‘The Last of Us’ Episode 9 ‘Look for the Light’ Review: A Perfect Season Finale
Bella Ramsey as Ellie in episode 9 of HBO’s The Last of Us.
The Last of Us came to a close with Sunday’s episode 9, which solidified the first season of the series as one of the greatest runs in recent television history.
What Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin have achieved with this show is nothing short of miraculous, and I would dare to say it turned The Last of Us into a worthy successor to Game of Thrones on HBO. Succession definitely caught a lot of people by surprise, but watching the latest episode from an HBO show hasn’t been a true pop culture event since the first Westeros days. It’s been a minute since fans of the original source material and new fans joined arms and watched together the events of the newest series unfold, and it all came down to one reason.
It’s not the fact that this was coming from a popular video game. It’s not about whether it stayed true to the source material or deviated from it. It’s not about including zombies (infected, I know) or huge action set pieces. It is about the writers developing characters and spending time to see them bond. Joel and Ellie won over the audience’s hearts, and the true success of the show is how human it felt. And it felt so human because people made wrong, but justified, decisions all the time; this episode is the ultimate example of that.
Bella Ramsey as Ellie and Pedro Pascal as Joel in episode 9 of HBO’s The Last of Us.
Druckmann and Mazin share co-writing credit on the finale, titled Look for the Light, with Ali Abbasi returning as director following last week’s episode. The title is an obvious callback to the premiere’s title, which contained the first half of the saying: “When you’re lost in the darkness, look for the light”. It is not the only callback to the premiere the episode has; in fact, the episode is essentially a mirror image of what happened in the premiere.
The key to this episode’s success was cementing, once and for all, the relationship between Joel and Ellie, which we got from a few exchanges and poignant moments at the beginning of the episode. The series had already done the homework of building up the bond between these two, but by spending the first 20 minutes of the episode falling in love with them, and most importantly, reflecting on how far they’ve come individually and together, it served as a definitive set up for the resolution of the episode and the season overall. And it is important to remember this is a season finale — an ending that concludes the characters’ arcs from these past few episodes, but one that also leaves the door open for more things to come.
Spoilers ahead for The Last of Us episode 9
Ashley Johnson as Anna Williams in episode 9 of HBO’s The Last of Us.
We start the episode with an absolutely devastating scene; Ashley Johnson, who played Ellie in the game, cameos as the young girl’s mother, already hinting at why Ellie was immune in the first place. Watching a woman realize she will turn into a zombie within hours after giving birth should be the most heartbreaking moment of any other story; and yet, in The Last of Us, it’s merely an afterthought after everything we’ve been through, from Bill and Frank, to Sam and Henry, to Riley, for starters. She hands the baby off to Marlene, who returns from the first episode to play a pivotal role here.
What comes next are some of my favorite 20 minutes from the show. Mirroring the initial exchanges between Joel and Ellie, one of the characters is mostly quiet, while the other one is very talkative; only this time, the roles have been reversed. The two approach the end of their time journey together with a sense of desperation to cherish every single second they have together. As usual with the series, I was on the edge of my seat waiting for an infected to show up from behind one of the cars, or a group of raiders to interrupt the conversation. But this is not the game, where you have to keep the player engaged by forcing him to do something every few minutes. Here, Mazin and Druckmann can tell the story they want because what’s engaging about the show is these two characters talking.
Bella Ramsey as Ellie and Pedro Pascal as Joel in episode 9 of HBO’s The Last of Us.
By falling in love with the characters, we can understand why Joel decided to kill everyone on his way to saving Ellie later in the episode, even if they didn’t present any real threat. Joel’s loss in the first episode comes back to haunt him once again, making the impact even harder from what was lost in the darkness… and us rallying behind him when he looks for the light. Ellie is now the daughter that was once taken from him; he’s realized that over the past few episodes, and his anger towards the world manifests once again when he decides to save her and let everyone else die.
Pedro Pascal’s road to the Emmys just cleared up for him after the final moments of the show, when we see him physically struggle to lie to Ellie about what really happened. The final scenes between the two are truly beautiful and cap off the tremendous accomplishment that The Last of Us has been. We get closure when Ellie brings up Riley again and confirms what we all suspected — she was forced to kill her in that mall. It was the perfect way to handle it, as it wasn’t something we needed to see in episode 7, but Mazin and Druckmann still found a way to deliver it as a way to build up character and relationship. It also leaves the door wide open to a nail-biting season 2 that will hopefully come sooner than we realize.
If you haven’t, you can check out all of our reviews of The Last of Us season 1 here. I have no problem saying that this is one of the best seasons of television I’ve ever seen, and I already cannot wait to rewatch it.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
