The Last of Us Recap: Season 1 Episode 2: [Spoiler] dies

In case you score at home, we’re only two episodes in and we already have one The last of us Body count started. Joel: 0, the mushrooms from hell: 1.

Tess sacrifices herself this week to give Joel and Ellie a chance to get out of the State House alive after a horde of walkers besieged the place. Let’s recap the highlights of Episode 2.

“Bomb This City” | This week’s episode begins on September 24, 2003 in Jakarta, Indonesia – two days before everything went wrong in the United States, as we saw at the premiere. A mycology professor (aka someone who studies fungi) is brought into a lab to study a sample; She identifies it as Ophiocordiceps, but scoffs when told it was taken from a human because the fungus is said to be incapable of surviving in humans. She puts on a hazmat suit and goes to the dead woman from whom the sample was taken. The corpse has a bullet hole in the head and a (human) bite on the leg; When the professor cuts into the wound, spongy material begins to emerge from it. Worse still, the corpse’s mouth contains threadlike tentacle structures that move of their own accord.

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The professor is horrified, then confused, to learn the bite happened 30 hours earlier at a flour and grain factory in the city. The bitten woman suddenly became violent and bit three of her workers; all had to be killed. The original walker is at large, and 14 people are missing. The military asks the professor for help in making a vaccine or medicine to treat the infected. She is very serious as she tells them that there is nothing they can do but “Bomb. Bomb this city and everyone in it.” She starts crying and then asks someone to give her a ride home to be with her family.

GET TO KNOW YOU | In Boston, when Joel, Tess and Ellie are getting some rest, Joel gives the teen the Stinkeye. He is convinced that sooner or later she will end up as a full-fledged infected. Tess talks him out of bringing them back to the QZ where they’ll just be scanned and killed, but she also wants to know what Ellie did to Marlene and why she’s so important. Reluctantly, Ellie tells them she’s headed to a Firefly base camp somewhere to the west, where doctors are working on a cure. Joel thinks that’s a load of crap, but Tess says it doesn’t matter: if they get her where she wants to go, “we’ll get what we want.” He agrees sullenly. Ellie begins to twitch and pretends to be infected before Tess finishes her shenanigans. I LIKE this kid!

The trio weaves their way through the ruins of Boston, which was bombed to contain the outbreak; apparently it was more effective there than in many other large cities. As they clamber over cars and the like, Ellie tells her fellow passengers how old she is (14) and how she was bitten (she snuck into a boarded up mall in QZ and that’s where it happened). She also mentions that she is an orphan.

She’s also super talkative and can’t get over the fact that the world outside of the QZ isn’t as immediately dangerous as she’s heard. “So there aren’t any superinfected that explode fungal spores on you?” she wonders. “Or those with split heads that see in the dark like bats?” It should be noted that the adults exchange a look at the latter.

CLICKERS? I BARELY KNOW YOU! | Their quest leads them to a flooded hotel where they climb to a high floor to get the location of the country. The bad news: There are LOTS of infected roaming the city, way more than the last time Joel and Tess came through. We learn that infected are connected to each other and the fungus also grows underground. So if you step on a patch of Cordyceps in one spot, you can wake up a crowd of infected people in another spot.

So the only way that could work is through the Bostonian Museum, a building that has been completely infested with the fungus. But Joel finds that the organic matter growing out of every window and crevice is dry, which could mean all infected inside are dead. So they go inside, guns and flashlights drawn, and Tess and Joel tell Ellie to shut up.

This advice proves moot when the building collapses around them, summoning a very terrifying-looking infected that sounds like a creaking alien baby bird and looks like a mushroom-like Venus flytrap. This is a stage of infection known as “clickers,” aka those bat-like creatures Ellie referred to earlier, and it’s SO strong and SO SO fast.

The clicker and some of his friends follow the trio through the museum in a super suspenseful and very spooky sequence. When they finish, Ellie has been bitten on the arm again and Tess’ ankle is twisted, but it seems they got over it well enough. Joel grumbles that maybe Ellie’s second bite is the one that lasts, but Tess warns him to take some good news for once.

BLAZE BY GORY | Eventually they make it to the State House…where the truck is empty outside and there’s blood on the steps. Within? Bodies everywhere. Ellie wonders if FEDRA is responsible, but Joel looks at the condition of the bodies and suspects someone was bitten. “The healthy fought against the sick. Everyone lost.”

Joel wants to return to the QZ, but Tess insists they don’t turn back. “Sooner or later our luck had to run out,” she says sadly, and with that the penny drops for Ellie. “F—k,” she states, “she’s infected.” Yes, Tess was bitten on the neck during the museum skirmish; Meanwhile, Ellie’s nip is already healing.

Tess instructs Joel to take the girl to two men named Bill and Frank. He protests that they won’t accept her, but Tess says he will convince her. “I never asked you for anything,” she adds desperately. If he can keep Ellie alive, “you did everything right, everything we did,” she says. As this all unfolds in the lobby in a really sad way, one of the corpses starts to move and Joel shoots it. Then he notices that some of the connected tendrils are moving; Outside, a pack of walkers is being revived and moving towards the front doors of the State House.

“Joel, save whoever you can save,” Tess whispers, knocking over gas canisters and spilling grenades on the floor. Anguished, Joel grabs Ellie, pulls her away, and exits the building before the Horde arrives. The infected quickly approach Tess, who is fumbling with a lighter that just won’t spark. When one of the infected puts his tender mouth on hers (ICK ICK ICK) she finally gets the lighter to work. She drops it on the floor where it catches the gas; a huge explosion and flames follow.

As Joel turns and walks away, Ellie pauses for a moment to watch the building burn.