the last of us the season finale, “Look For the Light,” gave us the end of Joel and Ellie’s cross-country journey, Joel’s heartbreaking choice when Ellie’s death was imminent, and all the moral and ethical debates that come with it. But he also showed us the begin of this story, including elements of it that were not shown there the last of us games. In particular, the opening scenes of “Look For the Light” depict Ellie’s birth, and the circumstances surrounding her one-of-a-kind immunity to the light. Cordyceps fungus
The series features Ellie’s mother, Anna (played by Ashley Johnson, Ellie’s voice in the last of us video games) running away from an infected zombie into a house to give birth. But the zombie follows him and attacks. Anna cuts him off with a knife and delivers her baby – Ellie – but the zombie manages to dislodge Anna’s leg in the process. It seems that something about this unusual birth and zombie attack at the same time made Ellie immune to anything inside Cordyceps a fungus turns everyone else it comes into contact with into a mushroom monster.
About the “Inside the Episode” video from HBO the last of us finale takes us behind the scenes of that series, and reveals some of the decisions that went into it. Series co-creator Craig Mazin says the audience “needs to understand why [Ellie] it is protective, but [they] she also needs to understand how much her mother was loved.” It’s all on display in that broken opening sequence from the episode. You can check out the making-of video below:
READ MORE: the last of us: Did Joel make the right choice?
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