Left Behind

To begin with, I had never been one of the Bella-haters with their "she looks nothing like the Ellie from the game" or "she seems like a different character" but she still had to prove (to me I mean) she was worthy of the part, at first she did it great at crafting an incredible and believable chemistry with the Joel character and now she's made very evident she's an amazing actress, with subtle performances that contribute to create the "childishness" of Ellie and raging and furious states where she demonstrates all the pain and suffering her character went through, overall she's made Ellie a multilayered character different from the one in the game but really believable.

This chapter on the other hand was good, not incredible, mostly a filler but it served as an Ellie back-story and it had a great atmosphere, an enjoyable episode that makes us understand why Ellie is so attached to Joel and won't abandon him as much as don't want to be abandoned by him.

I get it that you need slow paced episodes to have the action-packed ones feel more impactful. But this was just too much and a good foreshadowing of what we can expect of season 2. Again they missed the opportunity to show why Fedra is so evil and focused on emotional coming of age ideas for an hour. TBH what's so bad about Fedra? Like the Captain is mentioning, they are keeping everything together.

You can compare this one to Episode 3. Compared to that though, this episode feels boring and stretched. Ep. 3 featured little action but a lot of meaningful emotion, a well written and completed story arc and a story I had to think about for days. Ep. 7 didn't manage to do any of that.

Anyone saying this is boring or a filler episode obviously has never experienced the source material and clearly has not interest in character development. If you're just here for the clickers, that cool I guess, but TLOU isn't about the clickers, it's about Ellie.

The show runners did a great job bringing the game to the screen in thos episode. Granted, it was a slow paced episode filled with teen drama, but guess what? You're watching a show about a teen in the aftermath of a fungal pandemic.

This episode was a masterful recreation of the originalaterial and the show runners should be proud.

If you've played the game, you KNOW what's coming just by the episode title. If you haven't played it, then you might have an idea of what's coming thanks to little mentions here and there in previous episodes. Either way, the episode delivers on all fronts as far as I'm concerned.

Storm Reid is SO well cast as Riley (even though she looks nothing like Riley from the game) and really embodies that character so well. Bella Ramsey, again, absolutely kills it as Ellie. Especially with this being an ever-so-slightly younger Ellie age-wise but a lot less world-weary than the Ellie we see with Joel. Speaking of Joel, Pedro gives so much more than one might expect given he's got about 3 minutes of screen time and maybe half a dozen lines. All 3 of them give brilliantly nuanced performances. Just more examples of why both Pedro and Bella deserve ALL the acting awards when it's that time of the year again.

The episode explores the game's DLC of the same title. While important to tell this story, a 10-15 min flashbacks within the main story would have been enough. Dedicating 2 out of 9 full episodes for character development, makes the main story feel rushed and incomplete. A good example would be ep 6 ending. The game explores a search for fireflies at the university for many hours, looking for clues, while the show dedicates 5 minutes of Joel and Ellie finding a packing list that was left behind by Fireflies but we get a full episode for 2 teens playing games in the mall... Only 2 episodes left people, what were you thinking?!

Nevertheless, I enjoyed it - 7/10.