Episode 9: Look for the light
Here we go, the season finale.
The episode starts with pregnant Anna (played by Ashley Johnson) running into an abandoned house. She has gone into labor, and is being hunted by one of the infected. She fights it off, and manages to give birth while doing so. And the baby turns out to be Ellie. Turns out Anna was part of fireflies, and Marlene and some of the fireflies come to find her. Anna go bitten just before giving birth, and hence the show's explanation of why Ellie has immunity.
IDK, This was such a strange scene. Just like with Troy Baker, I feel like Ashley Johnson was just there for fan service. Not only that, but I really wish there would've been better reasons. I mean for one thing, I'm sure that's not how immunity works, and I'm sure they copied this from Blade's origin.
We jump back to the present time, while Joel and Ellie are continuing to make their way to firefly base. These two now officially have accepted each other as surrogate father/daughter, and their dialog seems so be once again lifted from the game. They make their way through a city, and we have our giraffe scene. The only thing that ruins it was the fact that giraffe was CGI. I understand they may not have been able to acquire an actual giraffe, but damn it, what's supposed to be a hauntingly beautiful scene looks really distracting. And they got an actual giraffe for this scene. I think that's quite amazing, making the scene all the better.
Joel and Ellie have a bit of dialog after this, and the foreshadowing of future events is more obvious, now we all know what happens by the end and in TLOU part 2. Joel actually confesses to Ellie that he was planning to end his own life after Sarah died, and how a last-minute hesitation saved him. Holy crap, that's actually dark, and totally understandable.
Joel and Ellie get captured by fireflies, and when Joel regains consciousness, Marlene is there to explain Ellie has to die to create a cure.
The show pretty much follows the game from this point, Joel fights through hell to save Ellie, and kills the doctors performing the surgery that would've killed Ellie. At this point, I realized this is only the second time in the show version that Joel is fighting against humans, the first one during the part with Sam and Henry. The game version had lot more encounters, IIRC. I guess the show didn't want to repeat the same format with every episode, but it is still weird they had no looter/bandit encounter to this point. I don't think we got to the part of Ellie being unable to swim, and them being chased by armored car.
This hospital scene is brutal. Joel spares NO ONE, even people who were surrendering. Maybe it's because I'm not in control of him, but I was a bit shocked here; All that sweet, nice side of him is gone, and I'm watching him mowing down people to save Ellie. I think it's probably even more shocking to those who never played the game.
Joel kills off Marlene and drives off with Ellie. He lies to her about the whole thing. And this is probably the part that still generates debate; Did Joel make the right decision? Would Ellie have made the decision to sacrifice her own life?
This was a 9/10 episode. Super close to the original game, with some detail changes for the show. But that intro with Anna was really weird and felt unnecessary
Overall:
Generally, I'd say this was a damn good live-action adaptation. It has shown that with careful dedication, writing, and understanding of the source material, we can have a nice adaptation. There were some questionable directions, missing parts from the game, and unnecessary/wasted cameos. Still, the plot was great, Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey's performances were superb, the atmosphere and set designs were on point.
Now to cancel my HBO max subscription until another interesting show comes along, or whenever part 2 gets made
