The end of LAST OF US 105 is really interesting for the ways it fulfills the different promises of 104-105.
First and foremost, it pays off the promise of confrontation. The two episodes have put in such work to give life to Kathleen and Henry and their individual and conflicting desires/problems/backstories. Everything about their stories said they have to face off at the end. And so they do.
It also pays off the promise of monsters. Chekhov's gun is one of those principles of storytelling that you hear mentioned a lot. If you show a gun in the first act of a play, by the play's end someone has to use it. A gun is understood as being so full of meaning, just by mentioning it you've set up a serious threat and foreshadowing. And if you don't follow that through, the audience will feel manipulated, like you made them feel scared for no reason.
The clickers are like that. They're so fucking terrifying they're around, just the mention of them is enough to serve as Chekhov's gun. So in 105 we hear that Kansas City's Fedra drove all the clickers underground 15 years ago. Then our heroes go underground and encounter absolutely nothing.
Given how much the confrontation between Kathleen and Henry pays off that promise, I almost wonder whether the show could have gotten away with not having a million underground zombies take over the scene. But maybe it speaks to something about theme (which I'm going to talk about tomorrow).
There's one further dimension to the promise of monsters here, I think. It's the promise of early safety—in an post-apocalypse every success has to be earned, and the cost should be A LOT. So, if you're you're going to be able to wander underground without encountering clickers, you not only need to encounter some after the fact, before the final escape is completed, they need to be harder than what we've already seen.
The KC strategy of burying their infected is much the same in principle, but a thousand times worse. If you are able to go 15 years without clickers, then when you see them again, it's got to be THE WORST EVER.
And so we get not only the endless flood of zombies, but new mutations, a child gymnast clicker who is doing stuff with your body that you cannot actually do with your body; and King Clicker, who is massive and impossible to kill.
Actually there's one other promise that the ending—the real ending needs to land, and it's connected to theme. More on that tomorrow!
