What Happens When You Walk Into a Story That Wasn’t Meant for You
I didn’t play the game. I just watched the show.
That simple fact now feels like a problem. At least, the show makes it feel like one.
Season 1 of The Last of Us worked beautifully without backstory. The emotional architecture was strong. The violence was sharp but purposeful. And most importantly, it welcomed me in. I wasn’t a gamer. I didn’t need to be. I was just a viewer, curious about what a post-apocalyptic HBO drama could still do after Chernobyl and Station Eleven and all the other end-of-world shows we’ve been drowning in since 2020.
It was tense and tender. And it didn’t feel like it had homework.
Then came Season 2.
The early shock was real. Joel’s death, in the second episode, hit hard. Not just because it was sudden or brutal — we’ve all seen enough prestige TV to expect that — but because it felt strangely weightless. Rushed. Almost like the show wanted to get it over with.
I kept watching, waiting for the fallout. The reckoning. But the rest of the season didn’t really give us that. It gave us a scavenger hunt. A jigsaw puzzle of characters and factions and timelines that kept slipping away just as I started to piece them together. It didn’t feel like mystery. It felt like disorientation.
And that disorientation didn’t seem to bother anyone — at least not the people who already knew the map.
That’s when I realized: maybe I’m not supposed to be here.
Not in the gatekeeping way. No one’s stopping me from watching. But the show doesn’t seem to care whether I understand it. It’s confident that someone will. Just maybe not me.
Because I didn’t know who Isaac was supposed to be. I didn’t know what the Seraphites believed or why they dressed like cult members from a different genre. I didn’t know why Ellie’s hunt mattered more than her grief. Or why Abby, the supposed villain, gets the final shot of the season — a brooding stare over the ruins of Seattle — and we’re just supposed to know what it means.
Gamers knew. They’d played that scene. They knew what was coming. But I hadn’t. So all I could do was squint at the title card: Seattle, Day One. And try to make sense of what I was watching.
The show is not incoherent. But it assumes coherence — not as something it builds, but something you bring. And if you didn’t bring it with you, tough luck.
This isn’t about nitpicking. I can follow complicated stories. I don’t need hand-holding. But storytelling isn’t a puzzle to be solved. It’s a relationship. You give your attention. The story gives you meaning. You sit with its questions. It respects your confusion. There’s a kind of generosity in that.
The Last of Us used to have that. It used to feel like it was telling me a story, not testing whether I already knew it.
The irony is, video games have always had this problem in reverse. For decades, they tried to mimic Hollywood. Cutscenes. Dialogue trees. Emotional realism. And just when they started to get really good at it — when a game like The Last of Us Part II could pull off something as complex as a dual-perspective revenge tragedy — Hollywood decided to turn the game into a show. But it forgot to translate the medium.
In a game, you live with the character. You walk around as them. Fight as them. Sometimes die as them. So when the story flips to another character — even one you hate — you’re forced to reckon with them on their own terms. That’s the genius of the Abby arc in the game. You don’t just watch her. You are her.
But on TV, you’re just a viewer. You don’t become anyone. You only believe them. Or you don’t.
And here’s the thing: belief takes time. Trust. Context. And this show, for all its craft, has started asking for belief without doing the work.
It’s not that the show is “too loyal” to the game. That’s a lazy critique. Fidelity can be beautiful. But fidelity without translation is just fan service. It rewards those who already belong. It forgets to make room for anyone else.
I don’t resent the gamers. I envy them. They’re seeing a fuller picture. I’m just tired of watching a story that feels like it was paused halfway through and handed to me like, “Catch up.”
I don’t need everything explained. But I need it to mean something. I need to feel like I’m part of it.
That’s what’s missing. Not plot. Not action. Not lore.
Just an invitation.
Not to play the game. Just to care. Without needing a controller. Without being told I’m on the wrong side of the story.
Maybe Season 3 will fix that. Maybe Abby’s story will open up in a way that brings everyone in. But if the point of this show is to make me want to play the game to understand what I just saw — then it’s not really a show. It’s a trailer.
And I don’t think I want to keep watching trailers for two years.