Contagion

In the two entries of The Last of Us, and in its reinterpretation as a television series, we can place the antagonists that we encounter into two groups. The first is the cordyceps fungus, which is very much presented as a force of nature. This fungus isn't evil; it's indifferent. We recognize it as a living organism with an evolutionary imperative to propagate at all costs.

The second group is people, who stand in contrast to cordyceps. Unlike the infected, people have agency and so it's the people who become the true moral antagonists. Because while the fungus has no ideology, people do. Cordyceps is singular; people are multifaceted.

However, the relentless spread of the fungus gives us a blueprint upon which we can examine the spread of a second force. A force which is never named, or even really acknowledged, yet present in nearly every moment of both the games and the show:

Grief.

Like cordyceps, grief overwhelms the host. It alters behavior, hijacks the mind. And, like cordyceps, it takes root, and it spreads.

There's a moment in the first season of the show where Joel and Ellie work in partnership with two brothers, Henry and Sam, to escape the Kansas City QZ. As they travel through a series of underground tunnels, they happen upon a classroom in which they decide to wait out the daylight and emerge after dark.

By the end of their brief stay in the classroom, the place feels warm. Even safe. But it doesn't feel that way when they first enter the room. The air is tense. We brace for infected, yet none arrive. The four travel through the tunnels without resistance.

This lack of resistance allows us a useful lens through which we can revisit the passage of time in the classroom. This buoyancy — one of the few times in the series that we experience it — doesn't come from the lack of infected; the infected were never there. It arrives because what the classroom walls have actually managed to keep out is grief.

Ellie and Sam play soccer and explore comic books together; they feel like children in this moment, rather than little people. Joel and Henry begin to bond.

But grief doesn't leave them alone for long; it reinfects them almost immediately upon emerging from the tunnels.

The Last of Us Part II highlights the extent to which the battle against grief is being lost. In this entry, the infected are manageable. Jackson is secure. Seattle is organized, if fractured; its factions pay way more attention to each other than they do the infected. The cordyceps fungus is never centered in Part II in the way that it was at times in Part I.

Like the cordyceps, grief progresses in stages and we witness this progression in Ellie. Joel's murder is shocking. Her ears ring, her vision blurs. Mouths move, but the voices are muffled. That shock mutates into action as she kicks off her revenge tour before curdling into obsession.

When Ellie reunites with Jesse, she tells him she's ready to turn back to bring Dina home. He asks if she's okay leaving some of her targets alive. She answers in the affirmative, but the words feel hollow.

Naturally, the two reach a fork shortly thereafter: rescue Tommy or pursue Abby. For Jesse, the choice is simple. In fact, for him, the choice is so simple that he assumes Ellie is following right behind him.

She isn't, and we see her evolution on full display. Getting to Abby is the only thing that matters; everything else is secondary.

Obsession.

Even Ellie, immune to cordyceps and an unwilling vessel for hope, isn't immune against this second virus.

We see that viral grief is equally, if not more, infectious than fungal cordyceps. Joel is infected the moment his daughter is gunned down by the military. Joel infects Abby by murdering her father. Abby infects Ellie by murdering Joel. Just as peaceful humans turn violent upon infection with cordyceps, so too do humans infected with grief. And the actions these infected undertake as a result lead to grief being introduced to new hosts.

Grief spreads because the infected pass it on.

However, just as we're presented with hope that cordyceps is something from which humans can be inoculated, we're presented with the same hope for inoculation from grief. The cure is genuine human connection.

We see in Part II that Abby has a recurring dream of walking down a hallway into the operating room in which her father was murdered. These dreams are dark, oppressive, traumatic. Yet, once Abby starts to form a connection with Lev and Yarra, she experiences a version of this dream that's both peaceful and serene. For the first time, we see Abby wake up with a gentle smile on her face, rather than with a sudden, violent gasp.

It's a turning point, and one in which we can notice the insidious nature of this second virus. Because moments after this peaceful awakening, she's reinfected after an encounter with Mel, who also carries the grief virus with her where she goes.

Even still, by the time that we see her in Santa Barbara, she's lighter; she's caring, she's joking. This is a dramatically different Abby than the one we meet outside of Jackson, who's abrasive and guarded even around people with whom she has a deep relationship.

Lev acts as a kind of circuit breaker for Abby. Abby undertakes her own revenge tour — the second of Part II — when she discovers that all of her WLF friends have been murdered. But when she has Ellie at gunpoint in the basement of the theater and braces herself to take another life, Lev stops her. He provides this moment of disruption, this brief, but sharp, break, that immediately brings Abby down to Earth. In this moment, he acts as a break in the recursive grief spiral. While we see so many people lose control of their actions as a result of infection from this virus, this small pause that Lev catalyzes breaks Abby's fever.

It seems that Ellie is on the same path. In the same way that Abby's connection with Lev erected levees that provided some protection against grief, it seems like Ellie's farmhouse life with Dina will do the same.

But, existing alongside someone and connecting with someone aren't the same thing, are they?

Where Abby's grief is interrupted by Lev, Ellie's grief is amplified by silence, memory, and a refusal to step outside of the loop. While Abby connects to Lev, the only person with whom Ellie could connect is gone, and she never allows herself to be loved again. She leaves Jesse. She's cruel to Dina.

I know what it means to want to connect with someone, only to find yourself unable to. It's a bizarre experience; I had always thought that want was the only necessary ingredient. After all, it isn't something that requires exertion of strength like, say, lifting a 100-lb keg. You may not have the muscle strength to lift a heavy object. But connecting with another person? Just do it, you know?

And yet, there are muscles required to do this too. Worse, these muscles can atrophy, even die, insidiously, without your awareness.

I am wildly fortunate to have come across multiple people in my life who've truly loved me — people who've held me, cared for me, cut me, tried me.

I have this imagined picture of my future life. It's arduous, not because I live under particularly difficult circumstances but, instead, because I've found myself ill-equipped to deal with a lot of the mundane requirements of daily life. I've found joy in sinking into music, in reading the perspectives of others, in crafting my own. And, in the same way that I've found activities that just perceptibly brighten the energy that radiates from my body, I've found someone with whom I can journey. I imagine helping to make this person feel like the fullest version of themselves. I imagine being someone in whom they can take refuge, as I can with them.

I imagine going on morning walks together, sitting in the sun and sharing a cup of coffee. I imagine washing dishes while the other cooks. I imagine the relief of existing alongside somebody without needing to perform.

It's a pleasant dream. As I conjure it now, I imagine spring days more textured and winter days less onerous. Not only is this a future that I want for myself, I detest myself for not having been able to meet the people who've already loved me in that place. Daily, I try to radiate both gratitude for the time that we were able to spend together and a desperate wish that I could have been better, in the hope that they'll somehow perceive that energy. It's so silly. Just do it, you know?

Some people know how to merge with another person. Others possess docking arms that are damaged in a manner that feels irrevocable. I'm in the latter group. Ellie is in the latter group.

Ellie doesn't reclaim herself in the way that Abby does. Instead, she's, simply, in remission. And, when you're in remission, relapse looms.

Ellie is hijacked by memory. We see her breath shorten, we know her body has forgotten how to be safe.

So she leaves. Of course she leaves.

In those moments, I feel dizzy. Relieved, regretful, reclusive. To know that you're the problem is a brutal punishment and, yet, an insufficient one.

Ellie has progressed to the final stage: the one where you can see the medicine, and yet can't take it.

Her grief reappears. It's tragedy. You want her to make a different decision. I wanted to make a different decision. She's consumed by a virus just as relentless as cordyceps. While she's immune from the latter, she's lost to the former.

Walking alone is how I feel most comfortable, even though it dooms me to keep some of the worst company on this Earth. Ellie, too, returns to an empty house and departs through an empty field, doomed to keep her own company to the end.