You're Always Far Kinder To Me Than I Deserve, And I Will Always Appreciate You

You're always far kinder to me than I deserve, and I will always appreciate you <3

I don’t know who sent this, but listen up, Anon. You deserve nothing less than love and kindness, okay? You should always have that. I’m really happy I’ve been able to give you some, but it is not “more than you deserve”. You deserve kindness. Period.

Gorgeous!! I cannot wait for Bella to absolutely CHEW the scenery in s2!!

Ellie’s face in this scene breaks my heart. You can see in her eyes that she knows. She isn’t crying or yelling, but just with this look you can see it so clearly. She’s hurt, she’s betrayed, she wants to cry but she can’t. She’s knows. She doesn’t want to, but she does.

It’s such a feat of acting, the fact that you can look in Ellie’s eyes and see everything she’s thinking. You can tell she knows, even though she denies it. But it’s so… real. It hurts! There’s no exaggerated look back at the camera or snarl, but somehow the look in Ellie’s eyes express even more.

plastic folding chairs???????

That’s a good one. Basically the premise is that Joel and Ellie go to support groups and get help for their trauma. Joel makes a deal with Ellie that if he goes to a support group for people who lost kids then she has to go to a support group for survivors of SV. She agrees because she wants him to shut up about it and doesn’t think that he’ll actually do it, but he and Maria go to a group together.

One of the biggest complaints about TLOU HBO was the lack of infected, and while I do understand the reasoning, I can’t help but strongly disagree. There are two main reasons for this…

Reason 1: Fear

I believe that the toned down action not only allows for more deep and incredible character moments, but it also gives every encounter far more weight than it would have with constant enemies (this goes for people, too). Every time an infected appeared, I felt (rightfully) scared for our characters. I think it’s like if you were in a forest filled with wolves versus in a forest with one huge bear. You can constantly encounter wolves, but after enough time they don’t really become that scary. You’re constantly taking down wolves left and right, and sometimes a wolf manages to bite your ally’s neck. But now imagine you’re in a forest with a huge, terrifying bear. You’ll encounter the bear less, but every time you see it someone dies and you barely escape. That seems just as scary to me!

Reason 2: Theme

I feel like the world of TLOU Game is scary, but the world of TLOU show is haunting. Obviously, you’ll have a preference on which one you prefer, but I just love the latter. The world filled with constant enemies and things trying to kill you is intense, it’s exhilarating, but the world feeling lonely and isolating, filled with ghost towns and empty ruins, is such a bleak, heartbreaking picture that I can’t help but adore. Joel is empty after Sarah’s death, and that’s reflected in the world around him. This image of a destroyed, broken down world, is tragic. Seeing these characters make their way through what used to be cities or nurseries, now just empty husks like the survivors, is so hauntingly dark and spectacular from a storytelling standpoint. But seeing these empty husks with a child, with someone excitable and curious is beutiful in a way that’s difficult to describe. By showing the world bleak, rather than intense, the thematic elements of the story and world building are cranked up to 11.

I also understand there’s the matter of audience expectations. If you played the game first, you’d be surprised by the lack of zombies. If you started out thinking of them as you thought of them during the game, the scariness is undercut. The game is chock full of intense action sequences, so if you were expecting constant new obstacles and challenges like in the game, you’d feel like the lack of action was more glaring.

Personally, I think the show would’ve suffered from an over-abundance of actions scenes, and the more ‘Bang!’ tone of the game would’ve hurt the show. I’m not at all saying it’s bad in the game, it’s just the difference in mediums. If you presented the world of TLOU HBO in game form, it wouldn’t be nearly as good. However, if you offer the world of the game in show form, that wouldn’t have worked either. It’s all about knowing what works when, and that’s something I tremendously respect from the teams behind both the game and show. They both knew how to take full advantage of their medium, and squeeze excellence from both.

TLOU s2: Behind the Camera

One of the most anticipated shows of 2025, The Last of Us (my favorite show of all time), is likely getting an official teaser trailer this month for the absolutely stacked season 2! If you’ve been keeping up with the news around it, you’ll know the incredible new actors added like Kaitlyn Dever, Isabella Merced, Jeffrey Wright, Katherine O’Hara, and Young Mazino, but they’re not the only rockstars stepping onto the set.

(Super long post)

Directors:

Aside from the amazing returning directors, TLOU has added four prestige legends to the lineup. Thank you for your service, Ali Abassi, if you’re past work directing stories about blonde sex-offenders is any indication, your Trump biopic will be fantastic.

The four directors added to the lineup are Stephen Williams, Kate Herron, Nina Lopez-Corrado, and the legend himself, Mark Mylod.

Stephen Williams, the director who’s known for constantly directing episodes with an 8.7 score on IMDB (that’s not what he’s actually known for). He’s directed episodes of Westworld (one in s1 and one in s2, both with an 8.7 score) and Lost (in which he has two more 8.7s, and I believe over 10 other episodes in the range of .2 points of 8.7), so he’s pretty good with time-skips and flashbacks. He’s also worked on Persons of Interest in which he directed another, you guessed it, 8.7 episode, as well as two more win the .2 range of it. Recently he’s broken out of the “almost nine” range with HBO’s Watchmen, in which he directed episodes 3 and 6. (He’s directed 9s before, but this was the first time where they weren’t surrounded by 8.7s). His work with time shenanigans, and the fact that TLOU is rated 8.7 on IMDB, make this a fantastic match.

Kate Herron is next up, known best for her work on Loki. She directed the entirety of season 1, which includes my favorite episode of the show ‘The Variant’, in which Loki and Mobius go to the location of a disaster in the near future to find a sinister variant. It’s practically a demo real for TLOU, since a lot of it takes place in a supermarket filled with people waiting out a disaster that none of them survive, showing she’s got the skill to pull of apocalyptic. She also delivered us the absolute gold of the salad scene. Other than that, she directed multiple episodes of Sex Education back when it was still beloved and acclaimed.

Third we have Nina Lopez-Corrado. While she hasn’t directed shows quite as high-caliber as some of the other directors, she’s proven she’s good at found family through her work on Agents of Shield, in which she delivered one of the highest rated, and roughest episodes of the show ‘Devil Complex’, in which our favorite characters get put through absolute hell (so she’ll be perfect for TLOU s2!). She’s also shown that she can get Tumblr obsessed with queer ships with her work on Supernatural…

Last and certainly not least is the most well known and acclaimed of the new directors, Mark Mylod. I believe he will be directing the most episodes of this list, but I’m not entirely certain. Mylod is probably best known for his amazing work on Succession, which he won an Emmy for. He’s directed all of my favorite episodes except Panic Room and America Decides. While he’s worked on other projects like Game of Thrones, Entourage, and The Menu, it’s his directing for Succession that gets me most excited for his work on TLOU. He’s proven he can elevate emotional scenes, and his directing is consistently incredible across all spectrums of human feeling. His thematic work with grief, trauma, and the cycle of violence will very much carry over into TLOU, and I can’t wait to see the absolute emotional brutality and heartbreak of his direction paired with Bella’s acting. Actually I can wait because holy shit I’m not going to make it… He directed Kendall’s traumatizing car crash in the s1 finale, Shiv’s self-destructive decisions in Ternhaven, Kendall’s breakdown in s3 when he admits to Roman and Shiv what he did, Roman’s grief and self-harming behaviors at the funeral, the bittersweet bonding in the finale of the show, and obviously Connor’s Wedding. If you’ve seen Succession or know the plot of TLOU part 2 you’ll know exactly how that might carry over…

You thought this was the end? Hell no! Directors aren’t the only ones behind the camera!

Writers:

Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann wrote season one. Their brilliant writing elevated the show and led to some truly unforgettable moments, and this season they’ve brought in some more incredible writers to help!

Halley Gross co-wrote The Last of Us part 2 alongside Neil Druckmann. No one was particularly surprised by this news, but it’s still great nonetheless. It’s clear how much Mazin respects the source material, and I love how TLOU brings in the people who wrote the games to help adapt it for television. She also wrote episodes for Westworld s1.

The other writer is more unexpected. Bo Shim joined the writers room of TLOU s2, but we don’t know much about him. He currently has no official writing credits, which either means it’s a pseudonym (which I doubt), or, more likely, they found a young, talented writer who hasn’t made it big yet and decided to give him his big break and use his skills for TLOU. If you’re looking, Craig, I know a film student who’d love to join the writing room for TLOU…. She’ll do it for free… she’ll pay you… please??

Cinematographers:

Cinematographers work with directors to create the look of the show, the shots, the lighting, etc.

Ksenia Sereda, who did the cinematography for TLOU episodes 1, 2, and 7 will be returning along newcomer Catherine Goldschmidt who worked on the always-gorgeous House of the Dragon.

Some of her amazing HotD shots:

Finally, Emily Mendez and Timothy A. Good are returning as editors. Set designers Austin Chuqiao Wang, Kyle White, and Shannon McArthur are returning as well.

There are wild amounts of other crew members who work on everything from lighting to costumes to vfx to storyboards. If I mentioned all of them this post would be as long as the credits, but every single one of them is important to the show and helps make it as incredible as it is!

I can’t wait for season 2!