The Last of Us

I've been listening to the post-Last of Us podcast hosted by Troy Baker, featuring co-showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann. It's a pretty fascinating ...

But in terms of making quality TV that lands, I think that model really does hold Netflix series back, not just because of the “water cooler conversation” aspect, but in terms of how the episodes are shot, written and received without real beginnings or endings like Mazin describes here. There’s something to be said about HBO’s “looking forward to Sunday night” philosophy, whether that’s for The Last of Us, before that The White Lotus, before that House of the Dragon, and the conversations that happen around one specific episode the next day. Do you think anyone would be talking about things like the Jakarta intro or the Tess kiss if we’d gotten every episode of The Last of Us dumped on us last Sunday? So what happens is that either the showrunners, writers and directors know this, so they don’t really bother filming coherent starts and stops in episodes, making them feel like overly long movies, or if they do try, those moments don’t really land because they can all be binged together. One interesting thing they talked about this week was the difference between a game and a show in terms of the ability to have episodes. But that’s not the case for the show here, and they talk about how that allows them specific start and stop points.

In last night's (January 22) episode 'Infected', we see Joel (Pedro Pascal), Tess (Anna Torv) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) make it to the state house in Boston, ...

HBO Max is not currently available in the UK. NME is supported by you. [January 23, 2023] Seconds later, she manages to blow up the building.

Among these, one of the most terrifying, challenging enemies of the game, the type of Infected that has lived with the Cordyceps fungus long enough to have it ...

"The first time I saw the full prosthetics, I got tears in my eyes," said Druckmann. "To present the Clickers onscreen my feeling was that we had to make 5,000 decisions exactly right,” said director Craig Mazin in HBO's behind-the-scenes video. "It looked so good, and it looked so creepy and beautiful at the same time. The Clickers are one of the game's hardest enemies — one tiny sound and you're done for. Later, all Joel has to do is raise a finger to his eyes and ears and we're in it. The museum sequence in Episode 2 is immediately, horribly reminiscent of listening mode — it feels like the air has been sucked out of the room, with everything audible except for the Clickers' dreaded sound. And once Ellie, Tess, and Joel are trapped within the museum's Independence Hall, one of the most terrifying sequences you'll endure begins with one horrible "aaarrwk." It's also one of the reasons I almost stopped playing the game. Among these, one of the most terrifying, challenging enemies of the game, the type of Infected that has lived with the Cordyceps fungus long enough to have it take over their face and subsequently, sight: yep, we're talking Clickers. It's this level of difficulty that would usually make someone simply frustrated, but Naughty Dog added the delightfully traumatic element of making you watch your beloved character die horrifically at the hands of a Clicker. Joel, Ellie, and Tess meet this particularly vicious form of Infected while making their way through an abandoned museum, en route to the old State House. And with one "click" sound, they're in real trouble.

HBO's The Last of Us is a mostly faithful adaptation of the hit PlayStation game. But just how close to its source material does it get? We've gathered images ...

But just how close to its source material does it get? HBO's The Last of Us is a mostly faithful adaptation of the hit PlayStation game. Warning: contains full spoilers for episode 2 of HBO's The Last of Us.

In HBO's TV adaptation of The Last of Us, Tess is played brilliantly by Australian actress Anna Torv. Her version of Tess is calm but assertive, ...

Tess believes in Ellie's immunity and that she could be the answer for a cure long before Joel even entertains the idea. Tragically for Tess, both of them became infected, and Tess was forced to kill her husband. This story was going to be told in two ways.

Episode 2 of The Last Of Us starts in Indonesia 2003. Authorities show up and take a woman away. This is Ibu Ratna, a Professor in Mycology who happens to ...

A big part of the game’s allure comes from the developing relationship between Joel and Ellie over time. The TV show though disrupts that slightly with the bizarre flashback at the end of episode 1, and then takes 26 minutes before Joel and Ellie even say anything to one another. In fact, all those sequences with Ellie and Tess talking to one another would have worked so much better if Tess and Joel switched places, allowing Joel to learn more information about this young girl. The changed lore with the infected, showing off the tendrils that are all connected, is a nice touch too, but it also negates Tess and Ellie’s bit of dialogue where they discuss the infected giving off fungal spores when killed. Anyway, she eventually manages to get her lighter to work, but only after one of the infected assaults and kisses her with its tendrils sticking in her mouth. The scene is perfectly worked from the game, with Joel and Ellie looking at the State House in the distance. Tess struggles to get her lighter to work as floods of then infected pour into the building. When one of the infected moves on the ground, Joel shoots it in the head. The group make it to the State House, where Joel goes forward and investigates. Outside though its all bone-dry so the trio decide to press on and continue through the building. Ibu is shocked to learn that “Patient Zero” (the first person to spread the infection by biting) is still out there, but Ibu has been brought in to try and try and find a vaccine and cure what’s occurring. so Ellie does and it causes Joel to fight one off.

Fire Emblem Engage; FIFA 23; God of War Ragnarok; Mario Kart 8: Deluxe; COD: Modern Warfare 2; Pokémon Violet; Nintendo Switch Sports; Minecraft (Switch) ...

- Pokémon Violet That game featured a popular school-style story and a greater emphasis on character relationships. It wasn't enough to trouble last week's new launch from Nintendo, Fire Emblem Engage, but it is worth noting that this sales data does not include digital downloads.

Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey are the new faces of Joel and Ellie, but it's not either actor's first time on an HBO series. And coincidentally, while they never ...

While the hope for any new show is for it to get renewed for several seasons, that doesn't seem to be the plan for The Last of Us. But another groundbreaker in the zombie genre, Neil Druckmann, revealed to [The Hollywood Reporter](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/the-last-of-us-hbo-pedro-pascal-bella-ramsey-interview-1235290103/) he once pitched The Last of Us to the legendary filmmaker. [Booksmart](https://collider.com/tag/booksmart/)star Kaitlyn Dever was later pegged for the role, even doing a table reading. Fan casting for The Last of Us dates back to 2013 when players noticed the striking resemblance between Ellie and actor Elliot Page (then known as Ellen Page). But as the premiere got closer, the number of episodes decreased to nine for a very important reason. Of Romero's 2017 death, Druckmann included in a Those recognizable guitar strings were composed by Gustavo Santaolalla, who composed the music for the games. Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey are the new faces of Joel and Ellie, but it's not either actor's first time on an HBO series. Both characters were killed off the series by the end of their respective runs. She has the essence of Ellie." Joel's and Ellie's original portrayers, Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson, will also make appearances in the series. Following closely to the game's storyline, the series will follow beloved characters Joel and Ellie on their journey traveling cross-country during an apocalypse.

Recap: Anna Torv's Tess gets a troubling moment in the spotlight in S1E2 of HBO's adaptation.

In the game, Tess asks if she was with Marlene when it happened, and she says no, she went to Marlene for help afterward. “They’ll take her off your hands and they’ll handle it from here.” Joel says he can’t, and in a painful line that reveals volumes about their relationship, Tess says, “I never ask you for anything, not to feel the way I felt, not to—you shut the fuck up because I don’t have time!—this is your chance. At the same time I’m frustrated with the idea that Tess, who in the game is a woman of action right up until her final moments, here fearfully fumbles with her lighter and rather passively stands and lets herself be kissed by the infected in the end. Again, it’s remarkable work from Anna Torv, who seems to draw on a life filled with shame and disappointment as she pleads with the only person she has any real connection with to do something in her memory that matters. Outside the capitol building, save for one corpse, there’s no sign of the Fireflies they were supposed to rendezvous with, and inside, just as in the game, Joel and Tess find the contingent dead. The three head into a hotel, a nod to a location Joel and Ellie visit later in the game. As Joel attends to her sprained ankle, Tess looks at him with rare appreciation and tenderness, almost as if she’s making a conscious effort to appreciate his presence and the goodness in him. And then, in a callback to the episode’s heartbreaking prologue, Ellie sees a bomb crater, and Tess explains that it was an effort to slow down the spread. Joel notes that the fungus outside the building’s entrance is “bone dry,” which “could mean they’re all finally dead in there.” Before heading in, Tess retrieves a flashlight and pistol from her backpack, and the way she holds them, using her flashlight arm to support her pistol arm, shows these two are seasoned pros at this. When he asks her what can be done, her answer is a single chilling word: “Bomb.” Perhaps if all of Jakarta is scorched to the ground and everyone in it obliterated, there may be some hope for the rest of humanity. I don’t think the HBO show quite succeeds in making her seem so capable and necessary, but I did appreciate that it’s her who makes the decision here to continue on the journey, with Joel ultimately relenting. In the back of their car, the woman asks if she has committed a crime (“Of course not” comes the polite reply) and then wonders if perhaps there’s some mistake.

Two women stand after a firefight in a dilapidated apartment hallway. Natasha Mumba and Merle Dandridge play Fireflies Kim and Marlene. Credit: Shane Harvey/HBO ...

FEDRA has a list of jobs out for people in the QZ to sign up for, including street sweeping and sewer maintenance, of varying pay levels. When we first encounter FEDRA in The Last of Us, an officer is questioning a child who collapsed outside the QZ. FEDRA also runs factories for making ammunition and pharmaceuticals, as the FEDRA officer tells Joel in episode 1 of a factory in the Atlanta QZ that supposedly only makes both. You'll see FEDRA warning signs dotted all over the buildings in The Last of Us, as markers of quarantine zones, rules, and regulations to manage the fungal pandemic. FEDRA acts as the law in the QZs, with surveillance marking the streets and perimeter in person or through security cameras. The Federal Disaster Response Agency (FEDRA) is the main authority in the U.S. But as Marlene is shot in her bad deal with Robert, Joel and Tess take on the journey with Ellie. At the end of the episode, Tess, Joel, and Ellie sadly find the group in the State House all dead and Infected, leaving the mission in their hands instead. The bigger plan for Marlene's Fireflies is to leave Boston and take Ellie west to a group of Fireflies supposedly waiting at the old State House in another QZ in Massachusetts, then onto a Firefly base camp where doctors are working on a cure for the Cordyceps pandemic. "Whatever happened to me is the key to the vaccine," Ellie tells Joel and Tess in episode 2. "We are in a war against a military dictatorship to restore democracy and freedom," says Marlene. [the Naughty Dog game](https://mashable.com/deals/where-to-buy-the-last-of-us-video-game) and [the HBO adaptation](https://mashable.com/article/the-last-of-us-hbo-review) by Chernobyl director Craig Mazin and The Last of Us creator Neil Druckmann.

Tess Servopoulos (Anna Torv) died at the end of The Last of Us Episode 2. Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Tess put their smuggler skills to work to deliver Ellie (Bella ...

When Joel looked to leave Ellie behind and return “home” in the Quarantine Zone, Tess told him the truth about her condition and asked him to bring Ellie to the Fireflies to be studied. In the live-action adaptation, Tess desperately looked to light her lighter before the horde noticed her. Tess Servopoulos (Anna Torv) died at the end of The Last of Us Episode 2.

Tess, Joel and Ellie's journey takes a dark twist in the HBO adaptation.

Much to our relief, she manages light the fire and closes her eyes before the explosion kills her and a bunch of infected. They reach the Capitol Building and find the corpses of the Fireflies they were meant to bring Ellie to. She's quickly gunned down, but her sacrifice gives Joel and Ellie the chance to escape. She dumps gas and grenades all over the floor. They hope to replicate Ellie's resistance and restore the world. A particularly horribly mutated infected notices her and tendrils extend from its mouth into hers -- never have I wanted a flame to ignite more. [changed it for the show](https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/news/the-last-of-us-spores-changed-games-tv-show-adaptation/) to avoid having characters wearing gas masks all the time. Several of these people were executed to stop the problem from growing, but it was too late. Fans of the [classic video game](/tech/gaming/sony-ps5-review-exclusive-games-power-playstation-5-sky-high-space-age-console/) will undoubtedly be pleased at how closely the series mirrors the source material. It's apparently [an Indonesian honorific](https://medium.com/curious/the-curious-case-of-indonesian-honorifics-7e75cb02b7e4). If any of these were infected with a fungal pathogen, it could be devastating. After being bitten by an unknown person, a woman working at a flour and grain factory in Jakarta, Indonesia, chomped on her coworkers before being gunned down.

If you missed it, congrats! Hope you slept well. If not, just know that Anna Torv's smuggler, Tess, not only dies at the hands of a cordyceps-infected herd—but ...

Neil Druckmann, creator of The Last of Us and director of the HBO series’ second episode, explained to [EW](https://ew.com/tv/the-last-of-us-tess-death-zombie-kiss/), “These things don't have to get violent unless you're fighting them from spreading [the infection] further.” Their unique way of spreading the zombie-like affliction is therefore “realized in this beautiful, yet horrific way with Anna,” he said, that also expanded upon his source material. Mazin also added that he thought the kiss was “very creepy, which I love." [frame-by-frame comparisons to the video game](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYmT5XOTHzs) and the HBO series, viewers can see just how close Druckmann and showrunner Craig Mazin have adapted the zombie drama—but that doesn’t mean there aren’t areas that still leave room for improvement. The only difference in the game? Hopefully, the Internet will be on my side in calling this gnarly and insane, and I won’t find a weird, horny subculture buried in all of this. This was one of the weirdest deaths I’ve seen in a long, long time.

Where in the PlayStation games she was a confident, dynamic character, HBO makes Tess an example.

In the HBO show, however, Tess struggles with a lighter as she tries to ignite the gasoline covering the floor of the lobby. But in HBO’s portrayal of her, Tess lacks one of the main things she held onto most closely: her dignity. The game’s Joel and Tess felt like equals in the violence they would commit, but a lot of the moments that contributed to that feeling are stripped away in the TV show. She pleads with Joel to take Ellie the rest of the way to her destination in the hope that her immunity can lead to a cure. The inner workings of their relationship aside, Tess is a character who oozes confidence, street smarts, and intuition in the game version of The Last of Us. The hints of tenderness they feel for each other are much more overt in the show, with a scene showing both Tess and Joel sharing a bed, and Joel showing concern for her injuries at the hands of Robert’s men rather than a general jaded annoyance.

What was the first moment you felt the hairs on your arm begin to stand up in alarm? There's a high likelihood it was as Joel, Ellie, and Tess ventured into the ...

We expect to see them bustling with life, but here The Last of Us guides us through ruined corridors of broken glass, haunting mannequins, remnants of the past wrecked by time and the violent effects of the Cordyceps virus. The kind that's best played in the pitch black night, with the sound loud so that you can trace and avoid the Clickers' cries. And in "Infected," Druckman and co. Viewers have seen some of the lesser Infected before the protagonists make it to the city, but it's in the moments in the museum that the show introduces the most nightmarish evolution of the Cordyceps brain virus, the fungi-faced terrors known as Clickers. The tonal switch in the show is so well done that, as soon as Joel smashes through the Cordyceps holding the Museum doors closed, the atmosphere shifts. While the game briefly dips into the depths of the subway first (and we'll likely venture into those tunnels sooner rather than later in the show), the series dives straight into the haunting halls of the Museum. But on your way, you get your first real taste of the horrors that await outside the Quarantine Zone. It's choices like that which made The Last of Us game such a massive hit. The kind that's best played in the pitch black night, with the volume loud so that you can trace and avoid the newly revealed Clickers' cries. One of the hardest things about adapting a video game to television or film is the big question of how you put the viewer in the shoes of the protagonist. Throw your mind back to the first time you played The Last of Us. What was the first moment you felt the hairs on your arm begin to stand up in alarm?

The acclaimed TV show adaptation of The Last Of Us appears to have triggered a significant jump in sales for the original game, at least in the UK.

One of the original game's co-creators, Bruce Straley, is not credited on the show at all, a fact he noted in an [interview](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-last-of-us-star-anna-torv-on-that-horrific-episode-2-climax/1100-6510751/). In a recent [interview](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-last-of-us-star-anna-torv-on-that-horrific-episode-2-climax/1100-6510751/), Anna Torv discussed the climax of episode 2, and how it moved many viewers. Besides The Last Of Us, the biggest risers in the charts were Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle and Battlefield 2042.

Pedro Pascal as “Joel” and Bella Ramsey as “Ellie,” photo courtesy of HBO. The zombie apocalypse genre has been portrayed on big and small screens for decades.

“The Last of Us” benefits from having a simple, straightforward story that allows for a more seamless transition into television. But before that, I was really worried about how Joel and Ellie would be portrayed because they are so important to the story, so I was really doubtful.” With a direct connection to the game’s director and an experienced writer/director like Mazin, the show had all the right parts to build a stellar series, something that was on full display during the first episode. “It wasn’t really about the infected or the zombies, it was more so about the love between Ellie and Joel… Twenty years after his daughter’s passing, Joel is faced with the task of transporting a fourteen-year-old girl named Ellie, played by Bella Ramsey and voiced by Ashley Johnson, to a group of doctors that may be able to make a cure from Ellie’s immunity to the virus. When the action/adventure game “Uncharted” came out in 2007, it revolutionized the way stories could be told through the video game medium.

In episode 2 of 'The Last of Us' on HBO, a zombie kiss spelled certain death for a beloved character. Are we ready to talk about it?

Because we’re cruel to the characters we love so much, it felt like she knows she’s done for, and then the lighter doesn’t work, and we take her all the way to the edge of horror before we finally give her an out.” Having the suddenness of that death, the violation of that death, weighing on her? Ellie—already suffering from survivor’s guilt—then has to abandon her to the creatures from whom she, alone, is immune. “We’ve left the quarantine zone, and that led to this other version where she’s giving an opening to escape to Joel and Ellie by blowing up a bunch of infected. “We had a long conversation about what’s more thematically appropriate for this episode, which is called ‘Infected’ and is about the threat of the outside,” he told Tess dies early in the story: Before she has the chance to deliver Ellie safely, one of the [monstrous infected](https://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/a42538495/the-last-of-us-infected-fungus-zombies-explained/) rips off a chunk of her shoulder, dooming her to a slow death as the [cordyceps fungus](https://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/a42535471/the-last-of-us-cordyceps-fungus-infection-explained/) steers control of her brain. For one thing, it provided essential context for how cordyceps operates in the world of The Last of Us. “Save who you can save,” she pleads with Joel, and as he drags Ellie out of the building she turns to face the approaching horde. As it staggers closer, Tess tries the lighter again and again, only for the stalker to get within inches of her face. When the infected burst through the capitol door, most seem unaware of her presence as she backs away, trying—in vain—to ignite the lighter in her shaking hand. Only with this horror realized does the lighter finally burst into flame, and the capitol blows to high heaven as Joel and Ellie make their escape. In the game, Tess refuses to “turn,” instead sacrificing herself to the incoming FEDRA soldiers so Joel and Ellie can make their escape without detection.

Like the game that inspired it, this saw Joel (Pedro Pascal), Tess (Anna Torv), and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) make their way through an infected post apocalyptic ...

Uncharted 3 infamously had an Easter egg for The Last of Us in a newspaper two years before people would even know the now iconic journey of Joel and Ellie. The Last of Us and Uncharted has always shared a lot of DNA between them. Tess’ death in the game was horrific enough, but this added tension with the swarm of infected and the lighter is some of the best suspense we have seen in years. This isn’t the first Uncharted reference found in the first two episodes of The Last of Us as Ellie has been seen wearing a red and white baseball shirt. In the games, we only heard Tess’ death from afar due to us playing as Joel. The biggest example being that Tess’ lighter is the same lighter that Nathan Drake’s brother Sam used in [Uncharted 4: A Thief's End](https://collider.com/tag/uncharted/).

Show creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann while speaking on the show's HBO Max official podcast, revealed that there were more changes to Tess' plot that did ...

"She had a husband and she had a son, and they were infected and she had to kill them. Despite telling Ellie that she and Joel weren’t “good people”, her inclination to trust the fourteen-year-old and hold onto hope while only little is available unlike Joel, shows she is not such a terrible cutthroat after all. It was a little bit of a backstory for Tess, and the fact that Tess had a kid," Mazin revealed. Despite aiding Joel (Pedro Pascal) in ending the pair of monsters, she ultimately had to sacrifice herself – given her condition – to prevent a horde of Infected from chasing down Joel and Ellie (Bella Ramsey). But it was fun to think about." The series has had a good number of moments that avid fans of the game would easily recognize.

The Last of Us is a pretty straightforward adaptation of the game, but some of the changes HBO is making feel pretty big, including Tess' death and the very ...

There are a few reasons that the show could have made this change, one of which being that FEDRA simply has barely been established in the drama of the series. The games aside, the show’s execution of Tess’ death is unsettling and strange. Aside from a few small changes, most of the show feels like the game has been translated directly to the screen, at least in the first two episodes. On top of that, Joel (and therefore the player) actually witnesses Tess’ death, whereas in the show he obviously only sees its ensuing explosion. While it may come as a surprise to first-timers, game players knew she would die from the start, though not necessarily in the way the show plays out. [The Last of Us](https://www.polygon.com/reviews/23547254/last-us-review-hbo-tv) is a strikingly faithful adaptation of its [video game source material](https://www.polygon.com/reviews/23329135/the-last-of-us-part-1-ps5-review-release-date-naughty-dog).

Though HBO's adaptation of the hit survival-horror game hews close to the source, it makes some key deviations.

While I first assumed this was a simple nod to a very silly keto-adjacent diet that was popular in the 2000s, as [Esquire observed](https://www.esquire.com/uk/culture/a42618050/last-of-us-cordyceps/), fans are speculating that Joel’s aversion to carbs is likely what kept him safe while the world fell apart. Weiss, Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin have submitted their contribution to the time-honored masculine tradition of [depicting awfully-coded violence](https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/last-of-us-clickers-flour-theory-game-changes-explained-1235495180/) against women on screen because it’s so “triggering” and “violative.” Good job, boys. A later episode sees a character talking about cases of contaminated food stuffs, mainly flour (which we’ll talk about in a bit). [depicted on screen in a frankly condemnable way](https://kotaku.com/hbo-last-of-us-tess-anna-torv-episode-two-death-kiss-1850018175'). It’s not entirely clear whether or not this doesn’t exist in the game’s fiction (though it would explain how some of these bastards seem to know where I am entirely too fast), but as Tess tells Ellie in the second episode, the infected appear to be networked, sharing some kind of uniform consciousness and sensory input: “You step on a patch of cordyceps in one place, and you can wake a dozen infected somewhere else. A [recent interview with Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin](https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/last-of-us-clickers-flour-theory-game-changes-explained-1235495180/) indicated that the idea indeed came from looking at some conceptual drawings, though it’s not clear if this is the same concept art that was included in the official art book from 2013. Episode two introduces us to its clickers, who are a mirror image of the shiv-vulnerable beasts we’re used to in video game form. “If we put spores in the air,” Mazin told Comicbook, “it would be pretty clear that they would spread around everywhere and everybody would have to wear a mask all the time.” It’s a welcome change as we’d have been robbed of Pedro Pascal’s wonderfully expressive face like we were in that other show where [he’s escorting another young person](https://kotaku.com/pedro-pascal-last-of-us-joel-daddy-game-of-thrones-1850013031) with special physiological characteristics. A bite on the torso or other area in the middle of the body sees transformation in two to eight hours, while a bite on the neck, face, or head results in a five to 15-minute grace period. unliateralis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiocordyceps_unilateralis#Fungal_hyperparasite). In the game, players often have to navigate areas filled with spores, necessitating a gas mask to avoid infection (though they often seem to take those damn masks off well before it seems safe to). While a bite from an infected person still transmits the disease, the airborne spores of the game are replaced with tendrils that pour out of an infected body to enter another victim and infect them.

After achieving HBO's second-most watched series premiere in more than a decade, "The Last of Us" is now reaching an even bigger audience.

PlayStation Productions and Naughty Dog both produce the series along with Word Games and the Mighty Mint. Both series have significantly outperformed the launch of both seasons of “Euphoria,” which became HBO’s second biggest series of all time after “Game of Thrones” during its second season in early 2022. Set 20 years after the destruction of modern civilization, “The Last of Us” stars Pedro Pascal as Joel, a hardened survivor who is hired to smuggle 14-year-old Ellie (Bella Ramsey) out of an oppressive quarantine zone. The original video game was developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for PlayStation platforms. The immediate popularity of “The Last of Us” is unsurprising, as the drama series is an adaptation of the megahit video game of the same name that has sold over 10 million copies worldwide. What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal, heartbreaking journey, as they both must traverse the U.S.

The Last of Us Co-Creators, Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin, explain the changes they made to the series, the infection, and Tess' story.

Both the horrifying Clickers and Tess reminded us that Sarah’s death wasn’t the exception. In the game it was all through biting and spores, but Mazin goes into the challenges of making spores work in the context of the show. The story in Episode 2 featured new haunting wrinkles to the Cordyceps virus and saw the end to Tess’ journey. Mazin and Druckmann use Tess’ already tragic death as a showcase of what makes these infected scarier then their gaming counterparts while giving Tess a more epic yet very somber send off. Actors who were fans of the games themselves and knew the Clickers frightful movements wore prosthetics designed by Barrie Gower. The pilot brilliantly introduced fans and non-gamers alike to the horrors of this tragic post-apocalyptic world that Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) are forced to inhabit.

The first episode of The Last of Us had its viewer count quadruple in just one week, with the series premiere now sitting at an impressive 18 million viewers.

Did you watch Sunday night’s episode of The Last of Us? Last night’s episode of The Last of Us was directed by Neil Druckmann himself, the co-creator of The Last of Us video game series, with him also overseeing the show alongside Craig Mazin. Bruce Straley co-directed the 2013 The Last of Us video game alongside Druckmann, but was left without a credit in the show.