‘The Last of Us’ Season 2, Episode 3 Precap: Every Road Trip Needs a Dina, Plus Gabriel Luna

Summary

The Prestige TV Podcast Summary
Episode: ‘The Last of Us’ Season 2, Episode 3 Precap: Every Road Trip Needs a Dina, Plus Gabriel Luna
Release Date: May 1, 2025
Host: Joanna Robinson and Rob Mahoney
Guest: Gabriel Luna

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Introduction

In this episode of The Prestige TV Podcast, hosts Joanna Robinson and Rob Mahoney delve into The Last of Us Season 2, Episode 3. The discussion encompasses various facets of the episode, including character developments, deviations from the original game, and thematic explorations. The episode is structured into three main sections: a discussion segment, an interview with Gabriel Luna, and a spoiler section that analyzes plot intricacies.

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Episode Breakdown

1. Road Trip Supplies and Scavenging Montage

Joanna and Rob kick off their discussion by addressing a fan comment from Reddit expressing frustration over Ellie’s acquisition of supplies with saddlebags, contrasting it with the arduous scavenging depicted in the show.

Joanna Robinson:
"[05:20] Let's talk about episode three... I'm just mad that Ellie got a horse with saddlebags full of supplies..."

Rob Mahoney:
"[05:45] ...could we not have gotten a scavenging montage in there? Could we not have gotten a rapid fire Ellie opening roughly 3,000 drawers and cabinets to find supplies?"

The hosts debate the balance between showing efficient resource gathering versus the more grueling reality of survival, suggesting that a montage could have added depth and realism to Ellie's resourcefulness.

2. Adaptations from the Game: Favorite and Least Favorite Changes

Rob shares his perspective as both a gamer and a professional involved in the show, highlighting his appreciation for the expanded emotional scenes that allow characters to grieve and develop.

Rob Mahoney:
"[07:23] My favorite change is probably just the expansion of the mournful, quiet moments that we get in Jackson to grieve as an audience and as characters to grieve Joel before we leave."

Conversely, he expresses reservations about the expedited travel sequences, which he feels lack the immersive scavenging process present in the game.

Rob Mahoney:
"[09:19] Honestly, I don't have a lot of least favorites for this episode other than... creating more of a travel montage."

3. Dina and Ellie’s Relationship Dynamics

The hosts explore the evolving relationship between Dina and Ellie, discussing how Dina serves as Ellie's anchor amidst chaos.

Rob Mahoney:
"[25:13] ...there are ways in which Ellie is such a self-reliant person and a really capable person who's out there on patrol wiping out infected. And in some ways she's still the naive teenager in the chucks who doesn't know better..."

Joanna Robinson:
"[29:21] ...Pedro Pascal is just like, everyone wants a piece of Pedro Pascal right now... filling Joel Miller's boots is tough."

They commend Dina’s role in keeping Ellie grounded and highlight her importance in Ellie's personal growth and emotional stability.

4. Community Dynamics and Tommy's Role

The discussion shifts to the community of Jackson and Tommy’s integral role within it, especially following Joel’s death.

Rob Mahoney:
"[46:49] ...Tommy is in service and that's who he is... having lost Joel, it creates a new dynamic and a whole well of guilt that's just sitting there in his heart."

Joanna Robinson:
"[49:54] ...Tommy’s future leadership... how he integrates into the community post-Joel's passing."

The hosts analyze how Tommy’s absence during Joel’s demise alters his character development and his subsequent actions within the community.

5. Moral Ambiguity and Emerging Groups (WLF and Seraphites)

Joanna and Rob delve into the introduction of the Seraphites, juxtaposed against the well-established WLF, to explore themes of moral ambiguity.

Rob Mahoney:
"[81:42] ...the introduction of the Seraphites... why Seraphites would expand their beliefs or take certain actions."

Joanna Robinson:
"[82:52] ...Seraphites give a little girl a weapon, which seems counter to their extremist portrayal."

This segment underscores the complexity of distinguishing between 'good' and 'bad' groups in the post-apocalyptic setting, emphasizing the show's commitment to nuanced storytelling.

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Interview with Gabriel Luna

Guest: Gabriel Luna as Tommy

1. Tommy's Emotional Journey

Gabriel shares his insights into portraying Tommy, especially dealing with the emotional weight of Joel’s death.

Gabriel Luna:
"[32:42] ...the fallout, dealing with the abrupt departure of somebody you love so much... having to check myself and recalibrate..."

He discusses the personal connections he draws upon, such as memories of his grandfather’s loss, to bring authenticity to Tommy’s grief and guilt.

2. Production Insights

Gabriel provides an inside look into the making of intense scenes, particularly the battle sequences and emotional confrontations.

Gabriel Luna:
"[43:26] ...all my friends on set... working 15, 16 hours to make it real... the brilliance of interlinked special and visual effects."

He praises the collaborative effort of the crew and the practical effects that enhance the realism of the show.

3. Playing Tommy: Then and Now

The actor contrasts his portrayal of Tommy before and after Joel’s death, highlighting the character’s evolution from a follower to a responsible leader grappling with loss.

Gabriel Luna:
"[40:11] ...Tommy's carrying guilt because he wasn't there to protect Joel... that's what creates a new dynamic."

He emphasizes how this change adds depth to Tommy’s character, influencing his future decisions and interactions.

4. Specific Scenes and Interactions

Gabriel reflects on memorable scenes, such as interactions with co-star Catherine O’Hara, and the challenges of maintaining character intensity amid extensive filmmaking elements.

Gabriel Luna:
"[53:48] ...recreating a photograph from Temple Grandin 16 years ago... sharing beers and philosophical questions."

He recounts the camaraderie and emotional exchanges that contribute to the show’s rich character dynamics.

5. Future Directions and Storylines

Looking ahead, Gabriel expresses excitement about exploring Tommy’s journey and the broader narrative arcs that will unfold.

Gabriel Luna:
"[50:32] ...seeing how Tommy manages guilt and his responsibilities... an opportunity to change things and explore new storylines."

He anticipates further character development and the deepening of existing relationships as the season progresses.

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Spoiler Section

Warning: Contains spoilers for The Last of Us Season 2, Episode 3.

1. Jesse’s Character Development

Joanna and Rob discuss Jesse’s role in the community and his unexpected support for Ellie’s plan, contrasting it with his previous portrayal.

Rob Mahoney:
"[63:59] ...Jesse is seen as future leadership, being groomed for an important role in Jackson."

They speculate on how Jesse’s loyalty and commitment to the community influence his actions and decisions.

2. Seraphites and Moral Ambiguity

The introduction of the Seraphites adds layers to the show's exploration of morality, presenting them as a potentially misunderstood or complex group rather than outright antagonists.

Rob Mahoney:
"[82:52] ...the Seraphites giving a little girl a weapon... reflecting genuine human motivations and complexities."

This enhances the narrative’s depth, making viewers question preconceived notions of good and evil.

3. Dina and Ellie's Relationship Stakes

The evolving bond between Dina and Ellie is scrutinized, with potential future conflicts looming due to the high-stakes environment.

Joanna Robinson:
"[86:11] ...Ellie maintaining a relationship with Dina despite external pressures and dangers."

They anticipate emotional turmoil as their relationship faces challenges amidst the overarching quest and impending losses.

4. Tommy’s Pursuit and Consequences

Tommy's decision to follow Ellie and Dina to Seattle is analyzed, considering the personal and communal repercussions of his absence during Joel’s death.

Rob Mahoney:
"[65:30] ...Tommy would feel guilt and pursue Ellie, risking his own safety and that of his family."

This pursuit is expected to drive significant plot developments and character arcs in future episodes.

5. The Role of Joel Through Flashbacks

The use of flashbacks to Joel’s past actions continues to shape the narrative, revealing critical backstory elements and influencing current character motivations.

Rob Mahoney:
"[75:46] ...flashbacks are essential for understanding Joel’s decisions and their impact on present events."

The strategic placement of these flashbacks is crucial for maintaining storyline coherence and emotional resonance.

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Conclusion

Joanna Robinson and Rob Mahoney provide a comprehensive and insightful analysis of The Last of Us Season 2, Episode 3, blending critical commentary with entertaining banter. The episode’s exploration of character dynamics, moral ambiguities, and significant plot deviations from the game is thoroughly examined, offering listeners a deeper understanding of the show’s intricate narrative. The interview with Gabriel Luna adds depth to the discussion, highlighting the emotional and professional facets of bringing Tommy to life. As the hosts navigate through both spoiler-free and spoiler-intensive segments, they ensure a balanced and engaging summary for fans and newcomers alike.

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Notable Quotes:

• Joanna Robinson [05:20]:
  "I'm just mad that Ellie got a horse with saddlebags full of supplies."

• Rob Mahoney [07:23]:
  "My favorite change is probably just the expansion of the mournful, quiet moments that we get in Jackson to grieve as an audience and as characters to grieve Joel before we leave."

• Gabriel Luna [32:42]:
  "Having to check myself and recalibrate and try to reset in a way that gave myself kind of somewhere to go."

• Rob Mahoney [81:42]:
  "The introduction of the Seraphites... why Seraphites would expand their beliefs or take certain actions."

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Transcript

[Joanna Robinson]

Hello. Welcome back to the Prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Joanna Robinson.

[Rob Mahoney]

I'm Rob Mahoney.

[Joanna Robinson]

We are here today talk to you about the Last of Us Season two, episode three. That is the plan today. We've got just in case you're joining us for the first time, the way we're covering the last of us on this feed is, is we're breaking every episode into two, three sections. Actually. We've got a discussion at the top that's kind of a mailbag sort of situation. We'll talk about that in a second.

[Rob Mahoney]

A Socratic seminar. Between us and all of our loyal listeners who are emailing Joe, we should say to this is your brain on shroomsmail.com or if that's too complicated for you, prestigetvpotify.com perfect.

[Joanna Robinson]

So that's the first section. Second section is an interview. Rob, who do we have on the podcast today?

[Rob Mahoney]

Gabriel Luna is joining the show this week. Very excited to have you all hear from him. Was very excited to talk to him. And we talked, you know, about Tommy, of course, who is I think, taking on like a pretty different life from the version of the character that we see in the game. We also work through, I would say, the whole range of emotion that goes into playing Tommy this week. In particular, from saying goodbye to your dead brother to crushing beers at a T ball game, Tommy gets to do it all.

[Joanna Robinson]

And then last but not least, we will have a spoiler section. Rob played the Last of Us the game years ago and so has a gamer's insight into the story yet to come, perhaps. Or some adaptive changes, stuff that we can't talk about in a spoiler freeway. So don't put that on more business.

[Rob Mahoney]

Card Joe, just Rob Mahoney. And then in quotes, a gamer's insight. Would that be okay with you?

[Joanna Robinson]

Is that how you think of yourself chiefly?

[Rob Mahoney]

I don't know. But I think as I am becoming a more compartmentalized professional, you know, I have my basketball stuff. I got this prestige stuff with you. Clearly I have this offshoot kind of gaming career that is now, now becoming quite lucrative for me, it turns out, you know, I just want to be able to market myself to all of the appropriate parties.

[Joanna Robinson]

So you're a ball knower.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yes.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay, thank you. A TV watcher. Yeah, with a, with a side of gamers insight. So that sounds. Okay, great.

[Rob Mahoney]

I mean, look, we'll have you work up the website, but that sounds great on the copy.

[Joanna Robinson]

Oh, you don't want me on your website. Okay, so that is the plan. Today, just FYI, in a larger sense of the feed, Rob and I are going to be continuing to cover your friends and neighbors perhaps in a week to week basis. Time will tell, but for right now, we're still in it with Jon Hamm. So we'll be back later this week to talk to you about that. There's also coverage of the rehearsal. I heard rumors that there might be a check in on the studio and hacks and poker faces coming up. So that's a. That's all the. The delicious stuff waiting for you on the Prestige TV podcast feed. Rob Mahoney, can I share with you, speaking of, like, specialities, can I share with you my Joanna Robinson, NBA podcaster moment that I had earlier this week?

[Rob Mahoney]

You simply must.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay. I was after I went to the Thunderbolts press greeting on Monday, and after that, I went to that parking garage that's by the Metreon, and I was, like, getting into the elevator to go up to my car, and. And there was a guy waiting next to me at the elevator. And it's. It's a place where you, like, kind of want to be on your guard of, like, what's going on around you. And so he was just like, he was watching something full volume on his phone. And we got to the elevator, he didn't look up. Got into the elevator, still watching. And I was like. And I could hear it. I was like, oh, who's playing? He's watching a basketball game. I'm like, who's playing? He's like, warriors. There are seconds left. Yep, it's 107 to 106.

[Rob Mahoney]

It sure is.

[Joanna Robinson]

And I was like, got it. You. You can't look up. I will. I will help you. He was like, I. But, you know. And the warriors won, right, over Houston.

[Rob Mahoney]

They did. I mean, what you were. What you're describing was a seminal Draymond Green moment. Just absolutely huge defensive stuff. And I will say, a crucial assist by you, Joe, in hitting that elevator button and not letting this guy miss a second of it.

[Joanna Robinson]

I thought you'd be proud of me. All right.

[Rob Mahoney]

Absolutely, fellas. You know Degree Cool Rush deodorant, right? Well, last year they changed the formula and guys were mad about it. One dude even started a petition.

[Gabriel Luna]

So guess what? Degree heard us, admitted they messed up.

[Rob Mahoney]

And brought the original Cool Rush scent.

[Gabriel Luna]

Back exactly how it was. And it's in Walmart, Target, and other.

[Rob Mahoney]

Stores now for under $4.

[Gabriel Luna]

So grab some and remember why its.

[Rob Mahoney]

Cool, crisp and fresh scent made it the number one men's antiperspirant for the.

[Gabriel Luna]

Last decade degree Cool Rush is back.

[Rob Mahoney]

And it smells like victory for all us. This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. Not everyone is careful with your personal information, which might explain why there's a victim of Identity theft every five seconds in the U.S. fortunately, there's LifeLock. Lifelock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity. If your identity is stolen, a US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year by visiting lifelock.com podcast terms apply.

[Joanna Robinson]

Let's talk about episode three. Speaking of gamers insight, Rob, I want to know how you feel about this comment that I that I found on the subreddit, which was this. I'm just mad that Ellie got a horse with saddlebags full of supplies. I had to search 8,000 drawers to find that stuff. Rob, did you feel similarly jealous and resentful of how easily Ellie got all those supplies? Or Dina, rather?

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah, I was about to say, let's be honest about who packed those saddlebags and who's responsible of the goods. Would scavenging make for good tv? I go back and forth on this. Is it exactly earned by Ellie? No, because as this poster alluded to, we had to dig all of those supplies out from every drawer. Yeah, between not Jackson and Seattle per se, but literally everywhere else around these respective towns. I'm glad. You know. You know what, here's what I'll say. We get this big traveling montage. Could we not have gotten a scavenging montage in there? Could we not have gotten a rapid fire ellie opening roughly 3,000 drawers and 3,000 cabinets to find supplies? Is that not a thing that we're entitled to?

[Joanna Robinson]

Oh, you want a drawer montage is what you said.

[Rob Mahoney]

I would love one.

[Joanna Robinson]

Would you set it to like a jaunty pop song or what would you.

[Rob Mahoney]

But yeah, I'm trying to think what the number. I mean, it's really like you get to get high BPMs on that. You know, it's going to get a little repetitive.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

If you can synergize it. Don't stop me now. Shaun of the Dead style to either crushing zombies or just the percussive opening of drawers, then I think we're really getting somewhere.

[Joanna Robinson]

You read my mind. I was like, this is an Edgar Wright moment if ever we saw one. Truly just like drawers and cabinets, opening, closing. Okay, I guess what I'm most interested to know from you, this is a largely like, departure from the game kind of episode the creators talked about sort of wanting to build in this three month window and our. And take this moment to breathe and grieve for Joel before we hit the road to Seattle. So I guess my question in a non spoiler sense, Rob, is can you share with us your favorite change and your least favorite change if you can talk about it in a non spoiler way inside of this episode?

[Rob Mahoney]

Great question. I think my favorite change is probably just the expansion of the mournful, quiet moments that we get in Jackson to grieve as an audience and as characters to grieve Joel before we leave. And that's, you know, there are bits and pieces of that certainly in the game, but it is blown out in a totally different way. And I think the time spent is. Is ultimately so much more impactful. Like these are the reasons that I watch and love this show in particular, right? Like things like Ellie getting to have an extended moment in Joel's bedroom, which again is kind of extrapolated but expanded. Getting this another kind of expanded sequence in terms of her getting to visit Joel's grave. And overall, I think my biggest payoff and part of the reason we wanted to have Gabriel Luna for this episode is Tommy getting to say goodbye to Joel. And that is like, I think it's a really remarkable scene and Tommy's carrying it all on his face. It's right there. It's in his hands. For some reason, the little detail that really got me was their kind of like dual very similar watches as he's cleaning Joel's arm. Really, really got to me for some reason. But I think Gabriel Luna is fantastic in that scene. And you just get. I think you get both the very personal devastating consequences of what's happening and then you get to juxtapose it with the slow zoom of this is a full morgue that, as Gabriel will tell us in the interview today, is actually the same room where he gave the big speech about preparedness. And so having that sort of juxtaposition of small stakes and large stakes, at least relative to the perspective of a town, I found to be really, really effective.

[Joanna Robinson]

Is it also the room where they have the town hall meeting?

[Rob Mahoney]

I believe so.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's just like the bar.

[Rob Mahoney]

The bar, the restaurant, you know. Does Jackson not have multiple restaurants or bars? I don't know, but this is the one.

[Joanna Robinson]

A lot of stuff caught on fire, Rob. Okay. Something that I. And then. Did you say least favorite?

[Rob Mahoney]

I'll say my least favorite. Honestly, I don't have a lot of least favorite for this episode other than, I think, creating more of a travel. The montage that we've already talked about. As far as the opening the drawers go, turning the travel sequence from Jackson to Seattle into a montage y event. I was left a little disoriented, Joe, as far as, like, I have literally no idea how long this is supposed to take these characters. And so I felt a little bit tossed about as we're kind of having these just like scenic walks, gallops, trots across the countryside, and then also some more intimate moments between Ellie and Dina. But I was a little mixed on that because on the one hand, it felt very fast travel y in a video game sense. Like, all of a sudden you're just kind of there, which would be fine, but stringing it out in a cursory surface level kind of way left me a little bit wanting.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay, that's interesting. I think for me not having as long of a time to sort of cherish the game storytelling as you've had. So I, I take my sort of objections more lightly.

[Rob Mahoney]

But, like, I do not.

[Joanna Robinson]

Dina. I do think this line, and we talked about it elsewhere, but I think this line where Dina says to Ellie in the game, where you go, I go, and we might yet get it in. In the show in a different context perhaps. But like that, that just felt like a core sort of Dina game moment to me. And. And they're parceling the Dina LA stuff out a little differently in the game. And we'll talk about all of that on the Dina front. Rob, I thought you might be able to add to this podcast not just a gamer's insight, but a baker's insight. You have been known to bring baked goods in a Tupperware to. To curry people.

[Rob Mahoney]

Well, okay, let's. Let's be honest about what's happening. It's not currying favor. It's that if I don't get rid of them, I will eat them. And so I need to get rid of roughly 1/2 to 3/4 of every batch of baked goods that I make. So it's, It's. I think it's strictly a practical affair and we're.

[Joanna Robinson]

But that can't be what's happening with Dina here because.

[Rob Mahoney]

No, no, no, no.

[Joanna Robinson]

Cookies seem rare and precious here. I just had. I was just wondering if you had any thoughts about the conversation we had on House of R about a potential chocolate shortage in the time of the mushroom apocalypse. Is this a carob chip situation? What are we doing? What are we doing here?

[Rob Mahoney]

I do have thoughts. This is 100% dried fruit. There's no chance of chocolate. It may not be a raisin, it could be a dried cherry, it could be any number of things, but that is definitely a dried fruit cookie. That's just what you've got in the post apocalyptic world. I mean, maybe a Craisin. Not for me personally, but I respect everybody out there who's living the crazin life.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay, if you're from Jackson, Wyoming, and you want to let us know what kind of dried fruit you're most likely to find in your local flora and fauna, let us know. If this is a dried cherry cookie, I.

[Rob Mahoney]

It's not a bad thing.

[Joanna Robinson]

Oh, well, it's not. It's not for me. Simply not for me.

[Rob Mahoney]

So you're anti hot fruit? You're also anti dried fruit?

[Joanna Robinson]

No. Well, okay, I'm sorry, this is a Last of Us podcast, but I'll eat a. I'll eat a dried fruit. But then you put it in a baked good and it kind of gets rehydrated and like it gets closer to baked fruit. Does that make sense?

[Rob Mahoney]

I'm just learning that you hate fruit.

[Joanna Robinson]

No, I love raisins.

[Rob Mahoney]

It kind of sounds like you hate fruit. I don't know what to tell you.

[Joanna Robinson]

That's deeply untrue. We talked so much about pineapples very recently. I hope you know that.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay. What do you think? Okay, so Gail is an additive character in the show. We got several emails from listeners just wanting to point out, like, what a bad sort of HIPAA violating psychiatrist skill is.

[Rob Mahoney]

Straight up, just, just very, very bad at the professional aspects of her job. Granted, this is a lawless space. You know, you can go around murdering people without legal consequences. So, you know, what's a little doctor patient confidentiality?

[Joanna Robinson]

So maybe not a good psychiatrist. More the only psychiatrist in town. So that's what we're dealing with here. Or Per was great before. Oh, I don't know, the world ended around her and she's like, you know, fair my professionalism or whatever, our listener. So a common sort of pushback I saw from some gamers on this episode was that they felt between some of the Gail scenes where she is sort of, you know, psychologically analyzing characters, and the town hall scene where we get dueling speeches about the nature of revenge and mercy and morality and all that sort of stuff like that, that we're making a lot of the themes of the game more explicitly stated rather than it's up to the gamer to sort of figure this out as the story unfolds. Do you feel like the show is holding hands a little. A little bit more than you would prefer? Or do you feel like it's a different medium so these things need to be told differently in that space?

[Rob Mahoney]

My personal preference as a viewer or a gamer or anything is I want as little hand holding as possible. I want to be able to make the connection for myself. And so, yes, similarly to how we talked about Abby's big speech, there are elements of the season that are just over explicated in a very different way than not just in the game, but than what you might find in other prestige TV fare. Right. Like characters are overtly saying their motivations up in front, front and center. Like leaving no room for misinterpretation as to what's happening in some of these things? Yeah, some of that I like. Some of it is obviously misdirection. Right. Like, Ellie is saying a lot of things in this episode. I don't know how many of them are true. She's just saying a lot of stuff. Gale is where I am concerned. And yeah, we did get this email from Natalie Joe, who talked about how not only is this hand holding, but it's sort of like potentially protecting the show from the similar kinds of backlash that the game received around some of these plot points.

[Joanna Robinson]

Bad faith interpretations from that we've talked about in the past, like bad faith or willful misinterpretation, I would say of the last was part two. And so leaving no room for those kinds of. Of points of view. Yeah, I think that's interesting.

[Rob Mahoney]

You can do that. I just think you then have to create ambiguity in other areas of the story. Right. You just don't want anything in a Last of Us type of storytelling to be so cut and dry. Like, we need room to question characters motivations. We need room to question who are the. Who are the quote, unquote, good guys in these various scenarios? Who are the people who are seeking violence versus trying to protect themselves from violence? Like, those are all worthwhile conversations to have. Gale, to me, is ground zero for a lot of these concerns. And it's one that I've started to have, I would say, especially with this episode, because even though I love Catherine O'Hara, I love seeing her on screen. I love what she's. What she brought to the character, especially initially on our first meeting with Gale. That is a character in this episode. She's sort of recast as the woman who sees things other people don't. And that's not a character. That is a device.

[Joanna Robinson]

And we talked before about this. Our reticence around therapy as device in TV storytelling in general.

[Rob Mahoney]

Well, Ellie has similar reservations. She wants no part of it.

[Joanna Robinson]

I guess it depends how much I think I want to reserve my feelings. And depending on how we use Gale going forward. I agree this episode felt like a lot, but we are on the road to Seattle at this point. And so I'm not sure how much more space there is for therapy hour with Gale, for sure.

[Rob Mahoney]

It's also why I'm really eager to see kind of what the show has in store for Eugene's story. That's a thing that fleshes out Gale as a character and tells us a lot about her life and her circumstances and makes her more than just the person telling us to watch out. Because Ellie is violent.

[Joanna Robinson]

On the. On the. On your sort of quest for moral ambiguity, which I think is at the heart of what has made the Last of Us both so compelling for people and open for those misinterpretations. I. I wanted to ask you about this. The group of people that we meet on the road outside side of Ellie's story, they've got bows and arrows, they've. They're armed with hammers, they've got scars on their faces, etc. We. We see that they have been attacked. Later, we don't know. And we should say this is additive. This. This scenario is not in the game. We don't know for sure. Ellie feels like she's sure she knows who did it. She's quite sure we don't know who did it. But I thought it was interesting. I hadn't thought about this, but this idea that, like Abby, when she is talking to Joel, she talks about the code of the wlf and the code being we don't kill people that can't defend themselves. And so when you see these people who are armed with bows and arrows and hammers and yes, literally that little girl has a hammer in her hand when she died. But would you call her someone who can defend them herself? So if this was the wlf, if these were the wolves, whether it's Ellie or other members that we see tromping down the street at the end of the episode to. Do you feel like the show is trying to say that code is. Or. Or Abby is. Or an Abby is so far gone from the code that it doesn't matter. What do you think?

[Rob Mahoney]

I think I interpreted this scene as being much less about potentially Abby or potentially the wlf, who, again, we should say we have no real connection to say that those people or anyone involved with the WLF was there other than Ellie and Dina find some random gun casings and are like, this must be them.

[Joanna Robinson]

Well, and the guy Jacob being pretty sure it's them, right? When his daughter's like, is it demon?

[Rob Mahoney]

Oh, sure, sure. Well, yeah, they do call them the wolves. And so I guess we do have that connective point for sure. I think for me, it's less to me about whether Ellie and Dina are right or wrong in going out for revenge ultimately to find Abby, and more that they are, like, looking for further justification of what they're doing. Right. Because if they find all these bodies, enough bodies in horrible enough states that Dina is vomiting from the sight of them, then what they're doing is not revenge, it's righteousness. Right. Like they are on the right side of everything. And so I'm learning more about Ellie and Dina from this scene than I am necessarily Abby or the WLF in particular, just because we've seen so little of them other than, you know, the. The splendor of their. Their tanks and their. Ultimately their heart, their war hardware at this point.

[Joanna Robinson]

Splendor. You love war. Let's. Let's.

[Rob Mahoney]

Famously. Very hawkish.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. Let's hear from our listener Catherine, who says watching this episode and seeing the military, the tanks, all the soldiers, all I could think is how much gasoline is there left in this world. These big cars are not fuel efficient. Shouldn't we save bullets for infected? So Catherine has the same concerns that the people of the world of Mad Max Fury Road do. I was about to say, wondering about Bullet Town and Guzzoline. So we're mapping to Seattle.

[Rob Mahoney]

We should be mapping to Bullet Town.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, we really should. Any. Any thoughts? I mean, like, it's not up to me to figure out how to logistically have an army in the mushroom apocalypse. No, but here. Here's what I think is interesting inside of. I mean, it's a. It's a funny email, but, like, here's what I think is interesting inside of Catherine's question. And it gets to the heart of something that I think the show and the. And the game have on their mind. We're fighting each other and losing sight of the real threat, which is. Yeah, the mushroom zombies. Right. And so we're spending bullets on each other when we should be saving them for mushroom attacks.

[Rob Mahoney]

Completely.

[Joanna Robinson]

And so, you know, and something that. Sorry, really quickly. Something.

[Rob Mahoney]

No, please.

[Joanna Robinson]

You know, the show. The show has this information from Eugene via Dina that, like, the WLF is one of several sort of splinter groups and Wouldn't it be better if they all banded together? But once again, if they ban it all together, they're banning all together against Fedra, which is still human, on human violence. And not all of us together versus the mushrooms.

[Rob Mahoney]

You know, I think it's very tempting, especially with a show like this, to say, like, why aren't these people operating in a logical way? And the answer is that they're in an apocalypse. Beyond that, they're human. That's the thing. Like, yeah, like, we are fickle, emotional creatures. And the idea that. Look, given where we are in human history right now, I'm just putting myself in our current world. The idea that somebody would be distracted by something streaking by real fast, that's another group of humans with another ultimately perspective on the world, as opposed to the grave existential threats facing literally everybody who could possibly relate to such a thing.

[Joanna Robinson]

You make great points here. Yeah, I wasn't saying that. Like, this is so beyond the scope.

[Rob Mahoney]

Oh, no.

[Joanna Robinson]

Understanding this is just like. This is just, again, something that the show has on its mind for sure. It's just like the way in which our little tribes, our little definitions of us, put us in more vulnerable positions than we might be if we could think of the larger.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yes.

[Joanna Robinson]

Which we often, in our current situation and when there are mushroom zombies knocking at the door, have trouble keeping in mind, even to the point we talked about last week of Tommy, like, Pillar of the Community. General Tommy is like, actually, fuck the larger scale battle. My main priority right now is distracting people from my wife. Like that. That's. That's my us that I'm zooming in on in this moment. So I just thought that was interesting.

[Rob Mahoney]

I think that's a lot of where we are right now and goes to the town hall sequence. And so many of the themes implicit and explicit of this episode is like, what happens when push comes to shove, when you really have to make compromising choices over the collective good versus what you want. Where are you going to fall on those things? And clearly, Ellie has a very defined worldview as far as what is important to her in these moments. And it's mostly, fuck all y'all. I'm going to do my own thing. And if I can bring 16 of you along with me, all the better.

[Joanna Robinson]

But if not, I'll do it myself and.

[Rob Mahoney]

Or at least attempt to, against a tank and an army.

[Joanna Robinson]

We return now to our conversation already in progress, about the bottle versus Brick debate.

[Rob Mahoney]

Oh, sure.

[Joanna Robinson]

We did get another piece of information from our listener Eli, who wanted to Point out that the bottles in question that you use to distract from zombies are not the same bottles that you use to construct a Molotov cocktail.

[Rob Mahoney]

This is true.

[Joanna Robinson]

So there is no inherent advantage to the bottles in terms of storage or crafts. As Eli. Suffice to say, team Brick. So Team Brick is another. Another push from.

[Rob Mahoney]

We regret the error. Yeah, I misstated that the bottles were one in the same. But counterpoint, do we not get the whole bottle family? Oh, like, are we not entitled to multiple kinds of bottle?

[Joanna Robinson]

Thanks for handing me that transition. Our listener Sarah wrote in on our group name question to suggest that we should refer to the zombie horde in terms of, like, how we talk about mushroom groupings.

[Rob Mahoney]

I love this.

[Joanna Robinson]

So here are some possibilities. Clusters, rings, patches and beds. Bed of mushrooms.

[Rob Mahoney]

You don't want to be in a bed of infected. That's for sure.

[Joanna Robinson]

I don't want to be in any of these, but I think I would have the best chance with a cluster. A cluster of zombies I think I can handle.

[Rob Mahoney]

But you think you can handle a cluster?

[Joanna Robinson]

Oh, no, I can't handle one, but. But if I have any chance of surviving, it might be against the cluster. All right, what else do you want to talk about inside of this episode in a spoiler free way that we haven't yet?

[Rob Mahoney]

Joe, I would love to talk about the fact that every road trip needs a Dina. Very important. I think there's a logistics versus execution thing happening between Dina and Ellie that in some ways makes them a good team.

[Joanna Robinson]

Oh, you mean in preparedness.

[Rob Mahoney]

Oh, yes.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay. I thought you meant in coming up with fun card games. Well, that too. You meant like the airport dad situation that Dina is presenting here.

[Rob Mahoney]

Let's go, games. First, if you are going to be the person responsible for the vibes, the games, the ox, whatever your version. Yeah, yeah, whatever your version of that thing is for your trip, I would recommend something other than let's just go letter by letter through the Alphabet on whatever our chosen theme is. Like, you got to jazz it up a little bit by the time you get to Q. You know, like we're.

[Joanna Robinson]

We're in trouble and it's queen. But like the. The like Dina, I mean, she immediately pivots to a really fun game. She does.

[Rob Mahoney]

She's adaptable, just really light and breezy stuff that Ellie engages in in full faith.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay, but in the. In the non game sense. What do you want to say about Dina?

[Rob Mahoney]

Well, I mean, for one, I think it highlights a couple things about Ellie. The fact that Dina has to be the One to come into Ellie's house, into Ellie's plan and say, I know you think you're doing this, but here's what you actually need to accomplish your goals. For one, Ellie is a top line thinker who has at this point one priority which is I need to kill this woman with the braid. Like that is basically all she wants to do. Has not really put together the question marks in between set out and goal. And Dina is the only thing that I would say is actually keeping Ellie alive as far as the execution of that plan goes. There's also the element of like there are ways in which Ellie is such a self reliant person and a really capable person who's out there on patrol wiping out infected. Like very, very capable. And in some ways she's still the naive teenager in the Chucks who doesn't know better than to like, doesn't know to put boots on. And I love that at this point in the story like she's literally engaging with those ideas as she's walking through Joel's house and seeing her old room and she's like so much caught between the ideas and the realities of who she's supposed to be.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, like 19 I think is a perfect age for that. To quote the philosopher Britney Spears, not a girl, not yet a woman. But like I think, I think, I think her plan of step one, converse in a pile of guns, step two, yada yada, step three, profit is yeah, gonna get her further than me on the road to Seattle. But not would it though. Yes, I think so.

[Rob Mahoney]

I also think to Dina's credit, operation let the WLF folks get where they're going before we pursue them. I actually think it has some merits. I think, I think this is a reasonable perspective to hold for two 19 year old people who are themselves not trackers. Like if you're, if you're Ellie, you know, clearly she would have preferred all the information and she has been denied it many times in the history of the last of us. I get it. Say she had set out the next day looking for Abby and her friends or several days after as opposed to this three month time jump that we get. How if you are not someone who knows how to track people and granted maybe she has some basic skill in that department as learned from Joel or Tommy or whoever. How are you expecting to find five random ass people you don't know in the great American West?

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, vibes straight up.

[Rob Mahoney]

Like not even a compass. Just like I'm sensing animosity from this general direction. I'M just going to, like, follow my Instagram.

[Joanna Robinson]

A route planned.

[Rob Mahoney]

None.

[Joanna Robinson]

She's never been that far west.

[Rob Mahoney]

Nope.

[Joanna Robinson]

You know, so, yeah, that's a great. That's a great point. So three cheers for Dina, who remains one of the greatest characters on television right now, played by a tremendously charismatic actor. And I'm really excited that we have Dina on this road trip, but. But this is a lot of pressure for. When Craig Mason said in the official podcast, this is our us. This is our twosome now.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yes.

[Joanna Robinson]

Dina and Ellie. And that's just. I think Isabel Mercedes done such a good job. Like, an incredible job.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

And she has to fill the Joel Miller boots for the audience, and that is. That's tough for anyone. Pedro Pascal is just like, everyone wants a piece of Peter Pascal right now. He is, like, the person everyone turns to. To be your leading man. And you're asking someone to sort of, like, be Joel Miller 2.0, even though she's actually a little bit more of the. The Ellie in this dynamic.

[Rob Mahoney]

It's true. But I would say especially important because even the other people that Ellie is ostensibly close to, you know, like people like Tommy and Jesse, for example, she's kind of keeping them at arm's length, too. Like, Dina is really the only person she's trusting to the extent that she is, with something resembling close human intimacy. Everybody else, it feels like, you know, to the point about her being a liar that Gale raises, she's telling a lot of people what they want to hear, or at least what she thinks they want to hear. And I think that's ultimately a reason why her plea to the town hall falls so flat is anyone who knows her knows that it's, like, real rich that this girl who doesn't want anything to do with us is all of a sudden talking about what's good for all of us. It just. It doesn't ring true at all. Even though, technically speaking, from like, a, you know, a speechwriting standpoint, the pathos note is here. Like, we get it, but it just doesn't track for the person that she is. To the point that, like, I almost believe homophobe Seth more than I believe her. Like, what he's saying makes sense for who he is.

[Joanna Robinson]

I think that, like, Dina. Dina is someone who will not accept, like, Ellie saying, I'm just going to bed and being like, I don't think that's where you're going. Like, will not accept the. That Ellie is. Even though Ellie does lie to her. Inside of this episode, we see it happen when she tells the story of the kid Brian from Kansas City. That is half truth at best.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

And Dina has no way of knowing that necessarily. But Dina has a really good BS like meter in general. And so a lot of her reactions, a lot of her like, huh, sure, I think is, is, is really interesting for that character. So for her sort of like in the same way, and we're going to talk about this a little bit more in the spoiler section, but in the same way that Ellie, Ellie's role was to crack Joel open when Joel is like, you're just cargo, like, you know, you know, I don't want you, I don't want family, I don't want any of this. And Ellie had to relentlessly, you know, reach out for a connection to him in order to form that bond.

[Rob Mahoney]

It's true.

[Joanna Robinson]

And here is Dina in that role for Ellie as they hit the road here. So anything else you want to say?

[Rob Mahoney]

Let's, let's keep it moving. Let's go to our chat with Gabriel Luna.

[Gabriel Luna]

Season 1 of Andor had critics calling it the best Star wars series yet.

[Rob Mahoney]

Season two of the Emmy nomination series is now streaming on Disney plus.

[Gabriel Luna]

Follow Cassian Andor as he embarks on.

[Rob Mahoney]

A path from a rebel to a.

[Gabriel Luna]

Hero starring Diego Luna. And from creator Tony Gilroy, writer of Michael Clayton and the Bourne Identity. Season two of Andor is now streaming only on Disney plus.

[Rob Mahoney]

And I'm joined now by Gabriel Luna, Tommy himself. Gabriel, thanks so much for joining the show.

[Gabriel Luna]

Thank you, Rob. Thank you.

[Rob Mahoney]

Well, I mean, why don't we go straight to the emotional anguish portion of this interview? I mean, could you tell us about.

[Gabriel Luna]

Let'S just go right, just dig right in.

[Rob Mahoney]

Tell us about your experience first. Learning that Joel was going to die in this season of the Last of Us and what that was like for you kind of seeing it play out on screen as well.

[Gabriel Luna]

Well, that was the, the best and worst kept secret of, of the entire kind of Last of Us story. I was aware of it and it's such a critical part of the second game. It's, it's what allows Ellie to, to, to grow and, and figure out who she is as a person without his protection and his love. So I always knew or I always kind of just kind of expected that, that to be the case having played the game and knowing this kind of story. So when it, when it happened, you know, we, we, we kept having to avoid it all before, you know, before the show came out. Avoid talking about that scene. And everyone would ask you Know, there was, I think there was a lot of people who had played the game that went through that trauma already once before, that hoped that we would be rewriting history in a way. And, but it's such a critical element. It had to happen. And that, and that's, that's the truth of life. People die, you know, and I, and to make, to make people face that is what the story is. A huge kind of inciting incident. And, and really what makes the story what it is, you know, having just the fallout, dealing with the abrupt departure of somebody you love so much. So I knew it was always going to take place. We did a good job of keeping it secret, even though the game has been out since 2020 and anybody who, who has an Internet connection could have found out that that possibly would be happening. But once again, that's a tribute to kind of Craig and Neil keeping everybody on their toes because there was still the possibility that maybe we do change it, maybe it does happen in a different way. But yeah, I always knew it was going to happen and. But still was still as devastated as everyone else when I saw it because I kept telling everyone, you know, watch the show with someone you love and then my dumb ass watches it alone.

[Rob Mahoney]

Oh no.

[Gabriel Luna]

After getting back from WrestleMania on Sunday and my wife was already in bed and she's like, we're going to watch it tomorrow, right? And I was like, yeah. And then I ended up watching it alone in the middle of the night and it was just, just a horrible idea.

[Rob Mahoney]

Well, Tommy has his own version of that moment and kind of getting to see Joel's body alone and in complete solitude. You know, this send off for his brother to help was him to kind of start to say goodbye for you as a performer, like, where do you go, emotionally speaking, to create that kind of moment for Tommy?

[Gabriel Luna]

Well, you know, I did a lot of kind of thinking about it and preparation, anticipating it. It was equally as important as any, any of the action that happens in the second episode. This reflection, this fallout of, of the events was something that I had, you know, certainly bookmarked ahead of time and knew once that night came that it was going to be. It's going to be kind of heavy load. And you know, I was so kind of charged up for that scene. I remembered going into rehearsal and rehearsing it and already bursting into tears. The moment I say the words, give Sarah my love, and then having to check myself and recalibrate and try to reset in a way that gave myself kind of somewhere to go, because we of course, had a whole night of shooting and many different setups and a lot of different coverage we were trying to get. And, you know, you didn't want to go all the way right at the top in rehearsal. So I did ask Peter, our director, Peter Hor, to. To start with the close ups, because I was kind of already there and would. Would stand outside in the. On streets that were previously teeming with stuntmen and dogs and fire and. But to stand on that street alone by myself was really kind of powerful. And the moment I kind of walked onto the set, because we were. We were in the Jackson set, which is a whole town.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah.

[Gabriel Luna]

And the. Where the makeshift morgue is, is the restaurant where I did the big meeting where I was telling everybody the plan, you know, and now it's just riddled, you know, you know, strewn with bodies everywhere. And the. So I walk in and I see the body there, who was. It was actually a body double named Philippe. Really nice guy who went through full makeup so that I could have something kind of visceral to respond to. And the moment, you know, the moment we were in it, you know, I stopped thinking about what I had hoped the moment to be and what I. What I was planning on it being. And it just became what it was. And. And in my mind, I had thought very. I started having visions of. Of my grandfather's wake and. And how he had lost both of his sons, my father, my Uncle David. And I was his only immediate family member. He has divorced my grandmother and, you know, and his. His second wife. And so he was, as far as immediate family goes, when they allow the immediate family to view the body before everyone else comes in. Yeah, I was the only one. So it was a very easy to remember what that was like and to try to bring that experience into the scene.

[Rob Mahoney]

I mean, what is it like to tap into a memory that's. That. That personal for you, that deep for you in this really emotional, raw place? And then you look up and, yeah, you have a body double under a sheet in front of you, but you're surrounded by cameras. Like, it's. It's a lot that's being put on your shoulders as sort of the sole performer in this scene. And yet you have all this, even though it is a, you know, a well built set around you, a lot of artifice around you.

[Gabriel Luna]

Yeah, I mean, it was. It was tough because it was. I remember, you know, kind of getting to that emotional place and having, you know, my eyes well up and. But also being outside with flame bars going off all around me that were drying up all the, all the tears. But it. We. We have an incredible crew, very respectful crew and very dedicated and very invested in the story. And so, you know, these moments are. Are as precious to them as they are to us. And, and so, you know, it was easy to. To put myself into that kind of waking hallucination that. That one has to, you know, put themselves into to. To believe the imaginary moment. And so it was. Once it was in there. I mean, it was. You could hear a pin drop. And that's just kind of. That's just the nature of our crew and how. How respectful they are of the source material and of the writing and of the moment.

[Rob Mahoney]

And I mean, us getting that moment with Tommy and Joel is sort of the trade off of one of the bigger changes from the game, which is, you know, not having Tommy there at the moment of Joel's death. Right When. When you read that in the script and that kind of departure, I mean, how. How did that hit you? And kind of, what do you. Do you see that as having an impact on Tommy as a character? The fact that he wasn't there in the room? Like, how does that change Tommy's reception of this moment?

[Gabriel Luna]

Yeah, no, that was. That was a big change in the. From the game. And that was one that I had planted kind of the seed of with Craig and Neil the first season. You know, we. We. We talked about that and I, And I had told them, you know, I mentioned to them how it. For me, it didn't make sense that Tommy would be so trusting of this stranger, especially how well trained he is and especially having lived in this, you don't survive, you know, 20 plus years in this, in this world that we have of the. In the last of us by trusting everyone you come across and telling people your name. You know, so for me, it just didn't really ring true. And that was something that kind of always kind of, you know, kind of kind of irked me about the. The scene. And then the fact that this capable warrior, this person who loves Joe so much, is. Is completely incapacitated when this is all happening, unable to do anything about it. And, and so Craig took that to heart and, and came to me, you know, before we started, before he, before he. When he was breaking the story for season two, him and Neil, Druckmann and Haley and said, you know what? We thought about it, and, and he sent me a very long text about what the new plan was, which is I would be in Jackson protecting the city with Maria and the townspeople fighting off two or three bloaters. Originally it was like two or three bloaters that we were fighting. Lots of action that we shot that was all kind of cut just for. Because we had to. That. That whole scene could have been 20 more minutes long with all the stuff that we had shot. The. But. The. But you know, what it creates, as you mentioned, it creates a new dynamic and it creates a whole well of guilt that's just sitting there in his heart. Having not been there and having not been able to protect his brother, it might, you know, some choices that he may make going forward are informed in a different way because of it. And, and that's, that's all really kind of rich new, you know, territory and ground to tread. And not only for me as a performer and all of us as the performers, but for, I think for Neil and for Craig. Yeah, this is, this is an opportunity for them to, to change things, maybe do things that they wish they had done. Neil wishes he had done in the game, you know, to, to come up with new and exciting ways to, to keep themselves kind of on their toes. So, yeah, I think, I think. I think it's, you know, just all of the guilt that Tommy must feel makes it, you know, makes his choices down the road are, Are just shaded a different way.

[Rob Mahoney]

Well, you, I mean, you mentioned the, the big battle sequence you get to be a part of as a performer instead of, you know, the emotional kind of death sequen one bloater or three. That's a huge production to be a part of. I mean, you've got flamethrower in hand, you have extras all over the place. There's a lot happening. What goes into the production of a big battle sequence like that that maybe people watching or people outside of the industry wouldn't expect.

[Gabriel Luna]

How much fun I had with all of the infected, like all my friends, you know, Andrea and Mike and all these different. Keanu, stunt or fight coordinator and J. Day one of our. My Town's people. He's a. Used to be a UFC fighter. He once fought Michael Bisping and, and fought him really well for a couple rounds. You know, it's, it's, it's everybody coming to work and giving their heart and working 15, 16 hours just to, just to try to make it real, man. I mean, Danny Virtue, who, Who was our horse wrangler and all of his team, I mean, just incredible stuntman Denton Edge, Glenn Ennis, we just. Ty Provost, my stuntman, we just, we. We did it all Together and it was, you know, fake blizzard surrounding us. Hundreds of hundreds of stunt people, hundreds of background, you know, weapons blanks being fired everywhere. The, I mean huge massive pyro explosions that, you know that it's just, it was insane how much there was, how much was there and how much we did practical. And I loved how, how ready HBO was to. To be able to plant the seeds, the events so that Alex Wang are. Alex Wong, our VFX coordinator could. And his team and all the house and Weta and everyone else who helped us already had so much to go on, man. I mean that's, that's, that's, that's really, that's really the brilliance of it is how interlinked our special effects and our visual effects were, how tightly woven they were. And I, and I think that that's what kind of lends itself to the realism. It's just, it's just, you know, they, you, you mask the scene so well because so much of it was there and then you don't have to jump far into the kind of computer generated world. It's, it was, it was absolutely incredible. And, and we shot it for two and a half weeks and then I did an additional four or five days on second unit.

[Rob Mahoney]

Whoa.

[Gabriel Luna]

So man's Manson, our second unit director. I must tip my hat to him and his team and then mark my lot of course, who, who never, who never left us feeling overwhelmed and unable to accomplish and to make the day because he just, he had such a strong focus and a great plan and he, and every single day he, he communicated so clearly his vision. In the morning, you know, he'd get on the God mic and we'd all be hundreds of us sitting all around and during safety meeting and, and he just broke it down. This is what we're doing. This part, this part, this part. This is how we're doing it. And said it in such a charming British accent. Everyone maybe foolishly believed that we could possibly do it, but turns out we could.

[Rob Mahoney]

Turns out you absolutely pulled it off. And I think overall the Jackson sequences of the show have been a lot of fun. Seeing this town from the inside out and seeing that Tommy, who we know to be a joiner, getting to see him have this sense of community that's really evolved and really expanded within the world of the show. I mean he's on the council, but he's also a father. And where are you seeing those sorts of elements of Tommy's personality coming out at this stage of the season in terms of. This is A community that he's kind of ingrained himself in.

[Gabriel Luna]

Yeah, I keep bringing this up because everyone takes Joel for his word in that first season that Tommy's a follower and he's a joiner, which is, I think, more. That is colored more through his lens. Tommy is a joiner and a follower of others. As he's drifting from me, I think is the. Is the way of phrasing that, or at least that's how it's happening in Joel's mind. Yeah, I think in tatami, Tommy is in service and. And that's. That's who he is. You know, that's why he joined the army. That's why he joins the community of Jackson is to serve others. And. And it's not blindly following. It's. It. It's. It's more of a, you know, it's more of a gift of his, you know, to. And to give the gifts of his strength and his knowledge and his ability. Right. And so I think you see that and I think you got to. You get to see that in its kind of, you know, it's. It's mature form his. You know, I think being a father, of course, I think really kind of reframes everything and restructures how he likes to live, you know, how careful they are on patrol. You know, the. The protocols in place, all the TCPs that he puts in place for. For his team and how they're. They're. How they are to engage the. The. Whatever threats they face. And so that's. That's, you know, that's. That's evident in just what you see and just kind of the way he. The way he composes himself and just a little bit more kind of put together. But love still loves having fun and loves. Loves to see his niece Ellie succeed and to grow and to hone her skill. And I think he's more able to. To do that than Joel is, was, you know, because he can keep that distance. But then after Joel's passing, I think you start to see the strain that is on him. And you know what? You know, there's a moment where he kind of lashes out at Eddie. You know, his cool kind of facade breaks when he. He tells Ellie, you know, don't talk to me like I didn't know him, you know, kind of putting her. Her in her place in a way that he, you know, didn't have the. The position to do before. I think, you know, because that was Joel's responsibility, but now it's his. And, you know, I think that there's other moments where, you know, there's a full embrace of. Of his responsibility. I mean, there. I think there always is with Tommy, but I think, you know, I was talking about this in another interview where when Gail kind of calls her a liar, there's a quick, you know, there's a. There's a quick defense he runs to the defense of his family. Yeah, she's not a liar. People lie, but she's not a liar. But Gail, you know, she's very intuitive and very perceptive, and she sees things and others don't. That's why I'm there talking to her. And so it's. Yeah, it's just. It's really exciting to. To play this version of Tommy because much of this is. Is exclusive to the show and, and to, you know, into, I guess, into my individual contribution to what this thing has become. And. And then, of course, the collective and everyone else who's built this beautiful story around us. So, yeah, it's. It's been a lot of fun, and I'm really excited where we're. We're going to keep going.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah, I mean, you're right about the different version of Tommy, and you've played, I guess, like as many as three, maybe more different versions of Tommy so far. We get the glimpses of him with Joel and Sarah kind of before the world goes to hell. We get him after the world has fallen apart, but at least reunited with his brother. And now we're seeing him, you know, start to cope in a world without Joel. And for you, just in terms of how you're modulating those performances, what are the biggest differences you see in how you play those versions of Tommy?

[Gabriel Luna]

Yeah, you know, that. That first. When you first meet him, that youthful, you know, I kind of played a character that was closer to my own age a bit, and, you know, that was just. Just plain as the kind of firebrand that he is and just kind of, you know, just the. The impulsive, the. The. The young, the kind of guy that'll. That'll get into a bar fight and get thrown in jail kind of guy. And. But. But also one who still very much under the. Under the thumb of his brother. And. And then I think the second version you see is. Is him branching out on his own, but still finding his way. And. And. And this is starting to kind of accept his. His. His role and this kind of more becoming a slightly more serious person. But I think. I think when they're upon the arrival of Joel, there's like this regression back to little brother and, and, and the influence of Joel and, And his ability to kind of get what he wants out of Tommy. And then, you know, I think, I think you start to. You see him in this year, you see him in. In kind of a form, a shape, a. A someone who's. Who has his own agency, who's. Who is. Is still very much one who serves and serves his wife, who's our leader and, and his community and helps his brother build whatever needs to be built and has this like, great place, a place position that he could be proud of and then that all gets torn apart. And so where he goes from now is just a whole nother. A whole nother story. And the story really just started, but I think it's, you know, I think, I think once again, I mean, I always have to kind of tip my hat to just the way it's written down and, and makes sense to me and all of the evolutions are there and it's just kind of try to tell the truth of that and, and then maybe give myself a. You know, Craig's always laughing. I'm always training and working out, trying to stay fit for the job. And he's like, you know, you're not supposed to be in shape. You're old now. You're 55. You're supposed to just be. It's like, well, I can't. I do that with acting. I can't be out of shape running around in cowboy boots.

[Rob Mahoney]

Obviously, the Last of Us is a pretty bleak story, even on the version that we've seen so far on tv. It's also a story where you can give us Catherine O'Hara in the outfield of a T ball game, guzzling beers. And the two of you have this wonderful scene together. I'm going to need you to tell me everything about the filming of that scene and that experience. I mean, it just really popped off the screen in episode three.

[Gabriel Luna]

Well, yeah, I think it's probably just my, My, my glee at being there with her. But not only being there with her, but being there with her again. After 16 years, I, I got to work with her. We didn't have the same. We weren't in scenes together, but we were in the hair and makeup trailer together on. On an HBO film called Temple Grandin 16 years ago. And I took a photograph of us there back then, and then we recreated the photograph here 16 years in the future and, and actually posted them today side by side. And everybody's freaking laughing at how much of a baby I looked like Back then. But first of all, she's a genius. She's an absolute genius. And like many of the best dramatic actors, she has this great comedic sensibility. So there is a. What that creates. And what I said in the past is it creates this kind of. This unpredictability about her and this wide range of extremes to which she can go to the furthest extent in both those directions. And. And so there's. So there's like so many more incremental kind of nuances that. That exist between that and that. She has that. And so it's just. There's this mischief in her eyes. I mean, that is always there. And. And so I just. I mean, I just soaked it all in. I just kind of just sat there and we got to just sit there and share a couple of fake beers and watch these little kids fall down, meanwhile having this really kind of deep philosophical question about, you know, can people be changed or can. Can they be saved from themselves? And as much as I'm talking about Ellie in that moment, I'm kind of talking about myself. You know, can I. Can I call off the dogs that are kind of barking in my soul? You know? And so it's just. She's just brilliant. And. And I was so thankful for that day. I was looking forward to it the whole year because we. We had crossed paths in the hair and makeup trailer and different scenes and things. But then finally to have that scene together was really fantastic. I had my guitar with me, as I do at every. With every job I do. And I was playing Take me Out to the Ball game. Yeah. Limping around because I had pulled. Pulled my muscle pushing sleds at the gym.

[Rob Mahoney]

Oh, no.

[Gabriel Luna]

Because. Because we had wrapped. We had wrapped all the action sequence from episode two, but I didn't. And then my whole legs were super tight. You know, they're really very sore, especially my calves. Once again, running in cowboy boots. And. And then I went to the gym, man, and wasn't, you know, didn't adequately warm up because I was like, oh, I'm good. You know, stretched just a little bit. But then I was pushing sleds and pulled my left calf and. And then so the whole day I was. I remember, just hobbling around, and it was like, from the trailers to the. To the baseball field was. I mean, it was. It was a long walk.

[Rob Mahoney]

But that's like. That's your true commitment to character. You know, you. You were a little too in shape, and so you had to create a limp for yourself.

[Gabriel Luna]

There you go.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Gabriel Luna]

That. That's it. That's exactly it. I. I do lean on these old football injuries and training injuries and stuff. My. My bum, shoulder, my. My dislocated patella. All these football injuries I got back in the day. I kind of lean into those when I have to play old.

[Rob Mahoney]

Well, I mean, I feel like as an audience, you know, we love seeing scenes like that between Gale and Tommy and seeing scenes in Jackson and like our characters that we care about in a relative kind of safety, but we're also drawn to the idea of them in turmoil and the whole season obviously can't stay within the city walls. I'm curious, from your perspective, as you think about the delicate balance of this show, how do you walk the line between putting these characters in dangerous situations, putting them out on the frontier, challenging them in new ways, but also giving us the quiet sort of character moments where they can express things and be themselves, and we get to know the kind of. The emotional core of those characters.

[Gabriel Luna]

I mean, I wish I knew what goes on in Craig Mason's mind, and I wish. I wish. I wish I had that ability. I mean, I guess I have it on my. In my own kind of focused, individual perspective. But he has this incredible ability to. To be everyone, you know, to be everyone's voice. And. But. But for all the voices to be so distinct and for all of us to remember our histories and to keep our histories and to. And to have those. Those paths, those. And the way that they have have crossed in the past still reverberate and resonate in every present moment, in every discussion. And it's just, he's. He's incredible, and that's what makes him the writer that he is. You know, I think that that's why you get these kind of cool little nuanced moments among characters, is because they know each other. So Craig knows them all so well, and he also knows how they all bounce off of each other. And. And so we can. We can do what we need to do and sensationalize the moments that we need to have in the show to keep people excited. But then what really keeps them coming back is just the quiet, cool moments, like the discussion with Gail and. And. Or, you know, all the beautiful scenes between Bella and Izzy in. In with Ellie and Dina's stuff. You know, they have so many cool little. Just little looks and little, you know, kind of in this last episode. I just watched it last night, and I was just so. Just so impressed. And there's such a sweetness there in their discovery of that love And. And, you know, that's. That's kind of where we are with our show and the way our camera ops work and our dps, Cassinya and Catherine and our directors and. And just the show as a whole. It's all these moments that we shouldn't be seeing, you know, and we feel like we feel so close to the characters. So, so close. And. And.

[Joanna Robinson]

And.

[Gabriel Luna]

But it's just these amazing, insane, you know, these really amazing moments and really funny, funny stuff that plays out, especially between Bella and Dina. You know, it's like the whole discussion about the kiss and how kind of, you know, how Bell is trying to play cool and. And then, of course, playing cool on the horse later on, which is really funny. Like I keep saying my favorite. My favorite line. It's just completely thrown away. It's the. In the whole. It's just like, you know, it's quiet. Oh, no, it's too quiet.

[Rob Mahoney]

You gotta do it. If it's right there, you gotta take it.

[Gabriel Luna]

And I just love. They love those Curtis and Viper movies so much. Joe loved them. And. And. And they. They've inherited this love of Curtis and Viper. And they mention it so many times. It's like the only. And. And I can resonate with that because when I was a kid, I had one VHS tape that. The movie Breaking the Last Dragon, and. And. And Return of the Jedi.

[Rob Mahoney]

And so that's quite a triple feature, I gotta say.

[Gabriel Luna]

Yeah, dude, the Last Dragon's great. If you ever seen Bruce Leroy, it's a great movie. But the. So it's just those three, you know, I can totally see that. These kids, they only have Curtis and Viper and have watched it, you know, a million times. And so they were like, you know, who says that? Curtis Reviper. She's like, both in all four movies. I was just like, God, it's so good. It's just. Yeah. Shared histories.

[Rob Mahoney]

Gabriel, thanks so much for your time. This has been a total treat.

[Gabriel Luna]

Yeah, thank you, Rob. Appreciate it, brother. Appreciate your thoughtful questions.

[Rob Mahoney]

Hey, anytime. Yeah, we're really enjoying the show.

[Joanna Robinson]

That was an incredible chat that I've definitely already heard and really insightful.

[Rob Mahoney]

You can take my word for it. Gabriel was a delight.

[Joanna Robinson]

Oh. I mean, he is a delight. So I'm jealous that you got to talk to him. Okay, so this is the spoiler section. How can we make it any clearer? I don't know, but these are where game spoilers are fair play.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yes.

[Joanna Robinson]

So that is what we will be talking about.

[Rob Mahoney]

We will say things that, if you are just Watching the show. You do not want to know. This is your fair warning. Like, I really don't know how much more clear we can make it. I want to give you appropriate time to turn off this podcast right now.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay. I'm trying to think of, like, what's the. What's the least sort of abrasive way I can start this, just in case they're being slow. Talk about the Jesse question. So we get this. This conversation where Dina is talking to Ellie in the tent about Jesse. Yeah. And his sadness. And I'm curious, you know, this is. I'm curious what you think this is laying track for with Jesse, because it feels like it's an attempt to deepen our understanding of this. A character that I quite like in the game. But, like, what do you think? What do you think they're up to here with this?

[Rob Mahoney]

I honestly don't know. And it did strike me as kind of an odd line because, yeah, Dina's saying, you know, if. If I can't come up with the reason why he's just organically sad, then it must be me and girl, maybe it's the apocalypse. Like, everyone is pretty bummed out. I don't know what to tell you.

[Joanna Robinson]

Don't have chocolate chips anymore. We have to put dried fruit in our fucking cookies.

[Rob Mahoney]

Maybe just a bizarre, like, framing of his entire deal. But, yeah, I don't really know. This idea of him as a sad. Like a fundamentally sad character or one at least that we know is kind of lost within his relationship with Dina. Right. They've broken up and gotten together a bunch of different times. It's just one of those things. And clearly something about that is not satisfying to him. I will say that part makes sense, given what we do know about Jesse from this portrayal in particular, which is, you know, not only was Joel kind of a member of this community, not only is Tommy really a pillar of the community, Jesse is, like, present and future tense leadership. Right. Like, he is kind of being groomed in this role to. As a. Now a member of the council, as somebody who's really important, as somebody who is picking up that hammer and just. Just building shit. Just. Just really, really making things happen. And I'll. I'll just say it looks positively yoked in the process.

[Joanna Robinson]

I didn't know that Henley's came in short sleeves, but Jesse knows.

[Rob Mahoney]

Young Mizino knows, you know, like, his workout regimen knows. That's for sure.

[Joanna Robinson]

I think. I think it's really interesting. Okay. So, like, I think a job that this episode does you know, there I saw plenty of people say this felt like a filler episode. I once again implore you to look up what a filler episode is. This is not what this is. But I think a lot of what this. This episode is showing is sort of like what is at risk. So to highlight Tommy so much here. Okay, let me. Quick pause. Do you think Tommy is in front of them on the way to Seattle, or do you think he's going to follow them to Seattle?

[Rob Mahoney]

I think he's going to follow them. And so I did talk to, you know, you haven't heard that chat yet, Joe. I did talk to Gabriel a little bit about kind of Tommy's motivations within this story. And we purposely, like, did not get into what is going to happen in the show.

[Joanna Robinson]

Right.

[Rob Mahoney]

But most importantly, this idea that how him, not how Tommy not being present for Joel's death changes the way he experiences that event and processes it. Right. Like, it would hit him in a totally different way, feeling like I couldn't even be there, even as opposed to I was there and got clocked and knocked out, and all of a sudden my brother is dead. And so I think there's. I think any version of Tommy, game or show would go after any version of Ellie if they found out that this was the case. If Ellie and Dina went out on their own, I do think Tommy would go, especially given everything that they've both just been through.

[Joanna Robinson]

Right.

[Rob Mahoney]

But now it comes. It would come at a totally different cost with Tommy being a father. Right. This idea that he would be willing to risk his life for his surrogate niece, even at the risk of leaving his kid fatherless.

[Joanna Robinson]

Right. So we should say in the game, in case you're listening to the spoiler section and you haven't played the game that Tommy takes off first.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yes.

[Joanna Robinson]

In the dead of night, basically, to prevent Ellie from, like, straight up the.

[Rob Mahoney]

Next day after Joel's death. Basically, like, no three months, like, he is off on the road, and then Ellie and Dina are in pursuit. Pursuit of Tommy, following, like, oh, yeah, yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

Dead bodies and other things on the. On the hunt for him, the trail.

[Rob Mahoney]

But their job ostensibly is to bring Tommy back. That's kind of like why they are sent out, is to bring Tommy home.

[Joanna Robinson]

Bring my husband home.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yes.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay. So all of that's true. So seeing so much of Tommy in this episode, this is just like a great Tommy is a member of the community episode. Seeing Jesse's role inside of the community. And then the third element, I will say there's Been some question or pushback on the rollout of the Ellie Dino relationship. Like, why. Why are we doing a sort of, like, slightly slow burn? Well, they won't. They instead of. They're already a thing. They have sex and, you know, before Joel dies, et cetera, et cetera. I think what we're really building here is. Is a. What was lost on the road here. So to go through it, Tommy, if he gets his same ending as he does in the game, Tommy sort of like losing his. Like, losing everything. We need to understand what Tommy is to this community. Jesse dying.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

Presumably before this season is over.

[Rob Mahoney]

I think. So timing wise, that would make sense.

[Joanna Robinson]

What that rips out of Jackson, like, what Ellie's quest rips out of Jackson, which is his future leadership. Right. And then Dina and Ellie again, if. I mean, they have to have the same ending, like their relationship not working out in the end, we have to see how hard one that was for Ellie in the first place. How hard it was for Ellie to form that relationship. How many. How many of her insecurities she had to battle through. How much, like, uncertainty and doubt. How good we'll feel when these two, like, you know, figure it out and get together and then how devastating it will be to lose that. So I think watching the work that goes into these two young women figuring it out together, I think will ultimately pay off in the loss of it later. That's how I'm choosing to interpret it.

[Rob Mahoney]

I thought you also made a great point, Joe, on House of Ar about the way that when you do the time jump, and I'm not sure what the order of operations is like, did they decide to do a time jump and then had to kind of reverse engineer some of the stuff around Dina's pregnancy to make that timeline make sense? Or did they later add the time jump because they wanted some other different story changes? I think we'll have to see kind of as we go. But that change in the timeline, given that Dina is pregnant, kind of has to happen if you're going to have this sort of time jump. I also think, like, so that could be some of why Dina is being a little bit cagey. A little bit. Will they. Won't they. A little bit frustrating in terms of her conversations with Ellie. Like, that stuff tracks and makes sense to me. I also think moving the conversation from. Again, this whole conversation that Dina and Ellie have about the kiss originally happens in the game while they are on patrol before Joel's death, when they're kind of like, snowed in to the growhouse to Eugene's grow house. Moving it from there to here when they're on the road, I think changes the stakes of that conversation a lot. Because if, say they're at the grow house and that conversation goes a little sideways, it's kind of a fraught talk. I think Dina has a lot of indications that Ellie is into her. But sometimes you can have every indication and things still get super weird.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

Worst case scenario, you go back to Jackson, you go to your respective corners, you give each other a little space. Everything could be fine. Dina doesn't have that luxury here. Like, if this conversation goes badly or goes poorly or all of a sudden they are alienated or putting distance between each other like that, that could be like life and death consequences because they are all that each other have right now.

[Joanna Robinson]

That is such a good point. That this is the us.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

And if we have. If we have a breakup before we even get started moment on the road, it's like, what do we even do here?

[Rob Mahoney]

All of that said, I did like this version. Well, enough of the like rate the kiss conversation. I think I was missing some of not to be the but the games but the books guy. I was missing some of the snowed in intimacy of that scene of the original.

[Joanna Robinson]

The tent's not doing it for you. A little lamplit tent, a little severance moment for you.

[Gabriel Luna]

You're not.

[Rob Mahoney]

I don't mind a lamp lit tent. I think what I'm missing is there's something about that original scene where because they're out on patrol and they have to duck into this random convenience store that turns out to be Eugene's grow house, there is like a teenager sneaking a private moment when they're supposed to be at work kind of thing. That's very sweet and endearing. And I think you just lose with some of this, like, oh, we're just adults on our own out on the road. It just gives it a very different vibe that I can appreciate on its own terms. And certainly the way these characters are developing in more of a slow burn way. But it's tangibly different for sure.

[Joanna Robinson]

Dina, pregnancy watch. I mean, the. This was like, I guess a vague question mark of like, are they actually going to. I just don't know how you do this game of, oh, she has to be pregnant. Yeah. So we. We get her throwing up in a. I think a very clear clue of we are definitely doing Dina's pregnancy. Why wouldn't we? At least it's.

[Rob Mahoney]

I think it's well hidden within the bodies yes.

[Joanna Robinson]

No, I think, I think if you watch that scene, you don't know. I think vomiting at the sight of a pile of bodies in the woods is legit.

[Rob Mahoney]

And some of that is character based too, of this idea of like Ellie has been. We know Ellie's history. We don't exactly know where Dina was brought up, what she's been exposed to. Like, clearly anyone who's lived she's so.

[Joanna Robinson]

So far. Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

Clearly anyone who's lived this long in the world of the show has seen some death. But that doesn't mean you've seen a whole crew of people and children slaughtered by bullets.

[Joanna Robinson]

Right. Because in this section of the game where Dina asks about the first person they killed.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

She tells a story about like her mom and protecting her mom and stuff like that. So we hear some of like Dina's. What Dina has had to do to survive this long. She wasn't like brought up in the confines of Jackson.

[Rob Mahoney]

No.

[Joanna Robinson]

No. Okay. On the Ellie and Dina future front.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

Did you ping the way that some other game players pinged on the sort of. Oh, waving wheat of the graveyard? Did it look similar to the farmhouse setting to you?

[Rob Mahoney]

It does look quite similar. I honestly didn't make the connection in real time, but you're absolutely right. And the kind of like broad landscapes, I think like the vastness of all of those scenes at the graveyard definitely call back like the farm and kind of where we're ultimately going to go and sort of this idea of the us. Right. Like, of, you know, that is Ellie and having a moment with Joel all alone, like there was no one else around other than, I guess, a bunch of dead bodies in the graveyard and Dina kind of waiting respectfully on horseback a little ways away. And part of what is so serene about the farm is that it's like it is Dina and Ellie's little enclave off by themselves. They are kind of removed from everything else. And so that kind of thematic callback I think is probably on the creators minds.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. And I'm wondering if they're setting up a future visual parallel they can draw of like Ellie leaving Dina and Ellie saying goodbye to Joel. You know what I mean? Like, like, okay, so on that front and this, this I think is. I think it's so clear that Ellie is lying to Gail when she says she didn't have another conversation with Joel before he died.

[Rob Mahoney]

Is there ambiguity about that?

[Joanna Robinson]

Some people are wondering if, if, if we'll get A, we'll get the porch scene at all or B, if the porch scene is Just in Ellie's mind, a wished for conversation.

[Rob Mahoney]

Guys, we're gonna get the porch scene.

[Joanna Robinson]

On the other. Yes, I agree. On the flip side, I will say, do you think the coffee beans that she leaves there, which is, you know, been a longish running, you know, Joel conversation, but do you think that's a reference? Because there's like a line in the game where Joel is drinking coffee and he's like, says he's embarrassed to tell her what he traded for the cup of coffee. So it's like one of the last things that they talked about was, like, how much he would give anything for a cup of coffee. So is that so? Some people took that as like, confirmation that the porch scene was gonna happen.

[Rob Mahoney]

I don't know that we need confirmation that scene is going to happen. Everything that Ellie tells Gale is a lie.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

So why would that part not be a lie?

[Joanna Robinson]

Exactly. I agree. What are you most looking forward to in next week's episode based on? Did you watch the trailer for.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah, I watched the trailer. I mean, I'm most looking forward to, you know, to our previous conversation about, like, where we're prioritizing the bullets and all this, like, one of the most exciting sequences of the game in the sense that you're kind of pinned between the WLF and the infected and you're having to kind of toggle these threats back and forth and leverage them against each other. And clearly, two 19 year olds in the middle of a city they don't know, surrounded by an army is a pretty dire situation. And so, like, how they want to portray that chaos within the world of the show, I'm really excited by. This is a show that, even though it's very sparing in its violence and action, usually really pays off with the suspense and ultimately the terror of those moments. I'm really looking forward to see how they manage that.

[Joanna Robinson]

We know from the trailer they're doing the subway sequence, which is particularly harrowing.

[Rob Mahoney]

It's not fun.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's really tough. And then anything, I guess. I want to talk to you about the Seraphites in a second. Yeah. A group that you did not want to name in our spoiler free section. But, like, is there anything, I guess for the rest of the season, is there, like, what is your most anticipated moment? Do you have one? Not know? We don't know where we're gonna end.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

But, like, do you have a moment? You're like, I can't wait to see what they do with this.

[Rob Mahoney]

I think I just can't wait to See, I mean, the pregnancy reveal, Dina's pregnancy reveal to Ellie is one I'm definitely looking forward to. I would say, really the future of Ellie and Dina's relationship within this portion of the story, given how much has been reconfigured to this point. And so we're still like, you know, there's this stray part of this previous conversation that wasn't there. Did it get excised or is it being repurposed and moved around here? Like, I'm kind of waiting to see some of those things. And in particular, as Jesse kind of gets caught back up into the story and how they're going to manage that, given everything we just said about how important he is in the community and he's being pinched in a way that Ellie is being pinched in the way that Tommy is being pinched. These very personal costs versus whatever debt or whatever they think they owe to kind of Jackson as a society. I love Jesse as a character and I honestly love him in the show even more than I ever did in the game, where I think he's a good vibes based addition in the game and such a necessary antidote of humor. I think they're really building him out to be something that as you alluded to, like highlights what is at stake here and what these characters have to lose and what we kind of like the broader society of Jackson has to lose. I was, I was thinking about that a lot as we're kind of going through this episode and we go through, you know, the vote at the city council and it's eight to three and people have already started kind of reverse engineering like, okay, who voted for what? Yeah, it never occurred to me for a second that Jesse would vote for Ellie's plan. I just don't think like for as much as Ellie means to him, that's someone who cares about the city, who cares about the safety of everyone there. And like this is a city that's still licking its wounds from a massive infected attack. That a number of them are dead, they're like fewer than ever in terms of the people that can actually protect that city. And you want to take 16 of the most able bodied people in Jackson on a revenge road trip. Like that doesn't seem like something that this version of Jesse would be down for.

[Joanna Robinson]

What about some of like, what about like mid bodied people? Can we take some of the mid tier people on our revenge?

[Rob Mahoney]

Are you gonna tell them that they're mid? Like, are you gonna put them on an evaluation? What's happening?

[Joanna Robinson]

If you pick the Top tier. You've already implied who the mid tier is. You know what I mean?

[Rob Mahoney]

So you gotta go some top tier, some mid tier. So they think they're top tier.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

And a couple of lower tier, but who have very specialized skills. That might be important, you know?

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay. Sound like a. Like a forager, someone who knows poison plants.

[Rob Mahoney]

If you can find a truffle.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

You're coming with us.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay. Rob a pig on the road to.

[Rob Mahoney]

Seattle or even, frankly, look like Seth on one leg. I don't care. That guy knows how to make a steak sandwich. Like, we need him out there, and.

[Joanna Robinson]

He'S got a lot of anger inside of him.

[Rob Mahoney]

Certainly does.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay. Seraphite intro. This is. Oh, I will say for. For me, what I'm most looking. What I'm most curious about is, is given, you know, we get, other than a sheet wrap body, no Pedro Pascal in this episode, we get, you know, no Joel mushroom figure in the opening credits, all this sort of stuff like that. We do know that inside the game, there are some flashbacks. We have seen in the trailers that there are some flashbacks. How much restraint are they gonna have around that? How often are we gonna go back to that? Well, you know, if it were me and I had Pedro Pascal in my back pocket, would I be able to resist putting him in, like, a little bit of him in every episode or a lot of him at once? Like, what would I. What would I do? It's very tough for the rest of the season, so that's. That's something I'm interested in.

[Rob Mahoney]

I do want to give Craig Mason and Neil Druckmann credit a firm salute for this episode in particular, for not having any Joel in this episode other than his body under the sheet. Granted, all those flashbacks exist, and many of them are quite important. Like getting the Science Museum flashback has to be there at some point. Getting, of course, the confrontation between Joel and Ellie about what's on the recorded tape, kind of revealing the truth of what Joel did. That's really important. Those things have to happen at some point over the next two seasons or season and change. Having him out of this episode is the only way that it works. And it's the only way that all the twists and turns of the Last of Us, they only pay off because you can feel the weight of them. And you only feel the weight of it in this episode because of that feeling of absence and because you're seeing all these characters coming to terms with what life without Joel is for them, in whatever respect that might be true. And so yeah, it's tempting to have little flashes of Pedro here and there because everyone wants to see him and wants to see Joel back on screen, even if it isn't a flashback. But I'm a little worried we're gonna get into. Just by the nature of how many are still left on the board and how important they are, are we going to get one an episode the rest of the way? Is he just going to be, like a series regular even though he's dead?

[Joanna Robinson]

Must be nice to collect series regular pay. Did you see, as part of the Entertainment Weekly cover story that they did, and they did the photo shoot with Caitlin Deaver at Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal, and Caitlin and Bella were talking about, you know, how tricky it was going to be to navigate people's feelings about this and blah, blah, blah.

[Rob Mahoney]

Sure.

[Joanna Robinson]

And Pedro was like, like, so glad I don't have to deal with it. He was like, sorry, I'm out of the junket. That's really funny. Okay.

[Rob Mahoney]

On the.

[Joanna Robinson]

On you. So on your request in the Spoilers free section for moral ambiguity, I think we can find no clearer case than the introduction of the Seraphites in. In this episode. We meet the Seraphites on the road, and this is perhaps like a splinter group, you know, given that they give this little girl a weapon, which seem. You know what I mean, Seems counter to the more extremist versions of the Seraphites. So this idea that, like, hashtag not all Seraphites or whatever it is that we're trying to learn from this group on the road is. Does that feed your desire for ambiguity in terms of who's the. Who are the good guys, who are the bad guys here?

[Rob Mahoney]

Definitely. I mean, especially because we get so much of a counterpoint of that for the wlf, right? Like, they're members of the WLF who are well meaning in their way, or have these codes, have these regiments, like, believe in a cause, and then there are people who are like, you know what? I think we probably just need to kill whoever we need to kill. If they're Seraphites, if they're children, if they're prophets, like, whoever it needs to be. Like, sometimes you just got to take people off the map. And so there are these clear divisions between these groups. So it's like, why wouldn't the Seraphites. Why wouldn't you expand the sort of, like, apostate idea or this idea of, like, the people who want to get out or believe in some teachings, but not all that tracks as a very human thing to me.

[Joanna Robinson]

I think that it's really interesting that the only member of the WLF we see in this episode that we know is Manny. Manny, who's, like, the most baditude of all the. All of Abby's crew. Right. We're not checking in with Mel. We're with Manny, and he's being a dick, as he always is. And so it's just sort of like if you're watching at home and you're not ready to have more empathy for Abby and her crew, you get to spend time with Manny and the Space Needle.

[Rob Mahoney]

Honestly, at least it's seen it goes. You know, it's a great. It's a great job. It's a great spot. Good for Manny. It's a good detail.

[Joanna Robinson]

I'd be really excited for that gig. But my question is, I mean, well, no, they have electricity, obviously, but, like. Oh, yeah, Is that elevator working in the. In the Space Needle, or are you climbing?

[Rob Mahoney]

It's a great question. I think in the game, you do a lot of climbing. And they did seem like, especially in the show, they seemed kind of wowed and impressed by the level of electricity and the generator and the sophistication of the infrastructure in Jackson. I'm guessing, like, the WLF compound that we're gonna see in the show, or kind of the base, ultimately, that we see in the show. The FOB is. I mean, it is more of a tent city. Right. It is a little bit more provisional than everything we see going on in Jackson.

[Joanna Robinson]

I'll come back to this thing I was alluding to in our spoiler free section. This idea that, like, if Ellie is in the Joel position and Dina is in the Ellie position in this twosome, and Dina's making a bid for connection, intimacy, then we're watching. We watched in season one, Joel succeed to a certain degree. There's complications here. But to succeed to a certain degree, in terms of finding community.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

In a way that Ellie is going to fail. There are major differences, obviously, across these two characters, not the least of which is, like, Joel isn't tracking down who killed Sarah. Like, he doesn't have this, like, clear target preoccupying his. His brain and heart space. But I think that's an interesting study in contrast, which, you know, both the game and the show are so interested in pursuing.

[Rob Mahoney]

Well, let me circle back to that right there. Like, do you think Ellie fails in finding that kind of community with Dina? Because I think what makes her course so tragic is that she kind of does have it. She's just so blind to it because of all this rage that she doesn't know what to do with.

[Joanna Robinson]

We did get an email from our listener Joey, who was sort of, like, pushing back on this idea that, like, you know, he. He was talking about Ellie removing herself from the family unit, almost like, for them to. If you want to interpret it that way, a fail is too judgmental a word. It's not. It's not one I actually really want to use, but, like, isn't able to.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

Have a. At least, you know, have a happily ever after with Dina in a way that Joel maybe could have if, you know, the consequences of his own actions hadn't come knocking, you know, And I.

[Rob Mahoney]

Think it was an active pursuit of. Right. Like, Joel had reached a level of peace in terms of at least his relationship with Ellie and kind of what he. The family, he was trying to rebuild.

[Joanna Robinson]

Right.

[Rob Mahoney]

Ellie keeps getting diverted from that idea in terms of, like, even though at this point in the show, Dina herself is a little wishy washy in terms of what she's after and her motivations and I guess, her sexuality in general. And so, like, all of that is kind of up for grabs in the world of the show. But ultimately, if it's following the path of the game, which I expect it will, they have a relationship, and it's a really meaningful one, and they're gonna have really important bonding moments over the next couple episodes, probably until Dina has to go back.

[Joanna Robinson]

I'm not saying their relationship is unimportant or not beautiful in many ways and stuff like that. Just in terms of, like. I don't know, though, I guess. I don't know. A reckoning comes for both Ellie and Joel. Just in different ways, I guess. Maybe that's a different way, I think.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah. Ellie, in some ways at this point is even more closed off than Joel was. Like, I found it really telling, you know, she has that conversation with Dina on horseback when they're talking about the first people that they killed. And it's like Ellie can't even comprehend that Dina would feel sorry for the fact that Ellie had to shoot someone. She's like, why are you feeling sorry for me and not the person that I killed? The fact that she's that closed off from even her own pain and her own emotions, I think really speaks to where she is at this point in the story.

[Joanna Robinson]

Anything else you want to say here in our spoiler section about episode three? Rob Mahoney.

[Rob Mahoney]

One final note, Joe, about the Seraphites. I actually do think we talked about the balance of the moral ambiguity that they're introducing with that group. I also think it's just a really deft play of the casual sort of expansion of this world as we're being introduced to like this pocket of characters we don't really know that's gonna die within the episode. What does that mean in all the different senses? Like, there's clearly the WLF vs. Seraphite part of that. There's also just this introduction of this idea that for one, things are a little stranger out west than Ellie and Dina may be used to. Right. Like there's these whole pockets of people that they don't know and don't understand. And also that there are just so many ways to live out here. And we've seen the version of that where you try to make a little town for yourself. We haven't really seen the version of that where you try to make a weird ass cult for yourself. But I look forward to seeing it more on screen.

[Joanna Robinson]

I mostly agree with you. I was thinking about that. I just, you know, I never want us to forget Cannibal David and his weird Bible based community last year.

[Rob Mahoney]

That's almost more like Jackson adjacent. Like it's kind of a. It's a straight up town town.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's true.

[Rob Mahoney]

It's just a cannibal town.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's true.

[Rob Mahoney]

There's Bullet Town and there's Cannibal Town. They're. They're neighboring counties, but they both get it done.

[Joanna Robinson]

The apocalypse sounds like a delight. It sounds so fun. All right, well, that does it for us here. We'll be back again with your Friends and Neighbors episode this week. We'll be back, of course, again with episode four of the Last of Us next week where we'll have more exciting interviews. I'm really excited about our interview next week and thanks for listening. Thanks to Donny Beacham for his work on this episode and Justin Sales for his work on this feed. And we'll see you soon.

[Rob Mahoney]

And thank you to Gabriel Luna for joining us for this episode.

[Joanna Robinson]

Absolutely. And we'll see you soon. Bye.