The Last of Us S2E02 Review | “Through the Valley”

Horde mode.

Kaitlyn Dever as Abby in The Last of Us Season 2, Episode 2 “Through the Valley.” Photo credit: Liane Hentscher/HBO

[This review contains spoilers for Season 2, Episode 2 of The Last of Us, “Through the Valley.” It does not contain spoilers for the video game The Last of Us: Part II]

“Hardhome,” the eighth episode of the fifth season of Game of Thrones, set a high bar for the show’s action sequences. The series started with a budget so restrained that in early seasons, epic battles happened off-screen, but by Season 5, it took viewers into an epic fray between Jon Snow and the White Walkers. It was not only an exhilarating sequence, but it also felt like a new bar was set in what was possible to accomplish on television. However, in its later seasons, Game of Thrones seemed like it was trying to outdo “Hardhome” in spectacle without necessarily delivering the same dramatic punch. The show’s aim for its set pieces didn’t seem to be catharsis as much as giving viewers the kind of VFX-heavy scenes they had previously only seen in theaters.

This arms race for action scenes in episodic television is now everywhere, and while we shouldn’t be surprised to see it come to The Last of Us, it also highlights the issue of going for a larger scope and losing sight of character. Season 1 had its big set pieces, in particular the infected ravaging Kansas City in “Endure and Survive.” But the second episode of Season 2, “Through the Valley,” clearly intends to put that action scene to shame with a massive horde of zombies attacking Jackson and Tommy (Gabriel Luna) and Maria (Rutina Wesley) leading the defense of the town.

Watching this massive set piece, I couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed, not because it was poorly executed (as action scenes go, director Mark Mylod did a good job of pacing the battle and keeping the geography intact), but because I don’t think it’s the show’s strong suit. The reason the first season hooked viewers wasn’t the spectacle in “Endure and Survive,” but the intimate human emotions of the third episode, “Long, Long Time,” which chronicled the romance between Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett). The driving idea behind the show is how love is a wonderful and terrible thing, and that it drives people to make decisions that may seem selfish, but are done out of a complicated mix of emotions and human foibles. The zombies are there, but they work better in terms of the world-building and symbolism rather than as the central impetus behind the narrative.

Throwing so many infected at the screen leads to a fractured episode where everything important to our main characters seems to be happening largely outside the biggest action scene. The central conflict between Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), Ellie (Bella Ramsey), and Joel (Pedro Pascal) is nowhere near Jackson when the zombies attack. There’s little to bridge the two plotlines, and if anything, it only serves to obscure our new character, Abby.

To be fair, the show seems like it’s purposefully playing coy on Abby, giving us just enough of her to understand her motivations, but not providing the same level of depth and texture we have for Joel and Ellie. It’s not rushing to put her on the same level, so she and her cohort are figuratively and literally outsiders. To put it another way, we’re getting glimpses of Abby, but our loyalties are still supposed to be with our Season 1 characters and those they trust, like Dina and Jesse (Young Mazino).

A bloater attacks Jackson in The Last of Us Season 2, Episode 2, “Through the Valley.” Photo credit: HBO

That’s a compelling story, but I suppose to avoid the same beats of the game and hold surprises for players and non-players alike, we now have this massive action scene set in Jackson, and the primary tension is what will happen to Tommy and Maria, which is fine, but doesn’t tell us much thematically or with regards to our central conflict. There’s less weight to a bloater bearing down on Tommy than there is with a horde bearing down on Abby. We’re certain Abby will survive (knocking her off wouldn’t make any sense after only a brief introduction), but watching her stumble into danger shows how reckless she’s willing to be if it means getting her revenge. It also serves the narrative convenience of letting her cross paths with Joel rather than figuring out how to infiltrate Jackson. Tommy facing down a bloater could mean he lives or dies, but there’s not much beyond that. The burning bloater just kind of keeling over was an apt metaphor for the whole set piece—big, bombastic, seemingly dangerous, and ending with a whimper.

At best, you can see it as an incredibly expensive misdirect, as so much energy gets put into the defense of Jackson that the casual observer assumes nothing major would happen anywhere else. Instead, the inciting event for the whole season happens in the lodge when Abby and her crew capture Joel and Dina (Isabela Merced), knock Dina out, and then Abby gets her revenge on Joel because Joel killed her father (the doctor who was going to operate on Ellie) in the Season 1 finale. Everything in the first episode of this season was to show how rocky things were between Joel and Ellie, and now Ellie is forced to watch Abby murder Joel. Perhaps if you see Jackson as synonymous with Joel and that now Ellie has no physical home and no father figure, then it makes sense to put the events in the same episode, but geography matters and “Through the Valley” feels like it’s trying to have it both ways by giving viewers the kind of big action scene they’ve come to expect from genre television but also leaving the central characters untouched by what’s happening in that scene.

Thankfully, The Last of Us still knows how to do intimacy, and watching Abby confront Joel is a reminder of why you hire an actor of Dever’s caliber. It’s not easy playing a character that the audience will instinctively hate, and it’s to Dever’s credit that she’s still able to retain some of our sympathies even as she’s monologuing through her violent desires. The episode does a good job of walking the line between showing Abby as willing to do something monstrous, but indicating she’s not necessarily a monster. The world of The Last of Us certainly has its share of horrendous people, but Dever is compelling enough to let us know there’s more to this young woman than sadism. Our sympathies may be with Ellie and how she’ll react, but Abby’s actions still relate to the show’s central question: What are the horrible things we’ll do out of love?

I hope that in the weeks ahead, the show returns more to the intimate character drama that made the first season come alive. Genre television doesn’t need to adopt the thinking behind Game of Thrones, where subsequent seasons require bigger set pieces. Those action scenes, while impressive, can also obscure the power of two characters just having a conversation. That’s where the show lives—with its human characters, not in shooting the walking dead.

Stray observations:

• Well, I don’t think Jackson is going to have to worry about its housing crisis.

• It is kind of amusing that next month marks the 10^th anniversary of “Hardhome,” and we now have another big old zombie battle in the snow in a popular HBO series.

• I’m eager to see how people react to Joel’s death. The Last of Us is not a big ensemble where anyone could die in any episode. You’ve killed off one of your three main characters to propel the central conflict between Abby and Ellie, and I’m wondering if anyone will bail now that Pascal is not a leading actor on the show (because where else where would you see him except for Freaky Tales, Materialists, Fantastic Four: First Steps, Eddington…)

• We encourage you to talk about the episode in the comments, but please refrain from video game spoilers. Having played the games should not be a prerequisite for watching the show.

The Last of Us airs Sunday nights at 9pm ET on HBO. Look for recaps of the latest episodes here later the same evening. Matt Goldberg is a film critic who lives and works in Atlanta. If you enjoyed this review, check out his newsletter, Commentary Track.