HBO’s ‘The Last of Us’ Elevates the Zombie Thriller

HBO’s most recent high-budget offering, The Last of Us, is a postapocalyptic thriller that provides the tired genre a shot in the arm it hasn’t enjoyed since Negan’s barbed-wire-wrapped baseball bat connected with Glenn’s skull in the waning days of The Walking Dead’s dominance, some seven years ago.

Is The Last of Us worth your time? I say yes. The show treats mature themes of loss and grief with more deftness than the pulpy genre often allows, and the world is a rational one in how society restructures itself — there’s an internal logic that the writers have tried to preserve. While this may seem like a small thing, we’ve seen too many shows embarrass themselves by ignoring a character’s incentives and history to pursue a writer’s earworm or an executive’s desire for checklists (The Witcher, Ted Lasso, Game of Thrones, etc.).

About the Author

Luther Ray Abel

Luther Ray Abel is an Associate Editor for National Review. A veteran of the U.S. Navy, Luther is a proud native of Sheboygan, Wis.

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HBO’s most recent high-budget offering, The Last of Us, is a postapocalyptic thriller that provides the tired genre a shot in the arm it hasn’t enjoyed since Negan’s barbed-wire-wrapped baseball bat connected with Glenn’s skull in the waning days of The Walking Dead’s dominance, some seven years ago.

Is The Last of Us worth your time? I say yes. The show treats mature themes of loss and grief with more deftness than the pulpy genre often allows, and the world is a rational one in how society restructures itself — there’s an internal logic that the writers have tried to preserve. While this may seem like a small thing, we’ve seen too many shows embarrass themselves by ignoring a character’s incentives and history to pursue a writer’s earworm or an executive’s desire for checklists (The Witcher, Ted Lasso, Game of Thrones, etc.).