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Written and Hosted by Ryan Arey (http://twitter.com/ryanarey)
Edited by Rohail Mistry, Lee Mazzio, Brianna McLarty, and Harriet Lengel-Enright

#LastOfUs #Breakdown #EasterEggs

We open with Anna, Ellie’s mother, running through the woods. This is by far my favorite easter egg in the show. Anna is played by Ashley Johnson. 80s babies might know her as Chrissy on Growing Pains, Marvel fans know her as the Waitress in the Avengers, but a lot of you might also know her from Critical Role, where she role plays d&d with a group of other prominent voice actors on a weekly twitch livestream. [clip].

But last of us fans know her as the actor who plays Ellie in the game. So Ashley Johnson has given birth to Ellie in the game, and in the show.

Doug: That’s so cool!

I know, right? She even looks like Bella Ramsey.

Now all of this is a new sequence that does not appear in the game. Although the backstory–the relationship between Marlene and Anna, was implied in the game and in the American Dreams comic book. Now showing Anna struggling to reach this house–how she falls, outranks the infected–and then her water breaks [clip, 1:20]. All of this is showing that Anna is the first of many people who have fought to keep Ellie alive.

When Anna is attacked by an infected, she fights back with her knife. The same knife that Ellie has used all through the series, drawing one of many parallels to her and Sarah. Remember, Sarah was briefly fascinated by Joel’s knife in the first episode.

And this episode is the first time we’ve seen exactly why Ellie is immune, like Blade, she’s a daywalker.

Doug: What do you mean by that?

Well, Blade is a vampire who can walk in the daylight, because his mom was attacked by a vampire while he was in the womb. In the same way, Ellie's mom was attached the moment she was giving birth. S Ellie's stem cells–maybe?--found a way to control the fungus.

Doug: Science and stuff.

That’s right. So the episode begins with a mother giving her life to save Ellie–and it ends with a father taking life–to save ellie.

Then Marlene shows up to the house, and she’s played by Merle Dandridge–the only actor in the show playing the same character she did in the game. Marlene finds her best friend and her new daughter–and it's hard to not find a parallel here with other Chosen One babies. Moses was discovered floating in a basket. Kal-El was in a rocketship. Tee’s a narrative trope of babies with a special purpose being alone, and then taken in. This is all building up to the idea that Ellie exists for a reason.

Again, the show has been building this idea up in our heads for a long time. [ep 8, things happen for a reason]. Or when Ellie talked about her greatest purpose [clip].

Now I would argue that Ellie did exist for a nobler purpose, but we can talk about that later in the episode. So as Marlene arrives in the house, we hear Anna singing [clip].

Doug: Yeah, what is that, boys to men?

No, that’s “The sun always shines on TV” by ah-ha–and there is a lot of hidden meaning packed into that song. First of all, you’ll remember that Ellie had an ah-ha cassette, and she and Riley had their small adventures set to the song “Take on me.” [clip] Knowing that Anna was an ah-ha fan, this makes me wonder if Marlene found a way to give this cassette to Ellie, because she knew her mom would have wanted that.

So the lyrics that she sings are: Touch me, how can it be? / Believe me, the sun always shines on TV / Hold me close to your heart / Touch me and give all your love to me.

Doug: To me….

There’s a very literal meaning here–a mother is singing to her daughter to hold her close, to get all of her love. But on a more meta level, the song is a deeply ironic statement about how television prepares us for happy endings that never come in the real world. The music video begins with a man singing to a woman, as the man slowly becomes a drawing. And it's a very slow, somber part of the song [cli].

And then comes a “the end” card–in the same way that this prologue is showing the end of Anna's story but the beginning of Ellie’s. So this show within a show depicts a man who is transforming into something else–so he can't be with the woman he love.s in the same way, Anna is transforming so she can never be with ellie.

And then the band performs the song in a cathedral in front of mannequins.