The series that is taking the world by storm with its profound storytelling and excellent acting performances, and bringing one of the world’s most beloved video game stories to a live-action adaptation, ‘The Last of Us’ has premiered its seventh episode of the series. Continuing to grow in viewership since the release of the pilot in January 2023, the astounding reviews from viewers and critics helped build the viewership it holds today. With the high bar of expectations set from the video game franchise’s incredibly large fanbase, the series adapted for HBO was able to render a large viewership of fans and others tuning in to see how the series compared to the critically acclaimed and award-winning game series. Luckily, the series exceeded its expectations, truly bringing to life the sorrow tone and one of the top duos in the gaming community, Ellie and Joel.
With the video game series winning multiple BAFTA Game Awards, including Best Game, Best Story, and Best Performance in 2014, ‘The Last of Us’ video game solidified itself as a pinnacle of effective video game storytelling. As a story telling the tragedy and beauty of parenthood, ‘The Last of Us’ video game captured the hearts of tens of millions that played and watched the campaign. But, with the devotion of these fans swearing by the narrative perfection of the video game, the idea of a live-action adaptation of the video game frightened most of the gaming community. As live-action video game adaptations have the unfortunate record of being lackluster, unloyal to the source material, or an ineffective translation from video game to film or television, the possibility of tarnishing the name of ‘The Last of Us’ seemed most likely. However, there were some glimmers of hope along the way that Hollywood was finally learning the right ways to adapt video games to film and television. Netflix’s ‘Arcane’, adapted from ‘League of Legends’, and ‘Castlevania’ from the video game franchise of the same name, are both critically acclaimed animated series developed from video games but that performed well in quality storytelling and viewership.
Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey: The Weight of the Franchise Falls on their Shoulders
Since the premiere of the pilot episode, the series has been a hit and continues to grow in viewership past other projects on the platform. A big thanks to the series’ success can be awarded to Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey, the actors given the ultimate task of bringing Joel and Ellie to life, respectively. Pedro Pascal, who plays the Mandalorian in ‘The Mandalorian’ captures everything gamers loved about Joel and more. With the dramatization of the game’s campaign onto the screen, Pedro Pascal is able to portray more of Joel’s vulnerability than gamers got to see in the limited video game series playthrough. To capture one of the game’s largest themes, which is the difficulty of parenthood, Pascal is no stranger to protagonist roles involving surprise lifetime fatherhood. With his work on ‘The Mandalorian’ with Grogu or “Baby Yoda”, Pascal once again drives a series with his stellar performance as a tough caretaker in a hostile world.
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Pascal is joined by his former ‘Game of Thrones’ co-star, Bella Ramsey, who captures the witty and edgy Ellie that gamers grew to appreciate. Although gamers were confident about Pascal’s abilities to play Joel, many were wary about Bella Ramsey’s casting for the role of Ellie. As Ellie is somewhat the princess of video game characters, Ramsey had the weight of playing the role perfectly or being slammed by millions online. Being a woman acting in a series expecting an audience being predominantly male, the unfortunate truth of the matter is that Ramsey was destined to be faced with backlash no matter how great she played the character. Much of the outrage in Ramsey’s casting lies on her being visually unsimilar to Ellie’s character model in the video game series, but when evaluating Ramsey’s performance, she nailed Ellie’s voice, got Ellie’s edgy spunk, and brings the light into the horrifying apocalyptic setting.
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Viewership and Plans for Season Two
From the pilot to the fourth episode, ‘The Last of Us’ saw an increase in viewership by 15-20% per week. Bringing its viewership to 7.5 million viewers, ‘The Last of Us’ places in second for the highest viewership for HBO series, falling behind ‘House of the Dragon’ which holds the top spot at 10 million. In taking second place, ‘The Last of Us’ surpassed Zendaya’s ‘Euphoria’. The live numbers account for less than half of the series’ viewership, as the first two episodes of the series are said to have gained an average of 21.3 million viewers total. With the release of the Nielsen streaming charts, ‘The Last of Us’ is revealed to have 837 million minutes streamed with only two episodes released for the week of January 16 to January 22. With these numbers, ‘The Last of Us’ outpaces ‘House of the Dragon’, which only had 741 million minutes viewed in the same two-episode interval.
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Upon the revelation of the series’ viewership and critical success, the series has been renewed for a second season before the first season has even finished. As the series seems to follow the plot and pacing of the first game in the franchise, it can be concluded (but not confirmed) that the second season will mimic the events and campaign of the second video game in the franchise ‘The Last of Us Part II’. Also critically acclaimed, having won many awards including 2020’s Game of the Year Award, it is a polarizing installment in the franchise and bears the burden of adapting one of the gaming community’s most hated video game characters to the television screen, Abigail “Abby” Anderson. Hopefully, the actress that earns the role of Abby isn’t keen on reading online comments.
By Nino Vongphachanh
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