‘When You’re Lost in the Darkness’: Spoiler-free photos from ‘The Last of Us’ episode 1

It’s “The Last of Us” day!

The first episode, titled “When You’re Lost in the Darkness,” is dropping in a few hours, but before that happens, I just want to share to you some of the spoiler-free photos from the first episode that HBO dropped a few weeks ago.

You might also want to read everything we know so far about the entire series, which many critics are now calling as the greatest adaptation of a video game ever. What my previous post didn’t mention is that episode 1 will be 85 minutes long! That almost feels like a full-length film.

For more about “The Last of Us,” click here.

Let’s start with this photo of Anna Torv and Pedro Pascal, who play Tess and Joel, respectively, in front of an infected. The show will hopefully explain all levels of infection, but don’t worry if it doesn’t do that early on in the series. You’ll eventually understand it all. This scene should be before they both meet Ellie, who is played by Bella Ramsey.

My guess is that instead of showing us infection day in the first scene, this episode will feature the infection day while they cut between scenes of Tess and Joel 20 years later. If you haven’t played the game or at least seen some gameplays, I’m sure this doesn’t make any sense to you right now, but once the episode is up, I know it will. If this is not the case, forget I said this.

The next photo here is Ellie and Tess, probably while hiding from the infected. As some post-apocalyptic stories go, there will be the living versus the living storylines, so this scene might also be one of those. I don’t know.

I don’t think this is going to spoil anything, but the photo below is where the title of the episode comes from. It’s the slogan of a resistance group that is going against the martial law.

Here’s another photo of Tess and Joel. I don’t have any idea what part of the story this is from, but this is also probably before they (and we as the audience) are introduced to Ellie. In the show, they’ve given some of the characters some nicknames. Tess is “the smuggler” while Joel is “the protector.” Ellie’s nickname is a bit spoilery for the first episode, so I’ll be mum on that for now. If you really want to know, look for it in the show’s official social media accounts.

The slogans are everywhere. Although in the case of this one below, somebody wasn’t able to finish graffitiing. I wonder what happened. This kinda reminds me of the two activists in Guinobatan, Albay who were killed before they could finish graffitiing “Duterte Ibagsak” (Down with Duterte) on a bridge railing in 2021.

Here’s a photo of Nico Parker who plays Sarah, Joel’s daughter. This is an interesting photo because in the game, we didn’t actually see Sarah during the a.m.

Tommy, played by Gabriel Luna, is “the soldier” in the show. He is Joel’s younger brother who we’ll see during the infection day with “the protector” and his daughter.

The photo below is of Merle Dandrige, who reprises the role of Marlene. She is probably the only one who does so. On the left is Natasha Mumba, who plays an entirely new character, Kim Tembo.

Other voice actors from the game are also in the show, but they’re playing different roles. The voice actor who played Ellie and Joel in the games are in the show playing different characters. We’ll talk about their characters some other time because if I mention them now, it might be a little bit spoilery.

Speaking of Kim Tembo as a new character, by the way, aside from her, the show will introduce other characters that have not appeared in the games. I’ll mention more details on them as the show progresses.

Here’s another photo of Sarah during the day. (Of course I’m gonna keep repeating that we are seeing her in the daytime in these photos because I find it interesting. LOL.)

And last but not the least, here’s a photo of the magnificent Craig Mazin, who’s directed and co-written the first episode. He is also one of the show creators alongside Neil Druckman, who’s responsible for the game’s storyline and direction. As I mentioned before, Mazin is also one of the creators of the must-watch HBO miniseries “Chernobyl.”

That’s it. That’s everything you need to see before the episode drops in a few hours. I’ll be posting breakdowns of each episode here, so please like this blog’s Facebook page to get notified when I do. Click here to read more about “The Last of Us.” Enjoy the day and don’t get infected.