​”The Last of Us,” HBO’s stellar new series, showed us again in its latest episode that it’s ready to break Hollywood conventions.

Endure and surviveEpisode 5, which aired this weekend, broke the established canon of American cinema, be it post-apocalyptic, but not only.

More precisely, we saw in the last series of the HBO series a similar presentation of “heroes” who fight against an oppressive state, a police state, against a military dictatorship or fascism.

Warning: Some spoilers ahead!

IN the last of us a series that has lived up to expectations since its announcement two years ago, the freedom fighters of Kansas City are portrayed to us as brutal, if not worse, than the representatives of tyranny (the FEDRA military, in this case).

The gang, led by Kathleen (played by New Zealand actress Melanie Lynskey), does not shy away from acts of barbarism and unbridled brutality against civilians they suspect of being collaborators or unconvinced of the need to fight FEDRA.

Essentially, in the HBO series, we see freedom fighters become exactly like the representatives of the tyranny they successfully fought to eliminate. The last of us they even add to this chapter by showing their actions more vividly and clearly than the actions of the FEDRA soldiers.

In this way, the series, created by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, strongly distances itself from the canon established in Hollywood, according to which those who fight against an oppressive state are always the “good guys”, even if sometimes they also have their mistakes and sins (of which they are washed away by the facts of today).

What the new HBO series wants to tell us

At a press conference held online a few days before the release of episode 5 of the series, HotNews.ro asked one of the actors from The last of us how he sees this idea differently, based on the game of the same name released 10 years ago.

And Jeffrey Pearce, I would say, is one of the actors who can answer, he played Perry in the series, Kathleen’s right-hand man who executes the decisions of the rebel group, and in the 2013 video game he voiced Tommy, the brother of the main character Joel.

“I think in the real world, nobody ever thinks of themselves as bad guys. I think the worst things that are done are done out of a sense of justice and a just cause, because otherwise you cannot justify what you are doing unless you believe that you are acting in the spirit of justice [lor]”, – answered the 51-year-old American actor.

He said that in an earlier conversation with a journalist in Italy, he had told him that “in a way, Mussolini and his mistress got what they deserved.”

“Those who did what they did to them felt completely justified in their actions. But what terrible things some people do to others. This cannot be called an act of justice, even if they deserved it,” he paraphrased the discussion.

“So I think it’s important that art teaches us that about ourselves because we don’t seem to learn that from other places. So yes, I think the idea of ​​turning that canon on its head is important, because we all have to look in the mirror, that’s what art is for,” Jeffrey Pearce added.

“Meet the new boss as you met the old boss,” he concluded of the transformation of freedom fighters into oppressors.

Jeffrey Pearce as Perry (PHOTO: HBO Max / Warner Bros. Discovery)

Parallel between “The Last of Us” and “Game of Thrones”

Inverse journalists note an interesting parallel between the new HBO series and the series that gained popularity not so many years ago: game of Thrones.

In both the post-apocalyptic world of the new series and the fantasy drama that ended in 2019, the only safe “bet” is that whoever is in charge, ordinary people will suffer. The life of an average mortal in Westeros is worth little, whether a member of House Targaryen is on the Iron Throne or not.

IN game of Thrones This system of oppression is often called a “wheel,” referring to the fact that each time it turns so that a new leader can rise to power, more people are crushed under it.

In the first and middle seasons of the fantasy series, this situation causes serious concern for Daenerys Targaryen, leading to a classic exchange with Tyrion Lannister:

Tyrion: It’s a beautiful dream to stop the wheel. You are not the first person to dream of this.

Daenerys: I will not stop the wheel, I will destroy the wheel.’

We see a similar situation in episodes 4 and 5 The last of us, in which FEDRA’s successors attack and nearly kill Joel and Ellie just after they enter Kansas City. And the wave of terror that follows is in no way inferior to the actions of FEDRA soldiers, on the contrary.

In other words, the wheel keeps turning.

Craig Mazin, one of the two creators The last of ussuccinctly explained the source of inspiration:

“When there is a sudden change of power from an oppressive regime that is overthrown by a revolutionary force, history is full of examples of how the revolutionary force was just as bad as before. And we embodied it in the image of Melanie Lynskey.”

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