by Season 2 of The Last of Us, created by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, starring Bella Ramsey, Pedro Pascal, Gabriel Luna, and Isabela Merced, has finally come back to our screens, and it’s been a rough start. Spoiler Alert!! The icon himself, Pedro Pascal, leaves the show after the second episode when Joel is brutally murdered. Whereas fans from the show are disappointed and sad, true fans from the videogame are not surprised, as they knew this was bound to happen. I confess that Joel left the show earlier than I would’ve liked, just as many other people would’ve wanted to. I think the show jumped very quickly into Joel’s murder, and the season starts with a tense relationship between Joel and a “coming-of-age” Ellie. The season wants to portray the difficulties of a father-daughter dynamic. They are both getting older and becoming more stubborn, but this ambivalence takes us nowhere and is only used as a resource for Ellie’s future trauma.
Audiences have not responded as enthusiastically this season for many reasons. Many fans continue comparing Bella Ramsey’s acting to video game actress Ashley Johnson, who played Ellie’s mom on the show. Other viewers are merely misogynistic or homophobic and dislike Bella’s performance because she’s not your typical heteronormative “It girl”. Other fans are judging the show because they claim it’s making many creative choices when it comes to storytelling, and claim it’s not as impactful as the video game. In the video game, Abby’s identity and motives are revealed after she kills Joel. In the show, her persona and drive are shown before she kills Joel. I think her villainous five-minute monologue before killing Joel came across as overly dramatic and unrealistic, almost like a soap opera. Either way, it wasn’t enough to call the episode disappointing. It was still jarring and captivating, no question in that. Whenever we look at an adaptation from a book, a game, or even another movie, comparison is unavoidable. It is as if we are setting ourselves up for disappointment because we have seen something we liked, especially as fans. Not only do we want the new production to meet our expectations, but we want to be surprised even more. We become so diligent that it makes it almost impossible to enjoy the new version.
I, however, can’t stop thinking about why the show is not as intriguing as it used to be. Could it be that times have changed? We must remember it’s been two years since the first season was released. Back then, society was falling back in order after COVID-19. Even though COVID wasn’t nearly as harmful as a Cordyceps pandemic or other epidemics like the Bird Flu or Ebola, it changed parameters that had never been challenged before. For example, at-home education or work modalities. These things isolated people, worsening their mental health, and we all faced a level of paranoia that entire countries hadn’t experienced in decades. Watching season one was relatable because audiences could understand a similar emotional hardship to trying to adapt to a new world, new societies, failing old ways, and new approaches to socializing. But two years later, Russia invaded Ukraine, and Donald Trump won… again. This last event has increased tensions between the US and the European Union. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict untied another violent war, the Pope died, and the United States has gone back to a polarized, conservative, and divided standing. There’s been an increase in the housing crisis, an increase in medical debt, and, not to mention, the anger from the people has also risen, and now they are looking up to United Healthcare CEO murderer, Luigi Mangione, as a role model. Thanks to tariffs and pointing fingers at everyone, the recession is back and better than ever. But… wait! So are vampires! Nosferatu came back to theaters with a marvelous chilling adaptation by Robert Eggers on December 25th, and Sinners with sexy vampires was released on April 17. So… could it be that audiences are not captivated by Zombies or post-mortem chasing psychopaths anymore?
The Meaning of Monsters
Mackenzie K. Phelps on Fear Then and Now: The Vampire as a Reflection of Society explains that humans have created monsters to express abstract fears. Societies have gone from expressing unconscious fears through oral traditions, literature to watching them on screens. People have made monsters to blame for all their negative or bad experiences, disasters, and inconveniences. Miscarriages were believed to be caused by evil spirits or demons, and mentally ill people had demonic forces puppeteering them to explain erratic and unknown behavior. Rotting harvests or animals were believed to be caused by mischievous beings.
Zombies
Paul J. Patterson, PhD, argues that Zombies represent a “disease following you” and “it’s about the environment degrading and falling apart” (Patterson in Park, 2018). Shows like The Walking Dead are a commentary on how humans react when societies fall, the fear in the back of our minds about losing stability. “When society fails us, when government fails us, how will we react? Will we help each other?”
Frankenstein
Frankenstein reveals a societal fear of scientific advancement, the likelihood of failed unintended consequences, and the result of playing God. It reveals anxieties about creating something without understanding its full extent and how it may negatively affect society or how it may become an uncontrollable, destructive liability.
It signifies Scientific Hubris and how creating life or playing with it could release dangers without ethical considerations. An innocent creature may become vengeful and violent toward other innocent people, turning against its creators. It reveals fear of the unknown, especially the afterlife.
“As a parable, the novel has been used as an argument both for and against slavery and revolution, vivisection and the Empire, and as a dialogue between history and progress, religion and atheism. The prefix ‘Franken-’ thrives in the modern lexicon as a byword for any anxiety about science, scientists and the human body, and has been used to shape worries about the atomic bomb, GM crops, strange foods, stem cell research and both to characterise and assuage fears about AI.” (Laurence, 2018)
Vampires
Vampire stories were initially pushed by mass hysteria and the fear of losing “European Christian values”. For example, in the 20th century, “one of us” equaled being straight, Christian, and Caucasian. With the rise of liberalism and a globalized world, vampires represented an unconscious fear of immigrants, Queer people, Jews, and outcasts disguised as the ideal European heteronormative individual.
The typical vampire figure is recycled through the ages to represent various threats depending on the cultural context. Queerness, rich foreigners, foreign invasion, and religions outside of Christianity or Catholicism represent the fall of societies built around their values; anything that threatens them reveals the fear of losing one’s identity, structure, and stability, therefore, safety.
Vampires first became popular among the masses with the release of classic literary pieces like Dracula and Nosferatu. Then vampires became the image of “evil” and “sin”. I believe this genre is amongst the most cyclical in literary and cinematic trends because the West has been struggling back and forth between letting go of Christian beliefs and holding back on to them. Productions like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Vampire Diaries, Twilight, What We Do in the Shadows, Interview with the Vampire, and Van Helsing trend every ten to fifteen years to remind us about heterosexual, hence patriarchal, and Christian views about how humans should partner up by sexualizing the characters. The male vampire makes the female victim his property, an unconscious sign of misogynistic views aligned with religion on how women must be submissive to men.
If we look at our current sociopolitical context and consider the rise of Christian narratives through the rise in popularity of conservative leaders like Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, Javier Milei, Nayib Bukele, Giorgia Meloni, Friederich Merz, etc., it is no surprise that Nosferatu is back in fashion.
Werewolves
Werewolf mythology originates in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, where King Lycaon, punished by Zeus for his barbaric attempt to fool the god, is transformed into a wolf. This story not only gives us the term “lycanthropy” but also establishes a narrative: the link between human-to-wolf transformation and the fear of consuming human flesh. Lycaon’s myth has been present through centuries of folklore, reminding us in werewolf stories of punishment, savagery, and a moralistic fear of crossing divine or societal boundaries.
In modern culture, werewolves are paired with vampires, but they stay closer to humanity as they are alive, conflicted, and transitional. In nineteenth and twentieth-century literature, female werewolves are born as metaphors for anxieties surrounding women’s autonomy and sexuality. Dressed in white fur, seductively dangerous, and drawn to children with predatory behavior, they challenge ideas about maternity and femininity. The full moon is used as a werewolf trigger, which could be linked to cycles, madness, and womanhood, revealing cultural shifts and unease. Werewolves are not only monsters, but reflections of the tensions surrounding transformation within life, nature, and humanity.
In my opinion, The Last of Us is not as accepted by audiences as it was back in 2023 because in just two years, the narrative has changed. Audiences are no longer scared of disease or the collapse of society because, so far, they’ve seen countries survive a global pandemic. Now, there is a bigger acceptance for conservative ideals, and even tolerance for radical, bigoted stances, such as Elon Musk’s salute at a Trump rally. Vampires are back on our screens due to the return of turmoil – the fear of losing stability linked to financial variations and the worries of a possible recession. People are desperate for something that makes them feel safe and in control. What else to provide such an illusion than traditional views?
Birmingham Perspective. (n.d.). The Big Bad Wolf. University of Birmingham. https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/perspective/the-big-bad-wolf
Lang, C. (2022, October 20). Why vampires are having a pop culture moment again. Time. https://time.com/6220602/vampires-pop-culture-2022/
Park, Michelle, “The Aesthetics and Psychology Behind Horror Films” (2018). Undergraduate Honors College Theses 2016-. 31.
https://digitalcommons.liu.edu/post_honors_theses/31
Phelps, Mackenzie K. Fear Then and Now: The Vampire as a Reflection of Society. 2021. Chapman University, MA Thesis. Chapman University Digital Commons, https://doi.org/10.36837/chapman.000287
Russell, M. (2018, June 11). Why Frankenstein is the story that defines our fears. BBC Culture. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180611-why-frankenstein-is-the-story-that-defined-our-fears
Sobolewski, N. (2020). Blood, lust, and other things that bite: Analyzing modern vampire narratives through the lens of gender and sexuality (Honors thesis). LIU Digital Commons. https://digitalcommons.liu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1030&context=post_honors_theses
