The last of us, season 2: explanations on the revelation of episode 5 which changes everything
In The Last of Useach episode hollows out a little more the descent into Ellie underworld. But episode 5 of season 2 crosses a CAP.
Attention spoilers!
Ellie’s quest for revenge (Bella Ramsey) After the brutal death of Joel (Pedro Pascal) reaches a point of no return. Tracking Nora (Tati Gabrielle), influential member of Washington Front Liberation Present during the murder of Joel, Ellie asked her … before torturing her to find out where Abby hides (Kaitlyn Dever). A shocking sequence, violent, but above all revealing a broader change: that of humanity in the face of an evolutionary threat.
Because the other major revelation of this episode is the introduction – for the very first time in the series – of a mode of contamination by aerial spores of the cordycers. A crucial change in the universe of the show, which revives here with one of the flagship elements of the original video game.
“The episode opens with a very mysterious note, introducing a new way in which the cordycepts can be transmitted”, Explain to Variety Stephen Williamsthe director of this episode. “Spectators do not understand what is happening until the end, thanks to the scene with Nora. But at the beginning, they are in the same situation as the characters: confronted with an airborne form of the infection, completely unprecedented. I think it is normal that they are a little disoriented, until the revelations on the source of the spores and their spread in this center of Seattle arrive.”
Nora therefore becomes the first visible victim of this new mutation in the virus, at the end of the episode in question.
An intense, suffocating, and extremely physical scene, that Tati Gabrielle a long time prepared with the creator of the series, Craig Mazin. She tells in Variety:
“Craig wanted it to be extreme, but scientifically realistic. We were very inspired by the way the cordycers takes possession of an insect in nature. I asked all the questions: she inhales the fungus, so he goes direct to the brain, then to the nervous system. But she suffocates? Craig said to me: no, she can technically breathe. It is just that her lungs suffocation.
The actress details this moment when her body fights to survive while her mind begins to dissociate itself: “Small convulsions, the tremors, it is because her brain tries to keep control long enough to say what she has to say to Ellie. She loses reason against her will. It is fast, uncontrollable. She clings to what she has of humanity. It was probably the most difficult scene that I have ever shot. Die and say her last words, it’s almost easier.
With this mutation in the cordycers and this new dynamic of invisible contamination, The Last of Us redefines the rules of survival for the rest of the series, to see next Monday in Max in France. There are 2 episodes left in this season 2.
