with her. While passing the bookstore again, Ellie He leafs a copy of The Monster at the End of This Book, a self -conscious book Sesame village where Grover He is terrified of the monster he will find on the last page, and relieved to find that the monster is himself. The Last of Usalready made its version of this, when Joel He revealed to be the monster at the end of the season. Here, it seems that we are on our way to a sequence. On the way to rescue Tommy , Ellie Discover where Abby It is hidden and, once again, chooses revenge instead of the family. When Ellie he arrives, Abby She has left, but she can kill two of her companions – and is horrified to realize that one of them was very pregnant. Ellietries to give birth, following the instructions of the dying mother, but this is not The Pitt (neither Eleven Station another post-apocalyptic drama of

Max

which had a memorable episode centered on a delivery). Ellie There is no idea what you are doing and fails the makeshift task. She became exactly what came to Seattle to punish – and begins to realize that. Perhaps, if it wasn’t for the flagrantly fake hook, that would be enough character arc for the year. But the shooting is annoying, and the change in perspective has not been performed with the necessary elegance, ending an irregular season in a very bad grade.

Kaitlyn Duty