Craig Mazin
Appearances
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
Yeah. That's the hardest moment, is when she's begging him to get up, and he tries.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
That is heartbreaking to me. Heartbreaking. Because that's where you see how pure a parent's love is for a child. And this is something that children don't know. It's not their fault. They just don't know because they haven't experienced it. People say, oh, you know, when you have a kid, you experience this new stuff. And a lot of people are like, I think I can extrapolate. You can't.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
You just can't. I couldn't. I didn't know until I knew. And that is pure parental desperate love. He's trying to pick himself up for her, even though he can't even move. And what Bella does here, I mean... It's the full range of things, and it is all brutally heartfelt, in part because I think she and Pedro, too, are very close and are so intertwined, you know, in their own lives.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
Pedro said this beautiful thing to Bella when we were wrapping season one. He said, you know, it's so strange how this life-changing thing came along so late for me and so early for you. But they share it. So a lot of this is overlapped, I think, with who they are as people, too. I remember we walked over, Marc Mylad and I walked over. We're sitting on the floor with Bella.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
And we said, listen, there's this moment where you're going to have to shift from the most brutal grief to savagery. We want you to terrify us with the resolve that you have to murder these people. Because Ellie has this catalytic change from fear and grief to anger that is so rapid and so frightening. And she does it.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
Yeah, HBO, the place that made Game of Thrones when Ned Stark gets his head lopped off. I'm still reeling from that. I mean, first of all, let's just all take a big deep breath because that was a lot. The episode is a lot. There is... this massive attack on Jackson, people's lives are in danger. It is absolute mayhem.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
And when she says, you're all going to fucking die, it is terrifying. I mean, I think they probably should have killed her at that point, but they didn't believe her.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
Well, it's a bit of a mystery, because... The night before, she told him she didn't need his help. She rejected him. She came home. She saw him on the porch. She walked right by him. Didn't say a word. Cold as ice. It's the next morning. And what she says to Jesse is, no offense, I think I'm just going to go on patrol with a Joel. She wants to go on patrol with Joel. What has happened?
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
And when Jesse pushes on her, she kind of explodes.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
collects herself back up because she has probably been told, hey, it's not great when you explode at people. So what happens is you get that explosion, then they kind of try and pull it back.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
And also, there is this brutal moment that ends with Bella both terrifying you and breaking your heart at the same time. And I think it's fair to say that a lot of people, having seen the episode, are a bit shaken, and reasonably so. It is a big thing we've asked the audience to swallow. It is going to upset a lot of people, and that's okay.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
And it is this interesting moment of clarity about her relationship with Joel that doesn't quite add up. So that mystery will hang in the air for a little bit. But... When she gets to him, we know it isn't just, oh, I didn't talk to you last night when you were on the porch. There's more. We just don't know what it is yet.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
Well, we began by asking questions, because I'm the pesky question guy. How do they defend themselves? What do they have other than a wall? What could they have other than a wall? What would their method be? Surely they've sat there and thought, okay, if raiders come, we do this. If a horde comes, we do this. So they have a plan. But what is it? And how can it be something that is...
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
a bit surprising to us, but also once we get over the surprise, we think, oh yeah, of course, that's smart. That's a good idea. And in that way, we created the plan. And the plan almost works until a bloater shows up, which is sort of the way life is, right? Everything's going fine until a bloater shows up. And then the madness begins.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
The town remains at the end. We understand, as Maria and Tommy are embracing and sort of emotionally collapsing, that the battle is over, but at great cost. there needs to be a reckoning, like Neil is saying, with the reality of the world. In season one, let's just talk practically for a second, we were figuring out how to do it all while we were doing it.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
A little bit like building a plane in the air. This season, we knew more, and we understood a little bit better about how to do it. Mark did a kind of amazing job working with Alex Wong, our visual effects supervisor, to create pre-vis for the entire battle. I mean, the whole thing was mapped out very, very carefully and then budgeted very, very carefully.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
It was prepped and shot like its own movie. I can't remember the total number of days, but movie-length days. Movie length in terms of schedule at the prep was very long. It's fascinating to see how these things work. You build them with large swaths of blue out there that you know will be a thing.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
And they may be angry about it, and they may be confused about it, and they may be miserable about it, but I'm hoping that for the majority of them, they are going to reconnect now with who's left behind and what happens now. Because what happens now is one unstoppable force meeting another.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
And then even now as we speak, because we recorded this quite a bit before the show airs, we are still working with Weta and D-Nag. Weta does all the creature stuff. So Weta is creating... We've mixed stunt people in with CG people. And as I review, a lot of times... Can't tell. Is that one of yours or one of ours?
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
Because that guy's running weird. And it turns out I was one of ours. It's real. So we can't change it. But that's what Weta is doing. And now, suddenly, it's there. The dream happens... rather late in the process. So you just, you have faith that it's all going to work. It's hard work.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
in the end, we always try and capture some, not just a relationship inside of these moments, but a change. Because there's something that Tommy does here with Maria that he never had a chance to do. She's shooting at this bloater who looks up at her, goes, ah, someone's shooting me from there. I'm going to go find you. And he says, no, chase after me. Chase after me. And that is new information.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
That is something Maria didn't know would happen. She may have hoped.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
They tuck tail. I'm out of here. That would happen.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
We don't chase stakes. You know, at some point, I know in movies, you eventually have to protect the entire galaxy. It's not enough to, you know, save your town. But for us, the stakes are the people and the relationships, and if we feel those, and if those are threatened.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
You can have an entire town under attack by waves of infected, but if you don't have Maria and Tommy looking at each other, and Tommy trying to save her, and her saving him. And, you know, it's just a fight.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
And let's stop for a moment and talk about the monsters as heroes of their story, because they're the most selfless. They're the most about community. They sacrifice each other willy-nilly. to protect the people behind them, the way that ants work. They are more cohesive, more collected, and more unified than people are. And that's, to me, its own fascinating thing.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
There's a reason cordyceps took over the world. They're better at it than we are. So we've created this little enclave to hide. Well, they're gonna try and get in anyway. But when you have a battle that is this big, with this many people,
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
You do crave a moment where it focuses down to two of them, where everything shrinks down to one act of desperation and one moment where a person faces death in the eye in a personal way. So there's that moment in Saving Private Ryan where one soldier is being slowly stabbed to death by another. And it is this moment.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
very personal, intimate act of violence that is so lonely and quiet as compared to the noise and chaos of war. And I thought it was important to see Tommy face death that way.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
Both of you gestured to me. I gestured to Neil because it comes from the game. I mean, there's this great moment in the game. We really just expanded on this small moment. You're playing as Abby and you come across frozen bodies. And it's scary. In part because you're not sure, why are all these bodies here?
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
And we expanded on this and had set up a little bit of a discussion, even all the way back in, all the way back one episode prior, Maria's got a hunch. She's got a feeling. And... They've already heard, as we hear from Jesse in the beginning of the episode, people have found infected that are now alive, hibernating or keeping warm underneath a layer of frozen infected covered by snow.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
So they're not sure how many of them are out there. Could be 30, could be 1,000 is what Jesse says. And of course, Ali's like, 1,000, right, sure. Well, Abby finds them. And her arrival triggers some movement under the snow, and then out they come.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
Yes, and I love working on those shots with Weta because one of the things they're really good at, and I always ask for this, is the first instinct is they pour out and they run down the hill. And my first instinct is they pour out and start falling. They run into each other. They lose their footing. There's no careful planning or thought. These are not stalkers.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
And so there's a messiness to it and a brutality. And again, a total lack of concern for each other. It's all about getting that one. And it leads to a sequence that we really looked for fidelity to the game. And that is when Abby gets into this mining plant and that fence goes in.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
Well, the easy part was the source material was correct. I remember playing it and experiencing it and feeling horrible. But there is that difference between experiencing something and feeling horrible because you loved somebody and you're grieving for the loss of that person. And you're shocked that the story would be so dangerous as to kill that person.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
Yeah, there's something wrong with us.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
Yeah, that was like, that's an easy one, right? Like, part of the fun of this for me is that as many questions as I ask and as many levers as I, you know, play around with, and I'll say, Neil, what if we do this? Or what if we do this? Or here's a crazy idea. There are some things where it's just full clarity. Oh, we're doing that. And we don't need to screw that. I mean, that's, it's gorgeous.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
And the way she's rescued and discovered by Joel, it's just, you know... Keep it. It works. It's great.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
Yeah, so Dina is with Joel now, and she's in this mine. That's an actual mining facility in Wyoming. And Dina's at this lower level, and she shouts for Joel. And Caitlin does this incredible thing where she's like, I just got saved. I'm freaking out. My gun is gone. That's the guy I'm looking for. He just saved my life. What do I do now? And the gears spinning in her head are fascinating to watch.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
Caitlin talks to Joel in a very intimate way before she begins to hurt him. And in that discussion, there's this moment where she turns and looks and sees this bag of old golf clubs across the room. And then she looks back at Joel and a tear just comes out. There is a pain there that you can't help but connect with. And that's why this story is so fascinating to me.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
It is screwing with the fundamental physics of narrative. It is forcing your brain to get out of its comfort zone with narrative because you are struggling in that moment. I almost feel like Schrodinger's audience in that moment. I am rooting for her and I'm rooting for him. It's both.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
The cognitive dissonance there, the emotional dissonance, is glorious to me because it's complicated and I think it mirrors how we feel a lot in our own lives.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
And a different response, which is a critical, I don't think that was a good choice. I thought it was a brilliant choice. I thought it was incredibly brave. And I thought it was really smart. Because in the end, you have to take plot armor away at some point.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
I remember seeing that little, I guess you'd call it a teaser, as a fan of the game, Losing My Shit. And the moment before it begins... is sort of why the song happens at all. Because Ellie makes this slow, painful crawl across the floor to Joel's body. She has been kicked in the ribs and clearly injured badly. She might not make it at all. I think she thinks she's going to die here.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
And she just wants to be with him. And it is so heartbreaking to hear her little breaths as she just settles in with the only person in her life that she truly loved. And then we wanted, I remember talking about this with Mark too, we wanted to drift away into a dreamy view of what happens now. Because you can't keep doing reality after that. That is the peak of it. And what that means is a song.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
And if you're going to tell a story about consequences, and if you're going to tell a story about a man who does a terrible, terrible thing for the best possible reason there is... then you need the world to provide feedback. And the feedback here is brutality. That's how the world works. So there was never a question that we were going to do this. The real question was when.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
And Ashley isn't just Ellie in the game, she's also now in our show, Ellie's mother. And there is this ghostly sound of the other person who loved Ellie as much as Joel did. And what she is singing about is not good news. In the end, even though Jackson is saved, even though Ellie survives, someone's soul might be damned. And that is rough.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
But I will say, and I'll be intentional about this, that we do know that for the viewer, there are some mysteries here. There's some gaps about Ellie and Joel's relationship. And I don't think it's a spoiler based on the fact that there's a trailer out there with lots of shots in it. This is not the last we will see of Joel.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
And we talked about this a lot. And it felt to us like episode one really taught us a lot about where Joel was and what his relationship was like with Ellie. And it doesn't end well. And here we get to episode two and this happens and you feel this double destruction because as far as we know, her relationship with Joel was broken and now she's forced to watch him die.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
And it's like a double wound to the heart.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
And I remember being... I like that, like he was setting you up for like a more interesting second part of that sentence. Clearly this happened.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
Abby is torn apart by grief. And grief is a very specific thing. Grief is not justice. Grief is not vengeance. Grief is the pain that is left when something that is entwined with you is ripped away. And what's happening here is a cycle where she is trying to keep herself from seeing this thing that is going to make this so much more grievous to her. And she can't.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
And you get the feeling that this is not the first time she's tried to tell herself, don't walk in that room. But what she sees in there is is horrible. When Joel shoots this man in the head, it is not a fun moment to watch. It is not a rooting moment as far as I'm concerned.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
In season one, when he does that, that is when we feel he's really just disconnected himself from any kind of sense of belonging to society or civilization. He is solely about getting Ellie out of there. He doesn't care what he does or who he hurts.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
And now this 19-year-old girl is wandering in there, who at that point is the same age that Ellie is right now, and sees him on the floor and sees that wound. There is a reason in season one we showed him on the floor. We could have easily just stayed with Joel after he shoots him in the head, but that's the last thing in the room that we see because that's what Abby's going to see.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
And that tearing away can't be undone, no matter how much she tries while she sleeps to do it.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
Very graphic. And one thing that we were able to do is have Abby be very explicit in her confrontation with Joel about what she saw, to confront him with what he did.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
And there's this moment between the two of them that I love and must give credit to Mark Mylot, our director, whose people may know him from Succession. And here he is doing this brilliant job with these actors in these little moments where Abby says, we have a code and the code is not to hurt people who can't defend themselves.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
And that's you right now, but I am gonna kill you because everyone agrees. that some things are just wrong. And Joel gives the slightest nod because he is acknowledging that what he did was capital W wrong, but also we understand he didn't care and he still doesn't care. It doesn't matter. So yes, does he deserve to die by the rules of the universe? Sure.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
Even when he shoots that guy in the head? Yeah. Even when he shoots the guy.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
Yeah, there's a lot of people talking about the trolley problem, the famous moral conundrum. And what I find interesting about these characters, at least when I'm sitting down at the keyboard and working on a scene, is that they don't have the trolley problem. It's not a problem for them at all. Nobody seems to be wrestling with what to do. Joel's a very clear goal.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
Oh, the trolley can either hit all those people or your kid. Not a problem. Send them to all the people. Abby has dragged this group of friends all the way from Seattle back here, putting them all in terrible danger, putting herself in terrible danger to do this. Not a trolley problem for her at all.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
So there is a moral clarity here where people are making their own systems of values and sticking to them in extremely hard ways. And the challenge that everyone is going to have is the challenge that Joel faces right here as someone is hitting him in his wounded knee with a golf club. And that is, does it work? In the end, does this method of pursuing my own value system actually work?
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
Would it not be better if I could have somehow figured out how to grow old and be Ellie's grandfatherly figure? Could I not see her become a 50-year-old person? I don't get that because of what I've done. They're all going to pay a price. So the question that we've seeded in here is, How do you win?
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
And you know, it's a great point. If she just shoots him and they leave... Ellie gets there too late. She never knows who did it.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 2 - “Through the Valley”
Well, they've been one step ahead in that they understood it was going to happen. I don't think that anyone knew exactly when it would happen.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
It's fascinating to see how Ellie finds her purpose in fighting. That's where she feels effective. That's where she feels like she's her own person. And I think a lot of this is about separation. And when you separate from the adult that has taken care of you and raised you, you want to figure out how you're an adult. And adults are effective at things. Ellie is not like Joel. Joel builds.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
Ellie doesn't build stuff. She doesn't do construction. But Ellie can do violence. And she does it right here. And then in the next scene we see her, she's blowing the head off a clicker, as Tommy teaches her. And her reaction when that head explodes is, oh! It's a delight. Because those things are dangerous animals. They're free to kill.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
We talk a lot about community. That word is going to come up more than a few times because that is what Jackson is. It is the only community that I can think of that we've... shown, certainly is, that's functional. It may be the only functional community at all in the world. We don't know because beyond the borders of where we've traveled is a bit invisible to us. But Jackson is functioning.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
There was something about the amount of attention and the size of the discussion and the size of the audience, which was way beyond what we expected. There's a general ballpark that you get from HBO. We'd love to hit this number and we... shot way past that number.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
It is taking in refugees. Joel and Tommy are working on renovating some of the houses that weren't livable so that they can house more people, so they can grow. This is what humans do in success. This is what was going on back in the hunter-gatherer days they began. A little small thing becomes London one day. And that's what's happening here. There is a power to that. There is a security to that.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
There is also a danger that you become a little complacent. You think you've figured it out. It's been five years. You are bringing the best of what we are back, arts and joy and peace and safety and harmony. But don't overestimate your place in this world.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
It was important... I think to get across that Joel was struggling with why. It's easy for anyone to go, oh, I'll tell you why, because look at how she ended season one. You swore and she said, okay, and she doesn't seem like she believes him. It was important to see that Joel hasn't kind of gotten there yet. And that, in fact, this is relatively new. This is a new development.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
Now, we're five years later. That means things must have been going okay for a while. And now they're not. And he's struggling with that. It is also important in this scene to introduce Dina because she is an incredibly important character to this story and what happens and what goes forward. And she is so different from Ellie and Joel. I think she represents a much more positive, healthy,
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
way to be she seems at least healthier and more positive she seems like a force for good she's wild she loves life yeah she's outgoing she's confident there was something that i didn't realize was missing in ellie until i saw it in dina and that's that spark that spunk that pluckiness that well i'll go take on anything dina loves people ellie and joel loved each other
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
And that was the size of their community. And you feel like Dina is this ray of sunshine. And Isabella Merced... Well, we asked her to do so many different things in this season, and we will watch as that happens. But one of the things that I love about how she portrays Dina here in this first episode is that you can feel the warmth radiating off of her.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
You want to be her friend because she's so funny and on top of stuff. She's charming. She's charming. She's really, really charming. You know what I love? Just a side note. Yeah. Again, Dina. Isabella is so, every time she's on screen, I just start smiling automatically. And when she comes to pick up Ellie to do the patrol, she's like trying to get them back together, you know?
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
It's sort of sweet and lovely and doesn't work. And she just sort of goes, okay, well, tried it. I love watching those two together.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
of shooting was the scene where she comes to pick her up to go on patrol. And I was, you know, five seconds into take one, and I went, we're gonna be fine. We're gonna be okay. We're gonna be more than fine. These two, like, amazing.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
I am a big believer in the Vince Gilligan theory that comic actors make the best dramatic actors. So, when Vince makes Breaking Bad, he casts Bryan Cranston. Sitcom dad, guess what? Incredible actor. There is a depth of humanity to funny people that is often discounted or overlooked. And Catherine O'Hara has done dramatic roles before, not too many.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
Mostly comedic roles because she's so brilliantly funny. And she's pretty funny in this one too. But there is a depth and soul to her that is so obvious, to me at least, and informs why she's funny. She is iconic and always comes across as knowing.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
This was a scene that actually has its roots in season one. I wrote a version of this for the first episode where we see Joel talking to a therapist. And it didn't fit in perfectly. It also felt a little bit off track from getting to Ellie. It was just delaying getting to Ellie, which was really important to us. But it was good, actually.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
It was a good thing that we didn't do it in season one because there's more subtext now to discuss. And I love characters that lie. I think that is one of the basic human actions. We don't give it enough credit because we do it all the time.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
The idea of lying or obscuring or holding back or concealing, even in a session with a therapist, a job that would be extraordinarily useful in a barter system in the post-apocalypse where everyone has suffered, everyone has been traumatized. And Gail is not just a therapist. She's good. She's really smart.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
And she's also brave because she's doing something in the scene that is scary, in part because she needs to, because she herself has been traumatized, and in part because she needs to demonstrate by example.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
Joel's emotions are connected to Ellie. What he is struggling with is the fact that she's pulling away from him. And he doesn't, or at least he claims to not know why. And we can see this. I mean, part of this episode is a little bit of a mystery. What is going on with the two of them? Right. Exactly. Because it's bad. And he's struggling with it, he's asking Dina, he's asking his therapist.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
Yeah. We care about the audience. We want them to love it. But the specific criticisms or praise, ultimately you have to put a shield up or else you'll drown in it.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
What he's terrified of is that the rift is because she knows or has figured out what he did. But when you see him stand up and say, I saved her, what's clear is he has no regrets about what he did.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
Pedro... has these almost invisible changes and choices that because they're almost invisible, they're extraordinarily visible. The way he goes from guilt to resolution in a moment. The way he goes from, I'm trapped and I'm like a little child who has to face up to what I've done to... I am indomitable and I'm leaving is remarkable.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
And sometimes when I'm directing and I have a situation like that, where I've just got two great actors facing off, it's like an action scene as far as I'm concerned. Emotional action scene. An emotional action scene, I always say it's like driving a Ferrari. I mean...
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
I come in there and I mostly just clarify some subtext things that might, you know, not popped out and then I get the hell out of the way.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
Things have happened between Joel and Ellie walking down the mountain towards Jackson at the end of season one and where we are now. A lot of things have happened. There are ghosts of mistakes in history past that we are going to unfold and we are going to discover. But where we are here... is heartbreaking because that guitar clearly means something.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
And the way it's on the floor, I can't tell you how much time I spent adjusting the clothing and the angle of the guitar and where the guitar would be and how it would be lying there and how much dust would be on it. It's a carelessness. It is a discarding of something that sticks in Joel's chest like a knife. And he does his very best to not explode or do anything.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
He just walks over, shoves all of his feelings down into a little ball, tells her she'll get it back the next day, he's gonna put some new strings on it, pretends that he's just caring for the guitar. She knows, she knows. The second he sees it there, she knows. that she's blown it and also seemingly doesn't care. That's the depth of what's going on here.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
And how we got there and how it gets resolved is yet to come.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
The community. But there's Ellie alone. Alone. And that is, you know, that's a shot. There are shots where, as I'm playing the game, it's not that I take notes, it's just emotionally, they thumbprint on you. Like, this is where, in making a television show, a shot like that lasts about two seconds or so.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
the number of meetings and the amount of work put in and the set design and how those lights would be strung and how we would shoot it. And then Ksenia Sarada, our brilliant cinematographer, one of my favorite moments of her work was that the shot was sort of set up to be on this little crane, which we had wheeled into the doorway of this church. And it just wasn't quite perfect like the game.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
I just wanted to... And she was very patient. And then she was like, in her very gustenny way, take the camera off the crane, please. And then she put it on her shoulders and she just did it herself by hand. And it was flawless. It's so beautiful. And that's one of those things where...
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
When the game and the show overlap like that, it's glorious, and I think it also helps enhance where the game and the show separate. Because you know it's going to come back. We don't wander away and never come back. We're always tied to that experience, which I think is great.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
For me, the most important thing was to establish a new reality for Joel and Ellie. It's been five years. She is older. She is different. She is more independent. And Joel is older, too, and has settled into this interesting kind of mentorship life. He's become a pillar of this community that he, you know, initially was sort of at odds with.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
Our love extends beyond the visual here. We're also listening to music that is being played by a band named Crooked Still, which is the music that plays in the game.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
Who's playing along with them as part of the band. Yeah. Britney and the Jug Boys is the name in the show. I think it's a fantastic name. But they were, it was wonderful to work with them and it just made the whole thing just so much, I don't know, truer.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
Seth. Good old Seth. I'll say this. We're gonna get a little deeper into Seth. Seth had a moment in the game that was important. And in our world, which stopped at 2003 in terms of its social progress and development, There was simply not the acceptance of gay people or lesbian people or anybody on that flag. And Seth comes from that world, clearly.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
We'll find out who he was and where he came from. But it was important to not pretend that the people in this world would necessarily be in a 2024 mindset about, say, queer people.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
Yes. And it is something that we want people to feel our characters carrying with them. Ellie carries this with her. She knows how people feel. Who she is and even how Joel understands it and how he comes to understand it is yet to be understood. And then there's the question of Dina. What is Dina doing? And I remember getting to that moment and loving it and also being like, is this real?
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
She says, I'm high. I smoked a lot. Well, is it real?
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
And the two of them are operating in a world of safety and security and confidence. Jackson is safe. The way that they're interacting with infected is different. They feel more like hunters now than victims or people who are quarry. So that and introducing the new realities for Tommy and Maria and their child, who is in Maria's belly in season one, and here he is running around as a five-year-old,
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
Do you know what breaks my heart, and this is right from the game, is that he does this and then turns to Ellie, and with all sincerity, as if he thinks she would be thrilled, He says, are you okay? Expecting her to hug him the way she did maybe outside that burning steakhouse. I saved you again. He can't help but try to keep saving her. And what she says is, I don't need your fucking help.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
And the anger on her face tells me that there is way more going on than I'm angry that you pushed a guy in a dance. And what that is, we will come to understand.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
Ellie has killed a clicker with a knife to the neck in Kansas City, and she's getting real good at killing clickers with a knife to the neck here. So is Dina. They are not afraid. But this is where Ellie wants to make a choice. When Dina questions it, Ellie says, if you'd rather let the men handle it. And it's not even about gender. It's about adults, really.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
What she's saying is you want the grownups to handle it. Are we just kids?
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
We talked a lot about how to create a world where our characters felt actually rather safe with the infected. Because when you go from season one to season two, if your fear reaction to infected is the same, then you kind of haven't learned anything in five years. You haven't gotten better. You haven't practiced. Humans are very good at solving problems over time.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
And these humans have gotten pretty good at solving the infected problem. They're feeling good about themselves to the point where Ellie and Dina are fine to walk in a supermarket and go one-on-one. But this one is different.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
And the Stalker, of course, is an evolution character in the game. And we kind of wanted to spotlight the fact that they think, which is a huge problem. It is terrifying. Even the way they sound, that sadness, there's a humanity in there still. There is more brain left in them. But they're also like, how they sound is they're quiet.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
Exactly. Like she says, they plan, they stalk. And it's also very important to note here that It wins in the sense that it bites Ellie and would infect her if she were anyone else on the planet. It's that good. So this kid slash young woman who goes into a supermarket, cocky as hell, just got bit by this other thing that she did not see coming.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
The introduction of that is probably never gonna pay off. I'm sure we will never see stalkers again.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
Yeah. What we liked about this was that it was the progress that caused the problem, that these pipes underground that had been there dormant for five years, that cordyceps had gotten into, nobody's touching them. Nobody knows it's there. But when you are humans and you want to expand, you cannot expand without an expense that nature has to pay. And now we see it.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
If you don't fix those houses, if you don't break those pipes, if you don't pull out the weeds, no problem. But they have, and they don't realize it yet. And there is- Actions have consequences. Actions have consequences.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
And meeting new people that are incredibly important to the story, Dina and Jesse. And of course, there is that moment with this absolutely new character named Abby and all the people she's with.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
All those things are important to get across here because as anybody that watches The Last of Us knows, whatever reality and whatever certainty we create, we're probably going to kick it around a bit before you know it.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
Yeah. So let's just go ahead and rip the scab off on what I think is going to be a lot of commentary. Future Days, that song didn't exist in 2003 when the world ended. And Neil and I... had, you know, a solid conversation and arrived at the following conclusion. We didn't give a shit. Because it is an important song to the story. And thematically, it's incredibly important.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
Because Joel is trying to figure out what his future is with Ellie. And Ellie is trying to figure out what her future is as herself, not as someone's kid. And where they're heading into the future, which we accelerate them into five years later, they have arrived at future days. It is, in fact, the past that is the anchor that is still holding them back.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
And the bait on the hook for me was Joel's reaction, which was new, because we never got to see it in the game. And when she says okay like that, what is he supposed to take from that? And I think it's a fantastic choice that Pedro makes there, which is... I'm pretty sure that's bad. I'm gonna choose to take it at face value anyway, because that's what's best for me. And it's fantastic.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
But I think, you know, Neil is absolutely right. Just that finality of ending with Ellie's okay, especially the way Bella delivered that is just incredible. But then we had a chance to come back and remind people of this moment, the key moment that generates everything from this point forward. And then to give them that little bit more to see what Joel chooses to do there.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
And you can already see in that choice the problem. The problem is he's going to pretend for as long as he can that she doesn't know, no matter what he gets back from her. So let's talk about Abby for a little bit.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
Well, the character is pretty much who the character is in the game. She is, as we find out, a firefly. She lives in Salt Lake City. We know that because we see the giraffes. They're burying people. And we don't know who this one cross is that she walks over to and drapes a firefly pendant over, but it's clearly somebody that mattered deeply to her.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
We know from this scene that she has a different relationship with Owen than with the others. We know that she is angry and she doesn't care about circumstances. She doesn't want to hear what you can't do or why you can't do it. She is already fixated on one thing, no matter what. She wants to kill Joel for what he's done. And we know what he's done. We saw it.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
And you can feel from the very beginning that even the person that she's closest with here, Owen, they're not like her. They've all been through this, but there's something different about her. She is operating in a place that is much more intense than them.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
Abby and how we introduce her and the context we put her in, in this season, right off the bat, it's the first new scene really that we see after Joel and Ellie walk towards Jackson, is something that we talked about a lot. And part of it was the way she's introduced in the game is through you playing her.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
And that experience is why the way I think you guys structured the information release worked so well. Because you are somebody, and it's a mystery, but who am I? Why am I here? What do I want? And why do I want it? But you're occupying her. We don't do that on the show. And so it felt like, okay,
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
Maybe the information delivery system should be different here because we don't have that opportunity to be a person.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
Well, we didn't feel like we were obliged to fully represent the same body shape that Abby has. There is a power that Abby gives you in the game as you're playing her. And as Neil said something that was so interesting to me as a game designer that I didn't really think about much as a player. I just experienced it.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
Just that when you're playing somebody and you then shift over and play somebody else, they need to have different... methods of... Different physicality. Different physicality, different ways to attack, different ways. So when you're Joel, you feel one way. When you're Ellie, you feel different.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
And you play differently, you're more scared because you're smaller and you don't quite have the Joel-ness about you. And it was smart to make Abby different in that play style than, say, Ellie. But again, we don't have gameplay. So to me, the key was to find a certain ferocity and a relentlessness.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
And I think you'll see some of that as the season goes on and certainly as we go forward with the show.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
Well, I mean, I will say season one, I'm just going to be fully transparent. I don't do well with a lot of attention. I think the rough thing for me is that if something fails, I feel really, really bad. And if something succeeds the way the first season did, I just feel really, really scared. I don't know why.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
The look on Ellie's face where all that kind of fun, I'm one of these guys doing this stuff, just gone. I'm not Joel's girl. And it was important for us to show this fight because we wanted to explore how somebody who is Bella's size fights. Because Bella has aged, but she's not getting taller. And the world is full of people that are bigger than her.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
And so we did a lot of research and looking around, and it seemed like jujitsu was the way to go. And I watched videos of small people taking down big people, and it's kind of incredible, and they do it the way she did it there. And that's what they're training her to do. And I think it's amazing the idea that Ellie is like, I know my size. Teach me how to do violence.
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Episode 1 - “Future Days”
two people that are bigger than me because I want to be effective in this world on my own. I don't want somebody coming to save me every time. I want to be able to take these people down. And we also get a hint that she's not necessarily fully in control of it because when she's in that moment and she's got his arm and he's tapping out, she's somewhere else.