The Last of Us Reviews and Audience Scores Are Nothing Short of Miraculous

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The last of us

RT

I can’t get over how well The Last of Us premiered on HBO last week. Yes, both for me personally as a fan of the original game, but more generally, in terms of reception by both the critical class and average viewers. The scores accumulated here are simply amazing, for different reasons.

The current The Last of Us has a score of 99% on Rotten Tomatoes from 117 reviews. I believe most of them have seen the first four episodes, so it goes beyond the impressive pilot, indicating that it maintains its quality as it goes. Some have seen all nine episodes, I think.

To put that 99% score into perspective, you have to go all the way back to 2022 for a full list to compare it to. Generally speaking, yes, TV scores are higher than movies, and there are actually 21 seasons of shows that got a perfect 100% score last year. However, there are fewer TV reviews and movie reviews in general, and while The Last of Us has 117 reviews, there’s no 100% show that has nearly that number of reviews. Most have between 25 and 50 reviews instead.

The last of us

HBO

So The Last of Us can best be compared to something like Barry season 3 (99%, 109 reviews) or Better Call Saul season 6 (99%, 179 reviews) or The Boys season 3 (98%, 149 reviews). Up there with already established series of high quality.

And the audience scores? For me, this is the most miraculous part. The Last of Us currently has a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 9.4/10 on IMDB from thousands of user reviews, an almost universal consensus on the quality of the series. Among TV fans, and a mix of video game and TV fans? It’s amazing, especially considering all the pre-air controversies the show has had.

There are progressive glitches that sometimes cause baseless bombings, where Joel and Tommy are now played by Latino actors, and Joel’s daughter isn’t white, which is a change from the game. more general casting controversies, as there was initial skepticism about casting Bella Ramseys as the beloved role of Ellie because she didn’t look so much like the character in the game. There is skepticism about the video game adaptations in general, and specifically about The Last of Us which is adored by many gamers who thought it didn’t need a remote adaptation. And some things have been changed from the original game. There’s the fact that The Last of Us has become a hugely controversial series, not least because of the events of Part 2 of the games, which could have spilled over into sentiment about the series here.

But none of that mattered. Casting questions were resolved with incredible performances from all the actors involved. Source material issues didn’t materialize given the series’ fidelity to the game, and what was changed was often for the better.

I’m worried about what will happen when we reach part 2 of the games next season and how the gaming and non-gaming audience will react to it opening, but that’s a problem for another day.

The point being, for a show that seemed destined to attract all kinds of controversy, it overcame it all by simply being extremely good and performing on all fronts where people had concerns. Just an amazing feat. I can’t wait any longer.

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