The emotional context is aided by both Pedro Pascal – heavy with grief, delivering an incredibly raw and intense performance – and Nico Parker’s peppy presence. Thanks to the show spending more time with Sarah than in the games, it’s a gut punch that hurts even more this time around. After some miscommunication, Joel’s daughter is shot and dies in his arms.
A soldier approaches Joel and a wounded Sarah. The gentle twangs of a banjo are deployed effectively throughout to intensify, but never overpower, the episode’s more emotional beats. That’s accentuated further by Gustavo Santaolalla’s powerful and restrained score. Director and co-showrunner Craig Mazin’s masterful use of the camera depicts all hell breaking loose from Sarah’s point of view, adding to the suffocating tone as things go from bad, to worse, to catastrophic. Joel and Sarah attempt to head out of town amid congested highways and pitch-black streets. The first half of the episode broadly follows the game’s prologue section while feeling not too dissimilar to A Quiet Place’s Day One sequences (ironically a film that took inspiration from The Last of Us). It won’t send pulses racing instead, it slowly begins ratcheting up the tension of an episode that fast becomes a horror film in miniature. Set in the 1960s, the scene – which does not come from the games – is dryly written and doesn’t skimp on the heavy-handed exposition as it introduces the show’s main threat and the world to follow. The opening minutes focuses on a team of scientific experts debating the likelihood of a viral fungus epidemic spreading across the world. The Last of Us’ first scene is a sobering reminder of its mission statement: this is a TV show first and a direct adaptation second. Fortunately, the premiere does the almost miraculous: it expands on the games – and often betters them. HBO’s adaptation of Naughty Dog’s PlayStation classic not only has to appeal to a legion of fans who will nitpick every minor change from the games, but it also has to stand out among a crowded marketplace of post-apocalyptic dramas teeming with zombie-like threats. The Last of Us has a thankless task ahead of it.
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