Episode Review: The Last of Us 2x4 - "Day One"

Welcome back to the blog readers. I cannot believe how good The Last of Us (2023-) has been so far this season. The performances are Emmy-worthy (especially from Bella Ramsey), the story is so engaging (especially with last week's massive deviation from the game that I loved), and we are introducing some concepts like the Seraphites pretty early on, earlier from the game. Now that we are in Seattle, would we be able to keep the momentum going with this episode, tiled "Day One," written by Craig Mazin, and directed by Kate Herron? Stick around to find out.

NOTE: I will be using spoilers for my thoughts, so DO NOT read ahead if you have not seen the episode. I also will not be spoiling the events of the game The Last of Us Part II (2020) in which the season is based.

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I knew that when we got to Seattle this show was going to get real dark real quick. If you have played the game, you would know what happens here and what heinous things we would see. There are some moments of levity in this location though, with two of them happening in this episode. More on that later, but I just want to say this may just be the second best episode of the season thus far. The performances (especially from Isabela Merced and Jeffrey Wright) and the story are all delectable, and I love how the little deviations from the game make this such a strong episode.

We all know that Isabela Merced has been killing it in this show so far as Dina, and you know how long I have been on this journey with her as an actor. She has effortlessly taken on the freewheeling Joan Baez-like spirit that Shannon Woodward had in the game and amplifies it tenfold. Merced was absolutely the right choice to play Dina in this show, and her performance in this episode only proves my point. To me, it is all in the subtlety of the performance that makes it fantastic. Just what she is able to portray with her body language and her eyes is enough to take me out of whatever is happening around her and make me focus on just her as a performer. And the final 10-15 minutes of this episode absolutely sold me on her. The despair all the way up to the love was done with such a power and a gravitas that I fully believe now she should get a Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series nomination.

Next up I want to talk about the performance of Jeffrey Wright...or should I say, Academy Award nominee Jeffrey Wright...as Isaac Dixon. As a veteran of the industry, Wright has been around in a lot of properties like Bond and the MCU. But he is also an award-nominated actor. He has a Primetime Emmy and a Tony on his mantle, and received an Academy Award nomination for his role in American Fiction (2023) (a role that John Campea believes should have won him the award over Cillian Murphy). Having played Dixon in The Last of Us Part II, I did not expect it to work out as well as Merle Dandridge reprising her role of Marlene from the first game to the first season. Thankfully, it was better.

We got so much in so little with Wright's performance in this episode. When we first see him, he is a jaded man who has been spent up with everything he has ever known. And we see how quickly he is willing to burn everything down to facilitate a change for himself. I thought this switch-up was a very nice representation of the broken and feral world that has been presented to us. When we later see Dixon torturing/interrogating that Seraphite (however you want to look at it), we first see a subdued man who is only looking to get information. But as the cracks begin to form and we see what he really is about, that rage and that restlessness boils to the surface and leads to probably the best performance I have seen from Wright thus far. I cannot wait to see what kinds of things we see from him in the future. And yes, this is the first time I have ever spent more than one paragraph on one performance.

Now we need to talk about the story of this episode because it is really advancing through to where we need to be. We start in a flashback to 2018, in which FEDRA soldiers are discussing and joking about the citizens of Seattle, primarily Janowitz (played by Josh Peck, who makes a surprise cameo in the episode). When they are discussing why thy call the citizens "voters," Isaac Dixon (who at this time is the commanding officer of these FEDRA soldiers) explains it is done in a mocking way because they took the people's right to vote away. The group is ambushed by a bunch of citizens led by Hanrahan (played by Alanna Ubach) and Isaac tells a soldier named Burton to get out of their truck. Greeting Hanrahan, Isaac takes the grenades on his uniform and throws them in the truck and locks the door, betraying FEDRA. After shooting the driver of the truck, he tells Burton to make a choice while shaking Hanrahan's hand, revealing he is betraying FEDRA to join the Washington Liberation Front (WLF).

In the present in 2029, Ellie and Dina have made it to Seattle and are looking for supplies. When they are ready to leave the pharmacy that they were rummaging in, Dina stumbles on something not shown to the camera, but she is delayed in her response to Ellie. Once they leave the pharmacy, they are surprised to not see any FEDRA, Seraphites, or WLF, but they do see dead bodies and skeletons of FEDRA soldiers. When they discover a massive base with WLF written on a satellite, the two conclude trying to infiltrate it by day is not a good idea and decide to go in at night. The pair hole up inside a music store where Ellie finds a guitar and begins to play A-ha's "Take On Me." When Dina discovers this, she urges Ellie to keep singing, and Dina begins to get emotional at being serenaded. She points out how good she has been getting and Ellie credits Joel for the lessons he gave her. Meanwhile, Isaac, now the leader of the WLF, interrogates a Seraphite and tortures him into giving him the location of the next attack. When he refuses, Isaac shoots him in the head as a converted Burton says he deserves it.

At night, Ellie and Dina prepare to infiltrate the WLF base and discover an entrance in which they won't be spotted. Once in, they notice that the Seraphites have strung WLF soldiers by the rafters and spilled out their intestines, leading to Dina getting sick again. Before they can react, WLF return to the base and the two are forced to hide. They are able to take out two of the soldiers but are forced to run when the rest discover them, leading to them taking refuge in a collapsed service tunnel. When the WLF arrive, they begin throwing flares with one landing under the train tracks right next to tendrils, leading to infected overrunning the WLF and killing them. Ellie and Dina are forced to run on and through the abandoned train car and they escape through a turnstile. It gets stuck and it looks as if Dina is about to get bitten, but Ellie instinctively puts her hand out to take the bite, allowing her to save Dina and the two escape to a nearby theater.

Once there, Ellie barricades the door but is surprised to see Dina pointing a gun at her. She saw Ellie get bit and thinks she has to kill her. Ellie tries to tell her she is immune and that she is going to bandage her arm and sleep. Dina obliges and Ellie is later woken up in the middle of the night by water falling on her face. When Dina finally sees that Ellie is immune, she admits she is pregnant and the two wind up having sex. When they wake up in the morning, Ellie asks why she waited until now to make her move on Ellie. Dina explains that she knew she was bisexual but her mother would not let her date women, leading her to try (and keep trying) to date Jesse knowing it would never work. When she saw Ellie get bit, she was afraid the future she wanted with Ellie would never happen. She also admits the baby is Jesse's, what she found was a pregnancy test and that she did four of them, and Ellie jokes that she is going to be a dad. Ellie also says she wants to have a future with Dina as the radio they pulled off a dead WLF soldier goes off, revealing Nora and the WLF are mobilizing at Lakehill hospital, confirming their next target. Ellie insists that Dina stay behind due to her pregnancy, but Dina insists on going with Ellie as the episode ends.

Now there is so much we need to talk about in this episode, so I might run over time a bit. The first thing I want to address is the cameo of Josh Peck as Janowitz. I did not watch the episode Sunday night when it aired so I had no idea he was in the episode until a social media post gave it away. I know Peck had a minor role in Oppenheimer (2025) but I did not expect half of Drake & Josh to be swearing up a storm dressed as a FEDRA soldier. I think the reason this was includes was to really highlight how little FEDRA thinks of the people it is supposed to represent and protect. And that goes towards what I was talking about in last week's review when I said lawlessness is the ruler of this post-apocalyptic world. FEDRA and all of these militant groups have developed a heightened sense of self and the fact that they are able to joke about random people that do not matter in their eyes highlights this to a tee.

The next thing I want to talk about is the character of Isaac Dixon. Now I personally do not remember this character from the game, which can only mean he was not given much of an emphasis in that narrative. I feel as if the Isaac/Hanrahan situation is going to play out similarly to the Kathleen situation from last season, in the sense that the switch from video game to series narrative allows for more flexibility, displayed brilliantly in the aforementioned massive changes from the game into last week's episode. The previews for next week's episode promise a whole lot of Ubach's Hanrahan, so I imagine we are going to get a whole lot more of Dixon as well. As someone who Wright describes as believing FEDRA betrayed him rather than the other way around, Dixon is someone who has a clear moral path and he is the type of character in which nothing is going to stop him from achieving his goals.

Speaking of changes from the game, this paragraph is going to span the entire episode and the three previous ones we have gotten. And this paragraph is going to reflect the relationship between Dina and Ellie. Since I will be talking about game events that we have seen in the show, you are safe to read this paragraph. In the game, Ellie and Dina are already a couple by the time Joel is killed and they emphasize this by having sex in Eugene's weed hideout that we see Ellie and Jesse in in the second episode I called a masterpiece. The major sex scene happens in this episode, and I kind of like how we are not just thrown into a relationship that does not feel earned. In the show, we already have an emotional connection with Dina and you feel it was earned when Dina leans in for the kiss and the eventual love-making that ensues. Personally, I really like the change from the game.

Now I do want to talk about something that was pulled directly from the game, in which Ellie serenades Dina with A-ha's "Take On Me." This scene was almost directly pulled from the game, and what makes it even more special is the fact that Bella Ramsey can sing and play guitar. I will highlight the one thing that made this version of it have more of an impact is the fact that Ellie and Dina are not a couple yet. So this was their way of telling us that Dina has now actually fallen in love with Ellie and her tearing up for it only drove that point home. Fun fact, Isabela Merced was told not to cry but she could not control it after being serenaded all day by Ramsey. She actually said that on the post-episode little making of special.

The Last of Us does a brilliant job in its fourth episode of displaying both the best and the worst of a collapsed society in a post-apocalyptic world. Thank you all for reading, and I will see you for the next post.