DJariya

Last episode until most likely 2025.

Deftones

I really really hope they follow the same ending of the game. I want people to lose their minds.

MrX

There’s a making of special on HBO Max after this airs.

Ashley Johnson, who voiced and did the motion capture for Ellie in the game, makes her appearance tonight as Anna.

Osiris3657

Only 43 min runtime?

Was expecting over an hour

Why So Blu?

And that's a wrap. See you in 2025!

Bring on the 4K disc set!

MrX

Loved they included the giraffe scene, I think that was the same music from the game.

I know that’s how it went in the game, but still surprised they had Joel kill that many people in the hospital.

I noticed they made sure to get a close up of




Ellie telling Joel she killed Riley was new I think.

Dan

Excellent. Glad they didn't bloat the episode just to make it longer. My wife was downright shocked by Joel's decision. She was rooting for him, obviously, but didn't think the show/game went there.
Now she wants to play Part 2!

nickdawgy

As soon as I heard the voice of Anna and even before she showed her face, I knew it was Ashley Johnson.

Outside of skipping the underground area they were right on point with the game in this one.

chowderhead

I think I am going to agree with Marlene on this. The human species is on the brink and Ellie is their chance to turn the tide.

Decker

Just another average episode of an average TV show.

No I kid. That was really shocking and visceral. Serves me right for quitting the game less than half way through.

Giantrobo

This was pretty good TV. I watched the "making of" and i cant wait to listen to the official podcast.

maxfisher

I really enjoyed the whole season, but was a little disappointed in the finale. I feel like it could've used some more breathing room to portray Ellie getting through her trauma and Joel's efforts to help her. It certainly wasn't bad, but the season did such a great job handling the characters and their development that I was disappointed to have it feel rushed and a bit more like they were checking boxes for character beats.

My only other complaint is Joel going full action hero in the finale. It was weird to see him essentially fully healed from a pretty serious injury, and then he cut through the fireflies like they were nothing. It came across as less grounded than a lot of the action over the course of the season.

Those small criticisms aside, I generally like the finale. The giraffe scene was beautifully handled and Pascal and Ramsey were fantastic, as they've been throughout the show.

Pointyskull

Having not played the game I had no expectations on where things would end up at the end of the season. But I will say when Ashley Johnson was running in the opening scene I thought there had been a time jump and that was an "older" Ellie. Finding out in the post ep making of that Ashley Johnson voiced Ellie in the game was interesting, but her resemblance to Bella Ramsey seemed pretty spot on.

Enjoyed this series a lot, but Bella Ramsey owned this season hands down, imo. She was fantastic.

movieguru

I've never seen or heard of the video game before watching this show. It was predictable that when they reached the hospital that they would use Ellie as a lab rat and and basically planned on killing her to get the cure. "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one".

csant

I'm ok with Joel's decision and with him killing everyone. It's a kill or be kill situation. The world is already fucked up and there is no guarantee the shit would be fixed. lol

mugwump

In the podcast they mentioned how focus groups reacted to the ending with people without kids being split 50/50 on whether or not Joel was the bad guy here while parents were 100% in favor of his actions.

Dan

Not only that...

davidh777

Because I knew what Joel was going to do, the finale lacked tension for me. Still good to see it play out on screen, though.

movieguru

While this apocalypse is fictional, the situation could be applied to real life situations. What if we could have had a very quick vaccine to the Covid virus if one person was the key to solving the virus and they would have to die to be able to replicate the vaccine. Would it be ok to use that person if they were an unwilling to participate in the study? Many life saving drugs could be on the market much quicker if we had human test subjects to test them on right at the beginning of the study. Would it be ok to use 1 unwilling human test subject that would die from the research, if it could save 500,000 other lives? What about 100 test subjects? How about 1,000 test subjects to save 500,000?

Decker

dsa_shea

Still doesn't make any sense as to why they would have to kill her or what exactly they were going to extract from her while doing so.

TomOpus

I was thinking the same. She does resemble an older Ellie.

Gunde

Well that was a shit ending. Not shocking or anger-inducing, just ... bad. Made the whole season seem pointless.

davidh777

It was that brain chemical, and the implication was she’d die or at best become a vegetable.

TomOpus

So what will happen with S2? Same characters or completely different ones?