2003 was a hell of a time, both for our world and for the world of The last of us. became reality the return of the King, the Iraq war and the completion of the Human Genome Project. The last of us-verse got a zombie pandemic and the second part got a twilight ripoff. You might miss the latter for the former in all the hubbub, but Episode 7, “Left Behind,” certainly nods to the universal lore of the (we’re guessing) great Dawn of the Wolf franchise with a tiny wink—you’ll miss that Easter egg.
While Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and her friend and would-be lover Riley (Storm Reid) have their tipsy fling that Riley has prepared for them, there are plenty of details to admire at the Boston mall they’re strolling around, including the movie poster and marquee for Dawn of the Wolf Part 2
Dawn of the Wolf Part 2 (and probably Part 1, if I had to guess) is an absolutely universal film for the world of The last of us, seen in glances of the poster or billboard. In the game Ellie and Joel discuss briefly via one of the billboards, with Ellie skeptical about the film and Joel dismissing it as a “stupid teen movie”.
If The last of us If Naughty Dog was in development in the late 2000s, the greatest “stupid teen movie” in the world would have been the Twilight franchise. And the last part of the film series, Breaking dawn part 2opened in theaters in 2012, a year before Sony’s release The last of us. Though the connection doesn’t matter much – the title, a nod to the vampire/werewolf fever gripping the nation; the implied YA melodrama; etc – it’s certainly one that fans clung to when the game came out.
And who can blame them? Look, we’re all missing the happier days of another Twilight movie to look forward to. The film franchise is a rich text of everything from young, eternal and chaste love to werewolves carrying pants around when they transform. Each new chapter is its own manic masterpiece, and I for one would love to soak up more of it.
In a way, this Easter egg is just another little nod to a larger universe beyond the confines of this show. But in another case, it’s an incredibly representative one, one that tells us (as players or viewers) something about almost every element of The last of us
In the game’s time, it’s both a simple shot at a 2013-era heavyweight and a visual nod to the bond between our protagonists. As a relic from HBO The last of us‘ Pop culture from 2003, it’s a little anomaly (the first Twilight book wouldn’t be released until 2005, at least if not a Cordyceps-driven zombie plague), but not beyond the bounds of reason. Like so many details on the show, it communicates so much with so little. And in the end, it’s all just another way normalcy — in their world or ours — feels so remote as to be unrecognizable.
If we only had the first two Twilight movies, who would play the Batman?
