HBO's The Last of Us Podcast - Podcast Rankings and reviews

The show AND this podcast are amazing. The podcast and the inside the episode videos, add so much more depth and context to the show. This makes it even more engrossing. Every show that wants to be taken seriously should follow this formula. So much time, effort and money go into making movies and tv shows. Enhance our experience by giving us a podcast and inside look. Well done HBO, Craig Mazin, Neil Druckmann and everyone else involved in this production. Thank you!

I love listening to the show-runners and creators explain why and how certain creative decisions were made…but I hate how sycophantic the host is and how self-aggrandizing the whole tone is. Some of the creative decisions in season 2 did not work for many fans and I wish they’d address those choices with more humility. Anyway….love the content and extra context. Hate the self-congratulatory tone.

Full disclosure I only engaged w the podcast for season 2 so only rating my experience with that. Primarily disappointed with how much this season seems to be relying on extras (post episode content, this pod) as essential supplementary material to tell the story. Hot take, I guess, but feels like the tv episodes should tell the story on their own without needing input from bonus content. Don’t get me wrong- I’m all for companion content that speaks to how the show was made and what the adaptation process looked like. S2 was a disappointment for me I think first because the revenge/cycle of violence themes just aren’t as interesting as the trauma processing/human connection seeking ones of S1, but also because the story was incompletely delivered on screen with too much reliance on supplemental content used to tell the audience how to feel. S1 stood out because we learned about and connected with characters over cohesively developed arcs or poignantly delivered vignettes without needing writers/directors to tell us what they were trying to evoke with various creative choices.

I’m a 58 year old woman whose gaming experience stopped at Ms PacMan a few decades ago, so you know that I had never played, or even heard of, the TLOU game. I saw that Pedro Pascal was in it, I think he’s a great actor and started watching it, and I was blown away by the story and, even more, by the characters! Everything works, it is just like in real life, only with tragedy amplified to the nth power. And while I was disappointed when Joel dies, I now see how that also makes sense, and I’m less sad. When I get so invested in the characters of a show, I know it’s a great one. Anyway, thank you for this podcast, it helps coloring in all the parts that I might miss watching the show, and thank you for making this story available to non-gamers too.