The Last of Us Season 2, Episode 2 Review – “Through the Valley”

With Abby’s arrival outside Jackson Hole at the end of “Future Days”, and knowing prolific Big HBO Episode Director Mark Mylod would be at the helm for next week’s episode, it was pretty clear “Through the Valley” would be that episode of The Last of Us. But even among the inevitable, “Through the Valley” manages to be an effective showcase for the series, one able to conjure incredible amounts of tension inside the walls of Jackson Hole, a terrifying backdrop that proves to be rather effective at heightening the inevitability of what happens in the lodge outside the city, where both Abby and Ellie’s anger towards Joel meet a shared, fateful end.

The moments before “Through the Valley” quickly descends into chaos are smartly crafted to lull the audience into the normal rhythms seen in the season premiere; Ellie’s still sheepish about her crush on Dina and cold towards Joel and normal patrols are being planned, just another normal day in Jackson Hole… at least until there’s mention of a patrol coming across infected creatures hibernating underneath other, frozen infected, both insulating themselves from the relentless Wyoming cold, and setting a fortunate trap for any unfortunate party who happened to fall into the mushroom-infested quicksand (which we get a horrifying glimpse of when Abby stumbles upon them, during her initial pursuit of Jesse and Ellie).

Like Joel’s faulty mechanism in the premiere, the reveal of the hidden infected provides a strong visual metaphor for the episode, and the horrors lying just under the surface of Jackson Hole – and more importantly, the people inside and around it, all one wrong step or decision away from complete and utter disaster and destruction. Abby’s impetuous decision to hunt Ellie and Jesse by herself is the catalyst; but once she’s breached Jackson Hole’s walls and immediately runs into Joel – as he saves her life from an aggressive infected, of course – The Last of Us leans harder into the cascading series of disasters and their inevitability, in a trio of effective parallel stories.

The best of these, of course, is Tommy, who provides the majority of our point of view through the undead’s siege of Jackson Hole. Not only does he predict everything that’s going to go wrong before it does (he warns people to avoid main street, and warns everyone of the impending breach of the wall when he sees one of the giant infected we last saw in “Endure and Survive”), but he leads the front to save the city, organizing everyone, leading the defense of the wall, then grabbing a flamethrower and leading away the biggest monster in town, if only to buy the people he loved and promised to protect a little more time.

Through Tommy, The Last of Us offers something other than the usual tambor of failure and horror; he offers the series a brief glimpse at the power of hope and resilience, a proper yin to Abby’s yang in the episode. Where her actions as the unspoken leader of her militia are spontaneous and selfish, Tommy (alongside his wife) is prepared and selfless in the defense of everything they’ve built, even as he’s retreating from the horde and preparing to run out the clock with the last of his handgun ammo. Though Tommy’s path through the town is mostly used for the harrowing dramatic effect, his actions provide a proper emotional backdrop for the rest of the episode to follow (in turn helping resolve a bit of the whiplash that comes from bouncing back and forth between the episode’s two major locations).

When it does permanently shift, of course, is when “Through the Valley”, and The Last of Us, sees Abby, Joel and Dina ascend to the lodge, where the rest of her militia awaits. From the moment they walk in and we see Joel emotionally disarmed, that inevitability immediately infects the entire scene, transferring the anxiety of the horde’s invasion (which, unbeknownst to us or Joel, was beginning to die down) immediately into the large central room of the lodge, where it became pretty clear there was no respite for Joel, and that he would no longer be able to outrun the echoes of the actions he took, and tried to hide from Ellie, five years earlier.

There was a lot of debate around “Future Day” and its decision to introduce Abby so early in the season’s narrative; but the speed and ferocity with which she comes into the center of “Through the Valley” helps explain, and redeem, that decision a bit. How quickly the two come into contact is anything but coincidental, of course, but it reinforces what this episode shows with the reveal of the veins of cordyceps running through the city’s pipes; when a foundation is fundamentally compromised, it’s really only a matter of when it all will fall apart. Worrying about the how or why can’t help anyone, and means nothing to those seeking vengeance – whether it be a world reclaiming itself, or a young woman exacting revenge on the man who executed her father.

“Through the Valley” does not linger on the preamble of Joel’s death, smartly; the breach of the city walls and Abby shooting Joel in the leg becoming another great parallel drawn between the two big stories playing out in the episode. As Joel lies on the ground wordless, Abby starts to launch into excerpts of different speeches she’s obviously played out in her head over the years – until Joel tells her to shut the fuck up and get on with it already, to which she enthusiastically obliges, taking a golf club to his injured leg, before we cut to Ellie, who finds the trail of their steps just in time to arrive at the lodge as Abby viciously beats Joel to the very edge of consciousness.

The last moments of the episode focus exclusively on Ellie – and it’s here where “Through the Valley” finally slows down, letting the audience sit with the shared horrors of Jackson Hole and the lodge, and Ellie and Abby’s path diverge, their anger towards Joel resolved in analogous, but painfully different ways. Ellie’s stricken face is juxtaposed with Abby’s taut look in the final moments, as both try to silently find peace in a moment clearly too horrific to do so; it’s a really strong way to end the episode, itself a moment that presents The Last of Us with an opportunity not only to expand its story, but shift its emotional palette a bit into something new, as it enters into a post-Joel world and shifts around its stories of community and revenge, and the dichotomies and fault points emerging from the various factions, and the things defining them, in the post-apocalyptic west coast of The Last of Us.

Though “Through the Valley” occasionally feels a bit disconnected as it jumps back and forth between the maximalist, explosive-and-bullet laden assault on Jackson Hole and the very tempered, measured path towards Joel’s death, by centering itself on Abby and Tommy, The Last of Us, at least briefly, finds a connective tissue between the stories of protection and revenge that drive so many of its central characters – and helps provide a bit of foundation for Joel, whose inner conflicts are not given voice again before he meets his unfortunate end. All we see is the tired look in his eyes when Abby reveals who she is, and the fear when he looks back to the sights of Jackson’s walls burning off in the distance; defeated and resigned, Joel dies at the hands of the last person whose life he saves, a death that remains as shocking and effective as the first time it was delivered (in the dour The Last of Us Part II, of course), but perhaps more so as portrayed in parallel with Tommy’s righteous fight to save what he loved, and Abby’s relentless pursuit to retaliate against those who took the same from her.

Of course, it remains to be seen whether The Last of Us will make any tweaks to the rest of its narrative to build on what is shows in “Through the Valley”, I think the choices here are surprisingly effective; though this episode is the latest in a long line of downer climactic moments, Joel’s death and the (mostly) successful defense of Jackson Hole provides a dramatic salve for the series, and an opportunity to present a different voice and pathos than what we saw in the first season – we’ll have to see whether it can capitalize on it as it digs into the bigger stories of The Last of Us Part II, but there are certainly a few intriguing signs that “Through the Valley” is not just a farewell to Joel, but a show bidding adieu to some of the show’s playbook from its first dozen episodes, as it begins to expand its world and cast of characters in the vacuum left by the death of its co-protagonist.

Grade: A-

Other thoughts/observations:

• Let’s say it again: Tommy might as well take the MVP for the season home now.
  
• Does this mean we don’t have to have any more therapy scenes? I’m curious whether O’Hara will return, but I certainly don’t need more time with her character. Keep telling us the story of Eugene through dialogue between other characters, though – that little piece of diegetic storytelling is wonderful.
  
• Abby came close to cartoonish villain territory when she grinned at the sight of the golf clubs – but I think when Joel tells her to shut the fuck up, it helps reground the scene in the portrayal of a young woman utterly broken by the selfish action of one man thinking he’s doing “the right thing”.
  
• Some may not like this episode jumping back and forth between the big, showy sequence and Joel’s last moments; I think it arguably makes them more effective, as it allowed themes of the episode and series to lead the action happening in both areas, quietly marrying them together in its subtext, softening a bit the whiplash of jumping between the loud, snarling interludes of the town, and the silent resignation happening between Abby, Joel, and the members of the WLF militia in the room.
  
• I will say – too much score happening in some of the siege scenes.
  
• It appears Mylod and HBO have learned a tiny bit about making sure there’s some sources of lighting when you’re attempting a big-scale scene. Smartly, it’s not an episode with a ton of big, wide (and obviously expensive) panning shots, which keeps the action grounded and feeling a bit more low-budget than one might’ve expected it to feel… but in a good way; it kept everything driven and claustrophobic. I found it refreshingly effective to feel the budgetary limitations of TV a bit (even a show like this has a hard stop point with money), and seeing a high-profile show operate within that).