As the tip of last week’s episode, “The Path,” confirmed us, Ellie’s (Bella Ramsey) quest for revenge is main her someplace way more harmful than she may’ve probably imagined. This week, that hazard will get a face: Jeffrey Wright’s Isaac Dixon, chief of the WLF, or Wolves.
Isaac will get a hell of an introduction through a prologue set in 2018 – ten years earlier than the occasions of this season. A disillusioned sergeant with FEDRA, the Federal Disaster Response Agency, he is visibly irritated by his stories utilizing “voters” as a slur for civilians. He tells the lads driving with him within the armored car that the time period dates again to when the federal authorities took away the general public’s proper to vote in response to the menace of the cordyceps an infection. “Voters,” then, grew to become a merciless joke, a linguistic reminder of authority’s slide into fascism.
It looks like Isaac has had sufficient of all that. When his transport is stopped by a bunch of civilians, he instructs all however one—the youngest of the troopers, the one one who doesn’t perceive how “voters” grew to become a slur—to remain within the truck, which he then tosses grenades into. Isaac subsequently shakes palms with a girl who got here out to satisfy him, and tells the boy beside him to choose: be a part of or die. This is the place the WLF is born, or a minimum of, the model of it that Ellie is about to satisfy. And Isaac is now on the very high.
If previous Isaac appeared principled, modern-day Isaac appears shockingly merciless. We are re-introduced to him mid-interrogation, as he rhapsodizes concerning the distinction between copper and forged iron cookware for retaining warmth. He’s doing this as a result of he’s holding hostage a Seraphite, nude and restrained, whom he intends to burn till he learns the cult’s subsequent goal. It’s a imply snapshot of how issues are in Seattle: Both the WLF and the Seraphites are locked in a battle that neither aspect can keep in mind the origin of, an infinite cycle of violence that nobody in cost appears excited by ending.
To a sure extent, that is all you actually need to know. In the online game The Last of Us Part II, Isaac (additionally portrayed by Wright) will get lots of backstory divulged in paperwork yow will discover all through the sport. Players can piece collectively how he co-founded the WLF with 4 others who had been dissidents fed up with FEDRA’s tyrannical rule over Seattle, finally expelling the federal government by pressure and consolidating Seattle’s inhabitants within the SoundView Stadium (based mostly on Lumen Field, the real-life house of the Seattle Seahawks). He is controversial for his bloodthirsty warmongering over the Seraphites, and his iron grip on Seattle’s inhabitants would not appear that completely different from FEDRA’s overreach. But Isaac has additionally undeniably saved the folks of Seattle secure, and that uncomfortable combine of concern and reassurance is what retains him in energy.
Once once more, as a result of construction of The Last of Us Part II, and the way the HBO present is mirroring it, none of this is going to grow to be clear till the story swings over to Abby’s (Kaitlyn Dever) perspective additional down the road. Isaac is, in any case, her commanding officer—and it is also by her eyes that viewers might need the chance to see how the common, non-militia residents of Seattle live below the WLF regime. (The SoundView Stadium is an fascinating counterpoint to the group in Jackson.)
Because our image is so incomplete, this episode appears like a lopsided, shaky one. It’s good, then, that the remainder of it is targeted on the budding romance between Ellie and Dina (Isabela Merced). The two at the moment are inside metropolis limits, scrounging for provides. Each finds one thing of some consequence: Dina will get some being pregnant exams to privately affirm a suspicion that she’s anticipating, due to her transient fling with Jesse (Young Mazino). And Ellie finds a guitar, sweetly enjoying “Take on Me” as Dina joins her for a non-public live performance.
