Left Behind (HBO's Podcast)/Transcript

The following is the full transcript of "Left Behind", the seventh episode of HBO's The Last of Us Podcast.
== Transcript ==
[Audio from TV show:] Ellie: Come on. You gotta help me. Come on.
Joel: Leave. Leave.
Ellie: Shut up, Joel.
Joel: Take the gun.
Ellie: Joel, shut the fuck up!
Joel: Go. You go. You go North. You go to Tommy. You go. [/End Audio from TV show]
Troy: Welcome back, everybody, to HBO's The Last of Us Podcast. I am your host, Troy Baker. I had the wonderful opportunity to play Joel in the video game, and now I get to sit down with the show runners, Craig Mazin...
Craig: I'm back! 
Troy: And Neil Druckmann. 
Neil: What up, Troy?
Troy: I love how comfortable we've gotten. We're now seven episodes in. 
Craig: That does prompt me, before we dive into this episode, to just thank people who are listening to us now for staying with us. I mean we're at a place now where we're pretty deep in. We're starting to approach our final descent. 
Neil: We love all 50 of you. 
Craig: I'm pleased that people are still with us, and hopefully they're feeling rewarded as we go. 
Troy: Today, we're talking about episode seven, titled, "Left Behind." And this episode does a bit of a time jump to tell the story of Ellie's relationship with Riley. Neil, you originally wrote this story not in the original game, but in a companion comic book in the DLC. Which we can say is shorthand for downloadable content. Let's talk about that. 
Neil: Yeah, 2013, when the game came out, downloadable content were getting pretty popular, like you would release like a full game, so in the case of The Last of Us, this was a 15-hour experience and then, often, you'll release like additional chapter. Something, an add-on, a downloadable content. And often, people would use like a side character, something that was kind of frivolous, so it wouldn't really effect the main story. And it's more to talk about something else that was really popular at the time, like add-on comic books. Like take your world and build another story and release it, like, as a comic book. And so, it's a way to help market your product, is a very cynical way to look at it. But I looked at both of these things, I'm like, "Oh, it's a storytelling opportunity." What if we treated both of these things like they matter? Like they're essential. And let's take our most important character of Ellie and put her in the center of both of these stories. So with the comic book, I teamed up with Faith Erin Hicks, who's just a brilliant comic book writer and artist, and we developed Riley together for that comic book. And you got to see how Ellie met Riley, and a little bit more of the school. And then the idea started, like, solidifying for the DLC, which was called Left Behind, which was Ellie and Riley's final encounter together. Before Ellie is thrust into the main journey of The Last of Us. And it was a really kind of great opportunity to spend even more time with Ellie before she was bitten. What was she like on her day-to-day business? And then, what was the event that turned her life completely upside down? 
Troy: No cold open. Straight to the credits. Why the change? 
Craig: Well, I think we were thinking about the opening of the show as to-taste, basically every episode, what does it want? Some episodes want it, and this one just didn't. 
Neil: Sometimes you use that opening to create almost like a reset. Of, like, okay, this was its own story, reset, now we're starting another story. These two stories are so intertwined. Like that edit is really important of like going from one directly to the other. 
Craig: Yeah, Ellie reaches for the doorknob here, and the screen cuts to black, and we start to hear Pearl Jam. We could've cut to the credits there and used that as a cold open, and then, when we come back, suddenly she's back in FEDRA school. But I think Neil's absolutely right. We want to understand that she's reliving kind of a lifetime moment in this second. And that's why we did it. I don't think there was even a debate. 
Neil: No. 
Craig: I want to talk a little bit about something that, again, HBO, in a very smart way, suggested to us. This wasn't originally the plan. Originally, this episode was gonna really play entirely as Ellie's story with Riley, and one of the things that HBO strongly suggested, and they were absolutely right, was to connect it back more to the story at hand. -Which is how it was...
Neil: What it was. 
Craig: ...in The Last of Us DLC. Sorry, in the Left Behind DLC. That's when we talked about seeing this image of Joel dying on this mattress in a basement with this very iconic blanket on. And I love the way this starts with Joel telling her to go. And there's this moment where... -What else can she do?
Neil: Right. 
Craig: What else can she do? Why wouldn't she go at this point? He is dying. That's clear. And she's not a doctor. They are not anywhere near civilization. There's nothing that can be done. It is a hopeless situation. 
Troy: He doesn't just tell her to leave, he shoves her. He reacts in the only way he can which is by force. And the second that he does that, and he sees her turn, the reality of that action, the consequence of that action is apparent. And he's-- It's not the pain that's making him cry, it's that. And it's just a single tear, it's not blubbering. 
Craig: I love that tear because you're right. Is he mourning his own impending death? Is he mourning the fact that she has to leave him, or that she is? Is he mourning the fact that the only way he could get her to go, to save her, was to push her away, and the last memory she'll have of him is something rejecting? 
Troy: Can she make it on her own? It's winter. 
Craig: Right. Will she survive?
Troy: "If you die, I'm fucked."
Craig: Yeah. 
Neil: That's my interpretation, it's the fear of, like, "I can't protect you. I have to let you go. And I don't know how this is going to play out, because I'm going to die." 
Craig: That's the best part of this, is any of those could be true. 
Neil: And it's probably a combination of all of them that's going on in his head. 
Craig: What matters is the depth of his connection to her, no matter how you slice any of the interpretations we just offered up, all of them come back to the same thing. There is this remarkable depth of connection between the two of them. 
Troy: Let's talk about music a little bit more. Pearl Jam. "All or None." Neil, you have a...
Neil: An obsession?
Troy: An obsession. I was gonna be very careful with my words. But there is-- I was gonna say connection to Pearl Jam. Is this just sympatico between you guys, or was there something that, Neil, you said, "I have a song that I would like to put in." 
Neil: You know, when you grow up, you have like a handful of songs that are like an escape when things are getting hard, or like, when you're down on yourself for whatever reason. And to me this was one of those songs. That song, specifically, there's a certain feel, a mood, a tone. I don't know if I have the right words for it, but capturing where Ellie's at right now. That she's alone, she's at a place she doesn't want to be, and there's kind of nothing going on for her. And this song, I think, captures that mood. But it also captures her attitude, it's called, "All or None." Which is very much Ellie. It's like everything or nothing. And it's always this kind of full commitment. 
Craig: Whenever it comes to songs, there aren't many that we use in the series. I mean we talked a lot about Never Let Me Down Again. Long, Long Time, obviously, is a centerpiece of our third episode. We really want to think about those lyrics. We don't want to be too on-the-nose. We don't want to be something that feels overused or too pop. I read this statistic that searches of Never Let Me Down Again, the Depeche Mode version...
Troy: Skyrocketed.
Craig: Yeah. By 500 percent or something. Well, that's what we want. We want a song that people discover it with us that are beyond, say, the fans of Pearl Jam. And Neil is a much bigger fan of Pearl Jam than I am. That's not to say I'm not a fan, it's just that he's a super fan. So I wasn't that familiar with that song and when he played it for me, I was like, "Okay, yeah." And there's something about the way it starts. 
Craig: The guitar tells you everything before Eddie Vedder even starts in. There's this sense of, "Oh, God." And Ellie's situation here is not simply hopeless, as the lyrics say, because she's stuck in a FEDRA orphanage training to become a soldier. It's hopeless because someone's gone missing.
Neil: It's hopeless to her.
Craig: Yeah.
[Audio from TV show:] Ellie: Give it back!
Bethany: Well, pick up your pace. I'm not running doubles again because of your shitty attitude. 
Ellie: I don't want to fight about it.
Bethany: "Fight about it"? You don't fight. Your friend fights. She's not here anymore. Is she?
(ELLIE GRUNTS) (PUNCH LANDS) [/End Audio from TV show]
Troy: I love the look that Bethany gives in the face when she's staring her down, she's like, "Are you--" It's not quick either.
Craig: No. 
Troy: She looks like, "What are you about to do?" And then she sees the punch coming. But you stay on Bethany for the-- 
Craig: Yeah, Bethany realizes she's made a terrible mistake. Just one second too late. 
Troy: She could've just walked away from the fight. 
Neil: Yeah. But she was disrespected.
Troy: She was disrespected.
Neil: It was personal.
Troy: It was personal.
Craig: It was personal. So, Bethany makes a couple of fatal errors. One is she underestimates Ellie. But the second one, more importantly, is... she brings up whoever this friend is who's not here anymore, triggers something inside Ellie that... It's like it uncorks the demon. We don't know who this person is yet. Until we meet Riley, we don't understand that that's who Bethany's talking about. All we know is Bethany stepped on a third rail. That Ellie's anger, and whatever innate violence she has, comes from her connection to other people. It's not so much about her. It's about, "Don't talk shit about my friend, because I love my friend." 
Troy: Here we see a completely different side of FEDRA. This is almost-- It's shadows of normalcy. -We have...
Craig: Pro-FEDRA, almost. 
Troy: Kind of, yeah. It's functioning. She gets in trouble. She goes, essentially, to the principal's office. And we get to meet Captain Kwong, who's played by Terry Chen. And then Ellie does this thing. She looks at the picture of his family. And he walks in, and he sits down. He doesn't notice it at first. And then he does, and he turns it around. 
Craig: Ellie has no problem invading people's personal space. The fact that he has a picture of these two girls, obviously, his daughters. Are they alive? Probably not. She has no problem invading that space and looking at them because she's not a parent. She doesn't know. She doesn't care. She wasn't even alive when this stuff was happening. Look at them. They're at an amusement park in that photo. And that's this little thing where he's like, "Okay, that belongs to me, not you." 
Troy: And after that, he lays out some cold, hard truth.
[Audio from TV show:] Captain Kwong: You're smart, Ellie. You're so smart, you're stupid. Can't see where this is going? Let me help you out. Two paths ahead of you. First path. You keep acting like a grunt, so you get the life of a grunt. Up at dawn. Walk the streets, walk the wall. You eat shit food, you do shit jobs, you take shit orders from your patrol leader, who'll probably be Bethany. And that'll be your life from now until you catch a bullet from a Firefly, or fall drunk off a roof, or get your hair caught in a moving tank tread.
Ellie: Hmm. 
Captain Kwong: There's the other path. You swallow this pride of yours. You follow the rules. You become an officer. You get your own room, you get a nice bed. We eat well. We don't go on patrol. We're cool in the summer, we're warm in the winter. And best of all, when you're an officer, you get to tell the Bethanys of the world exactly where to shove it. [/End Audio from TV show]
Craig: One of the things that Neil and I talked about a lot throughout the development of the show was... never painting one side or the other as purely bad or purely good. We've gotten so much bad FEDRA stuff. I mean, we saw how abusive, or at least how cold and controlling, FEDRA was in the first episode.
Neil: And corrupt.
Craig: Exactly. And we saw how FEDRA-- Even though we didn't see what FEDRA did to the people of Kansas City in our fourth and fifth episode, we certainly saw the aftermath. And there's no way to account for how brutal the uprising was if, as Henry put it, "FEDRA hadn't done it to them first, and for 20 years." But now, we have this other conversation. And we thought it would be important to hear the other side of it. And the other side of it is, "We're the only things holding this together. If we go down, these people are going to starve or kill each other," which we saw happen in prior episodes. So, he's right. "And you, Ellie, are the generation that we need to raise to keep this going, or everything will fall apart." And he's saying to Ellie, "You can be me. You can be in charge. You could run all of Boston one day. You have the innate intellectual capability, and strength of character to do this. If you would just get your shit together." This is the most parental-possible discussion you can have. But that notion of the push and pull of FEDRA and its polar opposite, the Fireflies, is going to come up over and over. 
Troy: I know that I had this conversation multiple times with principals, teachers. The word that I hated growing-up hearing -was "potential."
Craig: "Potential." I, personally, was an overachiever, and I don't say that proudly. And no one ever said, "Oh, if only you could get your shit together." My problem was my shit was too together. So, I'm always drawn to characters that I wish I had been more like. And, you know, in this case, I mean, this is a script by Neil, but it's all-- Everything goes back to the Ellie that Neil wrote anyway. One of the reasons I always loved her is because I wanted to be like her. I wanted to be that kid. She's so brave. She says, "Just put me in the fucking hole." She doesn't care. She's so cool. 
Neil: Well, she has such, like, an allergy to authority, which-- I've been in those conversations a lot because I was not a good student. I would do good enough on tests to just get by.
Troy: Homework.
Neil: But homework, forget it. And I would have advisor after advisor sit me down and be like, "You have all this potential and you're squandering it." I'm like-- And I was just kind of like Ellie. I guess I was just aimless. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I wanted to, like, play guitar, and hang out with my friends. And it was only once I thought about making video games that I went from, like, a C student to an A student. So, that one very much resonates with me. And I guess this whole-- A lot of the idea for Left Behind as a concept, again, because I was such a terrible student-- I hope my parents aren't listening to this. 
Craig: Oh, they're listening. I'll make sure of it. 
Neil: I skipped school all the time. And we would just go hang out somewhere or go to the mall. And the thought was like, "What's the post-apocalyptic version of that, of skipping school and hanging out with your friend that you have a crush on?" 
Troy: There is this connection, though, always with her stuff. Bethany starts by taking the Walkman from Captain Kwong. She says, "Can I have my Walkman back?" The first thing she said, for Marlene, "Can I have my stuff back?" 
Neil: Some of these totems are very personal to Ellie. And, like, she has a reaction when Joel steps on her knife that's very primal. And then other times, I don't know if this is unique to Ellie, but these things are so precious in this world. It's like how many working Walkmans are there out there? Probably not that many. So, this is one of those things that Ellie has probably had for a while. And whenever she's alone or needs to escape, she just shuts out the world and put these headphones on. So, for someone to threaten to take away that, "How fucking dare you?" As from where Ellie's standing. 
Craig: Her world is actually very small. Ellie does not have a lot of friends. In fact, she has one friend, and that friend hasn't been around in weeks. So, what does she have left? No one talks to her. There's a scene that we shot, that we, ultimately, cut for time, where Ellie is in a locker room. It was a very classic, you know, Hollywood-type scene. She's in a locker room, and everybody else is chitchatting, and she's alone. And when your world gets that solitary, it does come down to these things that give you comfort, and help you ground yourself. -A Walkman, a switchblade.
Neil: A comic book. 
Craig: A comic book. There's a baseball on the windowsill. There are posters of things that she's heard about, but will never know about, or so we think. And there are a few cassette tapes that we know must mean a lot to her. We don't know how she got them. All we know is, they're hers. And that's the sum totality of her entire world. You know, once Riley leaves, this is all Ellie has. 
Troy: We all want to talk about Riley, because we've already mentioned her so much. Riley was played by Storm Reid, and it's one of those things where it's like, literally, she just came off the pages of the comic book and onto of the game. 
Craig: We had a few things going for us. We had Liza Johnson directing the episode, who is an excellent director, but also, of all of our directors, I think the one that was the most connected to the actors. She just kept them so safe throughout the process, which was amazing to watch. Anybody who's lived through the misery of those years... And I, I don't know who these people are that enjoyed those years, but if you lived through... 
Neil: The worst of the worst. Middle school is the worst. High school is also... 
Craig: It's the best and worst, right? It's like, I guess like... I think of Ellie as like a freshman in high school, you know? It's like the worst year possible. And yet, there is the magic of your heart pounding in your chest for the first time really. The way that opens up, I mean, that's where you really start to live. And we're watching it happen here. And I think the fact that Storm and Bella are close enough to that experience that I'm sure they both had, that you could feel it. It just felt so true. 
Troy: That first heartbeat starts not with necessarily love, but fear. Riley comes through the window, and we see immediately their relationship. 
[Audio from TV show:] Ellie: You're a Firefly? 
Riley: Jesus! I told you I'd fucking do it.
Ellie: Talking about liberating the QZ is not the same as... Fuck! Where did you even—
Riley: Slow down, slow down. I will tell you everything. First, you have to promise me something... sort of crazy. And you're going to say, "No," but then you have to say, "Yes." Come with me for a few hours and have the best night of your life.
Ellie: No.
Riley: Okay, now say yes.
Ellie: I'm not going anywhere with you. [/End Audio from TV show]
Troy: You said that Ellie is allergic to authority. However, she does submit herself to the authority of Riley. 
Neil: I guess for me, it's not so much the authority of Riley. It's like, Ellie wants... There are certain people she looks up to. And Joel, obviously, has become one of those people. And Riley is this other person, but she wants to be their equal. She doesn't want to just follow their commands. She wants to sit alongside them. 
Craig: Yeah. She's so proud that she fucked Bethany up. You know, because she's doing what Riley would do. I think Neil's exactly right. Riley is somebody that is older, taller, stronger. And Ellie has aspiration. Ellie is small. I love how small Bella is. I think it's really important. You know, she's small. And when you're small, people will underestimate you all the time. But she can pack a punch, literally. 
Troy: And Riley comes back at this moment with a grand plan. We don't know what it is, but it's-- she's doing a very typical thing, which is, “I've got some good news and some bad news. The good news is, I've got a great night planned for us, but ultimately, we'll find out, the bad news is why I've planned this night." And just like in the installment in the game, the DLC Left Behind, this retroactively adds weight to our story. There's this one quick line that Riley says. She goes, “Do you want another 7-Eleven situation?” 
Craig: Mmm. 
Troy: What is the 7-Eleven situation? 
Craig: What is the 7-Eleven situation, Neil? 
Neil: What is the 7-Eleven situation? Well, one, again, that conversation is just like, things could go wrong. Someone could get hurt. Just kind of like-- But there's also... You know, I get this question so many times of like, “How did Ellie get her scar?”
Craig: On the eyebrow.
Neil: On her eyebrow. And then Craig and I discussed it, and I told him, like, just some thoughts I had about it. So I was like, “I don't necessarily want to answer that, at least not yet. And like, we could just hint that there is a story there.” 
Craig: So something happened in a 7-Eleven that obviously is in the QZ and abandoned, where, in my mind, it happened together, right? Ellie and Riley must've been together. They must have broken in. They must have had to run out fast. There was some glass, they go in through a window. Something happened. It's interesting how in the first, I don't know, 10 minutes of this episode, the concept of stitches comes up over and over, which I think is really interesting. The notion that you get wounded, and you have to have stitches. 
Neil: And it's a constant reminder. 
Craig: Yes. That we are frail. And that comes into play at the end. It all comes back around. But the notion that there are scars from living in this world is a really interesting one. And it was important to, since Ellie and Joel talk about Joel's scar early on in episode three, this was an interesting opportunity to at least acknowledge that something happened. And here it's like, well, we don't know exactly how Ellie got her scar. We also don't know exactly how Joel got his scar. All he says is, you know, "There was a shootout." You know? "And the other guy missed.” So we're hinting at these things. But what we are saying explicitly is, violence is permanent and leaves marks. And sometimes, the only way to close up a wound is to stitch it. 
Troy: They make their way up through this decrepit building. And they come upon not only a bottle of hooch, but also a dead body.
[Audio from TV show:] Ellie: This isn't moonshine, either. It's, like, from before. This guy must have spent every card he had to get this.
Riley: No one told him he couldn't mix pills with that shit?
Ellie: I think he knew what he was doing. -(BODY FALLS THROUGH FLOOR) -(ELLIE AND RILEY YELLING) (ELLIE LAUGHING) [/End Audio from TV show]
Troy: Let's talk about that moment. 
Neil: Yeah, we talked quite a bit about that beat and what it would mean, and what does it say about Ellie? A lot of it came from, one, just how brave she is. She's not scared of something morbid that I think if we saw it, we'd be like, “Ugh, let's steer clear of that. Let's call 911. Let's just take care of this.” But instead, she's fascinated. Again, she's fascinated with the dark part of humanity. And here is someone that just, whether they purposely or not, took their own life. They ended up taking their own life just by overdosing on drugs that maybe this person even bought from Joel. Right? We see that little baggie there. Also establishing this is the reality of these two girls. Like, they live in a different world than the one we know. That it's not that big of a deal for them. 
Craig: Well, it's definitely not that big of a deal for Ellie, because she has never experienced the death of somebody she cares about. Because she doesn't have anyone she cares about, except for Riley. She's never known her parents. And what I loved about this scene, and what comes after, is that you realize there is one fundamental difference between Ellie and Riley. And that's that Riley did know her parents. And Riley saw her parents die. And Riley's experience of dead bodies and death is different than Ellie's. For Ellie, she has that thing that kids can have, which is a sense of immortality. And so this doesn't mean anything to her. She laughs when that body falls through the floor because-- I hope people don't get the sense that we're saying that Ellie is a psycho. Even though people jokingly call her a psycho, she's not, at all. She's just grown up under such different circumstances than we have. 
Neil: But it's also like that age, right? It's like you're pushing the boundaries of how far you could take things. What are the darkest things you could see or explore. 
Troy: In the previous episode, Ellie asks for a drink, and Joel obliges. And she says, “Yep, still gross.” Are we seeing the first time that she's had something to drink here? 
Craig: I think we might be. 
Neil: Yeah. I'm not sure if we say it's the first time or not, but it's definitely an early time. And again, it's just-- the idea is better than the thing itself. Like the idea of being naughty or doing something that you're not supposed to do is more exciting than how disgusting alcohol tastes when you first have it. 
Craig: This is a rite of passage. I don't know if every kid goes through it, but certainly a lot do. I did. My parents had this, it wasn't a liquor cabinet, it was this weird cube. It's like a wooden cube of 1970s furniture that had this little, tiny knob, and you would open it, and inside they had all these bottles. And my parents weren't big drinkers. So the bottles that were there were things that people had brought over for the very occasional, you know, dinner parties or something that they would have 70s style, with crab dip and horrible avocado-based foods. And my sister and I were just like, “Let's do it.” You know, we got in there. And I think the one we chose, because we liked the bottle and the name, and the vague smell of it, was Amaretto Disaronno, which is an almond liqueur. And we both, you know, took a way too big swig. And it felt like I had done something permanently damaging to my mouth and throat and stomach. 
Troy: You'll never be the same. 
Craig: No, I was like, “Did I-- Sorry, was this, like, toilet bowl cleaner, or is this meant to be drank? Because that's horrible.” Now later on, things changed. But there's something about that first time where you're trying to be grown up.
Troy: Sure.
Neil: Yeah. 
Craig: And you're not. 
Neil: Well, there's one other thing, which is like, again, high school parties and stuff, where you're next to someone you have a crush on, and like, you feel this nervous-- You're like, “Maybe the alcohol will, like, make that subside.” 
Craig: Yeah. 
Neil: Maybe not in this initial drink, but as they go forward, I think Ellie's drinking because she's getting more and more nervous. 
Troy: Yeah, she's taking shots of courage. 
Craig: She is. And what I like about how the episode develops is that it's not for nothing. It kind of works. Like, ultimately, the courage is there. 
Troy: I do want to get to the place that Riley is trying to bring us to, which is transitioning from this broken down, decrepit reminder of this failed world, and then the remnant of what was wonderful. And now, understanding kind of where maybe we drew that from, this mall. We get into this epic shot of this world coming online. And what I love is Ellie's look of wonderment. There's innocence there. 
Craig: And awe. This-- Oh, boy. I'll tell you. 
Neil: That's one of the hardest VFX. 
Craig: I wish I could drag everybody in the audience back in time to make them sit through all the meetings we had to sit through on this one. 
Troy: Was that practical? Or was that VFX?
Craig: It was VFX.
Troy: Wow! 
Craig: So, we had this interesting challenge. I was in love with the mall from the DLC, and we needed it. This takes place in a mall for all the reasons Neil said. That's where you sneak away as a teenager. And I wanted, as much as Neil wanted, to see Ellie experiencing what we all took for granted for the first time, and how magical it is. Well, we got kind of lucky. To an extent. There was a mall in Calgary that was scheduled for demolition. So on the one hand, it was great, because they basically said, “You can do whatever you want. You can break up the floors, you can gack up the whole place with... 
Troy: “Here the keys." 
Craig: ...mud and vines and everything. And you have the run of it for shooting as long as you want throughout the day.” 
Neil: The problem was... 
Craig: The problem was the mall itself was not great.
Troy: A death trap?
Neil: A little sad. 
Craig: It was a sad mall. It was a one-story mall. There was only one area, like at the very end of the mall, where there was an escalator, which obviously we used, that went up to this one little extra taller section that led into, like, a Winners, I believe, which is the Canadian kind of Target-ish sort of store, and then like a clinic. It was really sad up there. 
Neil: But if you're standing at the top of that escalator looking out, you just see a wall.
Craig: There was nothing. 
Neil: There's like-- because there was no second floor. Everything, like, tilts down and goes down to the first floor. 
Craig: So, if you're like a junky, and you want to know, like, how we do things, the shot where we're behind Ellie and we see that mall coming on, that wasn't at the mall, that was on a soundstage. We built a little railing and then there's just blue. And so, we say to Alex Wang, our visual effects supervisor, “You're gonna have to figure this out.” And he was scared. That was one of the few times I saw him scared, because that is a very difficult thing to pull off. And when we were in the physical mall, we needed to kind of paint like a blue stripe where the first floor kind of ended, to say, “From this point up, we're going to be building out and set-extending with visual effects.” 
Neil: We had some conversation like, “Okay, should we just make it like a one-story mall?”
Craig: You can't. No!
Neil: And then pretty quickly, we're like, “No.” 
Craig: There are these phrases people use in Hollywood. The one that I hate the most is, “Is the juice worth the squeeze?” I fucking hate that. 
Troy: I will never say that around you. 
Craig: The answer is, "Yes, it is." It is worth the squeeze. And is it worth it for this one marquee shot where this world comes to life? -Yes.
Troy: Yes. 
Craig: And does doing that mean that throughout everything else, we're going to need to continually show this other floor above it, and it's going to be money and time expense? Yes. Because we need to know that they're in a place that is magical and connects back to the world we know. In the world we know, that's what malls look like. And what Alex and the vendors did to make that happen is magic. It's just absolute fucking magic. And I want to say again how important it is that we're building a show based on this game. Because it's the love of the game that brought all these visual effects artists to the show. And it's the love of the game that kept them working at their computer and their tablets for iteration after iteration to make it great. 
Neil: What's interesting, too, with the DLC is, you know, it wasn't as popular as the main game, but for people who played it, they have such a deep love for it. And a lot of the crew members had that deep love for it. They were so excited to work on, like, this part of the story. 
Troy: There's another thing that this moment specifically does, and speaking of the game, it's a moment that happens in the game, it also happens in the show, where it almost mirrors something that happens later between Joel and Ellie when she's looking out and he says, “Is it everything you hoped for?” 
Craig: Yeah. 
Troy: We have almost that same kind of moment. Was that a happy accident or was that intentional? 
Craig: Mm, it's probably happy accident.
Neil: Happy accident.
Troy: Wow. If it is, it's like-- sometimes these things work on a subconscious, but it's like-- Right, so we know that Ellie just has an appreciation for beauty and for the old world. So, in a similar situation, she's going to have a similar reaction. And I love these kind of connections that we didn't even intend. We're just being true to the characters and they happen organically. 
Craig: There is this thing about Ellie where the people who love her want to show her things. They do, because she appreciates them. She's not a romantic, but she's a passionate person about the world around her. And even in this shithole they live in, even though the mall is wrecked, to see those lights come on and to see how big it is, it's so magical for her, she appreciates it. So, of course you want to show her that stuff. 
Neil: Yeah, it's this awesome moment, right, where it's like you've seen a great movie, or played a great game, and you get to share that with your friend, and you get to experience it again through their eyes. That's what Riley's doing right here. Like, Riley loves this mall, and then she knows Ellie would love it even more, and now she gets to share it with her. 
Craig: Which is basically what I'm doing now with you. I'm like, "I want everyone to see the thing!" 
Troy: But she's also-- one of the things I love is that Riley gets surprised -by the thing that Ellie--
Craig: Right. 
Troy: She freaks out over the escalator. 
Craig: Yeah. 
Troy: We have a big conversation about the world that was and what was important; sneakers, not soap. But then it leads quickly to this other moment, really the first moment of tension between the two of them at the Victoria's Secret.
[Audio from TV show:] Riley: I mean, I don't get why people back then wanted all this stuff.
Ellie: Do you need me to explain it to you?
Riley: Haha. No, I know why. It just looks uncomfortable.
Ellie: Yep. (RILEY CHUCKLES) What?
Riley: Nothing. I was just trying to imagine -you wearing that.
Ellie: Shut up! 
Riley: All right, come on. We're almost there. [/End Audio from TV show]
Neil: Malls are just such weird places, right? They got this weird collection of all these different stores. Right? It's like shoes and a food court. And then you have like this store that's all about sex. And again, you think back to the years as a teenager where, like, your brain is just getting pumped full of hormones, and then you can't help but think about attraction and sex and all these things when you're next to that store. And ultimately, we know where the story goes. And both of these girls like each other, like really like each other, but they're too afraid to say anything. And here, like, Riley gets to poke at it and see the reaction. And Ellie has a very, kind of weird, nervous reaction, because she doesn't want to-- she does want to reveal how vulnerable she is, because she loves Riley. And that's why after Riley walks away, we get this lingering moment where Ellie's just looking at her own reflection, and we see an insecurity. 
Craig: Yeah. Liza really understood this moment beautifully, that here are two girls who-- Well, we've all seen the episode now, so no big secret, they're both gay. And their sexuality is... confusing to them and scary to them because the world, to remind everybody, in our show stops in 2003. The revolution that we've gone through as a culture to become accepting of homosexuality, and whatever we would call non-heteronormative sexualities, hasn't occurred. Which means, if the world stops in 2003, it just doesn't happen. In this world, that stuff is still problematic, as they say. So you have these two girls who are uncomfortable with and afraid of their own sexuality. And they're looking at the most heteronormative presentation of female sexuality there can be. Lingerie designed to be incredibly feminine to attract men. And neither one of them seem to quite get the allure of it. Which is not surprising. It's not their thing. But what I love about what Riley does there is that she-- And people do this, right? We know they do this. She gets scared of her own feelings for Ellie, and so she basically puts Ellie down to cover up how she's feeling in this weird moment. And Ellie doesn't understand that. And it hurts. 
Neil: She gets defensive. 
Craig: And she gets defensive, and then she gets insecure. And she's looking at herself in the reflection of this angel, you know, the Victoria's Secret angel. And she is not an angel. She doesn't like her face. She doesn't like her hair. She doesn't like the way any of it is. And she's pretty sure that Riley would never, ever like it either. And I can't think of a more 14-year-old teenager-y thing to think than that, because God knows I was thinking that stuff myself. 
Neil: We are shaped so much by media and how we're bombarded by movies and games and comics and ads. A big part of it is ads. These girls didn't grow up with that. So then, you get a glimpse into this other world where like, “Look how easy they had it. Look how beautiful they were.” Like, it's almost like it becomes this fantasy, instead of like looking back at a reality. 
Troy: We move from that moment into-- The mall gets even more magical. We find this merry-go-round, which is taken straight from the game.
Craig: Yeah, it sure is.
Troy: And we hear-- 
Craig: I love when that happens. 
Troy: We hear this almost calliope version of The Cure's Just Like Heaven. 
Craig: Yeah, and I have to give credit to our editor, Tim Good. That was his. Tim, I think, is as important to the creative integrity and success of the show as anyone. And he had been waiting, I think, to put this in a show forever. And I think he had tried, and people have been like, “What? No.” And then I heard this, and I was like, “Oh, my God, it's the most beautiful thing.” And is there realistically a merry-go-round that would play a calliope version of-- 
Neil: That's where we're joking. This is like the coolest merry-go-round in the world. 
Craig: In history. 
Troy: It plays OK Computer. 
Craig: Yeah, it's like the coolest merry-go-round. I think a lot of people, I suspect, are going to be like, “Wait, what was that? Wait, that was The Cure?” I'm excited to see how people discover that. 
Troy: Second viewing for me. Second viewing. I was like, “Wait a minute.” I had to go back and listen to it again. 
Craig: I love how this functions. I loved how it functioned in Left Behind, and I love how it functions here. Ellie allows herself to slip into the fantasy. And it is just like heaven, until it's not. Because at some point, the world comes crashing in on her, even before the merry-go-round breaks down. She remembers, “Oh, yeah, this girl doesn't feel about me the way I feel about her. In fact, she never will.” And that's when she has to kind of go back to questioning, “What is the thing with you and me? Why did you run away? What are we doing here?”
[Audio from TV show:] Ellie: Did you really leave because you actually think you could liberate this place?
Riley: Don't say it like it's some type of fantasy, Ellie. They've done it in the QZs. Set things right, the way they used to be.
Ellie: Yeah, we could do that, too. If you come back, I mean. We're-- We're like the future. You know, we could make things better. We could be running things. [/End Audio from TV show]
Neil: The text is they're talking about the political standing of the quarantine zone, but they're really talking about each other. And Ellie's trying to say, “I was so hurt because you left and you were my everything.” 
Craig: Yeah. I mean, that's why I think the world comes crashing in on her because she remembers, “Oh, yeah. Riley just left and had no problem with that.” Ellie would never leave Riley for three weeks, ever, because Ellie is in love with Riley. "But Riley left, no problem. Obviously, Riley's not in love with me.” And so, Neil's right, the discussion is, why? And we, in that discussion, learn a really interesting thing about Riley. Which is that Riley is not going anywhere at FEDRA. Riley is not Ellie. Captain Kwong is not sitting Riley down saying, “You're officer material.” 
Troy: Gave her sewage detail. 
Craig: Yeah, “You're gonna be sewage detail.” And that opens Ellie's mind to an understanding. “Okay, I'm starting to get it.” 
Troy: The next beat that we get into, the photo booth. Let's talk about what the photo booth meant in the game, both mechanically and also narratively. 
Neil: So a lot of the game, we took these mechanics that were used for violence when you played as Joel in the full game, and then, for this extra chapter, we subverted those mechanics to get you to connect with Riley and be on this sort of date, like running away together. We had this idea of like, “Oh, what if they went in this photo booth?” Because again, this is a thing you do in a mall with your friends, and you take pictures together. And it would be a moment that would make it interactive. You could choose what poses you want to do. So there's a little bit of agency for the player there as far as shaping how that experience goes. Ultimately, that moment is about a cracking of the dam, of seeing, like, these girls are starting to telegraph to each other, whether consciously or not, that there is more here than just friendship. And that was the purpose for it in the game. And in the game, it was this huge investment. We would always say, like, you know, we used to be known for these set pieces in Uncharted. One of the most famous ones is you are in this building that's being shot with missiles by a helicopter, and you're fighting all these enemies, and you dynamically jump out of it just as it crashes around you. And it took this massive effort for the whole studio to pull that off. It was kind of the same for this photo booth, and it was, like, unheard of to spend that many resources on this very intimate character moment. But again, for people that experienced it, it had the same impact, the same emotional payoff, even more so of an emotional payoff than maybe an adrenaline rush. And it kind of changed, you know, how we approach things at the studio, as far as the kind of games we make and the kind of moments we are willing to invest in. And that's why I believe Craig was, like, so adamant from the get-go that we need to recapture this moment, this photo booth moment. 
Craig: Yeah. That was an easy one. And to try and recapture it as truly to that experience that I had playing Left Behind as we could. This is the back and forth we do all the time. How much fidelity? What are the things we do exactly? What are the things we change? This was one where I just thought, as a fan, if I didn't see it, even down to bunny ears and monster poses and just feeling like I remember that feeling of being physically close to a girl that I liked, and she liked me, and we both knew it, and we were teenagers. And there's just-- I don't know, man. There's just something there, and-- 
Neil: But also, that moment where, like, you're so insecure, you can't even have enough proof. There's never enough proof to say, "She definitely likes me." 
Craig: I know. Yeah, not even when her friend's like, “No, no, no. She like-likes you.” But Ellie's like, “Okay, okay, get off.” It's the second time, because in the first time she's coming down the escalator, she trips and she's like, “No, okay, I'm fine. No, I'm fine.” It's Ellie gets so excited by and terrified of physical contact with Riley that when it happens, she needs to stop it, because she's afraid that she won't be able to stop herself from kissing her. 
Neil: Ellie's afraid that Riley will see right through her. She'll see all the emotions she's feeling, -and she'll be embarrassed.
Craig: Right. 
Neil: So she has to protect herself from that. 
Craig: Yeah, because what's coming is, “Whoa, uh, we're friends, but I don't feel that way about you. Also, actually, now that I know that you're one of those, I don't want to be friends with you at all.” That's the fear. I mean-- 
Troy: Of losing someone. 
Craig: Yeah. When I talk to my friends who grew up gay, and they explain those additional levels, that's the scariest part. If I liked a girl and I asked her out, and she said, “I actually would rather be friends,” like, maybe she'll be laughing about me with her friends that night, and that hurts, but there won't be this, like, crazy rumor mill in the school. No one's going to stop being friends with me. No one's going to call me bad names. No one's going to hit me. But that's not true if you're gay. Not when you're growing up in the '70s or the '80s or the '90s or even the 2000s. I think it's changed dramatically, at least in some places. Not everywhere, unfortunately. But that's, I think, a real fear that Ellie has, that it won't merely be a rejection of romance, it will be a total rejection of her as a person and as a friend. And she can't bear that. 
Troy: We'll get to the moment where she's afraid of losing her, and that's really at the root of that fear. But first, we have another wonder of the mall. 
Craig: The most wondrous wonder of the mall. 
Troy: Why Mortal Kombat II? Why Mortal Kombat II specifically? Because that's my fave. Where did that-- Was that just the one you could find? 
Craig: No! I mean, okay. First of all, Mortal Kombat II is the best.
Troy: Ever!
Craig: Right? Like, not every cabinet arcade game worked like that. Sometimes the first one was the best. In this case, Mortal Kombat II I think was the best. 
Troy: Same. 
Craig: And we had this opportunity to do something that Naughty Dog couldn't do when they were making the game, which is use real stuff because I don't know the rules, I don't understand the intellectual property thing. In the video game, the game's called, The Turning? 
Neil: Yeah, in the game, one, you know, again, when I skipped school, the highlight of skipping school was going to the arcade.
Troy: Absolutely.
Neil: By far. So that just had to be, like, kind of the climax of what Riley wants to show Ellie. Which, by the way, having just recently rewatched this episode, I tear up every time they're standing in front of that arcade. I don't know what it is, it's like some combination of like what's happening in the episode and my own nostalgia for arcades that have just kind of disappeared over the years. So when we made the game, we couldn't use an existing game because we would've had to recreate it.
Craig: Mm. That makes sense.
Neil: So that's one thing. And then licensing would have been a headache. So we just never went down that road. So we made our own game called The Turning. It was called The Turning because when I was working on the comic book that eventually became The Last of Us, when it was pitched at Naughty Dog, it was called The Turning. So this was kind of like a homage to myself, I guess. -I don't know.
Neil: But again, it's just one of those things you imbue with stuff to make it more personal to you, so you get more invested in it. That's very much a rip off of Mortal Kombat II. And it was always intended to be that way. And the reason we did Mortal Kombat II, or just thought about it, is there's this evolution of games and violence in games. How violence is used in games. And Mortal Kombat II, there was this whole conversation around it with violence in the media, and Senator Lieberman wanting to censor video games. That's where, like, the rating system all came out. So it's a lot of, like, really interesting political things that happened with video games with that specific game. But to go back to what Craig was saying, we had an opportunity to use the original source, the original inspiration, which is Mortal Kombat II. And I'm like, “Wait a minute, we could actually, like, probably get the rights for this relatively easy because it's Warner Brothers.” So it was it was just very cool to be able to use that. So, then we worked backwards from there. And if you notice the opening of the episode, when we're in Ellie's room, she has a poster for Mortal Kombat II. And these girls would have had an obsession with this particular thing, because Ellie just has this, not dissimilar to me, an obsession with violent media, which, like, you know, I grew up at that age, or maybe a little bit older, I saw Pulp Fiction and I read Sin City and was just, like, very much drawn to that kind of experiences at the time. 
Craig: Yeah. And there's this nice circle back payoff to a moment that happened in the third episode when Ellie finds a dead Mortal Kombat II game in the convenience store, and tells Joel about how she had a friend, and she played Mileena, and she would swallow you whole and barf out your bones, and now we see it. And one of the things that I was obsessive about, because I concentrate enormously on sound, I try whenever I'm writing scripts to write sound into the script. And then when we're mixing-- And I told our mixing team, which is amazing, led by Marc Fishman and Kevin Roache, “Guys, this isn't going to be a normal mixing space for you. I am going to get so granular about so many things.” And one of the things I got really granular about was the way it would feel in your stomach when you dropped that quarter. That bass...
[Audio from TV show:] (ARCADE MACHINE RESOUNDS)
(ELLIE AND RILEY CHUCKLING) 
(QUARTER THUNKS) (ARCADE MACHINE RESOUNDS)
(CHUCKLING)
Ellie: That's so cool. Oh, my god. [/End Audio from TV show]
Craig: This is one of those meta moments where there's a television show based on a video game, and the guy that made the video game, and the guy over here that's helping adapt the video game both love video games, and we have our whole lives. And giving everybody a chance, especially, I think, kids who haven't known the mall arcade experience the way we have, to just enjoy other people enjoying it, I think was great. It was beautiful. And I love how Riley knows inherently that Ellie is going to love the fatality moves, the special finishers. 
Troy: For people who know Mortal Kombat, especially when you played it in ‘93, the only way you knew about the cheat codes, or the fatality codes, was anecdotally, you heard the rumors, because somebody in the arcade-- 
Neil: I'm so glad you brought that up. I'm so glad you brought that up, because I'm sure people will watch and be like, “How do they know the moves? How did they figure out the moves?” This is actually something we talked quite a lot about. And it's like, again, as they collect these totems from this old world, one of the things that used to be really popular, and was still popular in the early 2000s, were video game magazines. 
Craig: Big glossy things like a proper book you'd flip through and it would discuss other levels-- 
Troy: “That's how you beat that level! I didn't realize I missed that there.” 
Neil: So. Right. If they were like, infatuated with this game, Ellie would collect anything to do with this game, including magazines that would have listed the moves, that they would have memorized as if they could ever play it. But of course, the tragic thing is they could never play it, because those games don't exist anymore. -Until today.
Craig: Yeah. 
Troy: They have this wonderful moment, and we leave them for a second inside of the arcade, and the purple light, and the cacophonous sounds, and the cartoonish violence that's happening inside of that video game. We start to pan out, and we follow this root system, and we see that they're not alone in this mall. That there is an imminent threat that wakes up. 
Craig: Yeah. And this is a difference from the game. In the game, there's no indication that there's anything in the mall.
Neil: Not until much later.
Craig: 'Til much later. And when it does happen, there are a lot of Infected. And as we talked it through, we did like the idea that, I mean, you know, Ellie's like, “That place is full of Infected,” and Riley says, “Well, if it's sealed off, then why isn't it sealed off?” And then you get in there, and you're like, “It's not full of Infected at all.” Riley's correct. And Riley's been living in this mall for a couple of weeks, and she hasn't seen any Infected. There's one. That's all it takes, is just one. And what wakes him up is their joy. It's the sound of their laughing, their having fun. As much as we can, we give our characters the things they want the most, and then we punish them for getting them, and we want them to be challenged by their darkest fears. And so, one of the fears that you have in this world is that you're never safe enough to have fun. You're never safe enough to fall in love. You're never safe enough to have a first kiss. 
Troy: There's two threats that are happening in this moment. First is the-- waking up the infected that's in there. And also, there's a bit of a truth bomb that Riley drops
Craig: Right. 
[Audio from TV show:] Riley: Ellie, I'm leaving. They're sending me to a post in the Atlanta QZ. I asked if you could join so we could go together, but Marlene said no.
Ellie: Who the fuck is Marlene?
Riley: Marlene is the lady that helped me get-- It doesn't matter. Ellie I tried. [/End Audio from TV show]
Craig: Yeah. Yeah. Ellie finds the truth of what Riley's been doing here. It's not just this romantic, “Oh, I've joined the Fireflies and have a gun and all that.” And Ellie's been making fun of her for it the whole time, “Oh it's 'cause you're such a fucking Firefly.” Well, there are pipe bombs. And the pipe bombs have one purpose, and that is to be thrown at FEDRA. In the middle of our first episode, we see what those pipe bombs can do. They blow up a car, they blow up the side of a building. They almost killed Tess. And Ellie is confronted with the reality that this girl that she's so connected to, that she cares so much about, is actively participating in something meant to kill people like her. And remember, she was told by Kwong in the beginning, “You're going to be an officer”" That means, one day, Riley is going to be lobbing one of these things at her, and the whole fantasy comes crashing in at that point. 
Troy: We have this petulant goodbye. What do you think it is that stops Ellie and makes her go back? 
Neil: It's love. It's what this show is all about. 
Craig: You can't escape the truth of what you want. You can know, intellectually, “This girl doesn't care about me the way I care about her. And she is actively participating in something that could end up in my death. But what if she does care about me that way? And what if I told her? Would it matter?” 
Neil: There's also the fear of like, “Is this the last interaction I want to have with her?” 
Craig: Right. She's leaving. 
Neil: Like, I think there's also like, there's such a love that Ellie is not ready to let her go. And later, right, she says to her like, “I'll support you. If this is what you really want.” 
Troy: “I'm your best friend.” 
Craig: “And I'm not saying it all pissy. I mean it”" Yeah. Like, I think Neil's right. There's this need to just say goodbye. I don't think Ellie goes back there thinking, “I'm going to tell her how I really feel, and I'm going to kiss her.” She goes back there to say a proper goodbye. 
Troy: But she does go back, and we get to see another iconic moment from the Left Behind game, which is the Halloween store. 
Craig: Yeah. 
Troy: You use source music again as score with Etta James' version of I Got You Babe. 
Craig: Taken right from the game, it's-- Anybody that's played it just knows it. I think a lot of people that play that game don't realize it's I Got You Babe, because Etta's version -is so... different.
Troy: Different. It's funky and fun and it's juxtaposed. 
Neil: I mean, that was the challenge, of like, you know, finding a song that is about romance, but is not so sentimental that it's just about romance. And this just strikes that balance of, again, the lyrics are about something, but the vibe you get, it's got this, like you're saying, a funky energy that it gets to hide what it's really about. Kind of like very much what is happening between Ellie and Riley at this moment. 
Craig: Yeah, I mean, literally hiding under masks. And there's this moment as they're dancing. And I love the way Liza shot this. Riley is a much better dancer than Ellie. That much is clear. Ellie is sort of like... 
Troy: Doing whatever, like shuffling to the left and right. 
Craig: Shuffling or being a goof. Riley, in that good dancer way, is sort of doing this thing where she's rotating around, and she turns away from Ellie as she's dancing around. And as she turns away, Ellie slowly stops dancing. And here's the magic of Bella Ramsey. She is wearing a mask that completely obscures her face, and you know exactly still how she's feeling just from the way her body moves. It's magic. It's just there, and what she's feeling there is this connection to Riley that is so powerful, and so joyous, that she just can't let it go. She can't walk away without begging. She just says, “Don't go.” And Riley says, “Okay.” And then she-- Ellie kisses her. And it's just like the game. And I don't think that's a bad thing. I think it's a wonderful thing, because it was perfect in the game, and I think it's perfect here. All of it. Bella's reaction after she kisses her, which is like 1500 emotions in 2 seconds, and then, you know, apologizing. And Riley saying, “For what?” And then Ellie realizing, “Oh, my god,” and Riley realizing, “Oh, my god.” 
Neil: We give her like a few seconds of the greatest joy of her life. -Just a few seconds.
Craig: Yeah. But there's, like, this thing of the two of them, like, “Oh, my god, the time we've wasted being scared when we both felt this way.” And then the world comes crashing in. 
Troy: Like you said, it's quickly interrupted by the pivotal moment for Ellie, which is, not only is she bitten, but also Riley is as well. And the disparity, again, between their responses, I don't know-- We don't get to see if Riley has her freak out moment, but we certainly see Ellie's, and she smashes stuff and Riley responds. 
Craig: Direct from the game, and almost everything that they say between each other is lifted from the game. There are few other little bits here or there that we put in, but what I love about this ending more than anything, and credit to HBO for kind of pushing us to keep growing it is, what Riley says to Ellie at the end here is not merely words of comfort or vague philosophy.
[Audio from TV show:] Riley: It ends this way for everyone sooner or later, right? Some of us just get there faster than others. But we don't quit. Whether... it's two minutes... or two days... we don't give that up. I don't want to give that up. [/End Audio from TV show]
Craig: It is a lesson that Ellie has in her bones, and it is why Ellie fights to keep Joel alive. Because what Riley is saying is, “We don't give up. Even if we have two minutes or two days, we just keep going, because we love each other. And death comes for us all. The time we have is the time we have. The fact that it must end is not a reason for us to not love.” And there's Ellie, who has been told to go away, who knows Joel is going to die. There's no fucking way she's gonna be able to save him. She's not going to quit. And she ransacks this house looking for what? Thread to stitch him up. It's the only thing she knows how to do with a wound, because of her own life. And she goes back down there and, oh, my god, they hold their-- The hands being held, it's like-- It's so beautiful to me. And then, when she's sewing him up, the look on her face is just... What do you describe it? It's-- 
Neil: That's desperation. 
Craig: Yeah. And fury. It's almost like, “I won't fucking let you go.” 
Neil: “I will will it. I will will the impossible.” 
Craig: Yes. 
Troy: Will it work? That is something we'll have to find out next week. Craig, thanks a million, man, for being here. 
Craig: Thanks, Troy. 
Troy: And of course, the same to you, Neil. 
Neil: Goodbye. 
Troy: We will talk to you both next week. This has been the official The Last of Us podcast from HBO. Again, I'm Troy Baker, joined by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann. You can stream new episodes of the HBO original series The Last of Us Sundays on HBO Max. The podcast episodes are available after episodes of The Last of Us Air on HBO. You can find this show wherever you listen to podcasts. Like and follow HBO's The Last of Us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Until next week, endure and survive.
Narrator: This is the official companion podcast for HBO's The Last of Us, hosted by Troy Baker. Our producers are Elliott Adler, Bria Mariette, and Noah Camuso. Darby Maloney is our editor. The show is mixed by Hannis Brown. Our executive producers are Gabrielle Lewis and Bari Finkel. Production music is courtesy of HBO, and you can watch episodes of The Last of Us on HBO Max.
Category:HBO's The Last of Us Podcast transcripts