The Last of Us has a new director this week: Loki’s Kate Herron. Like the rest of this season’s episodes, “Day One” is written by show co-creator Craig Mazin, and the result is a powerhouse, equal parts horror and beauty—which is what this show does best. (That, and leave me wondering about horses. Will they ever get back to poor Shimmer?)
But first, a flashback: 2018, Seattle Quarantine Zone. Some FEDRA guys (and I’m pretty sure they were all guys) in a tank tell an obnoxious story about an encounter with some “voters,” which is what they call civilians. A presence looms near the front of the tank, but doesn’t speak until a fresh-faced young man (Ben Ahlers) asks why they’re called voters. The answer, says Isaac Dixon (Jeffrey Wright) is because they took all their votes away, so they now call people voters to mock them.
Then he chooses those voters over his FEDRA teammates in a memorable and violent fashion. The non-expression on Wright’s face as he tosses grenades into that tank is incredible: the face of a man who decided on this course of action a while back and has just been waiting for the moment to take it. No surprise, no doubt. But enough humanity left to bring the promising young man with him. “Now make your choice,” he says, flatly.
One other detail stands out in this brief scene, which is that Isaac had clearly connected with these civilians—led by Hanrahan (Alanna Ubach)—previously. The hows and the details might be irrelevant, but I am curious.
This scene does exactly what it needs to, introducing Isaac as a man who acts decisively and violently when he feels it’s called for, but may have some semblance of a moral compass. Or he just saw a chance to make a convert. It’s a sly thing to leave up in the air.
Eleven years later, Dina and Ellie ride into Capitol Hill and are baffled by all the rainbows. Pride, it turns out, did not survive the apocalypse. Monistat did, which is a relief to anyone who’s ever had a yeast infection. (How many very serious shows have ever even mentioned yeast infections? I love Craig Mazin for this.) While digging through an old pharmacy, Dina finds something else that we’re not shown, but it’s pretty easy to leap to a conclusion based on the look on Isabela Merced’s ever-expressive face. Well, one of two conclusions: I figured either pregnancy tests or mifepristone.
In a bit of narrative convenience that I will just let slide, they wind up on the same street where Isaac’s little tank maneuver happened all those years ago, which means I spent several minutes muttering Ellie no do not open that tank please don’t open that tank. She does, and finds the burned skeletons inside, and is inspired to compare it to Apollo 1, a reference she explains to Dina: Three astronauts were supposed to go to the moon but their capsule caught fire on the launch pad. Ellie is interested in space, but still, this feels very loaded—a tragic story about people never getting their mission off the ground.
These two really are the brains and the brawn: Ellie making a resoundingly loud noise while opening the tank, Dina noting that at least now they know there’s no one around, and making plans. Ellie would barge in guns blazing to just about any situation that involved something she could fight; Dina will hold her back long enough to gently suggest trying something less likely to get her killed. (Like maybe not barging into the building with WLF painted on it in big letters in broad daylight.) This dynamic started with the first episode, with the way Dina counts infected by sound, and that skill returns later—but every time she nudges Ellie into a smarter tactic, I think of that. Their relationship is already a partnership, a sharing of the load and of their skills. And every time they demonstrate this, I get nervous about Dina’s future.
But before the violence, the beauty. Conveniently, the store with a big enough door for Shimmer to fit through is also a combination record and musical instruments shop that contains all the necessary things to make them feel at home: Bob Marley records, Tears for Fears records, Pearl Jam posters, and an acoustic guitar saved from the ravages of time and moisture by little desiccant packets. (Ellie’s appreciation for said packets is such a nice touch.)
The very sweet scene with Ellie playing “Take on Me” as Dina looks on with increasing adoration and tears in her eyes goes on for so long that I became pretty certain this was a gift to gamers, and it turns out yes; it’s a scene in the game that a person might miss if they did not happen into that exact room. It’s a little gift for us viewers, too, a break in all the violence and horror that allows us to see Ellie’s softer side—her delicate voice, singing “slowly learning that life is okay”—and to remind us that she spent more time with Joel than we’ve seen. He said he would teach her guitar, and he clearly did—and he did a good job of it, as Dina points out. Dina cries, but Ellie doesn’t, and there’s a soft look on her face that perfectly captures that bittersweet feeling of missing someone deeply while also being grateful that they were in your life at all.
And then rather than carefully put that guitar back in its case to be safe for more years, Ellie leaves it out, and we get a meaningfully framed shot of it, alone, untended, destined to go to shit because it wasn’t taken care of. Ouch.
Back in Isaac’s narrative, we are reintroduced to him as a man who likes high-quality tools. Because this is the world it is, it seems quite clear from the minute he clicks on that gas burner that he is not about to whip up a feast, but I still didn’t quite expect the horrors of this scene (after which the horrors just build and build for quite some time). The camera angles give it away: Isaac is monologuing to someone on the floor, but the scene drags out the reveal of the naked, beaten, bloody man, who Isaac calls a Scar. “Seraphite,” the prisoner corrects him, which is the first time on the show that name has been used.
This scene is not subtle, but it works, in large part because the torture is not the point, but a terrible and familiar background to a lot of information about Isaac. There’s his little story about cooking and not being able to talk to women, and coveting the expensive Mauvier pans, but those are just details. A fierce and fast argument about who commits which acts of violence ends with Isaac saying “I’m not playing your little chicken-and-egg games today, Scar.” It hardly seems like a game. But Isaac has decided that he’s right. And so has the Seraphite, who insists that the WLF will lose because people regularly leave the WLF for the Seraphites, but never the other way around.
There’s so much ugly certainty here, but that snagged me, because Isaac doesn’t argue with him. We as viewers don’t know if that’s a true statement, but Isaac’s reaction suggests there is at least some truth in it—and some anxiety on his part about loyalty. A militia is not a religion, though both might demand loyalty and obedience. But this Seraphite demonstrates a willingness to suffer that is almost shocking: he holds out his hand, unasked, for Isaac’s next round of hot-pan torture. And Isaac shoots him.
You could read this as Isaac assuming that a man willing to be tortured will never break. You could also read this as Isaac reacting to a level of loyalty and devotion that he can’t inspire in his people. It’s a layered, horrible exchange that is never anything but hideous, and yet never devolves into gratuitousness, and Ryan Mason, who plays the Seraphite, does a really powerful job up against Wright’s seasoned intensity.
Meanwhile, no-longer-young Butler is outside the door demonstrating his own intensity and devotion to the cause. He is so changed that I didn’t even clock that it was him at first. Phew.
The Seraphites’ own commitment to violence is on utterly horrifying display in the TV station that Ellie and Dina break into, thinking they may find their Wolf targets inside. And they do: dead and gutted Wolves, (“feel her love,” yikes) and the live ones that come to investigate. “What the fuck is wrong with Seattle?” asks Dina. A fair question. (Notable, also, that Ellie and Dina silently agree to kill any Wolves they come across, not just Abby and her crew. Do they have another practical choice? What else are they going to do with them? But still. That is its own commitment to violence.)
The investigating Wolves kick off a breathless action sequence that is impeccably crafted and terribly intense; I knew Ellie, at least, wasn’t going to die here, but I am constantly afraid for Dina’s life, because no one this warm and smart ever gets to live long in a story like this. But amid all the tension, you can still appreciate the work that went into making that entire TV station sequence so clear and believable: You always know where the characters are in relation to one another, and know that it’s impossible for Ellie and Dina to get out without being seen. The inevitability of that fight is what makes the scene so taut; the inevitable arrival of the infected, in the subway tunnels, provides that chest-clenching sense of doom.
Interesting, though, that the Wolves don’t know better than to chuck flares willy-nilly into a dark underground space where cordyceps fibers might grow. Maybe their battles have been more with other humans than with the infected.
The subway car sequence, too, is horribly, impressively well put-together, and the fact that the infected are stopped by the turnstiles an incredible and grotesque detail. (Smish.) The preview for this episode made it all too clear, I think, that Ellie was going to get bitten, but I did not expect it to be a self-sacrifice to save Dina. The dread on Isabela Merced’s face, from here until she finally begins to believe Ellie that she’s immune, is terrible to see. She thinks she’s losing the woman she loves—and if that happens, she’ll be alone in an incredibly hostile Seattle. No wonder she sits up while Ellie sleeps, clutching that gun. If things were different, she would be in the same situation Ellie was in that mall all those years ago. (A story Dina doesn’t know, but that the show nodded to last week, when Dina asked Ellie about her first kill.)
The way Ellie seems to just absolutely forget to mention her immunity to Dina is frustrating, but makes sense: They’re not safe until they get inside that theater (and not even then, really). And this revelation needs to be given its moment: Ellie having to find the words to tell Dina her huge secret. It’s heartbreaking (“A lot of the times, I wish this wasn’t true”) and necessary, not just for the obvious reason (Ellie’s continued survival) but so that this secret isn’t between them.
So many lingering beats here really drive home the fear Dina must be feeling—fear for herself, fear for Ellie, fear of Ellie—but also how Ellie has to step up and take charge of something that isn’t violence. And she’s good at it, she’s clear, she’s practical. Everything is very practical until enough time has passed that Dina believes Ellie, and responds with her own revelation about her pregnancy. And also the revelation of her feelings for Ellie.
It’s sweet and lovely and entirely believable that these two fall straight into bed (or what passes for “into bed” after the apocalypse; a nearby floor will do) after all of this life-or-death intensity. I love how it unlocks their conversations, how it brings out the softness in both their faces, not having to hide their feelings anymore (however poorly hidden they may have been before). Intimacy begets intimacy, and their secrets pour out: Ellie’s story about being bitten and covering it up, Dina’s story about pretending to be straight because of pressure from her mother. (This little face she makes while telling this story is perfection.) And the absolute pile of pregnancy tests! It’s funny and it’s so in character: She wanted to be sure. Really sure.
And it’s lovely and in character that Ellie thinks of Jesse, how it’s his kid too. (She’s not the only dad in this situation.) All this sweetness and yet it’s all tempered by tragedy, because these kids are so young, not even out of their teens, and they’re planning their adult lives, their whole futures. Of course they are: they’ve all seen people they love die, probably at all ages. But it is impossible not to want something different for them, some infected-free life where they could do all this later. This little pocket of love and connection comes after a night that almost killed both of them. They have to take what they have while they can have it.
Little kernels of ominousness are tucked into this conversation, not least Ellie’s line about hiding things: “It’s a little thing, but when you start to hide little things, they become big things.” What about when you hide big things, like Joel’s choice in Salt Lake? What a big thing that’s likely to become. Though they really have enough big stuff to face right now. This is the midpoint of this oddly short season, and an episode full of revelations for these two—not just the ones said out loud, but the fact of Seattle’s own violence, the size of the WLF, their fight with the Seraphim. Ellie and Dina aren’t just facing Abby and her four pals; they’re facing an army and they are woefully underprepared and newly emotionally dazzled. I’m sure everything will be just fine. Maybe they could just go home instead?