On September 24th 2003 in Jakarta, Indonesia, Professor Ratna Pertiwi is taken into custody by the military for her expertise as one of the country's highest authorities on mycology. Upon being shown a slide of Ophiocordyceps unilateralis treated with a dye designated for human specimens, Ratna is disbelieving, as the fungus cannot survive in humans — but this appears to no longer be the case, as Ratna is obliged to examine the corpse of the woman that the sample came from. Her body is absolutely rife with fungus that seems to originate from a bite on her leg, inflicted by another human; worse still, as Ratna discovers to her terror and disgust, the tendrils of the fungus are still alive and on the move, searching for a new host.
Still recovering from this shock, Ratna tries to get to the bottom of what caused this. Lieutenant General Agus Hidayat tells her that the dead woman worked at a flour and grain factory on the western side of the city; 30 hours ago she went berserk and attacked her co-workers before being contained and shot by the police, and three people who were bitten by her were taken in for observation and later 'executed'. As to who bit the woman or where they are now, the military has no clue...which goes the same for the fourteen factory workers currently unaccounted for. At this last revelation, Ratna trembles and has to steady herself when telling Hidayat that there is no possible vaccine or cure for this infection. Her answer to his desperate plea of what can be done: bomb and level the city of Jakarta and everyone in it. Off Hidayat's horrified silence, Ratna starts to weep and asks to be allowed to go home to her family.
Twenty years later, Ellie awakens on a patch of grass with sunshine and butterflies overhead...and very quickly finds Joel and Tess staring at her stone-faced, guns at the ready, clearly having watched through the night while she slept in case she turned. Joel doesn't buy Ellie's supposed immunity despite her insistence and quickly grows exasperated when Ellie, under pressure from Tess, reveals that Marlene intends for her to be taken to a Firefly post in the west, where she can help to make the much-prized and utterly impossible vaccine. Tess, a little more willing to believe Ellie, convinces Joel that they should take her to the Fireflies waiting for her rather than heading straight back to the QZ; if nothing else, this is likely the only way he'll get what he needs to reach Tommy.
The trio set out into the ruins of Boston. The city was devastated by the bombs that were dropped in order to try and control the spread of the infection, and all this destruction and nature steadily claiming the remains has turned what two decades ago would be a ten-minute walk to the statehouse into two routes; the long but safe way and the short but 'We're fuckin' dead' way. The group elects for the former, which necessitates traveling through a flooded hotel and clambering to the roof in order to cross between buildings — only to find the way has been blocked by debris since the last time Joel and Tess visited. While Tess scouts ahead to find a clear route, Joel and Ellie make awkward conversation where he quickly shuts down any questions about himself.
Tess soon returns with bad news, inviting Joel and Ellie to come and see for themselves. She reveals that the route they had planned to take is now crowded with scores of infected people. As Ellie stares at this distant but still disquieting first sight of the infected, writhing on the ground and snarling when sunlight hits them, Tess explains that the fungus also burrows underground for miles at a time, connecting those it has infested into a hive mind. Step on a patch of cordyceps in one place, and dozens of infected will be summoned. Even if Ellie is immune to the fungus, that's no protection from being ripped apart.
With this route now unusable, the only other way to the statehouse is via the roof of a nearby museum. Fortunately the fungus covering it seems to be long dead and it's no longer a beacon for the infected. Unfortunately, fairly soon after they venture inside the building Ellie stumbles upon a freshly dead man — not a victim of the fungus but of a savage attacker that mauled him like an animal. Ellie starts to wonder aloud what could have done that but is quickly hushed by a terrified Joel and Tess, who evidently know exactly what did it...but they have no choice but to press on and upwards through the building, carpeted with the desiccated remains of humans and fungus alike and combined, in complete silence. Inevitably their luck only holds so far and as they enter one of the exhibit rooms the ceiling collapses behind them, both robbing them of a retreat and drawing the attention of something in the dark.
Shambling, stumbling, gargling and croaking, two Clickers emerge into the torchlight; having lost their eyes due to the growth of the fungus inside their heads, these infected hunt by sound and stalk the trio through the exhibit. Joel and Tess manage to dispatch them, but in the struggle Tess twists her ankle and Ellie is bitten a second time. Her nonchalance at this is beginning to bring Tess around, but Joel still disbelieves and is eager to get her off his hands, much to his partner's anger and frustration.
With Tess well in the lead, the trio finally reach the statehouse...only to find that the Fireflies who were expecting them are all dead, either having been infected or killed by their comrades. Joel officially calls it quits and is ready to head back to the QZ, even at the expense of Ellie's life upon their return, but Tess refuses. Ellie is first to realize that Tess is also infected, and Tess reveals that she was bitten as well back in the museum. She's already showing the first symptoms of infection but it's now apparent that Ellie has no symptoms; not from a bite made three weeks ago and not now, proving that she is truly immune and the chance of creating a vaccine is real.
Now that her time's running out fast, Tess charges Joel to protect Ellie, get her to the Fireflies "and set everything right." Even as she begs him, one of the infected Fireflies awakens and Joel shoots him — meaning the fungus in his body sends a message through the mycelium network that it's being attacked. And the scores of infected that the trio saw earlier are roused, summoned and set off at a dead sprint.
With barely a minute before they arrive at the statehouse, Tess spills gasoline and grenades from the Fireflies' supplies across the floor and plans to make sure that Joel and Ellie won't be followed. As Joel tries to process what's happening, Tess faces him head-on and tells him "Save who you can save."
Joel stares at her. His face shifts. He grabs Ellie and drags her out even as she screams and protests, never looking back at Tess.
Left alone in her final moments of life, Tess tries to work her zippo lighter to ignite the gasoline as the infected burst in, but the flame refuses to catch. The infected pause at the lack of an enemy and the nearest one to Tess draws nearer as the fungus recognizes itself in her. While she struggles to make a flame, her fingers betraying her, the fungus welcomes her to itself with a kiss.
As the zippo finally catches and holds a flame, the last of Tess lets the light drop to the floor and closes her eyes.
Joel and Ellie, safely outside by this point, are rocked by the explosion and watch as a few infected make it out of the building before collapsing in flames. Once it's clear there'll be no pursuit, Joel shoulders his rifle, turns and sets off. Ellie has no choice but to follow him if she wants to stay alive, but still hesitates to do so.
Tropes in this episode include:
- Adaptational Location Change: Parts of the hotel level in Pittsburgh were moved to Boston, replacing the Goldstone Building.
- Adaptation Distillation: The trek through the ruins of Boston is significantly shortened by omitting the Goldstone Building and replacing it with a compressed version of the hotel from Pittsburgh. All encounters with FEDRA and the infected before the museum have been omitted. The museum encounter features just two clickers in the upper level instead of a much larger number of runners and clickers throughout the building.
- Adaptation Expansion:
- The prologue is an original scene set in Jakarta in the early days of the outbreak, showing the origins of the fungus.
- Tess reveals that the fungus forms a hive mind that connects underground and links the infected together.
- All of Them: Joel's answer when Tess asks him how many of the undead are approaching the statehouse.
- Artistic License – Gun Safety: A very minor example. After discovering a fresh corpse on the floor of the museum, Joel stands with his rifle pointed directly at Ellie's chest for more than a minute while he and Tess quietly discuss the possibility of there being Clickers in the building.
- Bait-and-Switch: At the beginning of the episode in Jakarta, the military takes a woman into custody. At first it seems she might be infected and she's being quarantined, but then it's revealed that she's Dr. Ratna Pertiwi, a mycologist, and the authorities are seeking her help.
- Big "SHUT UP!": When Tess reveals her infection, she quickly decides to use her final time (likely an hour, max) to protect Joel and Ellie. When Joel tries to protest, she cuts him off with a "shut the fuck up, because I don't have time."
- Big Sister Instinct: Much like in the games, Tess is much nicer to Ellie than Joel is initially, even going out of her way to explain about how the fungus works and how to stay alive.
- Bilingual Bonus: The song in the Indonesian restaurant includes the (untranslated) lyrics Namun kini kau menghilang. Bagaikan ditelan bumi which translates to "Now you are gone. As if swallowed by the earth," foreshadowing the fate of the characters and humanity at large.
- Bland-Name Product: According to the logo on the door, Joel, Tess, and Ellie spend their first night outside the QZ in an abandoned "Supercups"
hair salon. - Blunt "No": Played for laughs. Joel picks up the assault rifle he stole from the FEDRA guy he killed in the previous episode:Ellie: Can I have a gun?
Joel: Absolutely not.
Tess: No.
Ellie: Okay, Jesus, fine. I'll have to throw a fuckin' sandwich at them. - Body Horror: During the episode's prologue, Professor Ratna is sent to examine the dead body of an early Infected to confirm that Cordyceps has indeed taken hold in humans. Outwardly the only evidence of trauma is a small bullet hole on the woman's forehead. When Ratna makes an incision over a bite mark on the woman's lower calf, she finds a mass of white mold that has already filled the tissue. She then uses some forceps to reach down the victim's throat and pulls up a mass of tendrils that are still alive and moving.
- Break Out the Museum Piece: When Tess, Ellie and Joel have to travel through a Revolutionary War museum in Boston full of "Clickers", Tess ends up killing one using a tomahawk she takes from one of the exhibits.
- Break the Haughty: A low-key example. At the start of the journey, Ellie is rather flippant and devil-may-care, not taking things totally seriously since she's immune to the fungus. At a certain point Tess shows her the scores of infected people in their initial path, tells her about how the underground filaments of the fungus work, and gently reminds her that she's not immune to being ripped apart and the adults are trying to keep her alive. Ellie is noticeably more serious and willing to follow directions after that.
- Calming Tea: After she examines the dead worker and the mutated cordyceps fungus, Dr. Ratna is seen with a cup of tea, presumably to calm down. It doesn't work; when told about the missing workers, she has to put the cup down because she is shaking so much.
- Chekhov's Gunman: The group slips past a horde of Infected lolling about outside a building. Naturally, said horde proves a problem in the climax.
- Chekhov's Lecture: It's explained to Ellie that the Infected are connected through the mycelium, and that disturbing the fungus in one place can summon Infected from a mile away. When Joel kills an Infected at the rendezvous point, he realizes to his horror that the body is on living fungus, which quickly summons the horde.
- Circus Brat: Discussed. When Joel asks Ellie about her knife-handling skills, she snarks back that she learned them in a circus.
- Dies Differently in Adaptation: In the game, the Fireflies that the heroes were supposed to meet at the capitol building were killed by FEDRA soldiers, who return to ambush the heroes and kill Tess. While writing the script for the episode, Craig Mazin felt that it didn't make sense for FEDRA to even be there and wondered why they would be patrolling so far beyond the QZ and the buffer zone, so in the episode the Fireflies end up killing each other when some of them get infected. Tess stays behind to blow up an infected horde that was alerted to their location and dies in the blast.
- Distressed Drink Jitters: After Professor Ratna is brought in to examine the Zombie Apocalypse-causing Cordyceps fungus, she's seen sitting with General Hidayat holding a glass of tea. He tells her that the infected woman she just investigated was found at a flour and grain factory, she ended up biting and infecting three other people who had to be executed before she herself was killed, and worst of all, fourteen factory workers are missing and unaccounted for. This last fact causes Professor Ratna's hands to start shaking uncontrollably, forcing her to put her glass down. At this point, she realizes that there's no hope, and that humanity is experiencing the beginning of the end.
- Dramatic Slip: Tess slips at the museum while running from a Clicker. This leads to her and Ellie being separated and her being caught and bitten by the Clicker off-screen.
- Dude, Not Funny!: Joel announces that he will shoot Ellie if she so much as "twitches". Ellie chooses that moment to gag and choke dramatically and cross her eyes. In response she gets a "Don't" with a side of Death Glare.
- Dying Declaration of Love: Tess demands that Joel gets Ellie to Bill and Frank as her last will, declaring that she's never asked him for a single thing before then, including returning her feelings.
- Dying Moment of Awesome: Tess dies blowing up a whole bunch of Infected.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Ellie makes an indirect reference to bloaters when she asks about a type of large infected that throws spores.
- Face Death with Dignity: Dr. Ratna calmly explains the deadly solution to the Jakarta outbreak, before asking politely to be taken to see her family one last time.
- Fan Disservice: Dr. Ratna has to check for the fungus inside a fully nude female cadaver that's already bloating.
- Feeling Their Age: Tess is out of breath and complains after climbing 10 floors while Ellie doesn't break a sweat.
- Flashback: The episode opens with a flashback to Jakarta, Indonesia during the initial outbreak there.
- Flies Equals Evil: We hear the sound of flies right before Joel finds the corpses of Firefly members by the truck.
- From Bad to Worse: While still recovering from the shock that cordyceps has spread to humans, and can apparently be transmitted through a bite, Dr. Ratna then learns in rapid succession that the dead woman worked at a flour and grain factory, which is one of the worst places to find a dangerous fungus; she went berserk and attacked her co-workers, biting three of them before she was shot by the police; the people who were bitten were taken into custody and within a few hours "it became necessary, according to procedure, to execute them"; the authorities have no idea who originally bit the woman, so that person is still on the loose... and fourteen other people who work at the factory are unaccounted for. It is this last bit of information that causes her hands to shake uncontrollably, as she now fully understands how dire the situation really is, leading her to recommend crossing the Godzilla Threshold.
- Godzilla Threshold: During the Jakarta outbreak, Dr. Ratna Pertiwi, a senior fungal researcher, is brought in to investigate the new cordyceps mutation. After being fully briefed on the outbreak, she explains that no treatment or vaccine will be able to be produced, and the only solution is to totally wipe Jakarta off the map.
- Hell Is That Noise: On the overpass, Joel, Tess, and Ellie hear the sound of a clicker echoing through the city.
- Heroic BSoD: Ratna after realizing just how bad the outbreak is going to be freezes and doesn't say anything for a while.
- Improperly Placed Firearms: Indonesian soldiers in 2003 Cold Open are seen armed with M16A1 rifles instead of the more period accurate Pindad SS1, which is an FN FNC modified to accommodate for Indonesian tropical climate.
- Invulnerable Knuckles: Averted. Joel hurt his knuckles pretty bad while bashing the soldier in the previous episode and confesses to Tess that he likely has a hairline fracture. He hopes it will heal fast.
- Is the Answer to This Question "Yes"?: When they enter the hotel lobby, Joel asks Ellie if she even knows what this place is. She responds with "Have you heard of books?"
- It's the Only Way to Be Sure: Dr. Ratna makes it clear that, with four workers already dead, fourteen unaccounted for, and the chain of infection unclear, the only hope of preventing a full-blown plague is to bomb Jakarta off the map. Sadly, it's already too late.
- Just Before the End: Dr. Ratna is enjoying lunch at a restaurant in Jakarta. Society is progressing as normal. Later that day, she and the Indonesian government learn that the cordyceps plague is already out-of-control, and their one, bleak hope is bombing Jakarta, themselves included.
- Kill It with Fire: After studying the first known outbreak, Indonesia's top mycologist says in certain terms that there is no hope for a vaccine or cure and that the only course is to bomb Jakarta into the ground and everyone in it. We later heard that a limited version of this was tried in America to keep the infection out of the Quarantine Zones, but that it only worked in smaller cities like Boston and Atlanta. In addition, any person testing positive in the QZ is killed and burned immediately.
- Kiss of Death: A stalker infects Tess with its tendrils by kissing her on the lips. Fortunately for her, her lighter finally ignited and she was able to blow up all the infected with her.
- Last Request: Tess makes Joel promise to keep Ellie safe and to "set everything right".
- Left the Background Music On: The ominous-sounding tune playing when the group enters the hotel is quickly revealed to be a frog jumping on a piano.
- Menacing Museum: The heroes must travel through all the levels of a poorly-lit, Clicker-infested museum in order to get to the statehouse.
- Mundane Luxury: Tess and Joel are surprised to see Ellie eating a chicken sandwich. Apparently, fresh meat is rare After the End.
- Mythology Gag:
- When the trio first encounters the dead Fireflies, Ellie asks if they were killed by FEDRA. In the game, they actually were killed by FEDRA.
- The background track playing at the end of the episode is "Allowed to be Happy," which was Abby's theme from Part II.
- Nuke 'em: Upon discovering the nature of the mutated cordyceps fungus and how many infected are still on the loose, Ratna declares that the only possible way to stop the spread is to bomb all of Jakarta to the ground. According to Tess, this became the common military solution early in the spread of the plague, to mixed results varying from country to country.
- Oblivious Guilt Slinging: When Ellie notices that she was bitten in the museum, she comments, "Well, if it had to be one of us..." The camera immediately cuts to a startled Tess, who hasn't told Joel and Ellie about her own bite mark yet.
- Oh, Crap!:
- When the Indonesian military comes looking for Professor Ratna, this is the reaction of the whole restaurant, and Ratna herself is terrified during the car ride. Unsurprising, as the fall of Indonesia's military dictator Suharto had only occurred five years prior in 1998. The General assures her she is not in trouble. She soon learns the situation is much worse.
- Ratna quickly exits the examination room when the cordyceps within the dead subject is still alive and moving. Her hand starts shaking and she can barely put her tea down when told that there are 14 missing workers at the factory where the infected woman worked.
- Her horror at the situation quickly spreads over to General Hidayat when she tells him that there is no medicine or vaccine that can treat or stop the fungus, and that the only solution that could potentially work to stop the pandemic is to destroy Jakarta and its 8.5 million inhabitants by bombing it.
- While traveling through the Boston Museum, Ellie finds a fresh corpse that has been torn apart, leading Joel and Tess to realize with horror that there are clickers in the building. You can even hear the fear in Tess' voice as she unsuccessfully tries to convince Joel and herself that the victim may have been attacked outside and then stumbled in.
- Peek-a-Boo Corpse: Ellie jokingly rings the front desk bell and pretends to call for service in the derelict hotel before nudging a luggage cart to inadvertently reveal what remains of a skeletonized bellhop.
- Prayer Is a Last Resort: Subverted. Several Indonesian viewers reported that when Lieutenant General Hidayat asked Professor Ratna what to do, they expected her to say "Pray." since that is what usually happens in these scenes in Indonesian movies. Both characters were played by renowned Indonesian actors as well. Therefore, her recommendation that Jakarta be bombed to dust took these viewers aback and hammers the horror in further.
- Reusable Lighter Toss: Tess drops her zippo in a puddle of fuel and explosives to immolate herself and as many infected as she can so they won't follow Joel and Ellie.
- Revolvers Are Just Better: Zigzagged. Their small size and mechanisms make them easily portable and reparable firearms for a survivalist like Joel, but as shown when he's being tracked by a Clicker, their cylinders make the act of reloading them a huge risk. Joel has to carefully remove the bullets without dropping a single one, then slowly slot new rounds into the chambers one by one, every time he does so causing a slight noise that allows the Clickers to slowly hone in on his location. He barely finishes when it's a foot away from him, making it clear why avoiding conflict with Clickers is always preferred, even with their blindness making ambushes a feasible option.
- Scene of Wonder: Ellie is mesmerized when laying eyes on The Outside World for the first time.
- Scientist vs. Soldier: A subverted example in the Jakarta flashback. Given the way the US military approached the outbreak, you’d expect the Indonesian military to be just as aggressive. The military leader, Lieutenant General Agus Hidayat, is asking the scientist, Professor Ratna, for a vaccine or a cure. Ratna informs him in no uncertain terms that there is no vaccine and that the only solution is to bomb the city and everyone in it. Including her. The poor man looks horrified.
- Senseless Sacrifice: Near the start of the outbreak, Professor Ratna tells General Hidayat to order Jakarta to be bombed to oblivion, sacrificing the lives of everybody in the city (pop. circa 8.5 million in 2003) including herself in order to eradicate the mutated cordyceps. It wasn't enough, as the fungi had already spread to other countries and continents. We learn that bombing was attempted by other regions too, but that didn't stop the spread either.
- Shown Their Work: Minor example. The Indonesian Ministry of Health logo is accurate to the time period it was set in (2003), as the logo was only changed in 2016.
- So Much for Stealth: The heroes repeatedly give away their presence to the clickers at the museum, be it by breathing too loudly or stepping on glass.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Joel mentions that while some infected live for years, most of them only last a month or two. Considering the infected are nothing more than mindless attack-animals with no sense of self-preservation, the idea that most of them die of natural causes is a plausible one.
- Stop Drowning and Stand Up: Played with when Ellie is reluctant to enter the pool of water at the hotel lobby because she doesn’t know how to swim until Joel demonstrates to her that it's only waist-deep.I don't know how I was supposed to know that...
- Taking You with Me: An already-infected Tess stays behind to hold off the horde of infected Joel inadvertently alerted. She uses the gasoline stored by the Fireflies and a lighter to blow them all up.
- Tattered Flag: Downplayed. The last shot shows a slightly tattered flag on top of the old statehouse, reinforcing the idea of a Fallen States of America.
- Total Party Kill: Somehow the Fireflies at the statehouse managed to kill each other to the last person during a frenzy after some of them get infected. We only see the aftermath when the heroes arrive to find the corpses scattered around.
- Trail of Blood: Tess and Ellie follow a trail of blood leading from the truck in front of the old statehouse inside the building.
- Up Close with the Monster: One of the Clickers attacks Joel, throws him to the ground and roars into his face, buying Joel enough time to shoot the monster dead.
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Apparently one of Ellie's catchphrases as she uses this a lot:
- The first time, when she realizes they are in a water-drenched hotel lobby.
- Again when she sees the fungus-encrusted door to the Menacing Museum they have to traverse.
- And once more when she notices that a Clicker bit her again on her right forearm.
- Zombie Infectee: During the fight with the Clickers in the museum, Tess gets bitten in the shoulder and infected. Prior to her death she was already showing the first signs of infection, with it being implied that she was only moments away from falling completely under the control of the fungus when she finally managed to ignite her lighter and blow up the statehouse and the infected horde inside.
