Last week, Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Tess (Anna Torv) agreed to transport Ellie (Anna Ramsey), a 14-year-old girl, in the custody of the rebel group Firefly, out of the Boston safe zone in exchange. Ellie is seemingly immune to infection, and Firefly want’s to get her somewhere “west” to work on a cure for the fungal plague. Now out of the safe zone, Joel and Tess take her on a dangerous trek through Boston to hand her off to another Firefly group waiting at the State House. This will definitely end well for everyone.
The episode then diverts us to a restaurant in Jakarta in 2003. Mycology expert Dr Ibu Ratna (Christine Hakim) is finishing up a lunch I wish had included some mushrooms. Two military men enter and onimously tell her she must go with them. Once at the research facility, they tell her about a series of attacks they’ve linked to a fungal infection.
(Dr. Ratna) Christine Hakim starting to realize the approximate level sh@t the world is in. Photograph by Liane Hentscher/HBO
She inspects the infected under the microscope and identifies the fungus as orthocordyceps. She tells them it’s impossible for that species to infect human, and they’re like yeah, but it did.
Dr. Ratna agrees to inspect the now dead owner of the cells. She enters an exam room in full protective gear. An oxygen duct connects her suit to the wall so we know this is hella bad. The Stand level, bad. Dr. Ratna discovers the fungus inside the woman’s body and pulls moving fungus tendrils from the corpse’s throat. She drops her forceps like a hot potato and runs, terrified, from the room, oh no.
The infected corpse was that of a “perfectly normal woman” who worked at a flour factory. A day earlier, she suddenly went berserk and attacked her coworkers. Before she was finally restrained and killed, she infected several coworkers who subsequently turned and had to be executed.
We find out the woman wasn’t “patient zero” and the proverbial cat of doom and destruction is already out of the bag rubbing up against everyone. Unru and the chief military officer (Yayu A.W. Unru) play their parts with both understatement and gravity, so when she, a scientist, advises him, a military officer, to bomb the city and everyone in it to stop the spread, we realize how impossible the situation truly is. Dr. Ratna then asks with complete calm, to be driven home to her family to spend her final hours with them. I like this woman. She’s a badass.
We return to present day Boston, where Joel, Tess, and Ellie journey through treacherous roads and crumbling buildings to reach the handoff spot.
I live in the Boston area, so I’m always tickled when apocalyptic stories are set here. Although the scenes were filmed in Alberta, Canada, the show did a mostly convincing, and creepy, imitation of what my fair city would look like in ruins.
After the team climbs through a toppled skyscraper, we get an overhead shot of tourist hot-spot Faneuil Hall/Quincy Marketplace covered in zombies. They writhe around on the ground, connected by the fungal networks both below ground and above. It’s a wonderfully horrifying site and the characters decide not to take that shortcut and grab a lobster magnet and a moldering Red Sox T-shirt. Instead, they choose a walk through of “the Bostonian Museum” which doesn’t really exist but looks convincing.
There, we meet the delightful zombie variant called “clickers.” They’ve somehow figured out how to use echolocation to find prey, since the top two-thirds of their heads are split down the middle, with layers of oyster mushrooms extending from the center. The heroes try to move quietly and slip through without notice and…wouldn’t it be great if that worked, ever? We get some great cat-and-mouse action and these zombies need a triple-tap to kill.
A “clicker” zombie on the prowl. Photograph by Liane Hentscher/HBO
The team dispatches the zombies and exits through a top floor window. Tess had twisted her ankle back inside, and while Joel tapes it up, Ellie, seemingly without the slightest worry, casually walks across a long, narrow plank to the next building over.
They continue to the State House from a non-existent route down a street lined with tall buildings. The State House is on flat ground instead of the iconic hill that’s, fun fact, also home to the actual Cheers bar upon which the classic sitcom was based.
Something is terribly amiss at the State House. Everyone from Firefly has been mysteriously killed, though Joel suspects one of the group was infected and spread it to the rest. That doesn’t sit right with me, and I think there may be a non-zombie-related cause.
One of the Firefly rebels, now infected, rises up and attacks them. I thought dead people couldn’t be infected so this plot point confused me a bit. Anyhow, Joel shoots him and sets off the WFW (worldwide fungal web) and every zombie in the area rushes to invade the building. Rut-Ro.
Tess reveals she was bitten when they were inside the museum and pleads with Joel to bring Ellie to their friends Bill and Frank, who are the source of the musical messages on the radio and are in the know about the goings on around Boston. She believes Ellie is truly immune to infection and is the key to “set things right.”
Tess (Anna Torv) and Joel (Pedro Pascal) at the State House.
Photograph by Liane Hentscher/HBOTess overturns a bunch of barrels of gasoline that I wasn’t sure why were in the State House lobby, but cool. Joel and Ellie run ahead. When the zombies storm in, Tess throws her lighter to the floor and blows up the whole building. However, before she does that something bonkers happens.
A zombie (shout out to the actor, Phillip Prajeux) walks over to her like a nervous prom date, plants a kiss on her lips, and shoves his tendrils down her throat (on the first date? Really?) The look on Tess’s face is priceless, and clearly Anna Torv was deep in the moment. A great death, but really sad to see a good and well-portrayed character leave the show so quickly (as in the game, apparently.)
Next week, Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett guest star as Bill and Frank and apparently the bulk of the episode will focus on their story. Can’t wait.
The best of episode 2
Best zombie variant of the week
The “clickers” or as I like to call them now, “Oyster heads.”
Most disturbing moment
Tess and a zombie sharing the most upsetting first kiss in history.
Scariest moment
Dr. Ratna, in full-body protective gear, pulls some tendrils out from the mouth of the corpse she’s examining, the tendrils start moving and she 100% freaks the eff out and runs from the room. Oh, sheeeeeeeeeet.
Saddest moment
Tess blows herself and a ton of zombies up so Joel and Ellie can go on.
Cutest moment
Ellie pushes around a hotel luggage cart and pretends to be a bellhop at the fancy hotel. Joel tells her she’s “a weird kid” and she says the same thing right back to him. I love this girl.
Tell us your thoughts. Did zombies kill the Firefly rebels? How would you describe Anna Torv’s expression during the buildup to the zombie tendril kiss? What did you think of the show’s digression to pre-apocalyptic Jakarta?
