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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
81
Mixed:
7
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
Mar 6, 2023
Season 1 Review:
By leaning just enough on the source material but not so much as to lose sight of the mission, which is to deliver a gut-wrenchingly emotional and poignant story, The Last of Us is not just the perfect adaptation; it’s an adaptation that has the potential to transcend even the original game.
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Jan 13, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Aa prestige drama based on a prestige video game, with quality distinctions that place this story in a league of its own. ... The television adaptation is such a gripping tale of survival because it makes ample room for savagery and love, desperation and selflessness. Pedro Pascal knocks it out of the park as grizzled survivor Joel. ... Prior knowledge of the saga is not required to become entangled in this rich drama. ... An enthralling experience.
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The Daily BeastJan 10, 2023
Season 1 Review:
As heartbreakingly faithful as it is riveting and suspenseful, The Last of Us is a triumph that ends any further debate about the all-time best video game adaptation. ... At once familiar and original, action-packed and mournful. Barring some Armageddon-grade calamity, it seems destined to be HBO’s next big blockbuster.
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ColliderJan 10, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Druckmann and Mazin have taken this unforgettable story and made it richer and more impactful, letting us live with these characters and this world in a way that we couldn’t in the game. The Last of Us is a monumental success, and in this universe of incredible darkness, Mazin and Druckmann show us the light that makes this story so powerful.
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IndieWireApr 7, 2025
Season 2 Review:
In addition to O’Hara’s thorny, well-honed performance, Pascal’s aching stares and Ramsey’s innocent glimmer are deployed to perfection and developed as scrupulously as the scripts. “The Last of Us” remains a rush to watch, as overwhelming as a tidal wave and piercing as the coldest water.
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Jan 10, 2023The PlaylistJan 10, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Through the riveting craft of it all, the taut writing, excellent direction—filmmakers like Jeremy Webb, Jasmila Žbanić, Liza Johnson, and Ali Abbasi—exemplary cinematography and moody and melancholy music, Mazin and his co-creator and co-writer Neil Druckmann—the creator of the original video game—craft something that becomes visceral and primal.
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Apr 14, 2025
Season 2 Review:
A late-season confrontation between a major character and a new mysterious threat is especially clumsy and ultimately unnecessary. But these minor deficiencies are washed away by the gigantic wave of emotion propelling the plot. .... Trust that this show’s devotion to its characters’ humanity makes the horrors hit harder.
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Apr 7, 2025
Season 2 Review:
We don’t get as many moments between Joel and Ellie as we did in season 1, and it’s a bit of a loss for the show, since they’re the emotional heart and soul of the series. What we do get of Joel and Ellie together, though, is poignant and gripping and the best of what “The Last of Us” can be. Despite that fissure, the show’s return gets a boost from new characters entering the fray.
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RogerEbert.comApr 7, 2025
Season 2 Review:
It’s a season that asks viewers to interrogate the cost of tough decisions, a masterful study in ripple effects from Joel losing his daughter in the prologue to how that influenced his commitment to saving Ellie. Being a hero for one person can make you a villain for another. That’s a tough thing to render, and for viewers to consider. But “The Last of Us” succeeded as a game franchise because it trusted the emotional intelligence of gamers, and the show does the same for TV viewers.
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LooperApr 7, 2025
Season 2 Review:
"The Last of Us" Season 2 is just very, very good; the showrunners know exactly what they're doing here, and every single performer involved understood their own assignments. Over just seven episodes, we get a new, full story about these characters we love. Just one thing: have tissues ready.
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Jan 17, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Mazin, Druckmann and the directors got the vital elements of "The Last of Us" right by honoring what makes the game outstanding and making its story come alive for anyone who has never played it and never will. Nonstop action can be enough to move along stories in that format and in comic books. Real people require additional dimensionality – and here, at last, is an apocalyptic fantasy that strives to give us that along with its monsters.
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Apr 7, 2025
Season 2 Review:
The Last of Us’ second season combines bludgeoning violence with precise emotional stabs as emotive acting, thoughtful dialogue, and deft camera work come together to convey every subtle shift in these characters—basically, it does a much better job than the game of putting us in these people’s headspaces. It’s not for the faint of heart, but this punishing journey is worth embarking on.
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The Mercury NewsApr 10, 2025
Apr 9, 2025
Season 2 Review:
The violence and horror of this season are extreme, absent any glimmer of light down that long, Stygian tunnel. .... But that shouldn't detract from the genuine pleasures here either — the acting, the superlative craftsmanship, even the spectacular Canadian Rockies. You could do worse. You will rarely do better.
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Apr 7, 2025
Season 2 Review:
Season 2 is in many respects a tougher and more upsetting season than the first. The cast, especially Pascal and Ramsey, does superb work, but what made Joel and Ellie easy to like and root for in the first season starts to erode here, another consequence of Joel's actions in Salt Lake City. That makes Season 2 more difficult but also more complex and provocative.
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Jan 13, 2023SlashfilmApr 7, 2025
Season 2 Review:
The few times the season stumbles is when it resembles the game at its most basic level — not unlike the emotional distance of watching someone else play through "Part II" on YouTube. At its best, however, it proves why this game was worth adapting to another medium in the first place. So how do you improve on what came before? By doing exactly what "The Last of Us" season 2 does.
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Jan 10, 2023
Season 1 Review:
The spotty track record of videogame adaptations and glut of apocalyptic/zombie dramas receive a welcome boost from The Last of Us, which proves there’s room for more of each as long as it’s this good. A road series with mini-dramas baked into the episodes, the HBO show quickly proves itself worthy of the hype and anticipation by delivering a fully realized series graced with flesh-and-blood characters.
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Apr 7, 2025
Season 2 Review:
Even this batch’s narratively weaker moments (the last installment of the season is its shakiest) feel like a treat to take in thanks to the show’s stunning cinematography, score, production value, and direction by the likes of Druckmann, Succession‘s Mark Mylod, and Loki‘s Kate Herron.
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Apr 7, 2025
Season 2 Review:
If the season has one specific flaw, it’s that some non-chronological storytelling ends up detracting from the narrative momentum. .... All elements of the production are as sharp as before, with the production design in particular really working overtime to capture not just the new community of Jackson, but the remains of the now-dead world from before.
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The GuardianApr 14, 2025
Season 2 Review:
This season has a narrower scope than the first, without the standalone, digressive episodes that were some of the original run’s best. It’s all about Ellie becoming her own person, which happily means a lot more of Ramsey’s wonderfully punchy portrayal of a damaged young soul fighting for autonomy.
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Apr 14, 2025
Season 2 Review:
While Ellie’s teenage petulance may make some viewers as irritated with her as her surrogate dad, the season offers ample opportunity to explore both the origins and the cost of Ellie’s abrasiveness, and Ramsey’s performance takes us inside Ellie’s skin without softening her armor-plated exterior.
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Apr 14, 2025
Season 2 Review:
“The Last of Us” does not provide many new reasons to watch in Season 2. But it still offers a consistently reliable one: Ramsey’s hard, nervy, wonderfully impertinent performance as Ellie. The 19-year-old character is not as fresh and funny as the 14-year-old was, but Ramsey continues to cleave through the well-made melodrama and get to something real.
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iApr 14, 2025
Season 2 Review:
Players of the game will spend this series waiting for the heartbreaking, game-changing plot twist that I won’t spoil here. For now, it’s worth basking in the safety of the compound – Joel and Ellie might be going through a rough patch, but that’s nothing compared to what faces them in the forthcoming episodes.
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The IndependentApr 7, 2025
Season 2 Review:
Showrunner Craig Mazin (and Neil Druckmann, the architect of the game, who co-creates this adaptation) have done a fine job translating for the screen. The world has ended over and over, on screens big and small, but it has rarely been as plausible – or compelling – as the barbaric wasteland of Last of Us’s second season.
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Apr 7, 2025
Season 2 Review:
The second season cannot match the world-building revelations of the first. There is still plenty to see and learn. .... Some questions are answered almost immediately, while others are left to linger for an unusual number of beats. But as previously noted, the real narrative of this season is about consequences, and by extension, choices, which makes it far more inward-focused than the first.
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Apr 7, 2025
Season 2 Review:
There are issues around the margins: texture about the surrounding world that doesn’t get enough detail, for instance, and the introduction of Abby, who does not yet have time to become as rounded and complex as Ellie or Joel. .... But in season two, The Last of Us is proof that a zombie story can be even better and more devastating, more nuanced about its moral conundrums and more thoughtful about the aftermath, when no one’s firing up a flamethrower.
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Jan 26, 2023
Season 1 Review:
The Last of Us takes up the mantle The Walking Dead set down long before it left the air, picking up where that show left off instead of attempting to trod its well-worn path. ... The Last of Us operates entirely differently, keeping the action centered on Joel and Ellie throughout the main story, and providing side characters with flashback spin-offs. We get to appreciate these side characters, and even become greatly endeared to them, but within the confines of their own story.
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Jan 19, 2023
Season 1 Review:
The show’s rough-hewn center is the surrogate father-daughter bond between Joel and Ellie, but the series works best as an anthropological travelogue of post-catastrophe subcultures, teasing out the disparate ways that survivors rebuild mini-societies and create new alignments of power.
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Jan 12, 2023
Season 1 Review:
If it’s zombie spatter you want, “The Last of Us” has it by the bucketful. If, on the other hand, you’re hoping that it will upend the plague-apocalypse genre as “The Sopranos” did the mob drama or “The Wire” did the cop show — well, not quite. But with its smidgen of hope and its rejection of nihilism, “The Last of Us” has a few key mutations that make it a variant of interest.
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Jan 10, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Fight scenes and gun battles are filmed as if the viewer is looking through the eyes of the character delivering the blows or pulling the trigger. This approach is deployed just often enough to add a sense of immediacy without feeling too much like a gimmick. The Last of Us distinguishes itself most when it veers off the path laid by its source material.
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RogerEbert.comJan 10, 2023
Season 1 Review:
The result is a show that amplifies what a phenomenal piece of storytelling the game was in the first place, taking a video game more seriously than any adaptation has to date. This is more Cormac McCarthy than Paul W.S. Anderson, and it should appeal to both fans of the game and those who put down their controllers years ago.
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The IndependentJan 10, 2023
Season 1 Review:
The Last of Us is undoubtedly a new landmark in the seemingly impossible task of adapting video games. It’s too early to say whether it will satisfy the legions of fans who believe that Druckmann’s survivalist game is high art, in itself. But Druckmann, working with Mazin, has his fingerprints all over this tender, well-crafted and blackly comic piece.
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Jan 10, 2023
Season 1 Review:
The third episode is what elevates The Last of Us from a horror romp to something on the verge of truly special. ... Though I wouldn’t have wanted much more padding, a tiny bit of additional breathing room could have let The Last of Us achieve additional profundity in its commentary on The Way We’re Living Now, beyond what is a sincere if superficial take on darkness and light within human nature. If those, however, are my biggest complaints about your blockbuster video game adaptation? Well, you’ve done pretty well indeed,
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Jan 10, 2023
Season 1 Review:
It is essentially a smarter and much better-executed The Walking Dead, with higher production values, and a smaller and stronger cast. ... But the character work soon becomes so potent that there are long stretches without any infected, and it doesn’t feel like the series is lacking in dramatic tension or memorable incident. ... Druckmann and Mazin have turned it into something that works incredibly well as a television show.
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Jan 10, 2023
Jan 10, 2023
Season 1 Review:
“The Last of Us” can lean too hard on action sequences, which emphasizes the uncanny surreality of the infected. But what lies beneath the chaos is the nascent bond between Joel, a rootless man who’s promised to guard Ellie. ... Through Pascal’s and Ramsey’s performances and some strong writing, this dynamic glimmers with emotion and life.
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The TelegraphJan 10, 2023
Season 1 Review:
At nine episodes, it feels a little long, even if it is truncated compared to its source material. But in its scale, depiction of dread and its believable vision of friendship in disaster, The Last of Us is a rare piece of television: an adaptation that makes you want to rush out and play the game.
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Jan 10, 2023
Season 1 Review:
The Last of Us is very good. Beyond Pascal and Ramsey's excellent work, it's visually striking — both in the post-apocalyptic world it creates and the scary creatures that inhabit it — tensely directed, and populated with intriguing characters (including a terrifying tyrant-in-the-making played by Melanie Lynskey). But the Bill and Frank episode suggests an even better show might be possible if it allowed itself to open up a bit more.
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Apr 7, 2025
Season 2 Review:
It’s commendable how Season 2 of The Last of Us tries to advance the narrative in a fresh way, but it’s not entirely successful. And the deep sadness that permeates the entire show stubbornly remains. I can say I admire a lot of the craftsmanship that goes into making The Last of Us.
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Apr 7, 2025
Season 2 Review:
Here's where reactions to the latest narrative will likely diverge between fans of the game and viewers unfamiliar with its recent plotlines. The former should be pleased by the show’s general fidelity to what they know; us non-players are in for some savage, devastating shocks. Either way, prepare to be hooked.
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Apr 7, 2025
Season 2 Review:
Ramsey homes in on how learning to live with that duality eats away at Ellie, and how a straight line can be drawn between Joel’s teachings and all the good and bad that the girl does. And it’s that insight, coupled with the nuance breathed into even the season’s smallest characters, many of whom inspect their lives with the quiet hope that the better angels within them keep the roiling hatred creeping in at the margins from swallowing their world whole, that keeps The Last of Us from succumbing to wall-to-wall misanthropy.
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Jan 12, 2023
Season 1 Review:
The high production values and the series' ability to pivot its storytelling — the third episode is a lovely and quite moving distraction from the main plot — keep it fresh, even as the show's familiarities and the rudimentary bickering between characters ("you sure do ask a lot of questions!" Joel crankily remarks to Ellie, as he'd rather walk in silence) ring all sorts of bells.
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Jan 10, 2023
Season 1 Review:
There’s a lot in The Last of Us that feels stale. But within that repetition, there are glimmers of promise: Its slick presentation, Pascal and Ramsey’s soulful performances, the show’s intermittent detours to (forgive me) flesh out the world Mazin and Druckmann have set up. Newbies to the story may find plenty to love in the series, if they can get past the trappings of the genre itself. But if you’re familiar with the game, get ready to watch it all over again, with a couple of novel twists.
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Apr 7, 2025
Season 2 Review:
Season 2 of HBO’s Naughty Dog adaptation is not bad television, far from it. It’s incredibly well-made, often looks gorgeous, and is packed full of stellar performances. But the storytelling devices and choices made in terms of pace and placement for key events bump up against what works, ultimately not delivering the striking effect this story’s undeniable shocking events should.
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Apr 7, 2025
Season 2 Review:
I can’t say I was ever less than entertained. Even the material about those strange and unexplained factions contained enough harrowing or unsettling elements, or else passed by quickly enough, to keep me engaged. But I did find myself missing the rich lyricism of that previous chapter, the sprawling humanity of it, the devastating finality of it.
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Jan 10, 2023
Season 1 Review:
The show is by turns gorgeous and harrowing, brutal and warm. From the performances to the storytelling to the aesthetic elements, it’s an exquisitely made adaptation. But it also asks viewers to absorb a whole lot of human misery without saying much that we haven’t already heard in similar shows.
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Jan 10, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Yet for all that is so clearly wonderful about this show, it’s a series that can never escape its roots. The Last of Us is hands-down one of the greatest and most inspired video game adaptations brought to screen. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? No matter how sharp the writing, how inspired the visuals, how awards-worthy the performances, this will always be an interactive story forced into a passive medium.
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Jan 10, 2023
Season 1 Review:
The scope is vast, for better (soaring vistas, extensive cityscapes) and for worse (one of the premiere's two prologues is pointless). There are big-deal guest leads. The action is fine, functional. One episode completely shifts the game's canon, but some scenes get recreated shot-for-shot. That may work best for newbies, or fans who prefer adaptations barely adapted. It contributes to the feeling of watching someone else's replay.
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Apr 7, 2025
Season 2 Review:
Season 2 has one major story thread stretched over the seven installments. That's not inherently a bad choice, but in this instance the overarching story feels both overlong and underwhelming as tiny pieces of the narrative are introduced without being fully explained.
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Jan 11, 2023
Season 1 Review:
“The Last of Us” is certainly well-made and mostly absorbing, anchored by solid performances from Pascal and Ramsey. ... But the story told in “The Last of Us” — from the game’s writer Neil Druckmann, teaming up with “Chernobyl” creator Craig Mazin — isn’t especially curious or interested in lingering in this place long enough to suss out the details.
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Apr 22, 2025
Season 2 Review:
Though Season 2 gives these individual dynamics more room to breathe, it ends up feeling smaller than its predecessor over all. A subplot involving Ellie’s crush on the flatly written Dina (Isabela Merced) soon descends into melodrama, and the narrative detours and beguiling world-building that once lent the show such poignancy and unpredictability are replaced by a relentless hammering-home of rudimentary lessons about the perils of revenge.
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The Observer (UK)Apr 21, 2025
Apr 14, 2025
Season 2 Review:
“The Last of Us” tenderly unpacks the way that need for purpose becomes a problem, but this isn’t a perfect season. It doesn’t really feel like a season; so much remains shadowy, undeveloped or underexplained that the finale feels like it stops more than it concludes.
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Apr 7, 2025
Season 2 Review:
This follow up is oddly workmanlike. .... To pretend that The Last of Us completely transcends its original medium would be to ignore the hole at the center of the show where insight and complexity and rich supporting characters should be. What fill out the episodes instead are extended zombie-battle scenes and long, silent sequences where people explore gorgeously decaying spaces. At those moments, you might as well be watching someone play a video game.
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