Spoilers for this week’s episode of The Last of Us below Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Dina (Isabela Merced) have found love in a hopeless place. This week’s installment of The Last of Us sees the pair, on the hunt for Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), enter into the lush, overgrown city of Seattle without totally understanding what they’re getting into. As an intense cold open featuring the introduction of Isaac (Jeffrey Wright, reprising his role from the game) shows us, the duo is smack dab in the middle of an ongoing war between the WLF and the Seraphites.
Oh, and there are still cordyceps zombies running around. The episode, written by series co-creator Craig Mazin and directed by Kate Herron, allows for plenty of quiet moments and massive reveals amongst the warring factions—and for the long-simmering love between Ellie and Dina to blossom. After a harrowing sequence where Ellie gets bitten, she tells Dina about her immunity to the virus, and Dina responds that she’s pregnant before the two finally kiss.
It’s a small ray of light in what’s otherwise been a bleak season for these characters. Herron, no stranger to telling queer stories within genre fiction via her work on Loki, Doctor Who, and Sex Education, felt an extra level of pressure to make sure she nailed the episode given its massive importance to the story of the season. Ahead of the episode’s premiere, Herron jumped on Zoom to chat with GQ about how her love of the game got her in position to direct the episode, staging the episode’s massive action sequence, what it was like to work with Ramsey and Merced for those big emotional moments, and much more.
GQ: How did this opportunity first come your way? Kate Herron: I honestly reached out to them. I did know the DP, Eben Bolter, from season one, who put a good word in for me, which is very nice of him.
During lockdown, I bought a PlayStation. I'd only played Nintendo games, and I texted all my friends that loved PlayStation and was like, "Hey, what should I play?" I was filming Loki [Season One], living on my own in Atlanta, and I was like, "I'm going to get really into games and I'm going to try this" — as in PlayStation games.
The Last of Us was at the top of everyone's list. I played the first game, the prequel, and then the second game came out. All the games completely blew my mind in terms of what a game could be in terms of what it said about empathy and video gaming.
Even simple things, like the people you were going after had names. I was like, "Wow." I remember thinking the characters were beautifully written.
The way it moved me—when Joel died in the second game, I hadn't lived with those games for as long as people [who] had played them for years, but I felt like someone I knew had died [laughs]. I was like, "Wow, okay." It had a profound effect upon me, that game.
I remember at the time they were making the first season, and I was so excited to see that.
