Infected (episode)

"Infected" is the second episode of the first season, and the second episode overall, of HBO's The Last of Us. The episode was directed by series creator Neil Druckmann and written by Craig Mazin. The episode aired on HBO on January 22, 2023.

Synopsis[]

In 2003, an Indonesian scientist makes a devastating discovery. In 2023, now outside of the quarantine zone, Joel and Tess clash over Ellie's fate as they navigate a long-abandoned Boston overrun with infected.^[1]

Cast and characters[]

Main cast

• Pedro Pascal as Joel Miller
• Bella Ramsey as Ellie Williams

Guest starring

• Anna Torv as Tess
• Christine Hakim as Ratna Pertiwi
• Yayu A.W. Unru as Agus Hidayat

Co-starring

• Sharon Crandall as lab worker
• Philip Prajoux as infected kissing man
• Oliver Ross-Parent as museum clicker
• Samuel Hoeksema as museum clicker

Uncredited

• Autumn Thom as infected #6

Plot[]

Jakarta[]

On September 24th, 2003, in Jakarta, Indonesia, mycologist Ratna Pertiwi enjoys lunch at a local café. The authorities abruptly escort her to a private laboratory, implying they require her academic expertise in mycology, and they prompt her to view a prepared specimen. She concludes that it is Ophiocordyceps, and the man informs her that it is from a human. She is skeptical, so they allow her to closely examine the infected woman; Ratna is horrified when she extracts tendrils from the woman's mouth. The authorities inform her the incident began at a flour mill where fourteen workers have gone missing, and ask her for guidance to avoid the spread. In shock, she suggests they bomb the entire city, killing everyone inside. She then becomes very emotional, asking to be with her family.

The outskirts[]

In 2023, Ellie sleeps on the ground in an abandoned building. Joel and Tess watch her as she wakes, both holding her at gunpoint. The three address her bite; Ellie maintains that she is not infected, but Joel and Tess are doubtful. Ellie begins eating a chicken sandwich Marlene packed for her, when Tess demands to know her importance or else they will leave without her, to which Ellie admits that there is a Firefly camp out west that is developing a vaccine. Joel, still completely doubtful, suggests again that they take her back, but Tess narrowly convinces him to follow through with the current plan because, while she is still doubtful over Ellie's immunity, she maintains that the Fireflies will still give them supplies. They head out, and Ellie is captivated by the ruins.

Their path to the Massachusetts State House is blocked by a crumbling building. Joel gives an ultimatum: the long way or the short way. Tess and Ellie wish to go the long way, and Joel makes the call to check the hotel first. On their way, Ellie tells Tess that she got bit after sneaking off to an abandoned mall, alone. She reveals that she is a fourteen-year-old orphan with no significant other. She confesses her previous belief that the outside world was saturated with hordes of infected, and asks about the infected possibly using echolocation, when an ominous scream distracts the group. Joel prompts them to keep moving.

They reach the hotel lobby, which is flooded, and Ellie notifies them that she cannot swim. The water turns out to be shallow, and Ellie fools around in the flooded lobby. She accidentally uncovers a skeleton, ending her folly, and the group continues up the stairs. The hallway is blocked, so Tess climbs into a narrow opening in the blockage to open a nearby door from the inside. Joel tries to make small talk with Ellie as they await Tess, but he becomes annoyed with her insolence and personal queries. They discuss the infected, and Tess interrupts a potential conversation about the man Joel beat to death the night before. Joel notices a worried look on Tess's face.

On a balcony, Tess shows them a large group of infected lying on the ground together in their path to the statehouse. Tess explains to Ellie that most of them were deep inside the buildings at one point, and when people seeking to reach the quarantine zone would go into the buildings to find shelter, they would often get bitten. Tess also explains that the fungus grows underground, with fibers growing miles long. Thus, disturbing one patch of Cordyceps could awaken another one miles away. She informs Ellie that although she may be immune from the infection, she is not immune from being ripped apart by a horde. They decide they must take "the short way": the museum.

Joel cracks the fungus growing outside the museum, deducing that its dryness indicates the infected in the museum are all dead. They slowly enter the museum; Joel admits they should have taken this route initially. Ellie encounters a man that seems to have been viciously attacked. Tess tries to convince herself and Joel that the man was attacked outside, because an indoor attack of this type implies something more sinister. Joel demands total silence for the rest of their time in the museum.

They quietly inch up the stairs. Ellie steps on a decayed hand, making noise. They carry on to the room at the top floor, and the stairway caves in on itself as soon as they make it through. They maintain their silence when they hear an ominous clicking sound. A clicker walks out of the adjacent room, and Ellie becomes increasingly terrified. They take cover behind a vitrine. Joel mouths to Ellie, "They can't see, but they can hear." The clicker stumbles next to them, and Ellie lets out a gasp, alerting it. This prompts Joel to unload his assault rifle on the clicker, which does nothing.

As he fights off the clicker, another one appears. Tess and Ellie run away, but they trip over a mannequin. The second clicker chases Tess as Ellie crawls away. Joel runs away from the first clicker, breaking open a display case, which catches the clicker's attention as he hides behind a wall. He discreetly reloads his gun and makes his way to Ellie; the two crouch away from the clicker. However, Joel steps on glass, and the clicker lunges over the table on top of Ellie and Joel. He escapes and kills both clickers with his assault rifle.

The capitol building[]

Tess tells them that they need to get moving before the sun goes down. Outside, Joel puts a bandage on Ellie's bite and helps Tess re-align her twisted ankle. He again shares his concern about Ellie being infected, but Tess snaps at him, saying that they should be grateful to still be alive. They make their way up to the road in front of the statehouse, where a container truck is parked and waiting to transport Ellie.

Joel becomes suspicious when no one comes out to meet them and checks the truck only to find the driver dead underneath it. Tess draws her gun and runs inside with Ellie. They find the Fireflies all dead. Joel turns over one of them and finds fungi growing on his face. Ellie asks him if FEDRA did this, and Joel replies no: one of the Fireflies got infected, spread the infection to others, and the survivors either got killed or took their own lives rather than become infected themselves.

A horrified Tess starts checking the bodies, claiming that one of them must have a map or something that points the way to the Firefly camp. Joel finally loses his patience and tells them that it is over and they need to go home. Tess remarks that this is her home now, to which Ellie realizes that she is infected. Joel tells her to show him, and Tess pulls her shirt aside to reveal a badly infected bite mark on her neck. She muses that their luck had to run out at some point.

As Joel tries to process what is happening, Tess orders Ellie to take her bandage off, revealing that her bite mark from earlier has completely healed. Tess instructs Joel to go find Bill and Frank and force them to transport Ellie, telling him that he has a responsibility to save whoever he can. Suddenly, one of the seemingly dead Fireflies wakes up and Joel shoots him dead without hesitating. Tendrils wrap around his hands, and the infected horde starts dashing towards the statehouse.

Tess grabs a discarded weapon and starts knocking over fuel drums and scattering grenades, telling Ellie that she will make sure the infected cannot follow them. Joel grabs Ellie's arm and drags her out of the statehouse by force as the horde storms the building. Tess tries to start her lighter, but the flame keeps fizzling out. An infected man corners her and lets the tendrils in his mouth enter hers, sealing them in a kiss.

As Tess feels her mind slowly being overcome by the Cordyceps infection, she keeps trying to strike the lighter until it finally starts up. Dropping it, she uses her last moment of free will to close her eyes as the building goes up in a sea of flame. Joel and Ellie are outside when the building explodes. They see infected stumbling outside, burning to death as Joel keeps his rifle aimed at them. Eventually, he lowers it and walks away without saying a word as Ellie remains behind, looking at him.

Reception[]

The episode marks the biggest growth for week 2 of an original HBO drama in the network's history. Up approximately 22% from the premiere, "Infected" garnered 5.7 million viewers in the U.S. on debut night.^[2] Like it's predecessor, it also received high praise. Praise was given for the presentation of Tess' death scene and the introduction of the Clickers, with critics highlighting the horror elements were arguably at their strongest here in the series. It holds a 9.1 rating out of 10 as an average for over 100,000 reviews on IMDB.^[3]

Transcript[]

Main article: Infected (episode)/Transcript

Behind the scenes[]

Featured music[]

• "Hampa" by Ari Lasso, plays in the background of the restaurant as Ratna Pertiwi is eating lunch.

Original score[]

• "Allowed to be Happy" by Gustavo Santaolalla, plays following Tess' death, continuing into the end credits.

Production[]

• An early title for this episode that was accidentally leaked on Rotten Tomatoes in December 2022 was "Cordyceps Ordo Seclorum". According to co-creator Craig Mazin, it was changed as the Latin did not actually make much sense when translated: the literal translation is "Cordyceps Order of the Centuries", though it has been posited the title was a pun on "Novus Ordo Seclorum" or "New World Order", thus the translation "Cordyceps World Order."^[4]
• The production team chose to portray clickers using prosthetics rather than visual effects, as Craig Mazin felt not having the physical creature would lessen the impact. The clickers were designed by Barrie and Sarah Gower, who previously worked with Mazin on Chernobyl. The designers frequently referenced art from the game in the process. Mazin noted it was important for players of the franchise to recognize the clickers as the enemy they encountered in the game, and for new viewers to be terrified. The actors hired to play the clickers were fans of the game, and made the noises during filming, though these were dubbed over in post-production.^[5][6]
• Both Bella Ramsey (Ellie) and Pedro Pascal (Joel) found filming the museum sequence immersive and terrifying due to having the clickers on-set and having to react in real time: Ramsey opined she did not have to act very much as she was genuinely scared by the clickers' appearance and movements.^[7][8]
• Joel mouthing to Ellie "They can't see, but they can hear" was a detail added in reshoots when executive producer Carolyn Strauss noticed that the script did not mention how Ellie understood the way clickers operate.^[9]
• While the clickers are physically portrayed by Olivier-Ross Parent and Samuel Hoeksema, actors Misty Lee and Phillip Kovats reprise their roles from the game as the voice of the clickers' distinctive noise.^[10]

Easter eggs and references[]

• During the scene where Ellie asks about different types of infected, she asks if there is a kind of infected that "explode fungus spores on you", which Tess denies. The reference is two-fold, alluding to both bloaters and spores, a mechanic from the game that was cut from the television series.
• The scene where Joel attempts to reload his gun while in the presence of a clicker is a reference to a similar scene from one of the first trailers for the game.^[11]
• The lighter Tess uses towards the end of the episode was mocked up to resemble Sam Drake's lighter from Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, another game developed by Naughty Dog.

Mistakes[]

• As Ratna converses with Agus while she is being escorted in the car to the laboratory in Jakarta, Indonesia, the street they are on is right-hand traffic (RHT), where cars are driving on the right side of the road. In reality, Indonesia is a left-hand traffic (LHT) country, which means that cars should drive on the left side of the road.
• Joel, Ellie, and Tess look west across Quincy Market, with Fanueil Hall and Boston City Hall visible in the background. However, this would mean that they came from the east, which consists of Boston Harbor, not the cityscape they were shown traveling through.

Gallery[]

Promotional images[]

Teaser collage

Official stills[]

Ratna Pertiwi

Ellie and Tess talking.

Joel and Tess monitor Ellie.

Tess talking to Ellie.

Ellie sat in the abandoned salon.

Joel looks at Ellie in the abandoned salon.

Ellie deduces Tess is infected.

Tess behind an abandoned car.

Ellie and Tess behind a car.

The group comes across an infected.

A clicker in the museum.

Joel shielding Ellie.

Ellie and Tess walk through the flooded part of the hotel.

Tess confronts Joel after being infected.

A scared Tess reveals she is infected.

Tess and Joel talk after Tess is infected.

Joel, Tess and Ellie looked at the flooded hotel.

Behind the scenes[]

Videos[]

Episode 2 - The Last of Us Podcast - HBO Max

The Last of Us - Inside the Episode - 2 - HBO Max

External links[]

• Watch "Infected" on HBO Max
• Listen to The Last of Us Official Playlist on Spotify
• "Infected" at IMDb

References[]