One of the biggest changes HBO’s The Last of Us made in season one was to forego the presence of spores. In the video games characters have to wear gas masks when they travel because cordyceps is literally in the air. Survivors always have to worry about the terrible possibility of inhaling floating spores. While terrifying, those airborne nightmares didn’t make sense for a TV show where you prefer to see world-class actors emote. But season two’s fifth episode found a way to finally introduce spores to the series in a truly horrifying way that doesn’t mean every performer suddenly has to cover up their face.
The only problem was the characters on The Last of Us inexplicably aren’t worried about their existence nearly as much as they should be.
Season two’s fifth episode began with high-ranking WLF leader Hanrahan, the woman who welcomed Jeffrey Wright’s Isaac into the group when he defected from FEDRA. She was meeting with Sergeant Elise Park. Elise’s unit had been charged with securing a hospital for the organization. Hanrahan was there on Isaacs’s orders while he dealt with the broken Seraphite treaty. Elise’s loyal soldiers feared Hanrahan would execute their leader for “killing her own soldiers,” a group that included someone named Leon.
Elise’s story absolved her of any wrongdoing in the most unimaginable, horrible way. She told Hanrahan about how they’d been clearing floors. The few infected they expected to encounter didn’t worry them. The bigger problem was the basement, which they could only reach via a single stairwell. It was also where the group’s older members said “they brought the first cordyceps patients in ’03.”
The day before earlier Elise sent a squad down to the basement to clear section B1. They found nothing there, “not even rats.” So earlier that morning she sent a second squad to check out the next section. What they discovered was maybe the scariest development mankind has known since Infection Day. Elise’s report was beyond chilling.
So today, B2, hoping to find more of the same, I sent a second squad down and I put Leon in charge ’cause he’s my best. Few minutes in he radios back there’s cordyceps on the wall, the floors. Chances are they’ll find infected next, but that’s what they were down there for so I told him to proceed. Five minutes later he radios again, but this time he….he was struggling to breath. He could hardly talk. I thought maybe he had been bit. I said, “Leon, were you bit?” He said….he said, “It’s in the air.” He said, “It’s in the air. Seal us in.” And I knew it wasn’t in the vents or we all would have been infected weeks ago. So I scrambled my other team, and we locked the only door to B2, and we locked the only door to B1. And we did what Leon said. We sealed them in.
Hanrahan confirmed nothing else had gotten out of that basement and no one else had been infected before leaving. As she walked out, she revealed why this sad development was especially tragic for Elise, who had acted with true bravery when she sealed her own soldiers’ fate. Leon is her son.
Later in the episode Ellie arrived at that same Seattle hospital looking for Nora, one of the people who helped Abby kill Joel. In a sequence adapted from The Last of Us Part II, Nora fled. But she ended up trapped in a barricaded hallway. With no way out she jumped into a slightly ajar(!) elevator shaft. The elevator cable then snapped, bringing her down to B2. Ellie chased after her, but the terrified WLF guards did not. Ellie soon learned why they stopped chasing her.
She found people, including Leon, alive and integrated into the cordyceps lined walls. B2 was a fungal nightmare of horror. With each breath, those lost soldiers emitted the very same spores that had doomed them. Those floating fungi were everywhere. And while Ellie’s immunity kept her safe, Nora instantly succumbed to the infection. Within a couple of minutes a coughing Nora could barely breathe or move. Her words and thoughts became sluggish. While we didn’t see it, by the time Ellie was done torturing her, Nora could barely talk. Her mind and fortitude had also faltered. She had initially refused to give. upher friend Abby. By the end she gave Ellie two words for Ellie to locate her nemesis.
Both Elise’s story and Ellie’s trip through B2 made the wait for spores on HBO’s series worth it. Hearing about Leon’s ill-fated mission was terrifying enough on its own. Seeing him entrenched into that wall, and seeing Nora meet the same end, was even more horrific than Elise or Hanrahan could have imagined.
But knowing what’s down there is bad enough that they should have been far more worried about the presence of spores! Hanrahan’s line about how the hospital is “a resource we can’t afford to lose” tried to explain why WLF didn’t immediately abandon the building before burning it down, but it wasn’t a good explanation. That attitude makes more sense in the game where mankind had already been living with the presence of spores for many years. People there have masks on them and know what spores can and can’t do. In the world of HBO’s The Last of Us, finding out cordyceps was in the air should have resulted in a far more urgent, far more appropriate response.
Sure, those floating fungi hadn’t made their way up the vents yet. That also helps logically explain why every character won’t suddenly need to wear a mask on the show, an obviously smart creative choice. But considering no one even knew spores existed that morning how could they assume they wouldn’t eventually make their way up to higher floors? Or to the outside? Why would any smart, capable leader—of which WLF clearly has many—treat them as anything other than an existential crisis?
Even if they truly believe the hospital is important enough it must operate while a fate worse than death dances in the air beneath their feet (a truly absurd decision), shouldn’t they have at least closed those elevator shafts for good? Nora got into one because it was still open. They all just assumed an old elevator hanging on a rusted cable was going to keep them safe forever? Or, again, floating spores wouldn’t maybe float up? What if a hole in a wall of a broken down building created an updraft?
One of the best things about The Last of Us season two is the matter-of-fact way people talk about death and violence. They talk about infected and violence the way we might talk about the weather. It makes the world they inhabit feel authentic and lived in. Cordyceps and raiders are the reality they know. They’ve adjusted to both. But that’s not true of floating spores. They are a totally different kind of nightmare than anything else they’ve ever encountered. Forgetting guns and zombie bites. Breathing itself can now kill them.
W.L.F. is run by people who know what they’re doing. Having them under react to a horrific discovery was not only illogical, it under cut the otherwise superb introduction of spores to HBO’s The Last of Us. The characters should find them as scary as we do.
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. He wonders what the spores smell and taste like. You can follow him on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.