Reaction Review: The Last Of Us Season 1 Episode 9: Look For the Light
Written by Andreas Babiolakis
EPISODE SUMMARY
Warning: major spoilers for The Last of Us season 1 episode 9, “Look For the Light”, are throughout the entire review. Reader discretion is strongly advised.
We see a pregnant woman running through the forest. We are not sure who she is at first, but her water is breaking. She breaks into an abandoned cabin to give birth until she hears a disturbance; she pulls out her picket knife (perhaps this is Ellie’s mom?). Before we can figure it out, an infected crawler comes for the mom but is stabbed to death while the birth takes place. She cuts the umbilical cord with the very knife that saved both lives, and the baby is healthy. This is confirmed to be Ellie's birth: she was born as toughly as her life has gone.
We cut to later in the day and see Marlene (hey, it’s been a minute since we’ve crossed paths with her). The mom’s infected and it’s starting to spread. The mom decides to pass little Ellie off to Marlene to save her life. Apparently Marlene and this woman know each other and have done so for many years (a lifetime, apparently); the new mom asks Marlene to also mercy kill her, which appears to be too much for the latter. Marlene passes off Ellie to a fellow Firefly member while she changes her mind and finishes off the suffering mom.
We cut to the present with Joel now being the sole guardian in Ellie’s life (it’s clear she never had a true parent at all, given how quickly her birth mother’s life ended after hers started). Joel is acting much more fatherly with her now, given how both nearly died the last episode. They are finally almost at the hospital where Ellie’s immunity can be studied to help create a vaccine to save humanity from infection. After breaking into a building on the way to the hospital, Ellie zips ahead and drops the ladder that is meant to bring Joel to her. He panics, thinking infected will be alerted. He sprints to her but all is safe: Ellie sees her first real giraffe just living amidst the destruction of civilization and eating the foliage that has grown since. They proceed to feed the giraffe until it slinks away. They wind up finding a whole sanctuary of giraffes: this has to be a good sign.
Staring at this utopia, Joel begins to have cold feet: why do we have to keep going to the hospital? This is what a perfect world looks like: giraffes just living and enjoying peace. This is what Joel’s brother, Tommy, has with his commune. Ellie assures Joel that they may as well finish what they started, given all of the hell that they’ve been through. Joel has to accept Ellie’s wishes. They proceed towards the hospital. Joel begins to open up to Ellie more than ever before; the stale expository conversations of old are gone. He discusses his daughter, Sarah, and her death. He was prepared to take his own life but flinched mid shot; it explains why he has had ringing in his ears. He claims that the only thing that has finally healed him is having Ellie as a daughter figure, and every HBO subscriber’s heart breaks. Ellie proclaims her gratitude that Joel is still around, and that only hurts even more. Once Joel asks for more of Ellie’s “shitty puns”, the pain is immeasurable.
This is painful and not joyous because we know something is wrong, and it is: FEDRA has found them (we think) and a flash grenade is set right behind them. Actually, it’s the Fireflies, and Marlene meets Joel when he wakes up in their base (so the Fireflies have similar tactics to their mortal enemy FEDRA? There’s something profound there). Joel wants to meet with Ellie but Marlene says that she cannot be bothered during her surgery. She believes that Ellie’s birth and its abnormal circumstances have made her immune to cordyceps because the fungus doesn’t want to attack her, thinking she’s one with it. Joel recalls that the fungus spreads to the brain, and then it’s obvious: Ellie is going to die for this cure. Joel cannot allow it. He cannot lose another daughter.
Marlene asks her soldiers to escort Joel out and to kill him should he try anything funny. Well, Joel will continue to do Joel things; he attacks both soldiers while deescalating a stairway and kills them. Instantly, radio signals ring out that there has been an attack and backup is needed. He goes from killing anyone that attacks him to even killing innocents that surrender: this is a side of Joel we haven’t seen in the series before. He begins to head towards the Paediatric Surgery ward. He finds Ellie on the operating table about to be worked on. Joel kills one of the surgeons working on her because they won’t work with him; the other two cooperate instantly. Joel carries Ellie’s comatose body out of the room and into the elevator with the intention of fleeing.
Marlene meets Joel in the garage and points a gun at him, demanding that Ellie is returned. She claims that Ellie cannot be protected forever despite being immune to cordyceps. Marlene states that Ellie must go through the operation to save humanity. Joel pauses to reconsider. We cut to Joel driving on the road, and shortly after Ellie wakes up in the back of the truck: it’s clear that he played by his own rules again. While Joel tells Ellie that the Fireflies had many immune citizens being worked on and there was still no cure in sight (which we know is false), we see the real story: Marlene also surrendered, and Joel appears to have shot her dead. Joel blames the bloodbath he left behind on “raiders”. We cut back to Joel's execution of Marlene where we see that he didn’t even give her a second chance to explain herself before finishing her off in the head.
We cut to beautiful scenery and both Joel and Ellie on the road again. They’re heading to Wyoming to see Tommy and live in the commune. Their truck has died, but it was inevitable in this universe (where vehicles don't last long and batteries are scarce). They vow to hike the rest of the way. They're no strangers to this. Joel begins to remark on some memories of Sarah. It gets Ellie thinking since Joel doth protest too much: he’s gotten a little too close to Ellie. She begins to recognize that Joel would likely like a redo of what happened before. After some waiting, Ellie starts to tell the truth about the first time she killed someone: the time she was with Riley. She had to mercy kill Riley in the way Marlene had to kill Ellie’s mother. After confessing, Ellie finally stands her ground “swear to me that everything you said about the Fireflies is true”. Joel swears. Ellie pauses, nods, and states “okay”. It’s time to enter the commune and have a new life.
FIRST REACTION
This is it. This is the peak of what The Last of Us as a series can be. The shortest episode is the most concise yet multilayered. We have a running theme here: people dying to save them from misery (as well as Ellie being put on her deathbed in preparation to save humanity). Joel cannot afford to lose a daughter again. He puts humanity’s livelihood on the line in order to protect her despite the massive sacrifices she and others (including Marlene) have had to do in order to protect them from fully experiencing infection (and to save others from being hurt as well). The magnitude of this episode is staggering. I thought “Long Long Time” was the peak of this series (and it is for sure the most beautiful episode of the show thus far), but “Look For the Light” is something else.
This is a fable of massive proportions. What do we do for love? Do we protect? Do we do what we are told is right? Joel was dismissive of Ellie for ages until now, but he may be too protective of her now. The ultimate dilemma (letting Ellie die to save the human species) is where audiences will be divided, but I love when art forces you to think and come to your own conclusions. What I mean by overprotection is when Joel lies to Ellie in order to keep her in his life instead of allowing her to come to her own choices as a member of society who likely would have died to save others. From the emotional sting to the narrative, poetic depth, “Look For the Light” is a tremendous ending to a stellar first season of this promising adaptation. Well done.
Final Grade: 5/5
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Toronto Metropolitan University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.