The concerning recrudescence of gender-based violence in The Last of Us

This post will discuss gender-based violence and sexual assault. It will also discuss what happens in the eighth and most recent episode of The Last of Us in detail.

For a show so intentionally crafted until now, I can’t help but be stunned at the carelessness on display in The Last of Us’ most recent episode.

But before we talk about episode eight, I want to revisit episode two. If you’ve been on the same train of thought as I’ve been, what I’m referring to will almost certainly come to mind: the kiss.

At the end of episode two, one of the series’ main characters up until this point, Tess, reveals that she’s received a death sentence by way of becoming infected with the cordyceps fungus, and she stays behind to buy Joel and Ellie time while she faces down a horde of Infected by herself. As she stands alone, one of the Infected makes his way to her and, sensing she’s “one of them” because of their shared infection, he kisses her.

Here’s how creator and writer Craig Mazin spoke about that moment in the show’s companion podcast:

There’s a bit to unpack there. But what jumps out to me is what’s not there: in this moment where a man kisses a woman who cannot meaningfully consent, there’s no mention of gender-based violence.

Using a companion podcast episode as evidence of authorial intent can get really tricky because, while it can give some insight into what creators were thinking about, there’s a lot that we still don’t see. There are still a lot of conversations that we just aren’t privy to, or maybe they talked about stuff that didn’t make the edit. So, keeping all of that in mind, it is striking to me that, when given the chance to talk about that moment, either they didn’t talk about the gendered aspect, or the editors didn’t keep it in. I can’t say anything for certain, but, working with what I have available to me, I do get the impression that maybe gender wasn’t considered very much when that scene was conceived.

I also disagree with the premise that this moment wasn’t violent. If we take what Mazin says at face value—that if she ran or fought back, the horde would act violently—then that threat of violence still hangs over that scene. It’s a situation where if she resists, then she dies on the spot. It’s a moment charged with violence, even if that violence doesn’t come to pass.

I’m willing to bet that a lot of women who watched that scene had a different takeaway. Maybe it struck a familiar chord—I’ve read countless accounts of situations where a woman has been trapped in an “intimate” setting with a man, and while explicit violence didn’t actually occur, she was in a situation where if she did not go along, she had a very reasonable expectation that she would be harmed. Without getting into linguistics or semantics, I don’t really think that describing a situation like that as “not violent” is entirely accurate. It’s a lot more complicated; even if violence is waiting in the wings, the players on the stage know it’s there.

Thinking about this moment, and what happens to Ellie in episode eight, I found myself remembering what Film Crit Hulk describes as “what you see when you see it.”1 He's talking about violence against LGBTQ people, but I think his main point carries over: put simply, violence onscreen has a tendency to hit different nerves in different people with different experiences. When we're dealing with the horror genre, where violence is a common tool, these stories can act as a space to face down fears that viewers may have and to achieve some kind of catharsis in having reckoned with them. But violence used effectively is violence used carefully. A scene like the kiss in episode two may be “weirdly beautiful” to some people. But it may make someone else remember the worst night of their life in a way that the story simply doesn't account for. And while the rest of the story chugs on, confident that it has elicited the desired emotions in its viewers, a few of those people may be going down a completely different emotional path that they weren’t prepared for.

In short, it’s a problem of empathy.

So when I was watching the climax of episode eight, where David, the cannibal antagonist, has a struggling Ellie pinned to the ground and he says that “the fighting is the part I like the most,” I was thinking about episode two. Except here, gender-based violence is made explicit—he calls Ellie a cunt when she fights back against his advances in an earlier scene. If the show carelessly wandered into that territory in episode two, it’s deliberately made camp there now.

To viewers who haven’t experienced this kind of trauma for themselves, the moment is gut-churning and terrifying. But the show isn’t prepared for the emotional response some viewers may have when they empathize with Ellie at this moment because it’s happened to them. It’s certainly not prepared for what happens when this violence strikes a different nerve for them, and suddenly they’re remembering instead of watching horrified from the sidelines. Empathy, like violence, is an extremely potent force. It’s one thing to watch violent acts, but it’s quite another to relive them when they’ve happened to you. And if the story doesn’t respect this, then it’s leaving viewers to deal with this on their own without offering any kind of catharsis that would make it worthwhile.

To be clear, I do think art and stories can absolutely reckon with gender-based violence and come out the other side having said something meaningful.2 But doing so requires much more intention and deftness than this episode showed. To quote Bernard Boo writing for Den of Geek:

It feels like the use of sexual and gender-based violence was an afterthought, insurance to make sure the audience hated David, or an exclamation mark on an already deeply traumatizing encounter for Ellie. None of these are what I would call violence used carefully. We see that the show can employ carefully used violence in this very episode with this very character: he strikes a child after she speaks out of turn, and he tells her that while her father is dead, he is also her father and must be respected. The show stops there, confident that the point has been made. The rest of the episode sorely needed that restraint.

By carelessly deploying gender-based violence, the show risks alienating audiences when it needs to draw them in the most. There absolutely is a place for reckoning with gender-based violence on television, and it is possible to do so in a way that respects the power of violence and empathy. But right now, I am not convinced that The Last of Us fully understands how careful and intentional it needs to be when it tries. I truly hope to be proven wrong.