The Last of Us Season 2 premiere is almost upon us, and we are extremely excited to see the show adapting the events from the second TLOU game. However, it has been more than two years since the first season premiered, so fans may have forgotten what they saw in Season 1. So, here’s a brief The Last Of Us Season 1 recap of all the major events that occurred in the first season.
The Cordyceps Fungus Takes the World Down in 2003
It all begins in September 2003 in The Last of Us Season 1. Humanity falls prey to the Cordyceps Fungus, which eventually starts taking over their brains, turning them into walking dead. As Joel explains in Episode 2, the fungus chose the food supply as the medium to enter human bodies.
The first episode introduces us to Joel Miller, his daughter Sarah, and his brother Tommy, who try to flee in their truck to survive the calamity. However, they get stuck in traffic, where they witness a plane crash and a fleet of human-turned-zombies attacking normal humans. To avoid all the chaos, Joel picks Sarah up in his arms and starts running; Tommy gives them backup.
On their way, they come across a soldier who points a gun at them. Joel tells him that they aren’t infected, but the soldier doesn’t show any mercy to them and shoots them. Joel dodges the attack, but unfortunately, Sarah can’t, and she dies in the arms of her father.
20 Years Later: Joel’s Encounter With Ellie
Twenty years pass, but Joel is still haunted by his daughter’s tragic death. However, he didn’t have any choice, so as a last resort, he had to become a smuggler to survive. He starts working with another survivalist named Tess. The duo holds the responsibility to smuggle weapons, drugs, and other goods without coming under FEDRA’s surveillance. They are often given the duty of burning the dead bodies for FEDRA.
Marlene, the leader of the militia group Fireflies in The Last of Us, asks Joel and Tess to deliver Ellie to their headquarters. However, she does not reveal much about the mission to the duo. Initially, Ellie and Joel stay cold towards each other, with the latter seeing the former just as cargo. However, soon, they start seeing family in each other.
Tess Makes a Heroic Choice
While exploring the wasteland of Boston, Tess, Joel, and Ellie get attacked by clickers. They fight the deadly creatures, but Tess and Ellie get bitten by them during the run. Tess has been skeptical about Ellie since the beginning, but the incident in the museum made things clear to her.
She doesn’t take much time to realize that Ellie is immune to the infection. So, Tess decides to sacrifice herself and asks Joel to take Ellie with him and not to stop until he delivers her to the Fireflies.
When the fleet of the infected breaks through the museum’s door, Tess catches sight of one of the walking dead, who kisses her. That’s when she lights the floor on fire and accepts her dark fate with open arms.
A Love Story We Didn’t See Coming
There’s no argument that the third episode of The Last of Us Season 1 was one of the best episodes of the series. Who would have thought that a post-apocalyptic story would bless fans with such an artistic episode?
We meet Bill, who is spending his days alone in the land of the dead, in this episode. He has no one to talk to or share his life with, but he is satisfied that he has a place to stay and food to eat. However, one day, a man named Frank shows up out of nowhere.
Frank enters Bill’s life as just a survivor who wants to have lunch because he has been starving for days. However, he ends up becoming the most integral part of Bill’s life. Years pass, and they grow old; Frank develops a disease that leads him to a wheelchair. The television show doesn’t reveal the name of the disease, though.
Frank becomes totally dependent on Bill, and that starts troubling him. So, one day, he asks Bill to help him go to eternal sleep. Bill does as his partner asks him to, but he also makes sure he doesn’t have to live an extra day without Frank. Bill leaves a letter and the key to his truck for Joel and clearly instructs him not to enter the bedroom.
Sam and Henry’s Tragic End
The viewers had not yet recovered from the trauma the third episode gave them when the TLOU series gave them another opportunity to shed tears. In the fourth episode, Ellie and Joel’s road trip leads them to Kansas city, where they get ambushed by the members of a rebellion group led by a woman named Kathleen.
Kathleen is after Henry, who escaped the group after stealing medicines for his 8-year-old brother, Sam. Henry sees Joel fight the rebels, so he decides to help Ellie and Joel find a way out in order to make them clear the way for him and his brother.
Sam and Ellie start growing closer, and the former starts seeing his sister in the latter. Just when they thought things were going as per their will, Sam develops the symptoms of the infection. So, Henry has to shoot him, but he can’t live with the guilt, so he kills himself within a few seconds of killing his little brother.
Joel and Tommy Reunite
After burying the bodies of Sam and Henry, Joel and Ellie head towards the West. On their way, they come across a group of Scouts. After the group is convinced that the duo isn’t infected, they take them to Jackson’s gated community. Joel sees Tommy and the brothers reunite after two decades.
He also learns that Tommy is married to Maria and that they are soon to be parents. After spending some time with his brother, Joel decides to leave Ellie with him as he will take good care of the girl. However, Ellie overhears the conversation, but she decides to stick with Joel no matter how dangerous the path gets.
Ellie and Riley’s Emotional End
The Last Of Us Season 1 brings Ellie’s best friend Riley into the picture through a flashback, in which we see our beloved protagonist in the boarding school led by FEDRA. Riley is her best friend, whom Marlene approached to ask her to join the Fireflies after being impressed with her sneaking skills.
So, before leaving the city, she wanted to spend some quality time with Ellie, as she was the most important person to Riley. So, the duo goes to a mall, where Riley stuns Ellie with all the amazing setups, including making her play Mortal Kombat in the Arcade.
However, things soon went south, and the girls got attacked by an infected. Even though Ellie killed him, she couldn’t prevent getting bitten. That was the day when she realized that she was immune to the infection. However, Riley wasn’t immune, so she turned into infected, and Ellie had to kill her.
Well, neither the game nor the series showcased the scene, but as Ellie tells Joel that she had to kill someone in the past, she clearly indicates that it was her best friend.
Ellie Comes Across a Cannibalistic Cult
Ellie and Joel are attacked by raiders, one of whom leaves the latter on the verge of death. Ellie can’t let that happen, so she takes Joel to the basement of an abandoned house and helps him heal. Previously, Joel had taken the lead, but now it was her turn to keep the man safe.
One day, while tracking down a deer, she comes across David, who portrays himself as a good guy. However, as the story moves forward, David starts showing his true colors, and Ellie learns about the cannibalistic nature of his cult.
David and his men capture Ellie and imprison her so that they can feed on her. However, when the men try to kill her, she bravely escapes and hides in the kitchen. After struggling a bit, she slashes David’s body with the knife that the evil man wanted to use on her. After escaping captivity, she reunites with Joel.
The Reason Behind Ellie’s Immunity Is Revealed
The final episode of The Last Of Us Season 1 opens with a pregnant woman who is running from an infected. She gets into an abandoned house, but can’t avoid the infected, who have been chasing her. Her water bag breaks on the run, and while fighting the infected, she delivers a baby, whom she names Ellie. Marlene arrives at the location after several hours. Anna hands Ellie over to her and gets shot by Marlene.
Later in the episode, Marlene explains to Joel that Ellie was born after the infected bit her mother, so she was born with the fungus in her system. That’s why the infected believe her to be one of them, as she has been the ‘chemical messenger’ since birth.
The Last OF Us Season 1’s Anti-Climactic Finish
After waking up at the Fireflies headquarters and learning about the surgery that the doctors are planning to conduct on Ellie, Joel runs to save her. He kills every guard in his way and rushes toward the operation theatre. He kills the doctor and asks the nurses to unhook Ellie.
After that, he picks her up, just like he picked Sarah when the outbreak took place. In the basement, Marlene appears and points a gun at him, but Joel kills her before she can attack him.
Later, he tells Ellie a fabricated story about doctors failing in the trials they conducted on other immune people, so they don’t want to spend more time finding a cure. After that, he states that the hospital was attacked by the raiders, so he had to pick her up without waking her up and flee from the location.
Source: Beebom
