The Path

I don't envy the writers of The Last of Us, having to come up with something to follow S2 Episode 2. Episode 2 was brilliant, a perfect whirlwind of action, drama and emotion. It was so climactic it felt like a season finale. A very tough episode to top.

This tragedy and finality left a lot of intrigue for Episode 3. Where to from here? Would Ellie now be the central character or would someone else emerge to at least share the spotlight? Ellie / Bella Ramsey is not capable of carrying the show, a fact which made Joel's death so much more intriguing from a plot perspective.

I was not expecting quick or elaborate answers to these questions as Episode 3, I felt, was always going to be one for regrouping rather than moving forward. And so it is, mostly, though we have some idea of where the next few episodes are taking us.

So, not the most exciting episode but that was to be expected.

The first episode this season was all over the place but was generally boring and difficult to get through at times. The characters and dialogue were irritating with a few exceptions. The second episode was completely the opposite and felt rushed with a tremendous amount of action and consequential events happening very quickly with little to no buildup. Tommy and Maria running around through hordes of infected without a scratch was so implausible that it just seemed ridiculous. The battle itself was very poorly thought out but it was at least interesting to watch.

This third episode is like the first but without any action at all. They seem to be setting up plot points for future episodes but nothing really happens this episode, at all. I know nothing about the games but it seemed obvious to me what was going to happen this episode. Some others seem to be happy about events that may be coming but this episode falls flat on its own. An episode needs to at least be somewhat entertaining. There was nothing here that I really enjoyed. I don't care what happens in the game, the show must stand on it's own and each episode needs to have some merit to be worth watching.

This episode has less than half an episode worth of material stretched thin, large parts of time are skipped over and nothing really substantial happens. Looking back, I don't even remember being engaged at any point and pretty much found myself skipping through wondering when something interesting would happen. It didn't. The remaining characters aren't appealing or engaging. The dialogue is rather drab and the pacing has gone from erratic in episode one, to hectic in episode two, to anemic in episode three. They blew the load too quickly in E02. The pacing of the episodes/events this season was poorly thought out and the quality of the series has suffered greatly for it.

To be honest, this was better than I expected it to be. I heard many people say that this is the worst episode of the season so far, which is probably true, but still, it's not horrible. There's a decent amount of things that happened this episode, even if the pacing is a little slow it was still enjoyable enough. I'm not really sure what I think about the changes they did with Tommy's character. In the games he wanted revenge even more than Ellie, but he's not really like that in this series. Overall, I think this episode was decent enough, so far this season hasn't really been that consistent, but I hope the next episode is better!

Well, after the mind-bending previous episode that shocked everybody even the gamers, we are back without a choice to lamer territories with brat Ellie and get-a-grip teenish Dina who weren't given time to get more acquainted while sober.

Seriously, what could you expect without Joel and the charismatic-for-the-role Pedro Pascal.

That's a disaster. In fact it's beginning to be a disaster.

I related to Seth in this episode and I hope that he'll be given a stronger and more important role cause if you give the leash to the 19 y.o. Babies, 'The Last of Us' won't go anywhere.

P. S. The last scene is supposed to be what, scare me to death?!

Joel, I so miss you!

• Screenplay/storyline/plots: 6.5
• Production value/impact: 7
• Development: 7.5
• Realism: 7
• Entertainment: 6
• Acting: 7
• Filming/photography/cinematography: 7.5
• VFX: 8
• Music/score/sound: 6.5
• Depth: 6.5
• Logic: 5
• Flow: 4.5
• Dystopian Sci-fi/Psychological/drama/action/adventure/thrilling horror: 4
• Ending: 6t2.

Greetings from Lithuania.

Third episode of TLOU season 2 was a slow build of a story. Knowing the story very well due multiple playthroughs of Part 2 I can't say that i was disappointed. It's more or less faithful adaptation of VG - wether you like it or not. What makes this episode just an OK watch is just that the story itself isn't particularly engaging, and acting by two young woman is just an OK.

Overall, "The Path" was a descent episode, but not particularly memorable one. That is a build up episode, but on a bright side it wasn't a filler or anything - its just a mostly faithful adaptation of the material.