‘The Last of Us’ Season One: A Prestigious Adaptation
From the moment The Last of Us opens with quiet devastation instead of spectacle, it becomes clear this is not a show interested in proving it’s “cool.” It’s interested in proving something harder: that survival stories only matter when they’re about people, not just bodies. Season 1 doesn’t merely adapt a beloved video game — it interrogates it, reframing its violence and loss through a deeply human, often devastating lens.
This is one of the rare adaptations that understands its source material and knows when to challenge it.
[Warning: spoilers from HBO’s first season of The Last of Us are below!]
Joel and Ellie: A relationship built on restraint
While some can (and would) argue that this is an ensemble piece from HBO, the show’s narrative ultimately boils down to two characters and the relationship that develops between them over the nine-episode season one.
Pedro Pascal’s Joel is not a softened version of the character, nor is he romanticized. He’s closed off, exhausted, and emotionally calcified by grief. Pascal plays him with an intentional stiffness — a man whose empathy has been surgically removed for survival. What makes his performance work is that the show never rushes his transformation. Joel doesn’t “warm up” so much as fracture, and that slow erosion is key.
Bella Ramsey’s Ellie is the show’s secret weapon. They aren’t the quirky, precocious archetype these roles often default to. Instead, Ellie is sharp, defensive, funny in a way that feels like armor. Ramsey understands that Ellie’s humor is not charm – it’s survival. The chemistry between Pascal and Ramsey isn’t sentimental; it’s cautious, earned, and deeply uncomfortable at times. That discomfort is the point and is one of the fundamental reasons that season one of The Last of Us is so engaging.
The Last of Us is a world that feels lived in
One of Season 1’s greatest achievements is how quiet it often is. The apocalypse here isn’t loud – it’s decayed. Cities feel abandoned rather than exploded. Nature reclaims space without fanfare. The show lingers on small details: empty bedrooms, broken toys, handwritten notes. These moments do more world-building than any exposition ever could.
The infected themselves are terrifying when they appear, but wisely used sparingly. The threat is always present, but rarely exploited. This restraint keeps the focus where it belongs: on moral compromise, not monster-of-the-week thrills. Which, for someone like me who enjoys action and thrillers more than scares and gore, this is a welcome decision in every sense.
It’s impossible to talk about Season 1 without acknowledging Episode 3, “Long, Long Time.” This episode is a statement – not just narratively, but philosophically. By expanding Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank’s (Murray Bartlett) story into a full-life arc, the show reframes the apocalypse as something that not only destroys, but also isolates, clarifies, and forces choices about how to live meaningfully.
Some viewers criticized the episode for straying from the game. That criticism misses the point. This episode doesn’t derail the story – it defines it. It argues that love, not survival, is the series’ central obsession. Everything that follows echoes that truth. And let’s be honest, it’s not every day a post-apocalyptic show can move audiences to tears through the genuine heart and unbelievable emotions it conveys in a single episode.
Violence without glory in this HBO original series
Unlike many prestige dramas, The Last of Us refuses to aestheticize violence. When it happens, it’s fast, messy, and emotionally consequential. Deaths aren’t staged as climactic moments; they’re interruptions. This approach makes the violence more disturbing, not less, because it refuses to let the audience feel comfortable with it.
That discomfort culminates in the finale, where the show forces viewers to confront the cost of love that has become possessive. Joel’s final choice is not framed as heroic or monstrous; it’s framed as inevitable. The show trusts the audience enough to sit with the moral ambiguity without spelling out how to feel.
Season 1 is deliberately paced, sometimes to the point of frustration for viewers expecting constant escalation. But this pacing is purposeful. Each episode functions like a character study rather than a plot checkpoint. The result is a season that feels cohesive, not because of its narrative mechanics, but because of its emotional throughline.
If there’s a critique to be made, it’s that some secondary characters don’t linger long enough to fully resonate. A few arcs feel truncated, powerful, but fleeting. Still, that transience may be part of the design. In this world, no one is guaranteed narrative permanence.
The Last of Us is a television series that earns its weight
The Last of Us: Season 1 succeeds because it knows exactly what it’s about — and what it’s not. It’s not an action series disguised as drama. It’s not fan service masquerading as adaptation. It’s a meditation on grief, attachment, and the terrifying things we justify when love becomes fear.
This is prestige television that doesn’t chase relevance; it commands it. Quietly. Relentlessly. And with devastating precision. Season 1 doesn’t ask whether humanity deserves saving. It asks a more unsettling question: who gets to decide?
The Last of Us is available for streaming now on HBO Max. Runtime is ~50-60 minutes per episode. Have you checked out this series yet? What are your thoughts on it? Let us know @bsb.insider on social media!
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