Kyle Orland and Andrew Cunningham discuss the latest episode of The Last of Us: Season 2 on HBO.
The episode focuses on a Joel Miller flashback and how he overcame hardship as a young man, which eventually helped him become the Joel Miller we know.
Orland didn’t like how the episode suddenly cut to Joel without warning at the end of the previous episode, and the conclusion of this episode feels like a “villain facade” to make the audience care more about Joel.
The opening flashback scene poses the question of whether or not generational trauma is responsible for Joel’s actions in The Last of Us.
Cunningham doesn’t have any issues with the transition and enjoys Joel’s father, played by Tony Dalton, who he knows from Better Call Saul.
As we go back and forth between Ellie’s birthdays in the episode, Joel’s insistence that “we could do this kind of thing more often” is a bittersweet sentiment, as it suggests that they don’t.
