This text comprises mild spoilers for each “The Final of Us” and “The Final of Us Half II.” When you’re unfamiliar with the bigger arc of the video video games, flip round and are available again later! Spoilers forward!
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Even when you’ve by no means performed the Naughty Canine video games “The Final of Us” and “The Final of Us Half II,” launched in 2013 and 2020, you are in all probability aware of them — particularly contemplating that they are the supply materials for considered one of HBO’s largest and hottest exhibits in the mean time. So will Neil Druckmann, who created and directed the sport alongside Bruce Straley, ever make the sport right into a trilogy?
Throughout an look on the Sacred Symbols podcast (which focuses on all issues Ps, the console that serves because the unique residence of “The Final of Us”), Druckmann addressed the potential of a 3rd online game, although he is at present absolutely dedicated to the HBO collection “The Final of Us.” (Druckmann serves as a co-showrunner alongside Craig Mazin, who beforehand labored with the premium community on “Chernobyl,” and Druckmann has directed two episodes thus far, together with the most recent installment “The Value.”)
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“I really feel like, with the very best TV makers at HBO, we’re making the very best model of that,” Druckmann stated of the story he, Naughty Canine, and now Mazin have been telling for over a decade at this level. “So, if we had been ever to come back again to it, I wish to make sure that it is a story worthy of ‘The Final of Us.’ I really like that world, I really like these characters. With the best alternative, with the best concept — yeah, I might completely bounce at it.”
This feels … fairly non-committal, which appears about proper. For anybody aware of the mixed, bigger story of “The Final of Us” and “The Final of Us Half II,” it does present a satisfying conclusion, and Druckmann is right that the fabric must be actually, actually good to run it again once more.
The Final of Us has moved on to materials from the second sport — and the story looks as if a closed loop
When you’re aware of the primary season of HBO’s “The Final of Us,” you realize what occurs within the first sport. After Joel Miller, performed by Pedro Pascal onscreen, watches his daughter Sarah (Nico Parker) die in his arms on the outset of the cordyceps outbreak, he closes himself off to the post-apocalyptic world he now inhabits … till he meets Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a woman who, by all accounts, is resistant to the cordyceps virus. When Joel meets up with the insurgent Firefly group, they ask him to securely transport Ellie to Salt Lake Metropolis for a “process,” however all through the journey, Joel and Ellie bond to the purpose the place she principally turns into his surrogate daughter; when it is time to carry out the process on an unconscious Ellie, Joel steals her from the working room and weapons down each Firefly in his path, together with unarmed docs and nurses.
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The second season of “The Final of Us,” which is about to air its finale, picks up 5 years afterwards, just for viewers to find that there is a noticeable divide between the once-close Joel and Ellie. That is, largely, as a result of we all know that Joel lied to Ellie about what occurred on the Firefly hospital in Utah, and within the season’s penultimate episode “The Value,” we additionally be taught that Ellie watches Joel mislead a grieving widow about her husband — whom he killed after the person turned contaminated by the virus — and connects the dots about what truly occurred again in Salt Lake Metropolis.
After Joel dies early in each “The Final of Us Half II” and the second season of “The Final of Us” — by the hands of Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), whose father was the surgeon making an attempt to carry out the process on Ellie — Ellie goes on her personal vengeance quest, which we see play out in full in “The Final of Us Half II.” With out completely spoiling the top of the online game (as a result of we’ll watch it play out on the small display screen because the collection continues), we do get some closure so far as Ellie is worried, so hopefully, Druckmann will think twice about persevering with her story until he has a really phenomenal cause.
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The season 2 finale of “The Final of Us” airs on HBO and HBO Max on Sunday, Could 25, and you’ll stream each seasons on HBO Max now.