← HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
HBO's The Last of Us Podcast
Season 1, Episode 7 - "Left Behind"
01:07:30
Host Troy Baker and Showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann break down the Ellie and Riley relationship and tease the backstory of Ellie’s scar. They geek out over arcades, malls and Mortal Kombat II and share how they brought all those sights and sounds to life on screen. HBO’s The Last of Us podcast is produced by HBO and Pineapple Street Studios.
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- [00:01]
Neil Druckmann
At Rocket, we believe everyone deserves their shot at the American dream. So if you're feeling locked out of home ownership, we're here to give you back the keys. We're opening doors, breaking down walls, and doing everything we can to turn renters into owners. And we're not going to stop until we help everyone home. To find out more, visit rocket.com Rocket Own the Dream.
- [00:37]
Craig Mazin
Come on. You gotta help me. Come on. Leave. Leave. Shut up, Joe. Take the gun, Joe. Shut the fuck up. Go. You go.
- [00:50]
Troy Baker
You go north. You go to Tommy. Welcome back, everybody, to HBO's the Last of Us podcast. I am your host, Troy Baker. I had the wonderful opportunity to play Joel in the video game and now I get to sit down with the showrunners, Craig Mason.
- [01:14]
Craig Mazin
I'm back.
- [01:15]
Troy Baker
And Neil Druckmann.
- [01:17]
Neil Druckmann
What up, Troy? I love how comfortable we've gotten.
- [01:20]
Troy Baker
We're now seven episodes in.
- [01:23]
Craig Mazin
That does prompt me, before we dive into this episode, to just thank people who are listening to us now for staying with us. I mean, we're at a place now where we're pretty deep in. We're starting to approach our final descent.
- [01:38]
Neil Druckmann
We love all 50 of you.
- [01:42]
Craig Mazin
I'm pleased that people are still with us and hopefully they're feeling rewarded as we go.
- [01:47]
Troy Baker
Today we're talking about episode seven, titled Left Behind. And this episode does a bit of a time jump to tell the story of Ellie's relationship with Riley. Neil, you originally wrote this story not in the original game, but in a companion comic book in the dlc, which we could say is shorthand for downloadable content. Let's talk about that.
- [02:14]
Neil Druckmann
Yeah, 2013, when the game came out, downloadable content were getting pretty popular, like you would release like a full game. So in the case of the Last of Us, this was a 15 hour experience. And then often you'll release like an additional chapter, something an add on, a downloadable content. And often people would use like a side character, something that was kind of frivolous, that wouldn't really affect the main story. And it's important to talk about something else that was really popular at the time, like add on comic books, like take your world and build another story and release it, like, as a comic book. And it's a way to help market your product, is a very cynical way to look at it. But I looked at both of these things. I'm like, oh, it's a storytelling opportunity. What if we treated both of these things like they matter, like they're essential? Let's take our most important character of Ellie and put her in the center of both of these stories. So with the comic book, I teamed up with Faith Aaron Hicks, who's just a brilliant comic book writer and artist. And we developed Riley together for that comic book. And you got to see how Ellie met Riley and a little bit more of the school. And then the idea started like solidifying for the dlc, which was called Left behind, which was Ellie and Riley's final encounter together before Ellie is thrust into the main journey of the Last of Us. And it was a really kind of great opportunity to spend even more time with Ellie before she was bitten. What was she like on her day to day business? And then what was the event that turned her life completely upside down?
- [03:55]
Troy Baker
No cold open, straight to the credits. Why the change?
- [04:00]
Craig Mazin
I think we were thinking about the opening of the show as to taste basically every episode. What does it want? Some episodes want it and this one just didn't.
- [04:13]
Neil Druckmann
Sometimes you use that opening to create almost like a reset of like, okay, this was its own story reset. Now we're starting another story. These two stories are so intertwined. Like that edit is really important of like going from one directly to the other.
- [04:30]
Craig Mazin
Yeah. Ellie reaches for the doorknob here and the screen cuts to black and we start to hear Pearl Jam. We could have cut to the credits there and used that as a cold open. And then when we come back, suddenly she's back in Fedra School. But I think Neil's absolutely right. It's. We want to understand that she's reliving kind of a lifetime moment in this second and that's why we did it. I don't think there was even a debate.
- [05:01]
Neil Druckmann
No.
- [05:02]
Craig Mazin
I want to talk a little bit about something that again, HBO in a very smart way suggested to us. This wasn't originally the plan. Originally this episode was going to really play entirely as Ellie's story with Riley. And one of the things that HBO strongly suggested, and they were absolutely right, was to connect it back more to the story at hand, which is how it was in the Last of Us dlc. Sorry. In Left behind dlc, that's when we talked about seeing this image of Joel dying on this mattress in a basement with this very iconic blanket on. And I love the way this starts with Joel telling her to go. And there's this moment where what else can she do? What else can she do? Why wouldn't she go at this point? He's dying, that's clear. And she's not a doctor. They are not anywhere near civilization. There's nothing that can be Done. It is a hopeless situation.
- [06:11]
Troy Baker
He doesn't just tell her to leave, he shoves her. He reacts in the only way that he can, which is by force. And the second that he does that and he sees her turn, the reality of that action, the consequence of that action is apparent, and he's. It's not the pain that's making him cry. It's that. And it's just a single tear. It's not blubbering.
- [06:32]
Craig Mazin
I love that tear. Because you're right. Is he mourning his own impending death? Is he mourning the fact that she has to leave him or that she is? Is he mourning the fact that the only way he could get her to go, to save her, was to push her away? And the last memory she'll have of him is something rejecting.
- [06:52]
Troy Baker
Can she make it on her own? It's winter.
- [06:54]
Craig Mazin
Will she survive?
- [06:56]
Troy Baker
If you die, I'm fucked.
- [06:57]
Neil Druckmann
Yes, that's my interpretation. It's the fear of, I can't protect you. I have to let you go. And I don't know how this is going to play out because I'm going to die.
- [07:05]
Craig Mazin
That's the best part of this, is any of those could be true.
- [07:09]
Neil Druckmann
And it's probably a combination of all of them that's going on in his head.
- [07:11]
Craig Mazin
What matters is the depth of his connection to her. No matter how you slice any of the interpretations we just offered up, all of them come back to the same thing. There is this remarkable depth of connection between the two of them.
- [07:26]
Troy Baker
Let's talk about music a little bit more. Pearl Jam. All or None. Neil, you have a.
- [07:33]
Neil Druckmann
An obsession.
- [07:35]
Troy Baker
I was going to be very careful with my words, but there is. I was going to say, connection to Pearl Jam. Is this just simpatico between you guys, or was there something that. Neil, you said, I have a song that I would like to put in.
- [07:48]
Neil Druckmann
You know, when you grow up, you have, like, a handful of songs that are, like an escape, you know, when things are getting hard or, like, when you're down on yourself for whatever reason. And to me, this was one of those songs. That song specifically, there's a certain feel, a mood, a tone. I don't know if I have the right words for it, but, like, capturing where Ellie's at right now, that she's alone. She's at a place she doesn't want to be, and there's kind of nothing going on for her. And this song, I think, captures that mood, but it also captures her attitude. It's called all or none, which is very much Ellie right It's like everything or nothing. And it's always this kind of full.
- [08:27]
Craig Mazin
Commitment whenever it comes to songs. There aren't many that we use in the series. I mean, we talked a lot about Never Let Me Down Again, Long, Long Time, obviously, is a centerpiece of our third episode. We really want to think about those lyrics. We don't want to be too on the nose. We don't want to be something that feels overused or too pop. I read this statistic that searches of Never Let Me Down Again, The Depeche Mode version skyrocketing, like, yeah, by 500% or something. Well, this is exciting. Like, that's what we want. We want a song that people discover it with us, that are beyond, say, the fans of Pearl Jam. And Neil is a much bigger fan of Pearl Jam than I am. That's not to say I'm not a fan. It's just that he's a super fan. So I wasn't that familiar with that song. And when he played it for me, I was like, okay. Yeah. And there's something about the way it starts. The guitar tells you everything. Before Eddie Vedder even starts in. There's this sense of, oh, God. And Ellie's situation here is not simply hopeless, as the lyrics say, because she's stuck in a Fedra orphanage training to become a soldier. It's hopeless because someone's gone missing.
- [09:43]
Neil Druckmann
It's hopeless to her.
- [09:44]
Craig Mazin
Yeah, give him back then.
- [09:49]
Troy Baker
Pick up your pace. I'm not running Devils again because of your shitty attitude.
- [09:53]
Craig Mazin
I don't wanna fight about it.
- [09:55]
Troy Baker
Fight about it. You don't fight. Your friend fights. She's not here anymore, is she?
- [10:07]
Craig Mazin
Yes, ma'am.
- [10:10]
Troy Baker
I love the look that Bethany gives on the face when she's staring her down. She's like, are you. It's not quick either.
- [10:16]
Craig Mazin
No.
- [10:16]
Troy Baker
She looks like, what are you about to do? And then she sees the punch coming. But you stay on Bethany.
- [10:21]
Craig Mazin
Yeah, Bethany. Bethany realizes she's made a terrible mistake just one second too late.
- [10:28]
Troy Baker
She could have just walked away from the fight.
- [10:30]
Neil Druckmann
Yeah, but she was disrespected.
- [10:32]
Troy Baker
She was disrespected.
- [10:33]
Craig Mazin
It was personal.
- [10:34]
Troy Baker
It was personal.
- [10:34]
Craig Mazin
It was personal. So Bethany makes a couple of fatal errors. One is she underestimates Ellie. But the second one, more importantly, is she brings up whoever this friend is who's not here anymore, triggers something inside Ellie that. It's like it uncorks the demon. We don't know who this person is yet until we meet Riley. We don't understand that that's who Bethany's talking about. All we know is Bethany stepped on a third rail. That Ellie's anger and whatever innate violence she has comes from her connection to other people. It's not so much about her, it's about, don't talk shit about my friend because I love my friend.
- [11:26]
Troy Baker
Here we see a completely different side of Fedra. This is almost. It's shadows of normalcy. We have Pro Phedra, almost kind of, yeah, it's functioning. She gets in trouble. She goes to essentially the principal's office and we get to meet Captain Kwong, who's played by Terry Chen. And then Ellie does this thing. She looks at the picture of his family.
- [11:47]
Craig Mazin
Yeah.
- [11:47]
Troy Baker
And he walks in and he sits down. He doesn't notice it at first, and then he does and he turns it around.
- [11:53]
Craig Mazin
Ellie has no problem invading people's personal space. The fact that he has a picture of these two girls, obviously his daughters, are they alive? Probably not. She has no problem invading that space and looking at them because she's not a parent. She doesn't know, she doesn't care. She wasn't even alive when this stuff was happening. Look at them. They're at an amusement park in that photo. And that's this little thing where he's like, okay, that belongs to me, not you.
- [12:21]
Troy Baker
And after that, he lays out some cold heart truth. You're smart, Ellie.
- [12:25]
Craig Mazin
You're so smart, you're stupid.
- [12:28]
Troy Baker
Can't see where this is going.
- [12:29]
Craig Mazin
Let me help you out.
- [12:31]
Troy Baker
Two paths ahead of you. First path, you keep acting like a grunt. So you get the life of a.
- [12:38]
Craig Mazin
Grunt up at dawn, walk the streets, walk the wall. You eat shit food, you do shit.
- [12:43]
Troy Baker
Jobs, you take shit orders from your.
- [12:45]
Craig Mazin
Patrol leader, who'll probably be Bethany.
- [12:49]
Troy Baker
And that'll be your life from now until you catch a bullet from a.
- [12:51]
Craig Mazin
Firefly or fall drunk off a roof or get your hair cut in a movie. Moving tank tread.
- [12:57]
Troy Baker
There's the other path. You swallow this pride of yours, you.
- [13:01]
Craig Mazin
Follow the rules, you become an officer. You get your own room, you get a nice bed, we eat well, we don't go on patrol. We're cool in the summer, we're warm in the winter. And best of all, when you're an officer, you get to tell the Bethany's of the world exactly where to shove it. One of the things that Neil and I talked about a lot throughout the development of the show was never painting one side or the other as purely bad or purely good. We've gotten so much bad Fedra stuff, I Mean, we saw how abusive or at least how cold and controlling Fedra was in the first episode.
- [13:41]
Neil Druckmann
And corrupt.
- [13:41]
Craig Mazin
Exactly. And we saw how Fedra, even though we didn't see what Fedra did to the people of Kansas City in our fourth and fifth episode, we certainly saw the aftermath. And there's no way to account for how brutal the uprising was if, as Henry put it, Fedra hadn't done it to them first and for 20 years. But now we have this other conversation and we thought it would be important to hear the other side of it. And the other side of it is we're the only things holding this together. If we go down, these people are going to starve or kill each other, which we saw happen in prior episodes. So he's right. And you, Ellie, are the generation that we need to raise to keep this going or everything will fall apart. And he's saying to Ellie, you can be me, you can be in charge. You could run all of Boston one day. You have the innate intellectual capability and strength of character to do this if you would just get your shit together. This is the most parental possible discussion you can have. But that notion of the push and pull of Fedra and its polar opposite, the Fireflies, is going to come up over and over.
- [15:01]
Troy Baker
I know that I had this conversation multiple times with principals, teachers. The word that I hated growing up hearing was potential.
- [15:09]
Craig Mazin
Potential. I personally was an overachiever, and I don't say that proudly. And no one ever said, oh, if only you could get your shit together. My problem was my shit was two together. So I am always drawn to characters that I wish I had been more like. And, you know, in this case, I mean, this is a script by Neil, but it's all. Everything goes back to the Ellie that Neil wrote. Anyway. One of the reasons I always loved her is because I wanted to be like her. I wanted to be that kid. She's so brave. She says, just put me in the fucking hole. She doesn't care. She's so cool.
- [15:49]
Neil Druckmann
She has such, like, an allergy to authority, which I've been in those conversations a lot because I was not a good student. I would do good enough on tests to just get by homework, but homework, forget it. And I would have advisor after advisor sit me down, be like, you have all this potential and you're squandering it. I'm like. And I was just kind of like Ellie. I guess I was aimless. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I wanted to, like, play guitar and hang out with My friends. And it was only once I thought about making video games that I went from like a C student to an A student. So that one very much resonates with me. And I guess this whole. A lot of the idea for left behind as a concept again because I was such a terrible student. I hope my parents aren't listening to this.
- [16:30]
Craig Mazin
Oh, they're.
- [16:31]
Neil Druckmann
They are. I skipped school all the time and we would just go hang out somewhere or go to the mall. And the thought was like, what's the post apocalyptic version of that, of skipping school and hanging out with your friend that you have a crush on?
- [16:45]
Troy Baker
There is this connection, though, always with her stuff. Bethany starts by taking the Walkman from Captain Kwong. She says, can I have my Walkman back? The first thing she said from Arlene, can I have my stuff back?
- [16:59]
Neil Druckmann
Some of these totems are very personal to Ellie and. Right. She has a reaction when Joel steps on her knife that's very primal. And then other times, I don't know if this is unique to Ellie, but these things are so precious in this world. It's like, how many working Walkmans are there out there? Probably not that many. So this is one of those things that Ellie has probably had for a while. And whenever she's alone or needs to escape, she just shuts out the world and put these headphones on. So for someone to threaten to take away that. How fucking dare you. As for where Ellie is standing, her.
- [17:34]
Craig Mazin
World is actually very small. Ellie does not have a lot of friends. In fact, she has one friend and that friend hasn't been around in weeks. So what does she have left? No one talks to her. There's a scene that we shot that we ultimately cut for time where Ellie is in a locker room. It's a very classic, you know, Hollywood type scene. She's in a locker room and everybody else is chit chatting and she's alone. And when your world gets that solitary, it does come down to these things that give you comfort and help you ground yourself. A Walkman, a switchblade.
- [18:11]
Neil Druckmann
A comic book.
- [18:12]
Craig Mazin
A comic book. There's a baseball on the windowsill. There are posters of things that she's heard about but will never know about. Or so we think. And there are a few cassette tapes that we know must mean a lot to her. We don't know how she got them. All we know is they're hers. And that's the sum totality of her entire world. You know, once Riley leaves, this is all Ellie has.
- [18:39]
Troy Baker
We all want to talk about Riley. Because we've already mentioned her so much. Riley was played by Storm Reed. And it's one of those things where it's like, literally, she just came off the pages of the comic book and out of the game.
- [18:51]
Craig Mazin
We had a few things going for us. We had Liza Johnson directing the episode, who is an excellent director. But also, of all of our directors, I think the one that was the most connected to the actors, she just kept them so safe throughout the process, which was amazing to watch. Anybody who's lived through the misery of those years, and I don't know who these people are that enjoyed those years.
- [19:15]
Neil Druckmann
But if you lived through those are the worst. Middle school is the worst. High school.
- [19:21]
Craig Mazin
It's the best and worst.
- [19:22]
Neil Druckmann
Right?
- [19:23]
Craig Mazin
It's like, I guess, like, I think of Ellie as like a freshman in high school, you know, it's like the worst year possible. And yet there is the magic of your heart pounding in your chest for the first time, really, the way that opens up. I mean, that's where you really start to live. And we're watching it happen here, and I think the fact that Storm and Bella are close enough to that experience that I'm sure they both had, you could feel it. It just felt so true.
- [19:56]
Troy Baker
That first heartbeat starts not with necessarily love, but fear. Riley comes through the window, and we see immediately their relationship.
- [20:06]
Craig Mazin
You're a firefly. Jesus.
- [20:09]
Neil Druckmann
I told you I'd fucking do it.
- [20:10]
Craig Mazin
Talking about liberating the QZ is not the same as.
- [20:13]
Neil Druckmann
Where did you even. Slow down.
- [20:15]
Craig Mazin
Slow down. I will tell you everything.
- [20:17]
Troy Baker
First, you have to promise me something.
- [20:19]
Craig Mazin
Sort of crazy, and you're gonna say no. But then you have to say yes. Come with me for a few hours and have the best night of your life. No.
- [20:33]
Troy Baker
Okay, now say yes.
- [20:34]
Craig Mazin
I'm not going anywhere with you.
- [20:36]
Troy Baker
You said that Ellie is allergic to authority. However, she does submit herself to the authority of Riley.
- [20:43]
Neil Druckmann
I guess for me, it's not so much the authority of Riley. It's like Ellie wants. There are certain people she looks up to, and Joel, obviously, has become one of those people. And Riley is this other person, but she wants to be their equal. She doesn't want to just follow their commands. She wants to sit alongside them.
- [20:59]
Craig Mazin
Yeah, she's so proud that she fucked Bethany up, you know, because she's doing what Riley would do. I think Neil's exactly right. Riley is somebody that is older, taller, stronger. And Ellie has aspiration. Ellie's small. I love how small Bella is. I think it's really important, you know, she's small. And when you're small, people will underestimate you all the time. But she can pack a punch, literally.
- [21:32]
Troy Baker
And Riley comes back at this moment with a grand plan. We don't know what it is, but she's doing a very typical thing, which is, I got some good news and some bad news. The good news is I've got a great night planned for us, but ultimately we'll find out. The bad news is why I planned this night. And just like in the installment in the game, the DLC left behind, this retroactively adds weight to our story. There's this one quick line that Riley says. She goes, do you want another 711 situation? What is the 711 situation?
- [22:08]
Craig Mazin
What is the seven 11 situation?
- [22:09]
Neil Druckmann
What is the seven eleven? Well, one, again, that conversation is just like, things could go wrong, someone could get hurt. Just kind of like. But there's also, you know, I get this question so many times of like, how did Ellie get her scar on the eyebrow? On her eyebrow. And then Craig and I discussed it and I told him just some thoughts I had about it. So we're like, I don't necessarily want to answer that, at least not yet. And like, okay, we could just hint that there is a story there.
- [22:35]
Craig Mazin
So something happened in a 711 that obviously is in the QZ and abandoned where in my mind, it happened together. Right. Ellie and Riley must have been together. They must have broken in. They must have had to run out fast. There was some glass going through a window. Something happened. It's interesting how in the first, I don't know, 10 minutes of this episode, the concept of stitches comes up over and over, which I think is really interesting. The notion that you get wounded and you have to have stitches.
- [23:04]
Neil Druckmann
And it's a constant reminder, yes.
- [23:07]
Craig Mazin
That we are frail. And that comes into play at the end. It all comes back around. But the notion that there are scars from living in this world is a really interesting one. And it was important to. Since Ellie and Joel talk about Joel's scar early on in episode three, this was an interesting opportunity to at least acknowledge that something happened. And here we. It's like, well, we don't know exactly how Ellie got her scar. We also don't know exactly how Joel got his scar. All he says is, you know, it was a shootout, you know, and the other guy missed. So we're hinting at these things. But what we are saying explicitly is violence is permanent and leaves marks. And sometimes the only way to close up a wound is to stitch it.
- [23:55]
Troy Baker
They make their Way up through this decrepit building, and they come upon not only a bottle of hooch, but also a dead body.
- [24:06]
Craig Mazin
This isn't moonshine either. It's like, from before. This guy must have spent every card he had to get this.
- [24:13]
Troy Baker
No one told him he couldn't mix.
- [24:14]
Craig Mazin
Pills with that shit. I think he knew what he was doing.
- [24:27]
Troy Baker
Let's talk about that moment.
- [24:29]
Neil Druckmann
Yeah, we talked quite a bit about that beat and what it would mean. And what does it say about Ellie? A lot of it came from one. Just how brave she is. She's not scared of something morbid that I think if we saw it, we'd be like, ugh, let's steer clear of that. Let's call 91 1. Let's just take care of this. But instead, she's fascinated again. She's fascinated with the dark part of humanity. And here is someone that just, whether they purposely or not, took their own life, they ended up taking their own life just by overdosing on drugs that maybe this person even bought from Joel.
- [25:03]
Troy Baker
Right?
- [25:03]
Neil Druckmann
We see that little baggie. There's also establishing that this is the reality of these two girls. They live in a different world than the one we know, that it's not that big of a deal for them.
- [25:14]
Craig Mazin
Well, it's definitely not that big of a deal for Ellie because she has never experienced the death of somebody she cares about because she doesn't have anyone she cares about except for Riley. She's never known her parents. And what I loved about this scene and what comes after is that you realize there is one fundamental difference between Ellie and Riley, and that's that Riley did know her parents and Riley saw her parents die. And Riley's experience of dead bodies and death is different than Ellie's. For Ellie, she has that thing that kids can have, which is a sense of immortality. And so this doesn't mean anything to her. She laughs when that body falls to the floor. Because I hope people don't get the sense that we're saying that Ellie's a psycho, even though people jokingly call her a psycho. She's not at all. She's just grown up under such different circumstances than we have.
- [26:14]
Neil Druckmann
But it's also like that age, right? It's like you're pushing the boundaries of how far you could take things. What are the darkest things you could see or explore?
- [26:22]
Troy Baker
In the previous episode, Ellie asks for a drink, and Joel obliges and she says, yep, still gross. Are we seeing the first time that she's had something to drink?
- [26:32]
Craig Mazin
Here I Think we might be.
- [26:35]
Neil Druckmann
Yeah. I'm not sure if we say it's the first time or not, but it's definitely an early time. And again, it's just the idea is better than the thing itself. Like the idea of being naughty or doing something that you're not supposed to do is more exciting than how disgusting alcohol tastes when you first have it.
- [26:52]
Craig Mazin
This is a rite of passage. I don't know if every kid goes through it, but certainly a lot do. I did. My parents had this. It wasn't a liquor cabinet. It was this weird cube, like a wooden cube of 1970s furniture that had this little tiny knob. And you would open it and inside they had all these bottles. And my parents weren't big drinkers, so the bottles that were there were things that people had brought over for the very occasional, you know, dinner parties or something that they would have. 70s style with crab dip and horrible avocado based foods. And my sister and I were just like, let's do it. You know, we got in there and I think the one we chose because we liked the bottle and the name and the vague smell of it was Amoretto D. Serrano, which is an almond liqueur. And we both, you know, took a way too big swig and it felt like I had done something permanently damaging to my mouth and throat and stomach. It'll never be the same. No. I was like, did I? Sorry. Was this like toilet bowl cleaner or is this meant to be drank? Because that's horrible. Now, later on, things change, but there's something about that first time where you're trying to be grown up.
- [28:08]
Troy Baker
Sure.
- [28:08]
Neil Druckmann
Yeah.
- [28:09]
Craig Mazin
And you're not.
- [28:10]
Neil Druckmann
Well, there's one other thing, which is like, again, high school parties and stuff where you're next to someone you have a crush on and you feel this nervous. You're like, maybe the alcohol will make that subside. Maybe not in this initial drink, but as they go forward. I think Ellie's drinking because she's getting more and more nervous.
- [28:29]
Troy Baker
Yeah, she's taking shots of courage.
- [28:31]
Craig Mazin
She is. And what I like about how the episode develops is that it's not for nothing. Yeah, it kind of works. Like, ultimately, the courage is there. This podcast is sponsored by Rocket. The American dream of homeownership feels further and further out of reach. For many people. Homeownership feels impossible. But Rocket is on a mission to help everyone get home. They've got a range of products and services designed turn renters into owners, from lowering down payments to as little as 1% to helping turn Your rent check into a forever home. Find out more@rocket.com Rocket Own the dream.
- [29:16]
Troy Baker
I do want to get to the place that Riley is trying to bring us to, which is transitioning from this broken down, decrepit reminder of this failed world. And then the remnant of what was wonderful and now understanding kind of where maybe we drew that from this mall. We get into this epic shot of this world coming online and what I love is Ellie's look of wonderment. There's innocence there and awe.
- [29:58]
Craig Mazin
This, oh boy.
- [30:00]
Neil Druckmann
I'll tell you, that's one of the hardest.
- [30:02]
Craig Mazin
I mean, yeah, I wish I could drag everybody in the audience back in time to make them sit through all the meetings we had to sit on this.
- [30:08]
Troy Baker
Was that practical or was that vfx?
- [30:09]
Craig Mazin
It was vfx. So we had this interesting challenge. I was in love with the mall from the DLC and we needed it. This takes place in mall for all the reasons Neil said. That's where you sneak away as a teenager. And I wanted, as much as Neil wanted to see Ellie experiencing what we all took for granted for the first time and how magical it is. Well, we got kind of lucky to an extent. There is a mall in Calgary that was scheduled for demolition. So on the one hand it was great because they basically said you can do whatever you want. You can break up the floors, you can gack up the whole place with here are the keys, mud and vines and everything. And you have the run of it for shooting as long as you want throughout the day.
- [30:58]
Neil Druckmann
The problem was, the problem was the.
- [31:00]
Craig Mazin
Mall itself was not a little sad. It was a sad. It was a one story mall. There was only one area like at the very end of the mall where there was an escalator which obviously we used that went up to this one little extra like taller section that led into like a Winners I believe, which is the Canadian kind of Target ish sort of store. And then like a clinic. It was really sad up there.
- [31:26]
Neil Druckmann
But anyway, if you're standing at the top of the escalator looking out, you just see a wall.
- [31:30]
Craig Mazin
There was nothing.
- [31:31]
Neil Druckmann
There was like. Cause there is no second floor. There's just like everything like tilts down and goes down to the first floor.
- [31:35]
Craig Mazin
So if you're like a junkie and you want to know like how we do things, the shot where we're behind Ellie and we see that mall coming on, that wasn't at the mall. That was on a soundstage where we built a little railing and then there's just blue and so we say to Alex Wong, our visual effects supervisor, you're gonna have to figure this out. And he was scared. That was one of the few times I saw him scared. Because that is a very difficult thing to pull off. And when we were in the physical mall, we needed to kind of paint like a blue stripe where the first floor kind of ended to say, from this point up, we're gonna be building out and set, extending with visual effects.
- [32:18]
Neil Druckmann
We had some conversations like, okay, should we just make it like a one story mall? And then pretty quickly we're like, no.
- [32:24]
Craig Mazin
There are these phrases people use in Hollywood, and the one that I hate the most is, is the juice worth the squeeze? I fucking hate that.
- [32:32]
Troy Baker
I will never see that around you.
- [32:33]
Craig Mazin
Yes, it is. It is worth the squeeze. And is it worth it for this one marquee shot where this world comes to life? Yes. And does doing that mean that throughout everything else, we're gonna need to continually show this other floor above it and it's gonna be money and time expense. Yes. Because we need to know that they are in a place that is magical and connects back to the world we know. And the world we know. That's what malls look like. And what Alex and the vendors did to make that happen is magic. It's just absolute fucking magic. And I want to say again how important it is that we're building a show based on this game, because it's the love of the game that brought all these visual effects artists to the show. And it's the love of the game that kept them working at their computer and their tablets for iteration after iteration to make it great.
- [33:31]
Neil Druckmann
What's interesting too, with the DLC is, you know, it wasn't as popular as the main game, but for people who played it, they have such a deep love for it. And a lot of the crew members had that deep love for it, and they were so excited to work on, like, this part of the story.
- [33:46]
Troy Baker
There's another thing that this moment specifically does. And speaking of the game, it's a moment that happens in the game. It also happens in the show where it almost mirrors something that happens later between Joel and Ellie when she's looking out and he says, is it everything you hope for? Yeah, we have almost that same kind of moment. Was that a happy accident or was that intentional?
- [34:06]
Craig Mazin
It's probably happy accident.
- [34:08]
Neil Druckmann
Happy accident. If it is. It's like sometimes these things work on a subconscious, but it's like, right. So we know that Ellie just has an appreciation for beauty and for the old world. So in a similar situation, she's going to have a similar reaction. And I love these kind of connections that we didn't even intend. We're just being true to the characters and they happen organically.
- [34:28]
Craig Mazin
There is this thing about Ellie where the people who love her want to show her things. They do because she appreciates them. She's not a romantic, but she's a passionate person about the world around her. And even in this shithole they live in, even though the mall is wrecked, to see those lights come on and to see how big it is, it's so magical for her. She appreciates it. So of course you want to show her that stuff.
- [34:56]
Neil Druckmann
It's this awesome moment, right, where it's like you've seen a great movie or played a great game and you get to share that with your friend and you get to experience it again through their eyes. That's what Riley's doing right here. Like, Riley loves this mall. And then she knows Ellie would love it even more. And now she gets to share it.
- [35:12]
Craig Mazin
With her, which is basically what I'm doing now with you. I'm like, I want everyone to see the.
- [35:17]
Troy Baker
She's also the. One of the things that I love is that Riley gets surprised by the thing that Ellie. She freaks it over the escalator.
- [35:25]
Craig Mazin
Yeah.
- [35:25]
Troy Baker
We have a big conversation about the world that was. And what was important, sneakers, not soap. But then it leads quickly to this other moment, really the first moment of tension between the two of them at the Victoria's Secret.
- [35:38]
Neil Druckmann
I mean, I don't get why people.
- [35:40]
Craig Mazin
Back then wanted all this stuff.
- [35:42]
Neil Druckmann
Do you need me to explain it to you?
- [35:44]
Craig Mazin
Haha. No, I know why. It just looks uncomfortable.
- [35:48]
Neil Druckmann
Yep.
- [35:51]
Craig Mazin
What? Nothing, I was just trying to imagine you wearing that. Shut up. All right, come on, we're almost there.
- [36:03]
Neil Druckmann
Malls are just such weird places, right? You got this weird collection of all these different stores, right? It's like shoes and a food court. And then you have like this store that's all about sex. And again, you think back to that years as a teenager where like your brain is just getting pumped full of hormones and then you can't help but think about attraction and sex and all these things when you're next to that store. And ultimately we know where the story goes. And both of these girls like each other, like really like each other, but they're too afraid to say anything. And here's like Riley gets to like poke at it and see the reaction. And Ellie has a very kind of weird nervous reaction because she doesn't want to. She doesn't want to reveal how vulnerable she is because she loves Riley. And that's why after Riley walks away, we get to this lingering moment where Ellie's just looking at her own reflection and we see an insecurity.
- [36:53]
Craig Mazin
Yeah, Liza really understood this moment beautifully. That here are two girls who. Well, we've all seen the episodes now, so no big secret, they're both gay and their sexuality is confusing to them and scary to them. Because the world, to remind everybody in our show stops in 2003. The revolution that we've gone through as a culture to become accepting of homosexuality and whatever we would call non heteronormative sexualities hasn't occurred. Which means if the world stops in 2003, it just doesn't happen in this world. That stuff is still problematic, as they say. So you have these two girls who are uncomfortable with and afraid of their own sexuality and they're looking at the most heteronormative presentation of female sexuality there can be. Lingerie designed to be incredibly feminine to attract men. And neither one of them seemed to quite get the allure of it, which is not surprising. It's not their thing. But what I love about what Riley does there is that she. And people do this. Right? We know they do this. She gets scared of her own feelings for Ellie and so she basically puts Ellie down to cover up how she's feeling in this weird moment. And Ellie doesn't understand that. And. And it hurts.
- [38:26]
Neil Druckmann
It gets defensive and she gets defensive.
- [38:29]
Craig Mazin
And then she gets insecure. And she's looking at herself in the reflection of this angel, you know, the Victoria's Secret angel. And she is not an angel. She doesn't like her face, she doesn't like her hair, she doesn't like the way any of it is. And she's pretty sure that Riley would never ever like it either. And I can't think of a more 14 year old teenagery thing to think than that because God knows I was thinking that stuff myself.
- [38:53]
Neil Druckmann
We are shaped so much by media and how we're bombarded by movies and games and comics and ads. A big part of it is ads. These girls didn't grow up with that. So then you get a glimpse into this other world where, like, look how easy they had it, look how beautiful they were. Like, it's almost like it becomes this fantasy instead of like looking back at a reality.
- [39:16]
Troy Baker
We move from that moment into the mall gets even more magical. We find this merry go round, which is taken straight from the game. Yeah, I sure Is.
- [39:27]
Craig Mazin
I love when that happens.
- [39:29]
Troy Baker
We hear this almost calliope version of the Cure is just like heaven.
- [39:35]
Craig Mazin
Yeah. And I have to give credit to our editor, Tim Good. That was his. Tim, I think, is as important to the creative integrity and success of the show as anyone. And he had been waiting, I think, to put this in a show forever. And I think he had tried and people had been like, what? No. And then I heard this and I was like, oh, my God, it's the most beautiful thing. And is there realistically a merry go round that would play a calliope version of.
- [40:07]
Neil Druckmann
Oh, that's what. We're joking. This is like the coolest merry go.
- [40:09]
Craig Mazin
Round in the world in history.
- [40:11]
Troy Baker
Like, plays.
- [40:12]
Craig Mazin
Okay.
- [40:12]
Troy Baker
Computer.
- [40:13]
Craig Mazin
It's like the coolest merry go around. I think a lot of people, I suspect, are going to be like, wait, what was that? Wait, that was the Cure. I'm excited to see how people are.
- [40:23]
Troy Baker
Second viewing for me. Second viewing. I was like, wait a minute. I had to go back and listen to it again.
- [40:27]
Craig Mazin
I love how this functions. I loved how it functioned in Left behind, and I love how it functions here. Ellie allows herself to slip into the fantasy, and it is just like heaven. Until it's not. Because at some point, the world comes crashing in on her. Even before the merry go round breaks down, she remembers, oh, yeah, this girl doesn't feel about me the way I feel about her. In fact, she never will. And that's when she has to kind of go back to questioning, what is the thing with you and me? Why did you run away? What are we doing here? Did you really leave because you actually think you could liberate this place? Don't say it like it's some type of fantasy, Ellie.
- [41:21]
Troy Baker
They've done it in the other QZs.
- [41:24]
Craig Mazin
Set things right the way they used to be. Yeah, we could do that too, if you come back. I mean, we're. We're like the future, you know, we could make things. We could be running things.
- [41:39]
Neil Druckmann
The text is they're talking about the political standing of the Quarantine Zone, but they're really talking about each other. And Ellie's trying to say, I was so hurt because you left and you were my everything.
- [41:51]
Craig Mazin
Yeah. I mean, that's why Ellie. I think the world comes crashing in on her because she remembers, oh, yeah, Riley just left and had no problem with that. Ellie would never leave Riley for three weeks, ever. Because Ellie is in love with Riley. But Riley left no problem. Obviously, Riley's not in love with me. And so Neil's right. The discussion is why. And we in that discussion learn a really interesting thing about Riley, which is that Riley is not going anywhere at Fedra. Riley is not Ellie. Captain Kwong is not sitting Riley down saying, your officer material gave her sewage detail. Yeah, you're gonna be sewage detail. And that opens Ellie's mind to an understanding. Okay, I'm starting to get it.
- [42:42]
Troy Baker
The next beat that we get into the photo booth, let's talk about what the photo booth meant in the game, both mechanically and also narratively.
- [42:53]
Neil Druckmann
So a lot of the game, we took these mechanics that were used for violence when you played as Joel in the full game. And then for this ext chapter, we subverted those mechanics to get you to connect with Riley and be on this sort of date of, like, running away together. We had this idea of like, oh, what if they went in this photo booth? Because again, this is the thing you do in a mall with your friends and you take pictures together. And it would be a moment that would make it interactive. You could choose what poses you want to do. So there's a little bit of agency for the player there as far as, like, shaping how that experience goes. Ultimately, that moment is about a cracking of the dam, of seeing, like, these girls are starting to telegraph to each other, whether consciously or not, that there is more here than just friendship. And that that was the purpose for it in the game. And in the game, it was like this huge investment. We would always say, like, you know, we used to be known for these set pieces in Uncharted. One of the most famous one is, like, you are in this building that's being shot with missiles by a helicopter, and you're fighting all these enemies, and you, like, dynamically jump out of it just as it crashes around you. And it took this massive effort for the whole studio to pull that off. It was kind of the same for this photo booth, and it was, like, unheard of to spend that many resources on this very intimate character moment. But again, for people that experienced it, it had the same impact, the same emotional payoff, even more so of an emotional payoff than maybe an adrenaline rush. And it kind of changed how we approach things at the studio as far as the kind of games we make and the kind of moments we are willing to invest in. And that's why I believe Craig was, like, so adamant from the get go that we need to recapture this moment, this photo booth moment.
- [44:33]
Craig Mazin
That was an easy one. And to try and recapture it as truly to that experience that I had playing left behind. As we could. This is the back and forth we do all the time. How much fidelity? What are the things we do exactly? What are the things we change? This was one where I just. As a fan, if I didn't see it, even down to bunny ears and monster poses and just feeling like. I remember that feeling of being physically close to a girl that I liked, and she liked me, and we both knew it, and we were teenagers, and there's just. I don't know, man. There's just something there. And.
- [45:12]
Neil Druckmann
But also that moment, right, where, like, you're so insecure, you can't even have enough proof. There's never enough proof to say she definitely likes me.
- [45:20]
Craig Mazin
Yeah. Not even, like, when her friend's like, no, no, no. She. But Ellie's like, oh, okay, okay, get off. It's the second time because in the first time, she's coming down the escalator, she trips, and she's like, no, okay, I'm fine. No, I'm fine. It's. Ellie gets so excited by and terrified of physical contact with Riley that when it happens, she needs to stop it because she's afraid that she won't be able to stop herself from kissing her.
- [45:48]
Neil Druckmann
Ellie's afraid that Riley will see right through her. She'll see all the emotions she's feeling, and she'll be embarrassed. So she has to protect herself from that.
- [45:56]
Craig Mazin
Yeah. Because what's coming is, whoa, we're friends. But I don't feel that way about you. Also, actually, now that I know that you're one of those, I don't want to be friends with you at all. That's the fear that's losing somebody. Yeah. When I talk to my friends who grew up gay and they explain those additional levels, that's the scariest part. If I liked a girl and I asked her out and she said, I actually would rather be friends, maybe she'll be laughing about me with her friends that night. And that hurts. But there won't be this crazy rumor mill in the school. No one's gonna stop being friends with me. No one's gonna call me bad names. No one's gonna hit me. But that's not true if you're gay. Not when you're growing up in the 70s or the 80s or the 90s or even the 2000s. I think it's changed dramatically. At least in some places. Not everywhere, unfortunately. But that's, I think, a real fear that Ellie has, that it won't merely be a rejection of romance. It will be a total rejection of her As a person and as a friend. And she can't bear that.
- [47:04]
Troy Baker
We'll get to the moment where she's afraid of losing her. And that's really at the root of that fear. But first, we have another wonder of.
- [47:14]
Craig Mazin
Them all, the most wondrous wonder of them all.
- [47:16]
Troy Baker
Why Mortal Kombat 2? Why Mortal Kombat 2?
- [47:19]
Neil Druckmann
Specifically?
- [47:19]
Troy Baker
Because that's my fave. Was that just the one you could find?
- [47:23]
Craig Mazin
No. I mean, okay, first of all, Mortal Kombat 2 is the best ever, right? Like, not every cabinet arcade game worked like that. Sometimes the first one was the best. In this case, Mortal Kombat 2, I think, was the best.
- [47:39]
Troy Baker
Same.
- [47:40]
Craig Mazin
And we had this opportunity to do something that Naughty Dog couldn't do when they were making the game, which is use real stuff. Because I don't know the rules. I don't understand the intellectual property thing in the video game, the game's called the Turning.
- [47:53]
Neil Druckmann
Yeah. And the game one again, when I skipped school, the highlight of skipping school was going to the arcade. Absolutely, by far. So that this had to be like kind of the climax of what Riley wants to show Ellie. Which, by the way, like, I haven't just recently rewatched this episode. I tear up every time they're standing in front of that arcade. I don't know what it is. It's like some combination of, like, what's happening in the episode and my own nostalgia for arcades that are just kind of disappeared over the years. So when we made the game, we couldn't use an existing game because we would have had to recreate it. So that's one thing. And then licensing would have been a headache. So we just never went down that road. So we made our own game called the Turning. It was called the Turning because when I was working on the comic book that eventually became the last of us, when it was pitched at Naughty Dog, it was called the Turning. So this was kind of like, homage to myself, I guess. I don't know. But again, it's just one of those things you imbue with stuff to make it more personal to you so you get more invested in it. That's very much a ripoff of Mortal Kombat 2. And it was always intended to be that way. And the reason we did Mortal Kombat 2, or just thought about it, is there's this evolution of games and violence in games, how violence in use in games. And Mortal Kombat 2, there was this whole conversation around it with violence in the media and Senator Lieberman wanting to Censor video games. And that's where, like, the rating system all came out. So it's like, a lot of, like, really interesting political things that happened with video games, with that specific game. But to go back to what Craig was saying, we had an opportunity to use the original source, the original inspiration, which is Mortal Kombat 2. And I'm like, wait a minute. We could actually, like, probably get the rights for this relatively easy, because it's Warner Brothers.
- [49:36]
Craig Mazin
Yeah.
- [49:37]
Neil Druckmann
So it was just very cool to be able to use that. So then we worked backwards from there. And if you notice the opening of the episode when we're in Ellie's room, she has a poster for Mortal Kombat 2. And the two. These girls would have had an obsession with this particular thing because Ellie just has this, not dissimilar to me, an obsession with violent media, which, like, you know, I grew up, like, at that age, like, or maybe a little bit older. I saw Pulp Fiction and I read Sin City and just, like, very much drawn to that kind of experiences at the time.
- [50:07]
Craig Mazin
Yeah. And there's this nice circle back payoff to a moment that happened in the third episode when Ellie finds a Dead Mortal Kombat 2 game in the convenience store and tells Joel about how she had a friend and she played Mileena and she would swallow you whole and barf out your bones. And now we see it. And one of the things that I was obsessive about because I concentrate enormously on sound. I try whenever I'm writing scripts, to write sound into the script. And then when we're mixing, and I told our mixing team, which is amazing, led by Mark Fishman and Kevin Roche, guys, this isn't going to be a normal mixing experience for you. I am going to get so granular about so many things. And one of the things I got really granular about was the way it would feel in your stomach when you drop that quarter, that bass. Oh.
- [51:13]
Troy Baker
Oh, my God.
- [51:16]
Craig Mazin
This is one of those meta moments where there's a television show based on a video game. And the guy that made the video game and the guy over here that's helping adapt the video game, both love video games. And we have our whole lives and giving everybody a chance, especially, I think, kids who haven't known the Mall Arcade experience the way we have to just enjoy other people enjoying it, I think was great. It was beautiful. And I love how Riley knows inherently that Ellie is going to love the fatality moves. The special finishers.
- [51:58]
Troy Baker
For people who know Mortal Kombat, especially when you played it in 93. The only way you knew about the cheat codes or fatality codes was anecdotally. You heard the rumors, because somebody in the arcade.
- [52:13]
Neil Druckmann
So glad you brought that up. Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up, because I'm sure people will watch this and be like, how do they know the moves? How did they figure out the moves? And this is actually something we talked quite a lot about. And it's like, again, as they collect these totems from this old world, one of the things that used to be really popular and was still popular in the early 2000s were video game magazines.
- [52:31]
Craig Mazin
The magazines, big glossy things like a proper book, you'd flip through and it would discuss.
- [52:38]
Troy Baker
That's how you beat that level. I didn't realize I missed that there.
- [52:41]
Neil Druckmann
Yeah. So if they were infatuated with this game, Ellie would collect anything to do with this game, including magazines that would have listed the moves that they would have memorized as if they could ever play it. But, of course, the tragic thing is they could never play it because those games don't exist anymore until today.
- [52:57]
Craig Mazin
Yeah.
- [52:57]
Troy Baker
They have this wonderful moment, and we leave them for a second inside of the arcade and the purple light and the cacophonous sound and the cartoonish violence that's happening inside of that video game, we start to pan out, and we follow this root system, and we see that they're not alone in this mall, that there is an imminent threat that wakes up.
- [53:18]
Craig Mazin
Yeah. And this is a difference from the game. In the game, there's no indication that there's anything in the mall.
- [53:28]
Neil Druckmann
Not until much later.
- [53:29]
Craig Mazin
Much later. And when it does happen, there are a lot of Infected. And as we talked it through, we did like the idea that. I mean, you know, Ellie's like, that place is full Infected. And Riley says, well, if it's sealed off, then why isn't it sealed off? And then you get in there and you're like, it's not full of Infected at all. Riley's correct. And Riley's been living in this mall for a couple of weeks, and she hasn't seen any Infected. There's one. That's all it takes, is just one. And what wakes him up is their joy. It's the sound of their laughing. They're having fun. As much as we can. We give our characters the things they want the most, and then we punish them for getting them. And we want them to be challenged by their darkest fears. And so one of the fears that you have in this world is that you're never safe enough to have fun. You're never safe enough to fall in love. You're never safe enough to have a first kiss.
- [54:34]
Troy Baker
There's two threats that are happening in this moment. First is the waking up the infected that's in there. And also there's a bit of a truth bomb that Riley drops.
- [54:43]
Craig Mazin
Right, Ellie, I'm leaving.
- [54:50]
Neil Druckmann
They're sending me to a post in the Atlantic.
- [54:52]
Craig Mazin
You see.
- [54:57]
Neil Druckmann
I asked if you could.
- [54:58]
Craig Mazin
Join so we could go together, but Marlene said no. Who the fuck is Marlene?
- [55:05]
Troy Baker
Marlene is the lady that helped me get.
- [55:07]
Neil Druckmann
It doesn't matter.
- [55:11]
Craig Mazin
Ellie.
- [55:11]
Neil Druckmann
I tried.
- [55:14]
Craig Mazin
Yeah, yeah. Ellie finds the truth of what Riley's been doing here. It's not just this romantic, oh, I've joined the Fireflies and I have a gun and all that. And Ellie's been making fun of her for it the whole time because he's such a fucking firefly. Well, there are pipe bombs, and the pipe bombs have one purpose, and that is to be thrown at Fedra. In the middle of our first episode, we see what those pipe bombs can do. They blow up a car, they blow up the side of a building, they almost kill Tess. And Ellie is confronted with the reality that this girl that she's so connected to, that she cares so much about, is actively participating in something meant to kill people like her. And remember, she was told by Kwong in the beginning, you're going to be an officer. That means one day Riley's going to be lobbing one of these things at her. And the whole fantasy comes crashing in.
- [56:07]
Troy Baker
At that point, we have this petulant goodbye. What do you think it is that stops Ellie and makes her go back?
- [56:16]
Neil Druckmann
It's love. It's what this show's all about.
- [56:19]
Craig Mazin
You can't escape the truth of what you want. You can know intellectually, this girl doesn't care about me the way I care about her. And she is actively participating in something that could end up in my death. But what if she does care about me that way? And what if I told her? Would it matter?
- [56:47]
Neil Druckmann
There's also the fear of, like, is this the last interaction I want to have with her?
- [56:51]
Craig Mazin
Right.
- [56:51]
Neil Druckmann
She's leaving. I think there's also, like, there's such a love that Ellie is not ready to let her go. And later, right, she says to her, is like, I'll support you if this is what you really want.
- [57:01]
Troy Baker
I'm your best friend.
- [57:02]
Craig Mazin
And I'm not saying it all pissy. I mean it. Yeah. Like, I think Neil's right. There's this need to just say goodbye. I don't think Ellie goes back there thinking, I'm gonna tell her how I really feel and I'm gonna kiss her. She goes back there to say a.
- [57:21]
Troy Baker
Proper goodbye, but she does go back, and we get to see another iconic moment from the Left behind game, which is the Halloween store.
- [57:29]
Craig Mazin
Yeah.
- [57:29]
Troy Baker
You use Source Music again as score with Etta Jane's version of I Got.
- [57:34]
Craig Mazin
Yout Babe, taken right from the game. It's. Anybody that's played it just knows it. I think a lot of people that play that game don't realize it's I Got yout Babe because Etta's version is so different. Different.
- [57:46]
Troy Baker
It's funky and fun and it's juxtaposed.
- [57:47]
Neil Druckmann
And I mean, that was the challenge of, like, you know, finding a song that is about romance but is not so sentimental that it's just about romance.
- [57:56]
Craig Mazin
Right.
- [57:56]
Neil Druckmann
And this just strikes that balance of. Again, the lyrics are about something. The vibe you get, it's got this, like you were saying, a funky energy that it gets to hide what it's really about. Kind of, like very much what is happening between Ellie and Riley at this moment.
- [58:11]
Craig Mazin
I mean, literally hiding under masks. And there's this moment as they're dancing. And I love the way Liza shot this. Riley is a much better dancer than Ellie. That much is clear. Ellie's sort of, like, doing what everyone's.
- [58:25]
Troy Baker
About, shuffling in the left and right, shuffling or.
- [58:27]
Craig Mazin
Or being a goof. Riley, in that good dancer way, is sort of doing this thing where she's rotating around and she turns away from Ellie as she's dancing around. And as she turns away, Ellie slowly stops dancing. And here's the magic of Bella Ramsey. She is wearing a mask that completely obscures her face. And, you know, exactly still how she's feeling just from the way her body moves.
- [58:55]
Troy Baker
Yes.
- [58:56]
Craig Mazin
It's magic. It's just there. And what she's feeling there is this connection to Riley that is so powerful and so joyous that she just can't let it go. She can't walk away without begging. She just says, don't go. And Riley says, okay. And then she. Ellie kisses her. And it's just like the game. And I don't think that's a bad thing. I think it's a wonderful thing because it was perfect in the game, and I think it's perfect here, all of it. Bella's reaction after she kisses her, which is like 1500 emotions in two seconds. And then, you know, apologizing and Riley saying, For what? And then Ellie realizing, oh my God. And Riley realizing, oh my God.
- [59:49]
Neil Druckmann
We give her like a few seconds of the greatest joy of her life. Just a few seconds.
- [59:54]
Craig Mazin
Yeah. But there's like this thing of the two of them, like, oh my God. The time we've wasted being scared when we both felt this way. And then the world comes crashing in, like you said.
- [60:06]
Troy Baker
It's quickly interrupted by the pivotal moment for Ellie, which is not only is she bitten, but also Riley is as well. And the disparity again between their responses. I don't know. We don't get to see if Riley has her freak out moment, but we certainly see Ellie's. And she smashes stuff. And Riley responds direct from the game.
- [60:30]
Craig Mazin
And almost everything that they say between each other is lifted from the game. There are a few other little bits here or there that we put in. But what I love about this ending more than anything and credit to HBO for kind of pushing us to keep growing it is what Riley says to Ellie at the end here is not merely words of comfort or vague philosophy.
- [60:57]
Neil Druckmann
It ends this way for everyone sooner or later.
- [61:00]
Craig Mazin
Right?
- [61:02]
Troy Baker
Some of us just get there faster than others.
- [61:08]
Neil Druckmann
But we don't quit. Whether it's two minutes or two days, we don't give that up. I don't want to give that up.
- [61:31]
Craig Mazin
It is a lesson that Ellie has in her bones and it is why Ellie fights to keep Joel alive. Because what Riley is saying is we don't give up. Even if we have two minutes or two days. We just keep going because we love each other and death comes for us all. The time we have is the time we have. The fact that it must end is not a reason for us to not love. And there's Ellie, who's been told to go away. Who knows Joel's gonna die. There's no fucking way she's gonna be able to save him. She's not going to quit. And she ransacks this house looking for what thread to stitch him up. It's the only thing she knows how to do with a wound because of her own life. And she goes back down there and. Oh my God, they hold their. The hands being held. It's like. It's so beautiful to me. And then when she's sewing him up, the look on her face is just. What do you describe it? It's.
- [62:35]
Neil Druckmann
That's a desperation.
- [62:36]
Craig Mazin
Yeah. And. And. And fury. It's almost like, I won't fucking let you go.
- [62:42]
Neil Druckmann
I will it.
- [62:43]
Craig Mazin
Yes, I will.
- [62:45]
Neil Druckmann
The impossible.
- [62:45]
Craig Mazin
Yes.
- [62:46]
Troy Baker
Will it work? That is something we'll have to find out next week. Craig, thanks a million man for being here. Thanks Troy, and of course the same to you Neil.
- [62:57]
Neil Druckmann
Goodbye.
- [62:59]
Troy Baker
We will talk to you both next week. This has been the official the Last of Us podcast from hbo. Again, I'm Troy Baker, joined by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann. You can stream new episodes of the HBO original series the Last of Us Sundays on HBO Max. The podcast episodes are available after episodes of the Last of Us air on hbo. You can find this show wherever you listen to podcasts like and follow HBO's the Last of Us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Until next week, endure and survive.
- [63:31]
Neil Druckmann
This is the official companion podcast for.
- [63:33]
Craig Mazin
HBO's the Last of Us, hosted by Troy Baker. Our producers are Elliot Adler, Bria Mariette and Noah Camuso.
- [63:41]
Neil Druckmann
Darby Maloney is our editor. The show is mixed by Hannis Brown.
- [63:45]
Craig Mazin
Our executive producers are Gabrielle Lewis and Bari Finkel. Production music is courtesy of HBO and.
- [63:52]
Neil Druckmann
You can watch episodes of the Last.
- [63:53]
Craig Mazin
Of Us on HBO Max.
- [64:03]
Neil Druckmann
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