The Zombie Ain't Your Enemy

Common sense would say: fear the flesh-eating, undead monster crawling toward you. However, after watching The Last of Us, I don't know why, but the zombies stopped feeling so important, or dangerous.

Yes, you get the jaw-clenching, knuckle-gripping moment of panic when the eerie clicking sounds lock into place. It's Ellie and Joel versus the zombie world — the badass, grotesque battle scenes between human and non-human — momentarily, at least. Then, the big space of nothingness happens. Somehow, it is this space that feels scarier.

Many of the responses that I've read have highlighted a vital portion of what The Last of Us embodies: a cycle of violence, passed down from one generation to the next (Read it here, the article is so good!). However, what struck me over again in these responses was the fact that the zombies weren't the problem, despite the violence enacted by and upon them.

I mean, they were a problem. Just not the problem.

I saw them more as pests, squarmy — albeit, more dangerous than a silverfish — but something that could be put away; locked behind doors and abandoned buildings. The more that I watched them slip out from gaps in the doors, or slam their bodies against chainlink fences, the less substantial they became.

By season two, the zombies started becoming smarter and conscious, and I began questioning what it meant to be a zombie at all.

And, I started becoming fascinated with rot.

The Zombie Image

The zombie image has a long and contentious history in literature and media. I won't go into it too much, but I think that it's important that in apocalypse and post-apocalyptic fiction, zombies represent an innate psychological fear of a loss of identity or autonomy. They are the consciousless, flesh-eating entity without face or name, very much othered, kind of playing into this instinctual fear of the unknown. Overtime, as the genre broadened and the zombie image began pervading mainstream media, what the zombie represented also changed, or at the very least, became more complex, and we see that quite clearly in this TV show.

In The Last of Us, nobody refers to the flesh-eating monsters as zombies; rather, everyone refers to them as the infected. Or, they use the proper term for the fungus, Cordyceps.

What is important about this distinction, especially when calling them the infected, is that it indicates that linguistically, the zombies are still considered humans. They are human beings who have been invaded by a conquering force, the cordyceps — a socio-political allusion, perhaps — but more importantly, a call to what we really are.

Seems far-fetched? Let me show you what I mean.

In season 2, episode 1, we get the parallel shoved in our faces multiple times. One great example is when we are presented with shots of the pipes, where we see that the cordycep fungus has invaded the very veins of the city. It isn't just laying on the ground in plain sight (I mean, it does that, too), but in this case, the fungus is intentionally placed in the city pipes, unseen under leaves and undergrowth that shine with vitality.

Now, I love this kind of play with imagery, and it is one of the many reasons I really enjoyed watching this show. The camera rolls up and it focuses on one of the city members, nameless and faceless, easily forgotten within the next few seconds, but completely uninfected — wholly human — the perfect, seemingly innocuous parallel that I've seen in the show, besides Ellie.

No, seriously, go back and watch that moment. What is the camera trying to say?

The same message is subliminally handed to us through Joel and Ellie. Think of their characters, their relationships, their arcs. It's all about decay and where it is hidden.

Joel

The most significant thing we need to know about Joel is that he is, at his core, a father. However, even before the apocalypse, his role as a father-figure is already festering. Joel works late. Joel forgets to bring his daughter a cake. She's left home alone — he loves her, but he isn't the perfect father and he knows it.

Then, we get the actual zombie apocalypse, but think about who actually kills Sarah. It's not any zombie; no, she survives that. Ultimately, it is an uninfected who shoots her down, and Joel's passivity (forged by his faith in the good of humankind) that leads to her demise.

Joel doesn't kill anyone in this scene, which is significant, yet even his nonviolence results in inevitable corruption: Sarah's death. That is the ultimate crumbling of their relationship and his identity, his inability to do anything. In the scene where he holds Sarah in his arms, we get close-up shots of his bloodied hands around her bullet wound, signifying his complicity as a bystander. Simultaneously, this moment also becomes the catalyst for the unravelling of his character. We see that when his mindset changes later in the season: "It was either him or me" (Season 1, ep. 4). The mindless, primal nature emerges as he begins his slow killing spree.

At the end, when he is again put to the test, Joel makes his final choice. The skin is peeled back: To kill or not to kill?

In either case, the rot overtakes. True human nature emerges.

Ellie

Switch over to Ellie, the supposed cure, the in-between zombie and human state. Ellie is meant to be this marker of hope; a survivor of the inescapable virus, and in some ways, a movement away from the brutality that exists within us. Yet, Ellie is never depicted as truly good. We see that in the flashbacks of her past, the implied murder she'd committed years before she met Joel. Then, later in the season, after Joel's death, her murder rampage reveals the undeniable truth; the fungus isn't the issue.

Think about the scene between Ellie and Nora in level B2 of the hospital. That entire area was zombie-infested, yet we don't get any zombies. Instead, Ellie gets to indulge in her bloodthirst. And, the result is brutal. The most violent that we see Ellie become.

This is an incredibly important moment. One that, in my opinion, carries the entirety of the second season. Because we aren’t talking about corruption of human nature due to extreme circumstances; we are considering humans as innately cruel and violent. This moment is parallel to Joel's massacre of the Fireflies. It is an unmasking of the hidden, marginalized elements of Ellie's self — the zombie that she'd locked far inside the depths of her. So when she makes the intentional choice to avenge her pseudo-father's death, it is not based on justice, or an eye-for-an-eye. It is blatantly unjust and cruel, and she knows it.

The worst part is that it's infectious. Because, while I was watching the screen, a big part of me (the bloodlusting, zombie part) also came out. I wanted to root for her because it wasn't fair Joel was killed. As Ellie beat on her victim, the tendrils of decay grew out towards me. I latched on.

Returning to the Rot

What makes this show particularly good is the way that it plays around with violence. Just like killing, the simple act of watching is an act of violence, too. The rot seeps off-screen and into you, viewer, forcing you to face your own complicity as you witness and engage with the narrative. The first person point-of-view shots become all the more intentional, for they inextricably entangle you into the character's emotions and actions.

Think of who you root for. Think of which character's death you've celebrated, whose you've mourned.

Blood is on your hands, too.