Note: This column includes spoilers for The Last of Us, season two, episode two.
A year and change ago, when writing up the news about Kaitlyn Dever’s casting in The Last of Us, I wanted to know why people had such strong feelings about her character. I found the shortest possible version of the answer and went on my merry way, not sure I would even be back to watch the show’s second season. (One can only take so much apocalyptic storytelling, especially in this timeline.)
As it turned out, instead of skipping the season, I’m reviewing it, which means I not only watched the episode in which Abby brutally kills Joel, but I thought about it. A lot.
And mostly what I thought about was the fact that knowing that it was coming didn’t make that moment any less terrible. It wasn’t just that moment, either: That episode, “Through the Valley,” tells viewers all the big things that are going to happen. There are piles of infected hiding under the snow. There is a plan for what happens if Jackson gets attacked. Abby, as she has already told us, wants to kill Joel. She gets her chance. The snow erupts with the infected. Jackson’s wall is breached. It’s all breathtaking.
It’s a cliche and a truth to say that the journey matters more than the destination. But that episode got me thinking a lot about stories, and narrative structure, and what we do or don’t consider spoilers—and the unpredictable way that sometimes knowing the details matters, and sometimes it doesn’t. I watched a very uninspired action movie years ago with only one thought in my head: When is the female lead going to die? I’d accidentally read a review that mentioned her death, and so for the first 20 minutes of the film, until it happened, that knowledge distracted me. I could not stop being aware it was going to happen.
This was not the case with poor Joel. Part of the reason for this was just that I didn’t expect it to come so soon in the season; I was in denial even as he rescued Abby and rode straight into her clutches. Surely something would happen to avert this—for now. Surely that death would be finale material.
Nope. It was time, and the episode was so well crafted, so perfectly acted, so masterfully directed, that knowing all those things only contributed to the sense of dread. Presumably, the writer (co-creator Craig Mazin) and director (Game of Thrones alum Mark Mylod) were aware that a lot of their audience knew that Joel’s death was impending, and they took that into consideration when creating an episode that had no other surprises. That would be enough of a shock for the unspoiled. You get a heads up for all the other terrible bits: You’re going to be stressed. You’re going to be upset. You might not see this other thing coming.
I thought, for a while, that maybe the reason I didn’t mind knowing what would happen to Joel was because it can be sort of soothing, or at least less dreadful, to know what’s coming, even when it’s terrible. But then I looked around and thought again. Knowing how many terrible things are coming, are continuing, have been happening, will keep happening—none of that makes it any “easier,” though to be honest I don’t know what “easy” would even mean in such a context. I never understand the frequent use of the phrase “I’m not surprised” when terrible news breaks. What difference does that make? Are you not still horrified? Is a death, a war, a genocide, the removal of someone’s rights, the destruction of important systems, less awful when you expect it? Maybe surprise makes some things feel more immediately acute. But the surprise fades. The horror remains.
Andor is a story in which we know exactly what is going to happen, eventually, because we’ve already seen Rogue One, which left many of us with several questions about how exactly Cassian Andor got where he ended up. Wicked, the book, is a story in which we know the ending (the musical, well, that’s a different story). Game of Thrones walked familiar territory for many of us, up to a point. Every retelling, to some degree, is a story in which the reader knows the ending, depending on their familiarity with the original tale (and the liberties the author does or doesn’t take). Arthur dies. Greek gods and goddesses get up to countless shenanigans. The evil queen/stepmother/witch is defeated. Can you spoil those? Is a spoiler different than basic story knowledge?
I don’t actually want to argue about spoilers. Especially not the week after Marvel gleefully spoiled its own movie in a way that implied that if you were a real fan, you would have gone to said movie already and thus not been spoiled. Spoilers exist, but they’re different for everyone, and a detail is not a spoiler. I think my definition of “spoiler” might be something like “a thing that, once you know it, changes how you experience the whole.” Not necessarily a twist, or a reveal, but a thing you can’t shove back out of your brain. Is it always a thing the storyteller presumably didn’t want you to know? Is the element of surprise part of it? Can that thing still be interesting, even without the surprise?
You can only experience a story for the first time once. But maybe there’s too much emphasis on the relative purity of that first time. It comes back to that impossible question of what each reader wants to know about a book before reading it. I’ve had moments where I had no interest in a book until someone told me a specific detail or angle, unmentioned in the cover copy or reviews, that was right up my alley. I know I’ve had this moment. But whatever book that was has just become part of my mental library, the details forgotten. It mattered at the time. It’s irrelevant now. Details are weird like that.
Daniel Abraham’s Kithamar trilogy tells the story of one year from three perspectives. I was a bit skeptical, going into the second book after reading the first, about how well this could work. And then I liked the second book as much as, if not more than, the first. You could read them in either order—or any order, once the third arrives. I am more antsy for the third book in this series than just about any other fantasy novel I can presently think of. And technically, I know what happens. But I have no idea how, or what the next perspective(s) will be like. The element of surprise is both present and absent. It’s delicious.
The no-spoilers-please people and the tell-me-everything people want different experiences. But even a blank slate isn’t blank; you arrive at a book, or a movie, or an episode of TV, with your own understanding and experience with stories and genre and narrative forms. I like to watch things twice, once for the first-time experience, and a second time to see how it works. I occasionally read things twice like that too, but it takes so much longer. Sometimes, though. Sometimes there’s time, and it’s as if knowing where the path ends makes it easier to keep my attention on every step. Like knowing the way makes the journey better. Sometimes.