'The Last of Us,' a masterful series worthy of being among the best of the year

Video game lovers are in luck. HBO Max premiered on Sunday, January 15, one of its most anticipated fictions, The Last of Us is a series based on the eponymous video game released by Naughty Dog for Play Station 3 in 2013. It also puts an end to the controversy that began in 2014 when the film adaptation was canceled. Making a series, it turns out, is a better idea to do justice to a video game like this one.

The Last of Us is a great start to this year's TV series season. The series stars Hispanic Pedro Pascal and his Game of Thrones co-star Bella Ramsey. It will have nine episodes in its first season and is everything the public expected. It pays tribute to what is considered one of the best video games of the last ten years.

Heir to The Walking Dead, the series places us in a post-apocalyptic world two decades after modern civilization is destroyed by a fungus, Cordyceps unilateralis. Joel (Pedro Pascal) is a survivor who ends up being in charge of Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a 14-year-old girl who could be the key to ending the infection.

Ramsey and Pascal are the perfect duo

The two actors carry the weight of the plot. From the beginning, viewers empathize with the lead, played by Pedro Pascal who, proved his skills as an actor in Narcos and The Mandalorian. His character, Joel, suffers a terrible loss in 2003 and that trauma continues to haunt him 20 years later.

The first scenes are from the perspective of a player. Explosions, car races, and chases are part of the plot from the very beginning. This is something that video game lovers appreciate and, in turn, does not slow down the plot for the rest of the viewers who have never picked up a video game controller. That opening could compete with the one created for House of the Dragon.

Bella Ramsey's performance as Ellie is outstanding. After showing her potential in Game of Thrones, she once again shows off her acting skills as a 14-year-old girl who gets something she never asked for. She is cheeky, and rebellious, but also curious to see a world that has been forbidden to her since birth. Ellie was never able to leave the quarantine zone run by the Federal Disaster Response Agency (F.E.D.R.A.), a military dictatorship. Therefore, seeing a glimmer of freedom, although risky, excites her and generates an intrigue that gradually spreads to viewers who experience, like the video game, the story from her point of view.

True to the video game

The A-list cast is made up of Gabriel Luna, Anna Torv, Nico Parker, Murray Bartlett, Nick Offerman, Melanie Lynskey, Storm Reid, Merle Dandridge, Jerrefrey Pierce, Lamar Johnson, Keivonn Woodard, Graham Greene and Elaine Miles. They play, respectively, Tommy (Joel's brother), Tess, Sarah, Frank, Bill, Kathlenn, Riley, Marlene, Perry, Henry, Sam, Marlon and Florence.

Without a doubt, we owe the best of the series to Neil Druckmann. He is responsible for the original video game and it is clear that he was directly involved in the development and production of The Last of Us. He already assured Vandal that he would not allow the series to deviate from the story told in the video game, unless it was to expand, complete, and improve it, and so it is.

Having Craig Mazin, executive producer of series such as Chernobyl or Mythic Quest, is also a key to success. His main mission in the series is to demonstrate how hope still exists, even when all seems lost. This is achieved by being faithful to Drukmann's indications and creating a masterful series that will surely go down in history as one of the best audiovisual adaptations of a video game. It's no wonder that it has a 100% positive review rating on Rotten Tomatoes crowning it as one of the best series of the year that has only just begun.

Score: 9/10