Well, that didn’t end the way I thought it might.

Keeping with my tradition of avoiding spoilers, I’m not going to reveal any of the plot twists of the final episode of the first season of The Last of Us, but I did just want to leave a comment or two.

Joel ended up having to make some split second decisions, and in the official podcast for the show, series creators Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin discussed how they worked on adapting the original game into a TV series.

Druckmann revealed that when they came up with the controversial ending for the original game, they first tested it and found that players who did not have children were equally divided on the outcome, while game players who were parents were 100% supportive of the difficult choices that Joel made.

Well, I’m not a parent but I was rooting for Joel the entire time.

I also want to add that for a science fiction show that revolves around zombies, there was relatively little violence in the entire series. When the action sequences came, they were definitely earned, but they were not the main thrust of the series. As Craig Mazin keeps saying in all the interviews he’s done, it’s really a love story.