The Last of Us Season 2, Episode 4 Review – “Day One”

Much has been made about The Last of Us‘s future since the events of “Through the Valley”, a question its follow up, the carefully calibrated reflection on grief offered in “The Path” did well to avoid answering. The answer, as we learn in the appropriately-titled “Day One”, is mostly the same mix of horror, anger, and misery – but with a few important tweaks, particularly emotionally, that open an unexpected world of possibility for the series, as it shifts its attention away from the tight-knit Jackson community, back into the tribalistic, ever-violent world around them.

It doesn’t help, however, that “Day One” has perhaps one of the oddest cold opens of any show in recent memory; if anybody had “Josh Peck as a vulgar militaristic chud” on their 2025 Guest Star Bingo Card, more power to you – but for anyone else who recognized him (who I last saw on How I Met Your Father as the main character’s ex), it certainly felt a strange way to introduce the militaristic idiocy at the heart of FEDRA’s fascism – the kind, as we see, that leads future WLF leader Isaac to turn against them, kicking off a bloody chain of events Ellie and Dina eventually stumble into the middle of, some seven years and many disturbing images later.

The two isolated scenes of Isaac offer a fitting introduction to the character – interestingly enough, as a fitting replacement for Joel. As someone who clearly sacrificed their humanity a long time ago, Isaac is a person of small delights (particularly fancy French cookware) and drastic decisions; in his two scenes, we see him coldly bomb a FEDRA truck full of his suddenly-former colleagues and murder all but one of the soldiers, and then torture a Scar trying to find information about their next attack on the WLF. Like Joel, Isaac has dehumanized so many of those around him in pursuit of whatever he thinks is right; and with “Day One”, it presents us with a pair of interesting litmus tests for how he defines that morality (or lack thereof), though the larger lack of context around his character and actions leave it feeling a bit of a premature introduction, especially with such an intense focus on Ellie and Dina throughout the rest of the hour.

Outside of those moments, “Day One” really builds itself towards two specific scenes; Ellie playing “Take Me On” on a guitar found in an abandoned music store, and Ellie and Dina’s first attempt to infiltrate the WLF – two acts with entirely different emotional tenors, which “Day One” smartly (and to some degree, surprisingly) centers on Dina. Though it’s not revealed until the end of the episode, Dina discovers she’s pregnant with Jesse’s child early in the hour – and from there, “Day One” spends a lot of its time viewing the world and Ellie through her lens, one where some sense of optimism can live underneath the ever-vigilant dread that’s just baked into anyone who grew up during the end of the civilized world.

Isabela Merced’s casting continues to pay huge dividends for The Last of Us in both of the signatures scenes of “Day One”; her reaction to Ellie’s guitar playing is perhaps the most tender moment the series has offered to date, a moment that could be cheap and cheesy in a less measured performance. And even in the moments where the writing betrays her character’s subtleties a little bit (“I told my mom I liked boys and I liked girls”, she awkwardly explains to Ellie before they hook up), Merced’s performance breathes life into the portrayal of a young woman, on the precipice of understanding her place in the world, suddenly faced with the one life-changing event the apocalypse can’t disrupt. It’s a terrific bit of work, a performance able to engage with the wide spectrum of emotions Dina is desperately clamping down inside herself, without it ever feeling cheap or underdeveloped (especially when Dina pulls a gun on Ellie after she takes an Infected bite to the arm right in front of her; we know neither of them are dying in that scene, so the stakes of the moment can only come from the delivery of its setting and performances).

Slightly less effective is Ellie’s presence in the episode; putting aside just how goddamn bumbling and thoughtless she is when it comes to making dangerous strategic decisions (deciding to randomly climb into open windows, forgoing safer tactics and nearly getting them both killed multiple times), The Last of Us approaches her with a bit of an uneven hand in this hour. There’s no question the haunting power of Ellie’s guitar playing and how much it speaks to the happy moments we never saw in her and Joel’s relationship; however, when the episode shifts to the sudden blossoming of her romance with Dina, their relationship moving from speculative to deeply committed in a moment’s notice, feels a bit odd – particularly when she’s immediately eager and willing to become a parent to Dina and Jesse’s unborn child.

This comes down to the writing of her character, of course; Ellie is a very interior-facing character, one whose motivations can be increasingly tunnel-visioned at any given time. There are hints of that here, but The Last of Us doesn’t quite give itself room to engage with it, moving rapidly from the cordyceps horde infiltrating the tunnel beneath Seattle (… which everyone thought was empty, apparently), right into the emotional and physical unions of its two stressed-out protagonists. It’s not an unbelievable leap, but a slightly underdeveloped one – her single-minded nature is dampened by the requirements of the plot, rather than the choices of her character, which makes the romantic aside, in an abandoned building surrounded by pouring rain, a bit less emotionally resonant than Kate Herron’s direction often suggests.

Regardless, “Day One” is a pretty effective introduction to the strange, brutal lands of Seattle, as Ellie and Dina stumble onto the skeletons of the past and eviscerated bodies of the present (the Seraphites hanging and gutting a group of WLF soldiers in an abandoned TV station, as evocative a set this series has ever offered), providing a voiceless backdrop to the lasting war alluded to when Isaac violently relieves a young Scar boy of his duty. Though Ellie and Dina have found each other, they’ve done so while in the middle of a minefield, hundreds of miles away from everything they know – will love be enough to quelch Ellie’s burning desire for vengeance (which has already led to the deaths of multiple uninvolved members of the WLF)? “Day One” suggests it probably won’t – but the bit of sunlight the two find amidst the relentless darkness at least provides a temporary respite, one I hope the series continues to engage with, to provide a bit of balance season one was sorely lacking (and could continue, if Jackson continues to slide into the background of the series).

Grade: B+