Warning this podcast today spoilers for the Last of Us episode six and light spoilers for aunt Man in the Lost Pontomania in our nerd Out section. Hello, my name is Jason Concepcion and I'm Rosy Night and welcome the next revision the Crooked Media podcast, where we dive deep into your favorite shows, movies, comics, and pop culture.
In this episode, in the Airlock, we will be getting chili. In the Last of US episodes, say heading to Wyoming and in nerd Out, it's a theory from Listen to Eli about a soutam part of ant Man in the Wasp Quantumnia.
Of course, if you want to jump around, check out the time stamps in our show notes. Up next, let's go to a Beautiful Jackson that Chris, Beauty Thin Mountain air We need to dive into the Last of Us episode six. Folks were stepping out of the airlock and that's right. The altitude is hitting us differently now getting less oxygen, but also a red blood cell count is increasing, and that's because we're in Beautiful Jackson, Wyoming for the Last of Us episode six, titled Kin written by Craig Mason,
directed by Yasmila Zabinich. Another wonderful episode, and let's dive into it. Three months after Joel and Allie escape from Kansas City, we find them in Wyoming somewhere. It is winter now. Joel and Ellie have broken into a hunting cabin and there they briefly take an Indigenous couple hostage. And I'll just say, it's wonderful to see Elaine Miles again, who I yeah in the in the show Northern Exposure.
Two icons here, and it's really fun to see Graham Green too. Like it's so great to see like two indigenous actors that I love. How chill they are about it, They're like, we're fine. The worries.
Elayne Miles bringing the the vibe of her character from Northern Exposure Florence to this episode. I will say asterisks. I haven't seen Northern Exposure since I was a child, and I don't know if it holds up. So if it doesn't hold up, I feel like I'm happy to see but I'm happy to see Elaine back. Joel tells the couple, Hey, I'm looking for my brother. He looks a lot like me. And this is a really brief kind of scene, but we learn a couple of important things.
One this couple has not seen Tommy, and two, anywhere that people used to live in any kind of sizeable population is now a no go zone. That includes former reservations, that includes small towns, et cetera. And then thirdly, if you go west of this river that's right over here, you die. There's just bodies there. There, You see dead infected there. You said see dead people there. Whoever it is that's living on that side of the river kills
everyone that crosses it. And the couple tells Joel and Ellie, if your brother's west of the river, he's gone, which is not good.
But you know what, I really loved this sequence, not just because two great actors, really nice character moment. It's very good like representation of two people who've just survived, but it really contradicts a usual zombie movie or comic book trope. If Charles Xavier had turned up at this house, or if Rick Grimes had turned up at this house, nobody would have survived. From I love that they leave,
and they leave this couple to just keep surviving. That was like a nice unexpected twist in this kind of opening.
I'm glad you bring that up because I also think that this is the influence of certainly Ellie, maybe even Tess. An earlier version of Joel would have just killed everybody in the cabin.
He would have been like, you haven't seen my brother, I don't believe you. Time to die and we'll kind of see how this is a big episode, which is really interesting because in a way, it's a very small, intimate, kind of almost like a bottle episode, but it is not.
It's like it's this huge character moment for Joel where we really get an expansion on his journey and where it's left him, and we get to see something introduced here that was kind of teased in the prologue of the game that will obviously become like a major part of the story going forward.
Yeah, I agree, you know to the bottle episode part of it this cold open, I guess you would call it kind of is it What makes it kind of feel like a bottle is that, you know, I think that there's like a way of looking at like television storytelling, or you'd look at this scene and go it kind
of doesn't need to happen. You learn a couple of things about the river, but you never meet these these characters end up not mattering, and you could have just like had them show up at Jackson across the river and then get and then get taken in. But I think the thing that's cool about it is, unlike other post apocalyptic shows, zombie apocalypse shows, you're getting a you're getting a wide cross section of people who survived and
the different ways they survived. It's not just like this group of survivors and everyone else that they run into who they kill. It's all of these disparate groups spread out across the country who have been making their way in different in different you know, kind of ways, different journeys they're taking to survive. And I thought that was really cool.
That's a great point, and I think it's something that got definitely, like our discord, very excited, because after this episode a lot of people were talking about, like, well, if you did a spinoff, what you saw all different people all over the country and all over the world how they survive, which again direct you back to Max Brooks World war Z, which we've talked about because that's
a great example of it. But there is really something very special about getting to see different kinds of people survive, especially when in a lot of post apocalyptic stories you see one kind of person, you see one.
You see one, you do a group of people that made it. I because our discord has been talking about World war Z, and because you bring it up here, it brings the following question from World war Z to mind, which is how does cold interact with the infected in World war Z. Just for those of you haven't read it, this is a slight spoiler from the book World Warz,
which is a really fun read. Winter time was the time to kind of go on the offensive against the zombies because they would freeze, and they would they would lack the kind of mobility that they had in the summertime, so you could just go out and just kind of like spear them while they were frozen there on the ground.
And also you want freeze under the ice, and you're trying to have these layers of ice that would melt. And I'm very interested in this. I think there was a really interesting discussion in the discord about basically like would the cordyceps virus be able to essentially drive forward like a frozen body and kind of because it's not the same as a zombie, but it is still kind of similar because of its only controlled by its brain.
I don't know. I think that as that heat does exactly how does it not freeze?
I guess is my main question.
And the interesting thing that I would say is, I do think that while this episode does not do like a direct it does not give us a direct answer. I do think it hints that living out in the cold seems to be easier than living in like an urbanized city where there's not a lot of snow. So maybe there is a way that it finds. I mean, think about it. Think about the ones that we saw early on in Boston that were all laid on the
ground kind of connected to the hive mind. If they got snowed over, surely they'd get frozen under that right, right right.
And and surely like if that was if they're all frozen up, now's the time you kind of go out and try and kill them so that when the springtime comes maybe you can just kind of like expand your livable area. But who knows. Clearly the fact that that's maybe not being done or has been tried and has failed tells you that the cordysps is a lot more hardy than maybe the show is telling us. Yeah, so Joel and Ellie head out. Ellie steals a couple of rabbits,
which is not cool. I don't think that's cool, but that's okay. I guess I don't.
I think they would have given them to them probably, honestly, I think they.
Probably would have given them to but it shows. It also kind of gives you the this relationship, this budding relationship between Joel and Ellie. They're rubbing off on each other. Joel is slightly mellowed, right, but also Ellie is, in the words of Joel, doing what she had has to do to survive, like, and she's impressed her. That's around it. Yeah, and it's kind of reluctant.
He's like, oh, you shouldn't have done it, but really he's gonna eat those rabbits, you know.
And as they head out, all of a sudden, Joel is struck by some kind of episode, which we eventually learn is a Tony soprano style panic attack and anxiety attack. And I think a really quite a good depiction of an anxiety attack if anybody's ever had one. Yeah, there's a lot what it's like you're like, I'm not breathing. Well, now I'm scared. Am I having a heart attack?
I'm like, I'm having a heart attack. And they're like, well, I can't breathe. If I think about I can't breathe, then I'm not going to be able to breathe.
And now I'm a little sudd I'm so conscious of my breathing and my fur aid and all of a sudden, I'm freaking out. And that is exactly what it's like.
It's horrible, terrible, and they did a really good job. And something I find really interesting about this is in the prologue of the original Lost of Us Part one game, you see that Joel is on like a number of different meds and one of them is anxiety EMDs, And then I feel like that's just a that's something that was kind of like, Okay, that happened. But I always I feel like a lot of people who played it
always thought like how much would that suck? Like if you're you already have anxiety and then you're in the fucking apocalypse, like that would just suck. And so many of us struggle from anxiety or or suffer from PTSD or all different kinds of kind of terrible things that affect our day to day life when there's not you know, infected hunting us down. And I'm very I was very interested and surprised and kind of happy with the fact that they decided to lean into this, and I.
Found it very interesting too.
I find it very interesting that this is where Joel's anxiety comes out. It's about his family, it's about Tommy, It's about Ellie. Like we've seen him do, fight against bloaters, all this crazy stuff we saw Sam and Henry, but it's something in him about finding Tommy or being with Ellie that's kind of bringing it to the forefront again.
We will discuss this more further into the recap. X Ray Vision will be back. Exciting news. What is it. We just dropped some brand new merch for all of you X ray Visions fans out there. It's a very very cool X ray Vision was Right t shirt inspired by the iconic Magneto was Right imagery from the early two thousand's run of Marvel comics The X Men. Shouts to my guy Magnus, he was right, and he's been right for quite some time. And this is also a reference not just to that but to the fact that
all our predictions are basically depending on how we interpret them. Right, obviously, head to crook dot com slash store to get your shirt now, and we're back now. As Ellie is watching this, she's freaking out and she says, man, if you die, I'm fucked. And Joel, you know, luckily manages to together. It's just an anxiety attack. You just kind of waited out, and they're fine. They camp at the river. Joel lets
Ellie have a little nip of the old alcohol, you know. Yeah, I know she's already committed murders and stuff, you know, and see people like he shows somebody, Yeah, come on, give her a little nip of the of the juice. And they have a little bonding conversation. Assume we meet the fireflies and managed to save the world. Ellie asks, uh, what do we do then? You know, and she's like, you know, you can go anywhere you want, you can do anything you want. What are you going to do?
And uh, Joel is like, well, that's never been an option. But eventually, in one of the more vulnerable moments I think up to now, he volunteers that he'd like to set up away from all people, which is not a surprise to the surprising part comes, which is he'd like to run a sheep branch, have some sheep out there grazing on the hillside, and Ellie jokes that it's romantic.
Yeah, Joel gets some he gets some good Ellie shade where he's like, they're quiet and they do what they're told. Like he's like, always did this this. You could tell that little crankiness between them, but really it's becoming that loving banter.
Joel then asks Ellie the same question, and she gazes up at the moon hovering above them, and that is her answer, the moon outer space, And then they start talking about astronauts. Apparently Ellie has a great interest in astronauts, which makes sense, you know, the world being what it is, you'd think about escape and when she was being raised at the Federal Orphanage, she read all she could about astronauts and she says, you know, my favorite astronaut is
Joel guesses Sally Ride. She's best astronaut name ever, and then really pregnant pause here. Then Ellie wonders about her immunity and the vaccine that could possibly be created from her blood, and she says, you know, do you think it would actually work? Would it work? And then she heartbreakingly Now, and it's important to remember this is three months later. Now, it's taken three months for her to
talk about this. She then tells Joel how she tried to cure Sam by rubbing the blood into his wounds, and she says, I know it was stupid, but I wanted to save him. Joel then tells Ellie listen, Marlene, for whatever, you know, whatever else she was, she was really smart. If she says the firefly scientist can make a vaccine, they can do it. Now. I don't truly believe Joel means this, but I think it's also a
pretty big indicator of his growth as a person. Yes, he's not previous to this before his experience with Ellie, been the type of person who would like sugarcoat a thing. But I think here he is, in a very dad like way, trying to kind of sand the rough edges off the truth, which is we don't know.
Yeah, and I think he's really moved by what Ellie tells him about Sam. Yeah, And I think he kind of wants to He wants to make it a little bit easy for her to give her that little bit of hope that he doesn't have. It's kind of the inversion of when he just wouldn't believe at the beginning. Now he wants Ellie to believe, even if he's not sure if it's true or not.
Here's a really small moment, but I thought one was really evocative of like what's going on with Joel right now. So they're going to sleep. Ellie is like, I'll take the second watch. Joel is like, mister dad, mister tough guy is like, no, no, I'll take both. And then he says, hey, why don't you while you're sleeping dream about sheep branches on the moon. She says she will, and then of course when Joel wakes up, what happens. He fell asleep during second watch and Ellie had to
do it. And it's just this very small microcosm of what's going on with Joel in this episode, which is he's getting older, he's losing a step, or certainly he's worried that he's losing a step and is not able to be the man that he was. But he's also not comfortable about letting Ellie know just how scared that he is that he is getting older and losing it, and he gets into her about the fact that he was angry' that's his way of hiding his fear. He's angry, he's pissed off.
I'm responsible for you liked And she's like, don't don't want to sleep that? Yeah, come on that point at this point, like that's what he doesn't want to admit, and then she tells him all the things that she learned from him that she did while he was asleep. I checked my six I looked for tracks, I went to the highest point to set up my watch. And she says, what can I say, I'm a natural, And again Joel kind of remains pissed, but you can also
tell he's a little impressed. There's not He's reluctantly impressed. They then set up on the river for a while and watch it for what I would imagine was you know, an hour, a couple of hours, just to see what would happen. Joel fires a shot just to see if anybody's gonna come investigate it.
Well, you know what's gonna happen. Nothing happens. So they cross the bridge. Ellie is is whistling as they cross the bridge, and she's thinking about, you know, like what would it take to be a good hunter. She thinks she'd be good at it. They come to a hydroelectric dam. Joel kind of explains the principle of what it used to do, and they kind of move on, and at
this point Ellie raises the posse. They come to another river, at which point Ellie raises the possibility that one they don't quite know where they are.
She's like, which one is the river of two?
Is this the river of death? And then it's only moments after that that they are completely surrounded by armed figures on horseback. The horse folks bring a dog out and the dog will test whether Joel and Ellie are infected. Uh, and there are some really tense moments Joel, of course, Joel has another panic attack right here. Then they send the dog at Ellie and it is it's extremely fraught, but Ellie comes up clean and not only that, but the dog seems to really like her. Yeah.
I found this really interesting because it kind of like it tells us so much about the the state of Ellie's infection without really telling us anything. The fact that the dog can't smell it means that she is truly clear, right, right.
What theate whatever the amount of fungus in her system is, it's an amount that cannot be detected by a dog, and it's certainly not enough to get her to get her sick.
Yeah, I'm so interested in it because I'm like, would she still come up positive on the federal tests? And how outdated were those tests and how many people did they miss? You know, it's I just think it's so interesting, and I love that moment where yeah, like the dog just loves her, Yeah, and there's just this instant connection.
Then Joel is like, hey, I'm looking for my brother, and then a woman rides up and says, wait, what's his name? And next thing you know, the group is taking Joel and Ellie back to their home. Jackson, Wyoming, now a fortified town with this big palisade wall around it, and the places is buzzin'.
I mean, it's like it's like pre full civilization in there.
Let's look it up right now, the population of Jackson, Wyoming, it is apparently ten thousand, let's call it eleven. There's certainly not a li seven thousand people there, but it looks that's a lot like it looks like an active town with kids and men and women of all ages, all wandering around doing stuff, going to and fro, certainly not wanting for anything. The hydroelectric dam, it turns out, is supplying this town with all the electricity it needs.
They have hot water, they have everything they could possibly want. And as they're walking in, who does Joel see working on a scaffolding, like working construction as he used to do his brother Tommy, And they embrace and Tommy's like, what the fuck are you doing here? And Joel is like, I came here to save you. By the way, it looks like Tommy doesn't need saving.
He's fine, It's like and Joel and Ellie are like in shock because this is yes, this is not just as we'll come to find out, this is not just like a great place in the context of post fedra. This is a great place pre like this is something here that is really special and feels very sustainable, but as we learn, it's at the cost of being like extremely exclusionary because you call them risk letting other people in.
Later on, they're at the cafeteria, Joel and Ellie are eating what looks like a delicious stew under the watchful gaze of Tommy and his partner Maria, the woman who was in that party that surrounded Joelinellie previously, Ellie kind of like snaps at a girl who's like watching her. It's like very interest her, and then Maria is like, hey, like they're just curious because kids around here don't look her talk like you at which and this was like, listen, this is a this is a really fun episode of
of a great show. This was the one line where I was like, do they not look her? First of all, who has heard Ellie talk like she just got here? Second of all, she honestly looks like every other kid here.
I think it's because she's swearing, Like is what they mean? Like she's like aggressive and like I swear.
Other kids not traumato.
I guess maybe they they say I think they say they've been there for like seven years or something, So I guess I guess there who've never seen infected, but.
Their parents are out there like slaughtering the raiders who crossed the river and like posting their corpses on the banks of.
Right, I think, But yeah, let's talk about quickly. Let's talk about the girl because this girl who's staring at Ellie has like become a huge talking point and on the podcast, Mason and Druckmen were very coy about this. But a lot of people think this.
Is Dina, I think from the Last of.
Us Part two, and I think I think so too. Dina is a huge part of the part two of the game who will come into Ellie's life, and I think that that that is probably where we just met her. But yeah, I thought that it was line was very interesting too, And that was actually I can't tell if they were red herring us like, because that line gave me like a creepy like, oh, maybe this is going
to be like a Walking Dead style like accountibals. Well they recall but exactly I think, But that was like the moment when she said that, I was like, what does she mean?
Like just one line that kind of stuck out as like I don't quite understand, Like I also got the kind of cult vibes, yeah, because it's like what is what exactly does that mean? Like Ellie asks for a gun back and she and Maria's like, oh, that's another thing. They don't carry guns, which one Ellie didn't come into town with her gun, like they'd taken her gun from her. And two, you tell me, these people that live out here killing raiders all the time don't teach their kids
to like control. I am pro gun control, but I guarantee you these people are teaching little kids how to shoot out definitely. Anyway, Ellie asked for her gun back. It's a no dice situation there. It's getting a little tense. Tommy tries to kind of cool everybody down. Ellie notes, kind of literally and truthfully that hey, you know, before they brought us back here, Maria and your friends were quite ready to like line us up and shoot us.
And Tommy says, hey, you know, like you can never be too careful to your point, like, it's this we've got. They've got a good thing going in here, and the last thing they need is letting people in who want to either destroy it or want to share it with people who destroy it, So they have to be very,
very careful. And then Maria says, well, yeah, you know, like we do kill raiders, and we absolutely display their bodies on the banks of the river as a warning to others, confirming what the indigenous couple told them earlier in the episode.
Tommy says something like just because you have a bad reputation doesn't mean you're bad. And there's this kind of like really knowing look between like Maria and Joel and Tommy and Joel about like what Joel's reputation obviously is, and that kind of comes into play as the episode goes on. So I found that very interesting. But yeah, this was like a very unexpected It's very different from
the Tommy's Damn segment in the first game. But as Masillis was kind of mentioning, it kind of seems to be taking more from a version that we see in in part two.
Yeah, well, we'll get back to this when it happens in the recap. But to your point, the fact that Joel has a reputation in this context, in this context where a woman just very casually is like, yeah, we kill people and we throw their fucking corpses out there so everyone can see them. The fact that to them Joel is a fucked up guy exactly exactly. He did some stuff, He did some crazy, really bad shit. Joel then says, hey, Marien, can can I talk to my brother?
And like this is a family affair, and Tommy's like, well, actually, Maria is family and ps. As we will soon learn in the episode, she's pregnant with his child. Then Maria and Tommy take them on the tour. Maria tells Joel that, as you mentioned, they've been here about seven years. Town
has been steadily growing since then. Raiders are a problem basically all the time, infected less so, and then Tommy braggs that, like, hey man, I've still got it, Like I can shoot infected, headshot him from half a mile away, it's no problem. Ellie is like, oh, I would love to learn how to headshot effected from half a mile away. Maria then tells Joel that, you know, you know, as we discussed previously, we need to keep this as quiet
as possible. We don't let people know what we have, we don't discuss our presence on the radio, and when when we venture out, we make sure we're not followed, all those kind of things. And then she says, kind of giving us a window into the culture of the town. This is a multi faith democracy. There's a ruleing. Ruling is probably not the word that they would use, but I'll just use it here. It's like a ruling board that sets you like a democratic he voted all democratically
voted in. There's about three hundred people that live here now and they live according to communal principles. There's a school, there's a laundry, We're about to see a movie theater. Power comes from the hydroelectric jam. And then this is really really funny. Joel is like, uh, see, all are communists. And then Tommy, who again you know, fought in the in the Gulf War One and was a US soldier and has you know, has some very very American centric views on what the word communism means.
It's like, man, he's like nothing.
Literally in a commune communists literally there literally every piece of property here is basically public.
Yeah, I like everybody's shed ownership.
Well, so I saw tweet.
I'm sorry to the whoever tweeted this, but I felt like it really summed up the power of this show, where it was like The Walking Dead took twelve seasons to tiptoe around the fact that the only way to rebuild after his zombie apocalypse would be communism, but they never said it, and six episodes in the Last of Us was just like communism, that's the only way you could survive.
Afterwards, Maria sets Joel and Ellie up with a beautiful home, like a beautiful house, and then Maria takes Ellie to go kind of like see the house so that Joel and Tommy can catch up. Tommy takes Joel to a bar gives him some apparently real tasting liquor. Wow, and then it's like, hey, so what's gone on with tests where she and Joel lies. He says, oh, she's fine,
he's not ready subject, Let's talk about something else. Ellie. Oh, she is the daughter of some high ranking firefly person, and you know, there's like I'm reuniting with her family. Tommy is clearly suspicious, but he tells his brother that the Fireflies are kind of nearby. They're about a day's ride away at the University of Eastern Colorado and they have a base there. Uh and like this needs saying,
but of course we got to say it. It is fucked up country between Jackson and the campus, of course.
And he says, he says, it's like bad bad, this is like very bad hit.
And then Joel's like, well, you know, it wouldn't be quite so bad if you came with us, because mister like I can snipe targets from half a mile away, Like if we had your skills at our side, it wouldn't be a problem. And Tommy's like, I can't because and now here comes the Reviewal Marie is pregnant with my baby, and I gotta be around. I got to be a present father. And Joel's like what Joel's like, fuck you, like like a parsonal slight.
It's very painful to him.
Now that is perfectly reasonable and in fact, healthy, non toxic, wonderful, egalitarian thing to be, like, Hey, I don't want to My wife is pregnant. She's gonna be dealing with a lot during that time, and I want to help make that burden easier. And Tommy, now you can tell like a door is opened to things that Tommy has been dying to talk about with someone that he's close to. And so he says, yeah, man, I wonder if I'll
be a good dad. You know this whole that is that is the doorway to a very big, substantive conversation that Tommy is ready to have. And then Joel is just not ready to have. He is completely emotionally unavailable, and he just says, well, I guess we'll find out.
Tommy is like heartbroken, like he is like as he's ready to knoock him out, Like yeah, but I will say I will say, look, one thing that we haven't really touched on here. Yeah, Joel has been worried about Tommy for like a really long time, and he's come halfway across the country and Tommy's just living the high life, watching movies in the theater. There's a Christmas tree, you know in it. Ironically, he is doing what Joel always says,
which is do what you have to survive. And for Tommy that meant not being on the radio and not telling Joe what he was. But Joel can't see it that way. Joel almost sees it as like a betrayal.
Well, you know it's interesting. Well Tommy snaps back, you know, just because life stopped for you doesn't mean as to stop for me. And then Joel's like, we'll be out of your hair in the morning, Classic Joey, Classic Joel. And you bring up something you know, really interesting, I think, which is that one? And we'll talk about this more because there's a and yet another question about why Joel is in such a rush to leave someplace that is clear.
Truly, like please, they could have stayed here for a good couple of months. The world doesn't vaccine that much.
I keep thinking about the thing Test said, which is can you just take the good news from once? Literally? That is Joel's personality. He is so traumatized. You know, there's a thing that can happen. I think when when you're when you're deeply unhappy or you've experienced to trauma and you don't quite know how to process it, you don't know how to live with it, where it becomes we're living with it, suffering from it, becomes an identity.
And I think that has happened for Joel, where he is so unhappy and used to being unhappy and heartbroken that he is more comfortable being heartbroken and being pissed off and being sad and being angry at other people than he is just being in the presence of his brother who's about to have a baby who he hasn't seen in x amount. He can't just enjoy it. He can't just sit here for an hour or two hours or a day an extra day and like catch up up and feel good. It feels so alien to him.
Feeling good that he would rather feel bad. And that's just a very sad, very relatable, I think to a lot of people, and very sad place to be at. Joel just can't literally can't allow himself to feel good.
Yeah, you can do it. You're so smart to throw it back to that test moment too, because it's almost like that is his biggest weakness at this point. Yeah, And I love the way that every episode we're kind of getting these different reflections for Joel. And last time, you know, we saw it was Kathleen, and we had
Bill who let somebody in. And now we have Tommy, who legit says to him like, just because your life stopped doesn't mean like the rest of us can't move on, you know, And that is like, this is what if imagine if Joel just was like, they've got something really good here. These are the skills I could bring me and Ellie could just live here. I don't trust the fireflies, like it would it be the most selfless thing to do when Ellie he could save the world. No, but like,
could there be a conversation about it? Could you choose to have a life with people that you loved? But that's not something all Joel knows how to do is to basically like push through every situation like a bulldozer and just keep going through.
He just keeps moving, almost like a shark.
It's like he can't stop because then he would have to think about the things that he's lost.
You know, it seems like such a simple thing. You know, if it was actually simple, then no one would need to go to therapy. But it's like the thing about baggage that's easier to forget is that you can put it down. And Jel just, yeah, he literally can't because he is he doesn't know how to be a person who is happy. He can he can only be a person that is suffering.
That's why, like in that moment, and we're so in Joel's mindset in this episode and throughout the show, so seeing things through his lens that I felt when Tommy told him that, Like I felt that pain for Joel, like, oh my Sarah died, but you're gonna have a baby, and actually you're so right. That shouldn't have been our first reaction. The first reaction should have been like, oh, this is joyful, hey, this family continuing, like even in
this terrible situation. You and your wife are going to be able to bring new life into it in a place that could be safe. That's incredible.
Why go to the can? I just and I would also say why why why go to the fireflies?
Like?
Can we first find out if there are any doctors here? Are there any scientists here? And he's pretty good? Have we even been a firefly.
The whole like six months that you've been on this journey or whatever?
We stay here and see if there are any scientists here, you know, like and let's but Joel needs the presence of danger. He needs the heartbreak. It's more than even a mission. He needs to put himself in danger because he deserves that. He is he thinks he does thinks he needs pain. He deserves to have pain and to carry pain around. And he has to put himself in situations where it's possible that he will feel pain. That's
just who he is. One more thing about this, So Tommy says that he couldn't radio Joel because this is the rules of commune. You know, they took me in. I have to respect their rules. And I think that that is a great reason and a very meaningful reason in this world with you know, people share the generosity of safety and companionship with you, and you kind of
have to respect the rules that they have. At the same time, a part of me wonders if Tommy, if there isn't on some level, because Tommy seems very at peace with that, yeah, you know what I mean. And I do wonder if on some level Tommy doesn't feel like whether he is able to verbalize this or not, that Joel brings drama like John brings that shit with him.
You know what the real truth is if think about if Joel, if he told Joel about them seven years ago, five years ago, two years ago, whatever he got there a month ago, you know when it was he Joel would probably have gone there with test guns blazon Oh I got to go there if.
I killed a bunch of people on the way there.
And they would have been like, oh, I've got to see if we can do a deal. And suddenly he's telling Bill about it. Oh, but you know, you know they have some stock there that you can use. Everything is a bar or a trade. And I think Tommy was right to not trust the jol that he knew then, the jol he knows now.
Joel would never tell anyone I know.
When Joel leaves this place, as angry as he is, he is a different person because of Ellie. He would not ruin that safe place or that sanctuary. But before, when everything was a transactional exchange, he definitely could have used that knowledge as a way to try and gain something rather than becoming a part of that community.
X Ray Vision will be back. The important work of political and civic engagement doesn't just happen every two years. Twenty twenty three has critical elections, starting with a must win Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin. Votes Save America's No Off Years program is here to help you stay engaged
throughout twenty twenty three. Right now, you can donate to our No Off Years fund to help get out the vote in Wisconsin ahead of their April election, and sign up to stay in the loop on what's happening and how you can get involved via remote and in person volunteer opportunities, targeted donations, and more. Just head to vote Saveamerica dot com to get started, and We're back. Ellie is at the house that she's going to be sharing
with Joel. She comes out of the shower and finds that Maria has left some new clothes for her and a note saying, hey, come meet me across the street, and has given her a menstrual cup, which is this wonderful to you? Forget that, like Joel, Yeah, doesn't know women. Yeah, I also love why that Ellie needs this.
Yeah, I really I love it. Ellie's response is like she squeezes it and sees the instruction and then she's like gross. And I'm just like, that's such a good teenage thing, like it's really useful in the apocalypse, really usable, don't have to worry about finding tampons anymore. But also as gross, Like I get it. I love that response. It was such a natural response from Bella.
So she goes over to Maria and Tommy's. She's a chalkboard over their fireplace, their hearth, which commemorates the lives of a boy named Kevin and a girl named Sarah, who both died in the early days of the outbreak, very close to each other. Kevin, who he learned very soon as Maria's son, was not even three years old. Yet. Maria comes in. She's got a coat for Ellie. It's eggplant,
not purple. Don't be saying purple around her, and we see that Maria is just incredibly generous and that like the that is the culture of Jackson right now, is this kind of generosity for everybody who is here. And she's like, let me trim your hair. When's last time the split ends have been trimmed and her hair and they talk about life. Maria's like, I used to be a prosecutor back in the day, which Ellie kind of doesn't quite know what that is, butch She's like, I
used to put bad people away. And then she inadvertently reveals, thinking that Ellie knew this, that the Sarah from the chalkboard was Joel's daughter, and Ellie says, I guess that explains him a little. Ellie, I think that explains him a lot.
I think it explains him a lot. But thinking about the coat, right, the eggplant coat, I just want to say, I also wonder if that line that we were kind of like, oh, they don't look like you. Yeah, I wonder if part of it is like Maria is so ensconced in this little world where everyone has these like clean clothes and wears the right clothes for the season.
Because she gives.
Ellie this outfit that's like warm gloves, like clothes. Before Ellie's wearing like five layers of like ratty, you know, whodies.
And I wonder if it was something to do with that, because her giving.
Out these clothes yea like makes her look like she's part of this town, right, It's like this visual safety of like you're wearing the right clothes for winter, you're there's a Christmas tree in this town. I mean, like, I wonder if Maria is so in that mindset that to Ellie. To us, Ellie looks like all these other kids. But to her, she can like see that she's like dust. She had a hat, she her clothes are old. You know.
That's a good point. Maria then kind of by the things she's saying, you can tell that she's suspicious, or at least is full of worry. She's full of worry about Ellie's situation with Joel. Is this safe for Ellie? What kind of situations is Joel getting Ellie into? Ellie says, hey, listen, I know about Joel's past. I know that he was
you know that he committed murders. And Ellie, I think quite fairly says, you know Tommy was involved in all that too, but you don't seem to worry about Tommy, which again I think calls back to the thing we were discussing earlier, which is man Joel. For all the bad stuff that they were all involved in tests Tommy, Joel and others, Joel must have been on a level yeah the worst like it. He was doing what.
He thought he needed to keep the people he loved alive. But we the more we learn, the.
More it must have been. It must have been quite savage, and I you know, you know, if there was any kind of processing of the tragedy of his daughter's murder, it probably was done through him committing violent acts on people.
I also wonder if like the choice, the smart choices that they have made that I think is why this show has such a wide appeal to not make Joel the Joel that we see in the game. I wonder if it feels at times when they talk about what Joel did, it feels at times as if they're talking about Joel that you play as in the game. You know.
You're killing in the game, you kill hundreds of people.
You constantly just have to murder people at all times to get Ellie and tests until Test is there no longer to this new place, and then different people that you meet, and I just I feel like there's this really smart Jewel storytelling where if you've played the game, you can kind of connect your own complicity and those actions.
And it makes a lot of sense.
We know where this story is going if we played the game right, and they need to build up this idea that Joel has committed terrible crimes because there is a there's an explosion of violence in the future that will likely happen, and I find it very interesting.
That's a actually really really really smart point. Maria notes that, well, you know, Tommy was just following the stuff that Joel was doing, Yeah, just as you know, just as Ellie appears to be. And then Ellie's like, well, maybe I'm smarter than Tommy. No offense, Maria. Basically, the whole crux of this conversation is Maria just wants to tell Ellie, hey, listen, the only people that can betray us or the people that we trust, and Ellie is not receptive to this.
She doesn't know Maria. But Maria's like, Okay, well, this conversation is going nowhere. Let's go to the movies. So they go.
That line is so it has so much weight when you know where the story is going. Y and Retina Wesley, who plays Maria Tara from True Blood, it's just like so good in this role. You just want to stick around and like you want Ellie to have this like strong, brilliant woman in her life who's like looking out for her. But all Ellie wants is grizzled old Joel.
Grizzled old Joel. So the movie is nineteen seventy sevens The Goodbye Girl, written by Neil Simon, starring Marshall Mason and Richard Dreyfus in the role that would make him the youngest to that point. Us were winner for Best Actor. Ellie is watching this movie. I don't know how much she is connecting with this movie, Like.
Yeah, kind of looking around, like what's going on, guys, Like this is how she's alive.
She sees Tommy kind of scurrying across the room, and so she goes off and she follows him. Tommy go is going to meet Joel. Joel is working on his his torn up boots. He's like taping him shut, trying to fix him. Trying to resole them. Tommy brings him a brand new parrot, well, not a brand new to Joel pair of boots. They look good to Joel's boots.
Uh.
And he's got an apology too, just about like the previous conversation and how it went, even though Tommy truly doesn't have nothing to apologize for. Joel then opens up all the fears that he has been kind of harboring over these last few months. He says, Listen, I don't this journey to Colorade. I don't think I'm gonna make it. Ellie had to kill a guy, and that's because of me. That's because I wasn't strong enough to do what had
to be done. If I had, if I had been a younger man, if I had been five years older, even if my hearing had been back, I would have if I had the superhering from the game that I don't have anymore. If somebody could just press the square, if I had square, I could have heard him. I would have heard him, and Ellie would have needed she would not have needed to do that, and it's my duty to protect her. But I can't. I think I'm
going to fail. I think i'm going to fail, and every time I go to sleep, I have a dream that I failed, and somehow even in my dreams, I'm fucking up. I need you to do it, Tommy. I need you to take her to Colorado. And Tommy is swayed by this, really swayed by this, and he says, I'll do it. I'll do it for you. I'll take her out. At dawn, Joel goes back to the house. He finds Ellie, and clearly Ellie has overheard this conversation
and she's pissed. First, she finds Ellie reading the journal of the girl that used to live there, and she's just like, there is this incredible like cultural dissonance of is this really what life was like girls my age twenty years ago? They were just like worried about boys and clothes and stuff. And then she gets to it, she's like, well, I guess it's Tommy. Then fuck you, Joel, And she's furious. She says, Joel, why are you even like hang out like where we have a conversation. Just go,
just do whatever you want to do, just leave. Why wait? Joel actually makes a strong point that like, listen, I get it, but Tommy knows this area to say nothing in the fact that he's younger than me. But it doesn't matter because bottom line, Ellie doesn't know Tommy, she doesn't trust Tommy. She has spent the last three months with Joel. She has a level of comfort with Joel, and she wants to go with Joel. That's it. And
she says, like, what are you afraid of? And she brings up Sarah, which was probably the wrong thing to do in this conversation because Joel immediately that you just see the door, Peja Pascal is amazing, because you just see the door close shut whatever door he had opened to be like, hey, I'm I'm I don't think I'm good enough to take you the rest of the way. That immediately shuts and he tries to like basically get into a suffering a trauma pissing contest with Allie, and
Ellie says, hey, everyone, you're going through shit. Everyone I cared for has either died or left. Everybody except you, and she pushes Joel really hard, but he's unmoved by this. He says, you're not my daughter, and I sure as hell ain't your dad. Come Dawn, we're going our separate ways.
Joel talk top top top top.
And then Joel spends the night thinking about Sarah. Next morning, Ellie is like ready to go before dawn, before anybody knocks on her door. She is packed, she has her shoes on, she has her new coat on. She's ready. Tommy comes. They go to the stables and there they find Joel saddling up a horror just getting a horse ready, and he says, you know what I thought about it.
I spent the night thinking about it, and you deserve at least to have a say, to have some agency in her life to make the choice about who you want to take you the rest of the way, Me or Tommy. And she's like you okay Tommy, Yeah, I haven't said she.
She literally like just smashes her bags into Joel and she's like, let's go.
It's time Tommy. Uh. Then says, hey, listen, when you get back, Jackson is here for you. We've got a place here. Uh. And then Joel asks that I would, And then Joel asks Tommy first hunting rifle. Tommy gives it to him. Uh, and they set off and again, I mean, we talked about it earlier, but this is why doesn't Joel, stay. It makes so much sense to stay, even if you're gonna go, don't go and Winter go.
He's some spending time. Yeah, why go now? It's just that Joel doesn't know any other way but the hardest way, because that is the life he's been living. He can't let himself off the hook. He just can't. Later on, on the way on the trip down, Joel teaches Ellie how to shoot the rifle, and she's bad it. She blames the gun and we see Joel do it and he's fucking great at it. He tells her about his previous life as a contractor, which is like building stuff.
We see her lean her head against his back as they're riding on the horse, and she and he tells her how American football worked, which is the down system, which is her good. They make Colorado in five days, Joel tells Ellie.
And they were also like, wait a minute, this wasn't bad. Yeah, everyone was like this is so terrible. This was like the worst journey. It's so fucked. It's the most scariest place and you're fucked if you're on the way there.
And they're like, wait a minute, that was really easy. Yeah, they there's another really nice, vulnerable Joel moment where he tells Ellie that when he was younger he wanted to be a singer. Ally that's say you got to sing now, yeah you got, just like he loves Ellie. I'm sorry.
There's no question. If there was any moment that needed you to know that he was fully committed to Ellie, it was when he decided to tell how he wanted to be a singer when he.
Was younger, and not how that means we're gonna get to see him sing.
I feel like they are setting us up for that.
So they find the university campus overrun by monkeys that I guess were being experimented on, or maybe there was a local zoo nearby, and now they're now they're set free. They find lots of evidence of lab work, and they follow the firefly symbols UH to to find the facilities where this lab work was being done. But there's nobody here. There's no fireflies here, there's nobody. Ellie sees a map and says, hey, they must have pulled out to hear Look,
there's this little pin on the map. They pulled out to Salt Lake City and then they hear some monkeys screeching out. They look out the window and guess who's here.
It's raiders.
Oh shit. They head for the horse. As they get to the horse, a raider pops literally out of the fucking ground. Where did this guy come from? And attacks Joel. Joel, like in the game, chokes the guy out. I felt myself. I felt myself gripping the controller at this moment, chokes the guy out. But when the guy drops, we see that there is a shank sticking out of Joel's guts.
Ellie gets Joel on the horse and they get out of there as quick as they can, with Ellie, you know, firing shots in the raider's direction, and they get quite a ways away to like a somewhere around like a railroad trestle, before Joel can't be His strength is fading now and he's bleeding out and he falls off the horse to the ground. Ellie jumps off. She tries to put pressure on the wound, but Joel is clearly dying, and Ellie says heartbreakingly, I can't do this without you,
and then we cut to Black Wolf. Yeah.
I have to say one of the most impressive feats that this show has achieved is most people watching this show do not know if Joel is going to live or die, Like so much of the response from audiences believes should we.
Even say this is.
I know right, I'm like, wait a minute, I'm like, look, that is how believable it is. Who knows.
We don't know how closely.
They're going to adapt the game, but I think that we really don't know. Incredible things about this moment is you feel it. You feel so scared for Joel, and even as a game player, whether the story may diverge, you believe that this could be it because these are the dramatic sweeps that the story is taking, and this ending is so heartbreaking.
That's heartbreaking.
I just love how small the moment is because in the game, the version of this is like much more dramatic and there's so many more people attacking Joel. And but I really like the horrific almost of it because the reality is that in this world, even though you're going up against all the infected and all these different people shived to the gut, that could be what takes you out. Just one person who gets a lucky shot landed And that makes it like so much more horrible.
I just, yeah, I thought that was like such a good, shocking kind of moment.
It really was. And I can't help but think as I watch Joel laying there, that this in a really sad, in a really sad and a sad way that is again I think, evocative of someone who's really like suffering with trauma and with depression. This is almost, in a
weird way, what Joel wanted. He wanted it. Not that he wants anything bad to happen to Ellie, but he is so defined in his mind by failing to keep people safe that he wants on some level, he wanted to put himself in a situation where he would fail to keep her safe and die in the process. And here he is doing it, And it's really really sad that he's can't just hang out with his brother for an extra week, just like literally, you could have just done that.
Maybe maybe if you'd have told Maria the truth of the situation about Ellie, she would have wanted Tommy to go with you, like she probably wants a better world for her kid and for her community. Like there's so many different versions, but I love your kind of point where it's It's like Joel's way is the hard way. Joel's way is always hard.
And that's punishment, like you said, and it's always a way too in which he has to you know, his brother gives him the rifle without any kind of without even blinking. Joel would not do that. His brother after having this huge blow up argument with with Joel, who didn't literally shit on him, when he was like, oh man, I wonder this huge moment in my life. I'm gonna have kids soon. I wonder if I'm gonna be good at it, and his and Joel is just like who
gives a ship? After all that, he basically is like, you know what, I will go in your stead. I will go risk my life, risk the quality of life of my partner and my unborn child, and I'll take this the kid because you need this. I can tell you really need me to do this. And he and Tommy was just like, yeah, you do that, but Joel kids, Tommy has had so much growth, Like even in lest we not forget, yeah.
That when Joel is in the stables when they go and find him, he was there to steal a horse. And then he got on the crisis of conscience and Tommy it was like, I would have just given you the horse, bro, but that's not how Joel is. Always has to be the hardest way. So you bring that up and it's like that tragedy of his need to always put himself in danger. It comes to fruition here in a really brew away that is gonna put Joel
and Ellie in an incredible amount of danger. And I think it's like quite well known now that the next episode is gonna be the the DLC episode, the left Behind episode we get into.
The Ellie stuff, So I think it's gonna be.
It's gonna be, it's got it's got an episode three level of heartbreak potential, and I think it's gonna be really interesting because it's also probably gonna leave Joel's fate in a pot to do I know, right, especially because we know what happens next in the game.
It's just like one of the scariest parts of the game. It's very very well. We'll be back here uh for episode seven and next week, and stay tuned for our ongoing coverage of not just The Last of Us and to be a Max, but the Last of Us game up next. Nerd out.
On this week's nerd out. I'm gonna begin it with a little spoiler war The blow theory has a minor it's like a minor major spoiler for m Man in the West Bontomania, depending on what you're interested in. So listen or not with that in mind. So you know this segment, that's where you tell us what you love them, why you're excited to share. Now Eli is sharing a theory that not only is Eli excited to share it, but me and Jason are excited to share it because this shit blew our minds.
I didn't blow my mind. It was one of those like, oh shit, this better be what this is because oh it's so.
Good that he doesn't really do this, or I'm just like higher Eli, because this has to good.
It's certainly on the table for something that could happen, you know, a couple of years from now. Anyway, here's Eli Montoya. Hey, X ray crew, here's a theory I've become obsessed with after seeing the techie ant army in aunt Man in the wast What if Hank Pim justin indvertently created the MSU's interpretation of the annihilation wave, Those
highly evolved ants recta conqueror's army with ease. Since time works differently in the quantrum, is it possible they could keep evolving, become more mechanized, and eventually bust out of the microsverse to consume all. First of all, let me just say so, the annihilation wave is a an insectoid like invasion of of these kind of like cybernetic, part machine,
part biological cosja beings. They're called bugs, and they are they are like spreading out across the universe just like like locusts, just like destroying everything in their midst and they are led by Annihilists. Who is this bug like foe of the Fantastic Four? Now I gotta say it really does.
It feels like what it is.
I mean, it feels like what it is, the annihilation you could create and not I think you could make like one of the big ants can just like evolve into annihilists.
Exactly like there's no reason and also as well like it's so it feels even though in the movie we felt like the ant Army was such a good like dux Mark and a gag and it really leaned into Hank Pim's kind of history of loving ants What I really love about it this is like this makes sense, Like narratively, it does make a lot of sense.
The annihilation wave has.
Like extremely advanced technology and weapons.
It's stoppable. They just are rolling over like very very advanced civilism, and they have so.
Many they have like unbelievable numbers. That was where their biggest power came from, which obviously ants have. I think this is so exciting and I wouldn't see it, especially because we know that this over like a thousand years in the quantum realm. This group of ants became this like highly mechanized, like technologically advanced communist society. That doesn't mean that there couldn't be one ant who wanted to
rise up and take over into fired by Kang. I mean that could be who takes over the quantum realm now Kang is gone, you know, it could be Annihilistan. I love this.
This is blind.
I also think it would be the coolest, like one of the biggest I think one of the biggest critiques I love MCU fans had about Am and the Lost is like the stakes didn't they felt higher than a normal movie, but they didn't necessarily feel like world ending.
If you weren't already deeply familiar with the Kang law.
So I would love for what seemed to be like a kind of funny Hank Pim joke to actually end up being like a huge part of the MCU going forward.
That would just be such a good me too. I hope, like higher Eli, because this is the one really good Now we should add as we head into Guardians three, that the Annihilation event was the thing that spurred the formation of the famous Guardians of the Galaxy roster. It basically got quilled together with Uh, with Grud and with Rocket.
And if there is to be which we would assume there's going to be another roster of Guardians after Guardians three, and this current roster kind of like exits stage left, I wonder if the Annihilation wave would be some kind of that's a really event that causes another formation, another team of Guardians to come out.
It's a really smart cool And also the other thing is, so we were kind of wondering about, like the how did the ants end up in a part of the quantum realm that they spent a thousand years in when everyone else was only in there for like a few
days or whatever. So in the comics, Annihilis is in the negative zone, so I do still wonder if this could be that space where where they fell into that's like the negative zone part of the quantum realm, which we kind of wondered for a long time, if those would be connected again, that connection to Fantastic Four, which we already have with Kang. I love this theory, Eli off this since we first heard about it.
I think it's really good.
It's so good.
Well, thanks Eli. If you have theories or passions you want to share, hit us up at x ray at cricket dot com instructions or in the show notes. That's it for us and this episode. Rosie any plugs.
Plugs, Fox plugs, Uh yeah, you can find me here twice a week. I'm on Instagram, Rosie marks letterbox the same, and just my writings are around in the world. I've been writing a lot of DC dot com recently, writing about some cool comic book history. I did a cool piece about Day McDuffie. I've got a really awesome piece coming out next week about like a really underread Mark
Bright Christopher prescreen Latin run. So yeah, just lots of fun stuff and obviously the usual spots too, and yeah, just happy to be here with you talking about all this cool stuff.
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X ray Vision is a Crooked Media production. The show is produced by Chris Lord and Saul Rubin. The show is executive produced by myself and Sandy's Rhard Are Editing and sound design Who's by Facillis Fatopoulos. Dilon Villanueva and Matt Group provide video production support. Alex Rella for handle social media. Thank you Brian Vasquez for theme music. See you next time. Bye,