This article contains spoilers for the Season 2 finale of The Last of Us .

The first season of The Last of Us ended with the show’s gruff hero, Joel (Pedro Pascal), making a horrifying choice whose moral weight was undermined by the fact that, unlike in the video games on which the series is based, you only had to watch him do the deed rather than carry it out yourself. It was startling to see Joel murder an entire legion of Firefly militia fighters, knowing full well that he might be ending the world’s last chance of rescuing itself from a zombie apocalypse. But it was also a little bit grotesque, submerging the audience in Joel’s panic and his righteous fury rather than giving us any distance from them. It was like being forced inside someone else’s action-movie fantasy, kno

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