It’s that time of year again! Time to celebrate the Resurrection with a weeklong plunge into all things zombie! Here’s the history: In 2008, Dr. Girlfriend and I decided to spend a week or so each year marathoning through zombie films that we’d never seen before, and I would blog short reviews. And simple as that, the Easter Zombie Movie Marathon was born.
For the curious, here are links to 2008, 2009 (a bad year), 2010, 2011, 2012 (when we left the blog behind), 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022.
Here there be spoilers!
Remember when I said they needed to spend more time establishing the villains during that two-part adventure? I’m standing by that as we get a done-in-one episode that introduces a religious cult with some secret cannibalism going on, and the guy Joel (Pedro Pascal) killed two episodes ago was part of their group. We also discover that after what seems like maybe a day or two (?), Joel is able to stalk and murder people thanks to two injections of penicillin directly into his stab wound and a good night’s sleep.
Anyway, let’s rewind for a moment. We open with a community on the verge of starvation, being led by a not-very charismatic preacher, David (Scott Shepherd). The fella Joel killed was a part of this group, and the preacher tells everyone that because of the weather, they can’t bury him. It’s totally obvious from the very beginning that they’re going to eat him. And that they’re not going to tell the congregation. But David and his Number One, James (Troy Baker) go hunting, just in case they can find more food.
Meanwhile, Joel is in bad shape, so Ellie (Bella Ramsey) goes hunting and actually ends up shooting a deer. This, of course, puts her on a collision course with David and James. She gets the drop on them, and after some deliberation, they agree to exchange half the deer for some penicillin. Also, it’s made creepily clear that David kind of likes the fact that Ellie got the drop on them.
After making the exchange, Ellie runs off, leaving the deer and David and James realize that it will be easy to follow her trail, find where they’re hiding, and then murder Joel in retribution. And probably eat him.
But not Ellie. David has other plans for her. Icky plans. David is a huge pervert as well as a preacher with the sizeable following! A sizeable following who disappear entirely in the back half of the episode, except for the two guys he sends to kill Joel, who of course are then killed by Joel – who is back from the nearly dead in record time. Where the other guys get off to, who knows? All you need to know is that when Ellie rejects David’s advances, he drops the C-word and decides that they’ll just kill and eat her in that case, giving Ellie a chance to kill James with a meat cleaver before setting the community building on fire and brutally murdering David with the same meat cleaver after he monologues for a while and then tries to rape her.
Nobody comes to put out the fire. Nobody comes to see what’s going on. Joel stalks through the compound without hiding and nobody sees him.
We end with a traumatized Ellie staggering out of the burning community building and falling into Joel’s arms as he calls her “Baby girl” symbolizing his deciding to really be her father figure. Which is only a little creepy after she was just nearly raped by a guy saying he was going to be her new father and “teach” her how it was going to be. I guess they just want to emphasize that Joel’s the real Good Dad.
The best part of the episode is the fact that Ellie saves Joel and herself in the end. The worst part is that again we are moving at warp speed, passing through events at unbelievable rates. This story should have at least been a two-parter. We don’t have time to really explore the whole dynamic of David and his followers, either as a community or as a threat. And with only one episode left, I can’t see us really getting to see how these events will affect Ellie.
We just need more time.
In hindsight, it seems like the obvious call would be to not try to adapt the entire game into one season. Just by clicking off each of the plot beats that have made up this season, it’s obvious that there are plenty of areas that could have lingered and been explored. I suppose that could stretch the credibility of needing the Joel and Ellie relationship to stay tentative until this penultimate episode, but I have no doubt they could have figured out a workaround. The creators are obviously talented enough to make these episodes solid, despite the shortcuts that seem to be required. I just want more.