Episode 2 resumes certain sequences of the game with great accuracy, but changing their course or their purpose. This is the case for the fate of Tess or even the very functioning of the infected. Spoilers!
It’s the same scene… but different. The adaptation of The Last of Us by HBO follows the same path as the game, but does not hesitate to emancipate itself in its way of staging its moving post-apocalyptic road trip. From the first episode, for example, the series took up the same original shock, with the loss of Sarah, but managed to extend the story of this character.
For Tess, it’s another fate that Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann reserve for the character in episode 2 broadcast on Prime Video January 23. Which comes on top of another major shift in how the zombie pandemic of The Last of Us works.
Attention, spoilers on episode 2 of the series – also valid for fans of the game.
How does Tess die in the series compared to The Last of Us game?
Like in the game The Last of Us Part I, Tess, Joel and Ellie find themselves stranded in the Capitol as they try to escape the confined city. This is where they face an evolved version of the infected: the terrible clickers. During this confrontation, Tess is bitten by one of these “zombies”. It is in the entrance hall that she reveals her condition to Joel and Ellie.
In the game, Tess sacrifices herself so the duo can get away. The FEDRA soldiers (antagonistic faction from the army, in charge of several quarantine zones) bring down the main door, then, after an exchange of gunfire, execute Tess. She will have at least succeeded in slowing them down, but Ellie and Joel will have to face them a little later.
In the series, Tess also demonstrates sacrifice. But it’s the infected knocking at the door. The duo flee, while Tess, doomed anyway, spills gasoline in the entrance hall. It is with the help of a lighter that she will set fire to the horde, killing the infected and also preventing them from pursuing Ellie and Joel.
Craig Mazin, co-showrunner of the adaptation, explained to the washington post : “ One of the needs we had was to show how the infected take over a city. How do they work? How do they infect? How many of them are there? What are the types of infection? And that naturally led to what made the most sense, which was that it’s infected rather than FEDRA soldiers. [qui tuent Tess]. »
The bizarre “zombie kiss” scene
This sequence gives rise to a very strange scene. After spilling the gasoline, Tess immediately fails to activate her lighter. An infected then approaches her slowly, without attacking her… then puts his mouth on hers. It is a staging based entirely on body horror — when a horrifying script element is directly linked to the human body.
At this point, Tess is already contaminated. However, episode 2 also established during its introduction (set in 2003 in Asia) that Cordyceps, the fungus causing the zombifying infection, generates kinds of growths within the mouth – tendrils (botanical term for stems similar to biologically active tentacles). During this scene, the tendrils of the infected come… to fit into the character’s mouth, to connect to his incipient infection.
There are different possible interpretations of the symbolism of this scene. That of a sexualization is very unlikely, since it is in no way the tone taken by the series (nor the game) on its female characters. The showrunners more likely sought to accentuate the physical horror in the cinematography, but more importantly depict the biological workings of Cordyceps between infected. Thus, it is not really a “kiss” strictly speaking, except in the gaze of a human spectator, but a connection between the tendrils of two Cordyceps hosts. This choice of the biological ignoring the social representation of a scene can certainly raise questions. But the system is not unlike that ofAlien — transforming human bodies into disembodied biological receptacles for an otherwise functioning species.
This is also another major change in the series: the way the infected (zombies) work.
The infected form a network
It is very rare that the series The Last of Us mobilizes an explanation verbalized by its characters, rather than a staging. It is a work that does not explain: it shows, carnally, emotionally, its story. But during a rare exposure sequence, Tess details how the infected operate. This one is very different than the one featured in the games.
The heroine explains that the tendrils of Cordyceps, which develop within the brain and the mouth (in short, the skull), connect the infected at a distance. Even several meters or kilometers away. Groups of infected would thus share a kind of connected mind, like a beehive. And everything would therefore rest on these tendrils that can be seen emerging from the mouths of the infected – and involved in the famous final scene of Tess.
These elements replace the spores in the game, in order to make the mushroom contamination mechanics more believable. But this also accentuates the dramatic danger in the background: if fighting a zombie in one place can possibly bring together zombies located several kilometers away, the threat is permanently latent.
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