The Last of Us: What you need to know about the show and game

The second episode of the HBO hit The Last Of Us opens with a scene in Jakarta, Indonesia. It’s set in 2003, at the beginning of a (fictional) fungal pandemic that goes on to destroy the world as we know it. After an expert in fungal biology evaluates the body of an infected factory worker, she speaks quietly to a military official who has asked for her help controlling the pathogen’s spread.

“There is no vaccine,” she says to his stricken face.

The season finale of HBO’s The Last of Us — based on the video game of the same name — thrust a longstanding philosophical question into the cultural spotlight: Is it ever ethical to kill one person for the well-being of many others?

If you haven’t seen the show or played the game, a real species of fungus called cordyceps has evolved the ability to inhabit humans, turning them into mushroom-zombies that bite. Twenty years of apocalyptic chaos ensues.

Prestige TV has finally come for video games. On paper, this is good news. The prestige TV treatment boils down to a rubric of extravagant thoughtfulness — more money for more considered details and more A-list performances — and shows like Severance, Andor, and Succession have served up some of the most gripping and provocative mass-market storytelling as a result.

So why not be jazzed about HBO’s The Last of Us, right? A beloved video game gets adapted by the only television network most would trust to do it justice. And it looks like great TV. The first several episodes positively sprout with craft. Much of the chatter surrounding the show has evaluated it according to those precepts, creating a kind of circular logic in which it seems self-evident that showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann managed to coax a tropey video game premise to its fullest expression.

At this point, it’s almost impossible to avoid Pedro Pascal. Avoiding him is like evading gravity, unfeasible unless one has access to, say, the moon. The 47-year-old actor is the lead of HBO’s The Last of Us, the biggest show of the moment. In March, he’ll resume his role as the Mandalorian in The Mandalorian, the Star Wars television spinoff that will probably be the biggest show of its moment when the series revs up its third season. Previously, Pascal starred in Narcos and wielded hot bisexual chaos as Oberyn Martel in Game of Thrones.

Even if you aren’t watching these shows or know nothing about Pedro Pascal, be prepared because he is coming for you, whether you like it or not.

The scariest shows and movies are often the ones rooted in reality — about psychopathic serial killers, late-night home invasions, and AI robot dolls. Zombie apocalypses typically don’t count.

But a new show on HBO, called The Last of Us, presents a compelling case that perhaps there’s such a thing as a realistic zombie. Or realistic-ish. And it’s definitely scary.