Showrunners Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin share the inspiration behind the “nightmare fuel” in Sunday’s episode.
Warning: The following contains spoilers for The Last of Us Season 1 Episode 2: “Infected”Just two episodes of HBO’s The last of us adaptation have aired so far, but fans are already excited about the live-action series and its faithfulness to the 2013 video game.
While many of the show’s scenes are shot-for-shot replicas of post-apocalyptic shooter cutscenes, series creators Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin have taken some creative liberties in adapting The last of us– sometimes resulting in even more gruesome scenarios.
One of those scenes concluded Sunday’s episode, aptly titled “Infected,” in which Tess (Anna Torv) sacrificed herself to save her smuggling partner Joel (Pablo Pascal) and their precious cargo Ellie (Bella Ramsey).
Although she was shot by American soldiers in the video game to buy time for Joel and Ellie, The last of us series had a more grotesque ending in mind for Tess – the heroine is subjected to a gruesome kiss from a Cordyceps-infected “Clicker”, leaving the audience to watch in horror as his fungal vines curiously extend into her mouth just before Tess swallows the remains of the US Capitol to smithereens.
In conversation with Variety about the creepy kissDruckmann shared that it seemed “thematically more appropriate” than the sacrifice of Tess through a soldier.
“Part of it was the deviation from the game, where Tess is killed by soldiers. We had a long talk about what is more appropriate thematically for this episode, which is called ‘Infected’ and is about the outside threat. We left the quarantine zone and that led to this other version where she provides an opening to escape from Joel and Ellie by blowing up a bunch of the infected,” he said, adding that the “cruel” co-creators pushed the already wounded Tess to the limit before you finally let her go.
“Because we’re cruel to the characters we love so much, it felt like she knows she’s done, and then the lighter doesn’t work, and we take her all the way to the brink of horror before we finally give her a chance . from.”
The last of us Co-Creator says Clicker Kiss was inspired by fan art
Though Mazin and Druckmann reworked the circumstances of Tess’s death, the revolting kiss of death itself has roots in macabre fan art.
“I found this image that an artist had made of someone who was overgrown with mold and had mushrooms in their mouths,” said Mazin, who shared that the art led to more questions about how a person infected with mold behaves in real life. would live. .
“We were already talking about tendrils coming out and we were asking these philosophical questions: ‘Why are infected people violent? When it comes to spreading the fungus, why do they have to be violent?’ We found out they don’t. They’re violent because we resist, but what if you don’t? What does it look like when you stand still and let them do this to you?”
“That’s when we landed on this nightmare fuel. It’s disturbing and it’s violent. I think it’s very primal in the way it enters your own body. To use an overused word, it triggers. It is [a] remarkable combination of Neil’s directing, Anna Torv’s acting when there’s clearly nothing there and our visual effects department doing this wonderful job of making it all come together and feel real and horrible.
As if that wasn’t enough fuel for your nightmare, new episodes of The last of us airs on HBO and HBO Max every Sunday at 9 p.m. EST.