Infected transcript

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The following is the full transcript of "Infected", the second episode of HBO's The Last of Us Podcast.

Transcript

[Audio from TV show:] Tess: This is your chance. You get her there. You keep her alive... and you set everything right. [/End Audio from TV show]

Troy: Hello, everybody. This is Troy Baker, your host here for The Official The Last of Us Podcast from HBO. If you were with us last week, we got to discuss the pilot, an amazing kickoff to this incredible story. And today, we will get into episode two, which we hope that you have watched beforehand because this episode deals with the very untimely, very tragic, but wonderfully-beautiful demise of Anna Torv's character, Tess. So, right now, let's jump straight into the conversation with co-creators of the show, Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann. Neil, you directed this episode. Stepping on stage, seeing something that you had created in a digital medium now actually becoming tangible. What was that like for you?

Neil: It's one of the highlights of my life. I sometimes tell people it's like, "Oh, it's as if they made Disneyland just for me." To me, like, one of the greatest compliments I think an artist could have is when you inspire another artist.

Troy: Absolutely.

Neil: And here, I get to work with, like, hundreds of people that are at the top of their game. These are the best people you could get for TV. Like, I got Craig Mazin. I got, like, all these people that are, like, so in demand, and they want to make The Last of Us. That's the thing they want to work on for the next 200-day grueling shoot. Walking on set, I could feel that love. And it made me emotional to see that and feel it.

Troy: But I'm curious for you, transitioning from just this white stage with 64 cameras all around, and your actors are walking around in these weird spandex suits, to now being on a set where the sets are practical, the props are practical, the actors are in wardrobe.

Neil: The big difference is you have to plan everything ahead of time on a TV show in a way you don't in the game. In the game, we do this performance capture. Everybody's wearing these funny suits with these balls. And then once you get their performance and you kind of have it in 3D, you can place the camera wherever you want. You could change their costume. You could change the set. -You could even change the character.

Troy: Right.

Neil: Can't do that on a TV show. You can, to some degree, with VFX, but for the most part, the frame you have is going to be pretty much your final frame. So, there's all this prep work you have to do ahead of time. You're meeting with, like, all the department heads, whether it's, like, special effects, whether it's the costume, whether it's the set, whether it's the actors, and, like, doing a table read with them. Just so that you can get to that moment where, like, "Okay, everything's ready to go," and you say, "Action!" And then you hold your breath and hope it all comes together in the way that you've envisioned it. And when it does, it's this incredible high that you're like, "Oh my God! We all-- We all came together." There's this camaraderie, this collaboration that just feels amazing. And I've had this-- Well, a bunch of people asked me, it's like, "What was it like to direct? Is it so crazy? Were you nervous?" I'm like-- I steal this line from Craig, which is, like, "I cheated." Because they all love this material so much, and they want to do right by it, and they want to do right by me. Like, everyone is there to help me.

Craig: Hmm. Honestly, I think the only piece of practical directing advice I gave him was -to wait a little bit longer before saying, "Cut!" That was it. 'Cause you do sometimes you get these little, little bits of bobs of things that you can sort of keep.

[Audio from TV show:] Ellie: There's a Firefly basecamp somewhere out west... with doctors. They're working on a cure.

Joel: Mm-hmm, I've heard this before.

Ellie: And whatever happened to me -is the key-

Joel: Is the key to finding the vaccine. That's what this is? We've heard this a million times. Vaccines, miracle cures, none of it works, ever.

Ellie: Fuck you, man. I didn't ask for this.

Joel: You and me both. This isn't going to end well, Tess. We need to go back. [/End audio from TV show]

Troy: Let's talk about the casting of Pedro Pascal.

Craig: Well, you know, there's an old saying that, "You write a movie four times: when you write it, when you cast it, when you shoot it, when you edit it." And casting seems like, "Wow! Really? That's on the same level as writing and shooting, editing?" Absolutely. So, what happens is, there's a feedback loop between the actor you cast and the screenplay you're giving them. And the feedback loop is they said they want to do it because they read that script. You're already on the same page, literally. But, of course, every actor has their own idiosyncrasies. Every actor has their own way of portraying things. And the really good screen actors also have an incredible sense of where they are in the frame, and how close the camera is, and how subtle they need to be because the littlest things will get picked up. There's a moment towards the end of this episode where Tess reveals that she's infected. And Pedro, as Joel, says, "Show me." And she takes a step forward before showing him, and he flinches.

Troy: It made me angry. I watched it. It made me angry because, "Fuck, that's so good." It's so good what he does. And the thing that he did that I loved is there's such this beauty to see Joel be afraid.

Craig: Yes. Which was something we talked about all the time, needing to undercut as much as we could what was just always naturally going to be there, which was heroism. Right? And heroism is real to an extent, but if it exists on screen in the absence of vulnerability, then you begin to become unmoored from reality. And everything we wanted to do was to say to people, "Listen, we're showing you extraordinary circumstances, a world that's fallen apart. And there are monsters, and all this stuff is happening, but it is applicable to your life right now here in the world that isn't fallen apart, and there are no monsters. But there is love, and fear, and hate." And if you don't undercut heroism with vulnerability, you start to lose touch with that. And what Pedro brought all the time, every day was that kind of thread of vulnerability. And I also have to say that, and he said so many times that, his work with Anna, Anna Torv, who plays Tess, was half of it because, I mean, you know this as a performer, it is-- it is a dance. You are not alone. And he said, "She is so present with me in those scenes." And I think he would be the first person to say that part of that instinct to flinch is how present she was as she moved toward him.

Troy: It did not look like a choice.

Craig: It was an instinct.

Troy: Completely instinctual.

Neil: People have seen this reaction online, which is, like, they're like, "Why did you tell the actors not to watch the game?" And it's for this moment you're describing right now. It's, like, that flinch doesn't exist in the game. If he was just trying to copy your performance, the best he could do is a poor imitation -of your performance.

Troy: Right.

Neil: Instead, we wanted Pedro, and Bella, and everybody else as part of the cast to make it their own. And that's why it's like, "Trust us that we put everything on the page that needs to be there. We're not asking you to replicate anything else." Because great performances come from the inside, not from the outside.

Troy: You do this opening... It's Jakarta. What was the reason for it?

Craig: Well, one of the things that we can do in television that we can't really do in something that is ongoing, like a movie or a video game where somebody can play all night long if they choose, we have episodes. That means we have starts and stops. And the beautiful thing about stopping is you get to start again. Every start is a new opportunity to reorient people or to disorient people. I mean, I'm particularly fond of disorientation. It's something I've been watching Vince Gilligan do this forever, where you have this five, six minutes of the beginning of every episode of television where the audience is the most open and receptive they'll ever be. They are willing to be confused, mystified, puzzled as long as you get them, ultimately, on solid ground. And I think we knew we wanted to give a little bit more of an origin story. We wanted to see what it would really be like at the very, very beginning because we're all pretty smart about this stuff now. And we wanted to show also that it was global, that this wasn't something that was just happening in America. This was the world.

Neil: By the way, that is a huge deviation from how we made the game.

Troy: Please.

Neil: In the game, it was-- The game is so much also like-- it has this, like, Americana love letter, and so made a conscious choice that we will never leave the perspective of the United States.

Craig: Originally, we had this plan for this montage where we saw all these places in the world and what had happened to them, and we just didn't have the money for it. But we thought it would be really interesting to see where it all begins. And as we often do, then immediately asked ourselves the question, "What person can we convey this through?" And then to take it one step further, "What relationship can we create to portray it through?" Because I really do believe that that's what people respond to more than anything. And so, here you have this little-- interesting short relationship between a military officer in charge of, you know, fighting pandemics and a mycologist, a woman who studies fungus. And I'm really fond of that last moment where it was just really one long shot of her sitting on this couch and explaining why we were so screwed.

Troy: She says this line in Indonesian, but what it translates to is...

[Audio from TV show:] Mycologist: Bomb. (MYCOLOGIST SPEAKS INDONESIAN) [/End audio from TV show:]

Troy: "...bomb. Start bombing. Bomb this city… and everyone in it."

Craig: Right. And it was really important for me to make the audience understand there's nothing you can do at that point that is going to make this better other than the unthinkable.

Neil: That's one of the beauties of that scene, which, like, again, in the game, you walk through what we call, "The Outskirts" of the Quarantine Zone, this area that was bombed to oblivion to try to control this outbreak. And even that didn't work. And here you get to see, -"How could someone reach that decision?"

Troy: Yes.

Neil: And you dramatize it, and you see characters like... And again, when she has that realization, that moment was like, "Oh my God! My time with my family is limited and is almost out. I gotta go."

Troy: Yeah. What I love in that scene, what she conveys to us is, "Either I've confirmed to you what you know you need to do or, even worse, I've just given you the solution. And I can't put that genie back in the bottle, and I have to go right now." The reason why I think it works, actually, and why my mind tracked back to that intro is because as we head into The Outskirts, Ellie literally has that line...

[Audio from TV show:] Ellie: It's like a fucked-up moon. Is this where they bombed?

Tess: Yeah. They hit most of the big cities like this. They had to slow the spread somehow. Worked here, but it didn't in most places. [/End audio from TV show]

Troy: There's another beautiful thing that I'd love to talk to you about. The first shot that we see of Ellie. She's bathed in this warm light in the fetal position, camera spinning over her. And then she wakes up, -and you have Joel and Tess on high alert. Just watching her.

Craig: That was one of those-- That is definitely one of those moments we're out of pesky questions. You know, because if she is infected, and they have every reason to believe she is, then they need to be ready to shoot her. And we knew we wanted-- Because, again, of the nature of the stop-and-start episodic television series structure, we had to begin again. That meant sort of, okay, they went out at night. It's going to be morning. So, what happened overnight?

[Audio from TV show:] Ellie: Do I look like I'm infected?

Joel: Show us your arm.

Ellie: Yeah. It's not getting any worse, is it? [/End audio from TV show]

Troy: In the game, we don't do that, right?

Craig: Exactly.

Troy: They pull an all-nighter and they fight clickers.

Craig: They just keep going. -Exactly!

Troy: That's what happens.

Craig: And because a player doesn't have to put the controller down. So, you guys in games cannot stop, really, until you hit, like, some major plot point. But for us, we're stopping all the time. So, okay, what did that-- how did that night go? And what I love about that scene is you start to see an interesting difference between Tess and Joel. And the difference is Tess has hope, which I love because it feels like a surprise. She seems so tough. She seems like she has assimilated into this new world quite well. I mean, she's getting beaten up and she's like, "Whatever." And she deals and trades in arms. She runs the show between her and Joel. Clearly, she's the boss. And here, suddenly, she is expressing hope. And there is something-- you know, we had talked about and we wrote it, we never shot it, and it was a little bit of a backstory of Tess, and the fact that Tess had a kid. She had a husband and she had a son, and they were infected, and she had to kill them. She killed her husband, but she could not kill the son. She couldn't do it.

Neil: She locked him in the basement.

Craig: She locked him in the basement, where, theoretically, he's still a clicker.

Neil: 'Cause we had a cold open where we just, like-- where the camera, like, pushed on this door, and you just hear this pounding coming from this basement, -and then we cut out.

Craig: Yeah.

Neil: And then later, Tess would tell the story of, like, how she couldn't kill her son, and just it-- Like Craig is saying, it didn't fit.

Craig: It's-- But it's—

Neil: But it was fun to think about.

Craig: It cuts to her-- It cuts to something that she has that Joel doesn't want to have again. She is brave enough to dare to hope.

[Audio from TV show:] Tess: She made it through the fucking night, Joel.

Joel: It doesn't matter. It's going to happen sooner or later. All right? We're still close to the wall. We sneak her back into the QZ. We find a different way to get the battery.

Tess: This is our best shot. [/End audio from TV show]

Neil: You have to remember that Tess knows how to influence Joel. So, like, when they're sitting in that salon and she's like, "It doesn't matter if it's real or not. If the Fireflies believe it's real, -we get what we want."

Troy: Right.

Neil: At that point, Tess already believes. -She believes.

Troy: Interesting.

Neil: And she just is telling Joel what he needs to hear in that moment.

Craig: Because what she says to him is, "She made it through the fucking night." And he goes, "You got to stop talking about this kid like she's got some kind of life in front of her." And Tess says, "If we bring her back, they're going to scan her, and they're going to shoot her." So, Tess is in mother mode. She's in mother mode. She's trying to protect and keep this kid alive because she's starting to believe that this kid is the real thing. And Joel is absolutely ready to send Ellie back to be killed. Tess: If we take her back to the QZ, someone's going to notice her arm, they're going to scan her, and they'll kill her. Joel: Well, better them than us.

Neil: By the way, I think Joel is being completely honest when he says, "Better them than us."

Craig: Right.

Troy: Mm-hmm.

Neil: He realizes already what's going to come down the line is like, "I'm gonna have to kill this kid."

Craig: Right. "And I don't want to, but I will."

Neil: Yeah.

Troy: Quick question for you, Neil. Explain how the infection spreads in the game versus how it spreads in the show.

Neil: Yeah, in the game, it has two vectors. So, one is some kind of fluid transfer, a bite, or where there's a lot of concentration of Cordyceps growth, fungal growth in the environment, there could be spores in the air. And if someone breathes enough of those spores in, they will cough and then become infected as well.

Troy: Pinging off of that, going back to the understanding of how this world works, the introduction of the network of Cordyceps.

Craig: Right.

[Audio from TV show:] Ellie: They're connected.

Tess: More than you know. The fungus also grows underground, long fibers like wires, some of them stretching over a mile. You step on a patch of Cordyceps in one place and you can wake a dozen infected from somewhere else. Now they know where you are. Now they come. You're not immune from being ripped apart. You understand? It's important. I'm trying to keep you alive. [/End audio from TV show]

Neil: By the way, that's one of those ideas that, again, in his research, Craig came up with that I was like, -"Wait, that would make for good gameplay." That's one of those I wish we had in the game.

Troy: Right? Just tripping over one of those things. It's such a cool moment that to me is like, "Oh, that makes so much sense!" It feels like it was always there. Like it's an inherent fact.

Craig: Well, that's the best compliment. I mean, as we create new material that doesn't exist in the game, for it to feel like it had always been there, or that it integrates seamlessly, that's the whole point.

Troy: One of the things that happens in this episode is we get our first look at clickers.

Craig: Yes.

Troy: When you get into that moment of like, "We're going to show the clickers first." Walk me through that. What's that conversation?

Craig: You start with the design first.

Troy: Sure.

Craig: Like, there's just a very simple question. First of all, do we want to do clickers? Obviously, yes. Second, should they look like the clickers from the game? Pretty much, yeah. To the extent that we can reproduce that physically. If you go into a CGI characterization right off the bat, it just starts to feel like it's not there. So, we really wanted to find prosthetics to actually turn somebody into a clicker, which the Gowers did incredible work on. And Paul Spateri, who works with the Gowers, was just tirelessly putting this stuff on these guys. We found great performers who could move like clickers and even sound like clickers. And from that point, I think our job was to say, "We know what the experience should be like when you first encounter one of these things, which is terror. And now what we have to do is, within the matrix of that sequence, give the audience some relationship payload. Because while we're doing this, clickers are running around and looking awesome and screeching at us and clawing and biting, something interesting is happening, which is, for the first time, Ellie, who was following Tess out of the QZ, and who was being protected by Tess in the salon, and who was asking Tess questions about what happened to the world, and who doesn't like Joel, Ellie is now suddenly stuck with and relying on Joel. It is the beginning of that.

Troy: That's what I put down. I was like, "This is the team up episode."

Craig: Yes.

Troy: Right? This is when we have this completely silent, mouthed conversation where he goes, "They can't see, but they can hear."

Neil: By the way, that was a reshoot that you're describing.

Troy: Talk to me about-- What? Okay. How?

Craig: Because our creative partners, who hadn't played the game, Carolyn Strauss in particular, who was my fellow executive producer on Chernobyl, and was the executive producer of Game of Thrones, and is a sort of a legend, she, in her very simple Carolyn way, said, "I don't know what the problem is. Like, why... I don't get that they can't see."

Troy: Oops.

Craig: Yeah. Like, "The fact that they don't have eyeballs isn't enough. "And I don't necessarily know why they're clicking." So, we had seeded a line when they're walking on the highway where Ellie's talking about, "Oh, I heard these rumors like..."

[Audio from TV show:] Ellie: Everyone said the open city was crazy. Like swarms of infected running around everywhere.

Joel: Not exactly like that.

Tess: You know, people like to tell stories.

Ellie: So, there aren't superinfected that explode fungus spores on you?

Tess: Shit, I hope not.

Ellie: Or ones with split open heads that see in the dark like bats? [/End audio from TV show]

Neil: We had the curse of knowledge, and we're like, "That'll probably be enough." And then, if we set up the action sequence, that plus this equals understanding of how clickers work.

Troy: Or...

Neil: Or not.

Craig: Or it did not. And then we went back and just did a little-- did an itty-bitty reshoot. So, in the game, at some point, he sees Ellie breathing spores and being fine. That's proof enough for him. But for us, it made sense that in that clicker fight, she got bit. We don't know yet that Tess has been bit, but we know that Ellie's been bit, and she's not concerned at all.

[Audio from TV show:] Tess: You all right?

Ellie: Well, I didn't shit my pants, so... You fucking kidding me? I mean, if it was going to happen to one of us... [/End audio from TV show]

Craig: That was also how we got around to dealing with the proof of Ellie's immunity. Because we aren't doing spores. Now, Joel is thinking, "Okay, the first one didn't work, this one's going to work." And then, look how angry Tess gets. One of my favorite Anna Torv moments is that she gets angry at him for his inability to imagine that something good could happen.

[Audio from TV show:] Joel: What about the kid? Maybe the first bite didn't take, but what about the second?

Tess: How about you just take the good news? Can you do that? And to think for once, maybe we can actually win? Just go. Go and watch her. [/End audio from TV show]

Craig: And her anger is not simply because he's being cynical. Her anger is, "I've been bit. I'm going to die. Everybody I loved that got bit died. Can you please imagine a world where maybe this doesn't have to happen to me or anyone else ever again?" And that's a pretty remarkable thing. And when we get to that rotunda and she reveals that she's been bitten, she goes over to Ellie and she shows Ellie's arm. And we can see the difference. We can see it. So it's proof for us too. Ellie's not going to be infected. She is immune. And Joel has to absorb the reality of that at that moment. He has no choice otherwise.

Neil: I just want to touch on that real quick, which was, to me, this is one of the beauties of this adaptation, in that the sequence that Craig described, from, you know, the moment that Tess is bitten, which is a secret for the viewer and for Joel. So, we're maybe a little confused by how big her reaction is when he's being cynical again. And he's surprised that, all of a sudden, she's, like, pushing back on him so hard. These are all elements, again, that exist in the game in a different way. But the underpinning of all of it was just, like, Tess-- now there's a growing desperation for this journey to mean something. It's a sort of-- It's her last chance at redemption, and she knows it.

Troy: We get this beautiful moment between the museum and getting to the Capitol Building, where we're really kind of Joel's POV as we see Tess is way out in front. She is moving at a pace faster than us towards the Capitol Building because what you say, she's already starting to feel the tremble in her right hand.

Craig: She knows she has maybe an hour or two.

Troy: So, another difference between the game and the series, I'm curious why.

Craig: Sure.

Troy: In the game, the threat is FEDRA. They have caught up to us in the Capitol Building, but here, it's clickers. Why not reintroduce FEDRA at this point?

Craig: One of my annoying, pesky questions for sure...

Craig: ...which was simply... "Why would FEDRA even be in here? What are they doing?" There's nothing there for them to police, really. The whole point of a QZ is we have a big wall, bad guys out there, we're in here. I get why they police the buffer zone so that people can't freely travel back and forth and bring the infection into the QZ. It didn't make much sense to me to have FEDRA all the way out there. And we had set up that they were meeting the Fireflies at the state house to tie back into this whole "We want to get to Tommy" thing. "They'll give you a truck. They'll give you a battery. You'll get everything you need. The Fireflies are waiting for you." Also, we wanted a chance to show a different result of being infected, which was not one of mere violence or horror, but rather a sick kind of community. We had set it up already that they're all connected. Ellie says they're connected, and Tess says, "More than you know." And now, at the end, we had an opportunity to show how connected they were. They can sense that she's one of them. -And then...

Craig: ...then the bad thing happens.

Troy: The shot I love is you are over her shoulder, and you are soft on the infected as they're spilling into the building. And there's one at center point that stops and turns. And the rest of them kind of slowly stop moving. Ultimately, the question that I have is, -what is the kiss to you?

Troy: But I would love for you to walk me through that scene.

Neil: One, again, it's another one of those beautiful sets that were starting to get built when we started preproduction on the episode, then was ready the day before.

Troy: So, that's not a building that you found. -That's a set--

Neil: No, that's a soundstage.

Craig: Yep. That's on a soundstage.

Neil: So, one, again, it was, like, a beautiful set. There's an opportunity to get some really beautiful graphic shots of, you know, capturing a wide shot of Tess being alone, like she's now left alone. And these are the last moments of her life and like, "Okay, how do you capture that on screen? How do you make that cinematic?" The other thing of like-- You talked about, you know, the crowd of infected coming in and their being out of focus, and, like, the horror of that because it puts you more in Tess' mind. And I wish I could tell you, I'm like, "Oh, I knew exactly what it's going to look like. And we only captured that version." The reality, I didn't know, and I captured two versions. There's one where they're all completely in focus and one where they're out of focus. I had a theory that it might be creepier with them out of focus, but I don't know. Again, I didn't want to be stuck in the edit bay one day or have Craig stuck in the edit bay being like, "Why the fuck didn't he get another version?!"

Craig: That does sound like me.

Neil: So, then, it was just starting wide. And how do we get into this intimate moment and treat it like an intimate moment? Like, what if you shot it like two people kissing, and you just think about it that way? 'Cause there's already so much horror of what's happening, right? It's like these tendrils coming out of this infected mouth. It's going down her throat. She's like-- It's just horrible to think about. So then, instead of shooting it in a creepy way, let's shoot it in the most beautiful way. Like, backlit, silhouetted, profile view. And we slowly just come in and in and in -as if it was an intimate kiss of two lovers.

Troy: Faces turned... -Absolutely in profile.

Neil: And it made it way creepier -by doing it that way.

Troy: Way creepier! But also, to me, I found myself watching and rewatching it going, "Is it bait? Because she's still flicking the lighter, or are we watching this transition of her giving in, and the lighter is the last fight?"

Craig: Yes! That! It's that. She knows she's lost. The lighter isn't lighting. She flicks slower and less frequently. You can see her giving up. And then in the last moment, whatever final bit -of humanity...

Troy: Of her that's still there.

Craig: ...is saying, "Try one more time," and she gets it. But I love the way we did that because it's underscoring again the theme of love and the way love functions. Because the fungus loves too. It makes more of itself. That's what we do when we love each other. A lot of us make more of ourselves. That's how the species is propagated.

Neil: Some of us do it too often.

Craig: Some of us do it too often. And there's this sense that, you know, what we are may look disgusting, and the way we reproduce may be horrifying and violating. But it is tender when this man comes to her. It's not violent because she's not fighting. If she ran, if she fought back, they would all-- -they would take her apart.

Neil: Yeah.

Craig: But she's just standing there, and he very gently shares of himself. And it is-- it's very Jungian. It's very upsetting. Anything penetrative is disgusting and scary when you're dealing with monsters. And it just-- I don't know. There's something so creepy and gross and primal about it. And yet also weirdly, like Neil said, the way, especially the way he shot it, beautiful. So, there's a lot of stuff going on in that shot, and that's why we wanted to do it. That's so much more interesting than, like, FEDRA showed up and shot her, you know?

Neil: Well, and also, like, and just to talk more about what that is like. -This episode was about the infected.

Craig: Yeah.

Neil: The show has already left FEDRA behind. But again, it's like, in the game, I think that the choices is what really defines these characters. So, like in the game, Tess makes a choice where like, -"I'm going to stay behind to buy you some time."

Craig: Right.

Neil: And then in the show, she stays behind to buy them some time. So it's like we get there in a different way, but the choices that the characters are making are the same.

Craig: That's a great point.

Troy: There's different thesis statements that, when we started off the show, "When you're lost in the darkness, look for the light." That is something that is very-- For people who are familiar with the story, that is something that is very, very resonant. But there is this new almost mantra, this new thesis statement that we're adding not in lieu of or instead of, but rather on top of, which is, -"Save who you can save."

Craig: Yeah.

Troy: Where did that come from?

Craig: One of the things that Neil and I talked a lot about in the beginning was Joel as a savior, and how dangerous that is, to be a savior, particularly when you're trying to save somebody that you cannot save at all. So much of what Joel is, is a man who wants to save his daughter, even though she's been dead for 20 years. So, there's this dark nature of his saviorhood. And here is this other woman saying, "I'm gone. But that kid is alive. Save her. And save who you can save." She might as well have been saying, "Stop trying to save your daughter. She's dead. That kid's alive. Save her." And that is going to be the interesting challenge for Joel over the next few episodes.

Neil: A lot of also what we talked about is what happens afterwards. Like, how does it end? How do we make it an interesting ending? And we had the version where they both walk downhill, and it didn't work. And I kind of like where we've ended, which is... And by the way, it's important to note as well is, like, trusting actors to sometimes deviate from what's on the page. 'Cause this was the first time I've directed a script that I didn't write, and I was very precious about it, even more so than I would be precious with my own writing.

Troy: Because you wanted to be respectful of the writer?

Craig: Yeah!

Neil: But the way it was described at the end is after they run out and the building blows up, and Joel makes sure that no infected are coming after them, he doesn't look at Ellie, and he walks off. And the way Pedro gave her this little look, like he's disg-- You could tell he blames her. You could see it in his eyes. He's blaming her, and he's disgusted by her, and he walks off. And then we're like, "What does Ellie do?" And then Ellie is just also at a loss. And you could see the hate in her eyes. She blames him. But then we're like, "Does she follow him? Does she not?" And she's just kind of stuck, and she's just frozen in place, and she doesn't know what to do. And it's just such a weird choice that Craig wrote that at the end of this episode, I'm like, "It has to be like that." And then we're like-- I think you were hesitating. You're like, "Maybe she should walk down the hill." -I'm like, "No!"

Craig: I get nervous sometimes.

Neil: I love this so much, that she doesn't know what to do, and he's not waiting for her, he's going. If she joins, she joins. Whatever. And I just like leaving it unresolved and cutting on that.

Craig: It does leave us wondering, "Is he going to do it or not?" I mean, he doesn't want to. Tess says, "You're going to take her to Bill and Frank's, and they'll handle her from there, but you're taking her." And he's saying, "I don't want to." And this is the one person that he sort of cared about in the world, who's dying in front of him now. And when he walks away from Ellie, I did want people to wonder, like, "Is he gonna come back? Or is he just going home to the QZ and leaving her there?"

Troy: Well, it's something to me, as a viewer, whenever you leave an audience wondering what's going to happen next, that's exactly where you want to leave them.

Craig: That's TV for you. That's what we do.

Neil: Goodbye.

Troy: This has been The Official The Last of Us Podcast from HBO. Again, I'm Troy Baker, joined by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann. You can stream new episodes of the HBO original series The Last of Us, Sundays on HBO Max. The podcast episodes are available after episodes of The Last of Us air on HBO. You can find this show wherever you listen to podcasts. Like and follow HBO's The Last of Us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Until next week, endure and survive.

Narrator: This is the official companion podcast for HBO's The Last of Us, hosted by Troy Baker. Our producers are Elliott Adler, Bria Mariette, and Noah Camuso. Darby Maloney is our editor. The show is mixed by Hannis Brown. Our executive producers are Gabrielle Lewis and Bari Finkel. Production music is courtesy of HBO, and you can watch episodes of The Last of Us on HBO Max.

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