In this piece · 10 sections+
YES, mostly. Season 1 is one of the best things HBO has made in a decade. Season 2 is messier and will test your patience. Watch anyway.
The case is simple. Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey carry a post-apocalyptic road show that got nominated for 24 Emmys out of the gate and won eight. Craig Mazin, the guy who made Chernobyl, co-runs it with Neil Druckmann, the guy who made the games. The pilot is a feature-length gut punch. The third episode of season 1 is the kind of hour of television people will still be arguing about in twenty years. If you watch the first three episodes and feel nothing, you're free to go. Most people don't feel nothing.
The quick verdict
Yes, watch it. Start with season 1 and give it until the end of episode 3 before you decide anything. If you want prestige drama with real actors and real stakes, you're in. If you need wall-to-wall action, zombie-horde set pieces every week, or a cheerful hang, this is not that show. It's a sad show about love in a dead world, with occasional very loud violence.
What The Last of Us is actually about
Twenty years after a fungus outbreak eats civilization, a smuggler named Joel gets hired to move a 14-year-old girl named Ellie across what used to be the United States. She might be immune. He is tired. The job turns into a trip, the trip turns into something closer to parenting, and the show spends most of its runtime watching two broken people figure out what they owe each other.
The tone is bleak with pockets of warmth, which is why it works. It isn't The Walking Dead. The infected are terrifying when they show up and the show mostly keeps them off screen, because the real threat is other survivors and the governments and militias they've cobbled together. Episodes slow down for long character beats. One episode detours entirely into a love story between two side characters you've never met. That episode is better than most movies this year.
The math on time
Two seasons. 16 episodes. Most run 50 to 65 minutes, with the pilot and a few others closer to 80. That's roughly 16 to 17 hours of television. A long weekend if you binge, a comfortable month if you watch two a week.
Is it worth that chunk? For season 1 alone, yes, easy. Nine episodes, every one does something. Season 2 is seven episodes and the ratio of great to frustrating drops. You're not signing up for Game of Thrones' eight-season commitment here. A third season is coming. If the whole thing turns out to be three seasons and done, you've spent less time on it than you spent on your last Netflix cop show you can't even remember the name of.
What it gets right
Casting. Pedro Pascal plays Joel like a man who has already decided he isn't a good person and is okay with it. Bella Ramsey plays Ellie like a kid who learned to be funny because the alternative is screaming. They don't look like the video game characters and it doesn't matter after ten minutes. The supporting bench is stacked: Nick Offerman, Melanie Lynskey, Anna Torv, Murray Bartlett, Storm Reid, Catherine O'Hara, Kaitlyn Dever. These are not streaming randoms. These are people who've been doing this for a while and know what to do with a scene.
The writing trusts quiet. Mazin learned on Chernobyl that the scariest thing on TV is a long close-up and a bad decision, and he brought that over. Big action set pieces exist. A horde attack on a Wyoming town in season 1 is as good as anything in a feature. But the show's best weapons are two people in a kitchen talking about what happened to them. The dialogue sounds like how people actually talk when they're scared and trying not to show it.
Production is top of the stack. HBO money, on screen, every episode. Real Alberta and British Columbia locations, practical sets, prosthetic infected that look like they'd smell. Gustavo Santaolalla's score, carried over from the games, does a huge amount of work. When the main theme hits, you feel it in your sternum, which is useful because a lot of this show is designed to make you feel things in your sternum.
What doesn't work
Season 2 wobbles. The show makes a hard narrative choice early on that fans of the games knew was coming and newcomers didn't. Whether or not you buy that choice, the season spends its remaining episodes recovering from it, and the recovery is uneven. New characters get introduced in a hurry. A planned flashback structure stretches the story thin. The season ends on a cliffhanger that will either make you lean forward or make you throw the remote, depending on your tolerance for cliffhangers.
The pacing in season 2 is also just slower in a way that isn't always earned. Season 1 had episodic detours that felt like short films. Season 2's detours sometimes feel like killing time until the next big beat. If you bounced off slow-burn prestige drama in general, this half of the show will test you.
Also, this is a sad show. Really sad. If you're in a bad place and looking for comfort TV, go watch something else and come back when you have more fuel. The pilot alone has broken people before they got to episode two. There's no light-hearted detour coming to save you in episode seven. The warm moments are warm because the cold ones are freezing. That's the deal.
Who should watch it
If you liked The Leftovers, Chernobyl, or Station Eleven, yes, this is your lane. If you loved the games, obviously yes, with the caveat that season 2 will test your relationship with the source material. If you want character drama where the apocalypse is the setting and not the plot, yes.
If you bounced off The Walking Dead because the zombie stuff got boring, you'll be fine. The infected are rationed. If you need a show that moves fast and resolves plots in 42 minutes, no. If you want something uplifting after a hard week, pick anything else on HBO Max. If you need a hopeful ending with a bow on it, this is not the show. It has moments of grace, not resolutions.
Where to watch
All 16 episodes stream on HBO Max in the US. Also available to rent or buy by the season on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, and the usual digital storefronts if you don't want a subscription. Buying the Blu-ray gets you a making-of that's worth it if you liked the show enough to want more.
FAQ
Is The Last of Us overrated?
Season 1 is not. It won eight Emmys and the praise was earned by actual craft on screen. Season 2 is where the overrated accusation lives, and there's a real argument there. The reception split hard between people who thought the show handled a controversial story turn well and people who thought the pacing collapsed. Both sides have a point.
Does it get better after season 1?
Honest answer: no, it gets rockier. Season 1 is the high point so far. Season 2 has great individual scenes and some of the best acting in the series, but the overall shape of the season is messier. The show is building to something that needs season 3 to pay off. Judge the full arc when it's done.
Is it too dark or too slow?
It's dark. It's not slow in a boring way, it's slow in a prestige-drama way, which means long character scenes and silence instead of plot engines. If you watch a lot of HBO already, this is normal speed. If you mostly watch broadcast procedurals or action, it will feel like it's dragging in spots.
Do I need to play the games first?
No. The show tells the full story on its own. Playing the games gives you more context and makes certain season 2 choices land differently, but the show is designed for people who've never touched a PlayStation. The games are great if you want them. They're not homework.
What to do tonight
Watch the pilot. If you're still breathing at the end, keep going through episode 3. If that one doesn't land for you, nothing else here will. For most people, it lands.
✅ WORTH IT
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