The Monitor is a weekly column dedicated to the whole lot taking place within the WIRED world of tradition, from motion pictures to memes, TV to Twitter.
The Final of Us is bumming everybody out. Largely as a result of the HBO collection’ juggernaut first season ended on Sunday, starting the lengthy arduous watch for a second season. But in addition as a result of The Final of Us is admittedly freaking unhappy. The collection started with a person watching his daughter die, and ended with him capturing his method via a makeshift hospital to make sure one other child didn’t meet the same destiny. In between, everybody died or killed (or ate) somebody, and in need of some homosexual gardening, there have been few odes to pleasure.
And really, regardless of chatter on-line decrying the present’s dour denouement, that was the purpose.
Look, I get why curling up on the sofa to stare at a giant pile of bleak isn’t everybody’s favourite factor to do. Banks are collapsing, Joe Unique desires to run for president—doubling down in your Sunday scaries with The Final of Us is just not a selection everybody desires to make. However this isn’t a shortcoming of the present or its storytelling. It’s a matter of desire.
Additionally, regardless of the darkness, The Final of Us stays a type of escapism. Bleak as it’s, it’s nonetheless fiction—fiction a few pandemic worse than the one presently raging that’s supposed, on some stage, to present viewers the chance to consider one thing else. Granted, it principally makes them ponder what occurs when humanity decides the one solution to save lots of people is to slaughter many extra, however nonetheless.
In different phrases, The Final of Us doesn’t commerce in darkness for darkness’ sake. It’s not a DC Comics movie attempting to be edgy. It’s not even Squid Sport, which in a method was much more miserable in its “oh yeah, that might occur”-ness. Because it stands, the world is just not contaminated with a zombifying fungus, nevertheless it’s full of people that will do something to remain alive and/or earn a living. If something, The Final of Us is a parable for what may occur when that Cordyceps fungus is launched into a spot that always prizes rugged individualism over group.
Sure, there are most likely scriptwriters on the market who would have instructed to Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin that they inject somewhat emotional reprieve, one episode that ends on a cheerful notice. However if you happen to consider, as Vulture’s Roxana Hadadi does, that The Final of Us is a commentary on the numerous flaws of American exceptionalism, then these in search of slivers of hope are destined to be left at the hours of darkness.
All of this got here to a swirling conclusion in Sunday’s finale. Within the remaining moments, Joel (Pedro Pascal) realized that the Fireflies would seemingly kill Ellie (Bella Ramsey) looking for a remedy for the Cordyceps fungus. He shot almost each Firefly in sight to avoid wasting her. Some of us argue he went too far, slaughtering many individuals to avoid wasting one; others really feel his actions have been justified. However the level isn’t to determine whether or not he’s “proper” or “mistaken.” The purpose—as my colleague Adrienne So famous over Slack this week—is {that a} society that might kill a toddler to avoid wasting itself possibly isn’t price saving. Anybody who learn Ursula Ok. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Stroll Away from Omelas” is aware of this.
Finally, it doesn’t matter whether or not Joel is a hero or villain. What issues is what his actions mirror. As Hadadi famous, “The Final of Us has painted a portrait of an American id incompatible with drastic change.” When the pandemic hit, all the nation’s selfishness and individualism reworked into one thing much more virulent than earlier than. It’s bleak, nevertheless it additionally feels that method as a result of it’s acquainted.