A lot happened in this week’s episode of The Last of Us, but one moment that has fans all in their feelings was when Ellie (Bella Ramsey) sang half a line of a Pearl Jam song in an empty Seattle theater. If you’re a fan of the Last of Us games, you know how significant “Future Days” (from the grunge band’s 2013 album Lightning Bolt) is to Ellie’s story. However, because the show has changed the order of some events, you might not know what the fuss is all about if HBO’s live-action series is your first time seeing Ellie’s revenge tour. If you want in on why the song matters, why Ellie is singing it, and don’t mind hearing about some scenes the TV series hasn’t shown, read on.
While we had to wait five episodes to hear someone sing “Future Days” in the show, the song makes an appearance much earlier in video game The Last of Us Part II. In the game’s opening segment, the player controls Joel as he brings a guitar back to the Jackson settlement—the old man told Ellie in the first game that he’d teach her how to play guitar, and now that he’s found one while on a patrol, he figures now’s the time to make good on that promise. He takes the guitar to Ellie’s shack behind his house and offers to play her something. Then we get Joel giving an understated performance of the Pearl Jam song, just perfect for the moment the game is trying to sell.
Joel actor Troy Baker gives his best performance as a “guy who really feels what he’s singing but is maybe not good at singing.” Joel’s untrained, bassy voice barely gets above a whisper as he croons the unsubtle line “If I ever were to lose you, I’d surely lose myself.” I give the show shit for throwing subtext out the window, but The Last of Us Part II certainly has its moments of beating you over the head with the themes. Even if it’s a little awkward, Ellie appreciates the performance, and Joel hands her the guitar and says he’ll teach her how to play the song. It’s an effective scene because it sets up the game’s themes and allows Joel to pass the figurative torch to Ellie as she becomes the primary player character for the sequel. Ellie is shown playing “Future Days” several times throughout Part II, whether she’s learning the song in her early gee-tar playing days in flashbacks, or she’s reflecting on Joel after his passing.
The show, meanwhile, hasn’t shown any of these scenes yet. For a moment, I figured the song might not be in the HBO series at all because the showrunners decided to start the show’s timeline in 2003, rather than the games’ 2013. The Pearl Jam album didn’t come out until 2013, so given the outbreak began 10 years earlier than in the source material, even with Naughty Dog’s explanations that Pearl Jam performed the song at live concerts before Lightning Bolt dropped there’s no plausible reason for this song to exist in the show’s altered chronology. Will the show explain this inconsistency, or are we just gonna roll with it because the song is too important to the story? Maybe we’ll have a better sense of that next episode, given it appears to be a flashback-heavy one focused on Joel (Pedro Pascal).
Whatever the explanation, game fans are having a moment finally hearing Ramsey perform the song, even if Ellie seems too fixated on the painful memories it surfaces to get more than a line in. This was all especially exciting after two years of folks fearing the song might get axed from the show because of the altered timeline.
Cross your fingers for a full cover from Pascal next week. We could use a palate cleanse after the events of this week’s episode.
