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    10 Works and Performances That Helped Me Make Sense of 2023

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    Global conflict and personal loss encouraged our critic to seek out art that gave her a better understanding of grief and healing.“I hope you don’t mind if we carry on,” Juicy says at the end of “Fat Ham.” The other characters in the play then begin cleaning and clearing the stage, an act that affirms Juicy’s proposition and, in this work inspired by Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy, suggests that there might be a way for them to work through their shared trauma together.Those words hit me hard when I heard them last spring. I was staving off my own mourning as my family prepared for the 10th anniversary of my brother Shaka’s death from cancer. That, coupled with political crises and global despair, pushed me to find film, television and performances that helped me make sense of my grief and, hopefully, find a release for it.‘Fat Ham’I almost didn’t see what ended up as one of my favorite plays of the year. I could not wrap my head around the story line of a Black, queer, “Hamlet”-like play, even after it had won over my fellow critics and earned the Pulitzer Prize for best drama. Then I saw it on Broadway. I was startled by its clever transformation of an Elizabethan-era depressive into Gen Z ennui through its main character Juicy (Marcel Spears), a 20-something mourning his father’s death as well as the hyper-masculinity that his family and society impose on him. Though Juicy sneaks glances and shares asides with the audience, “Fat Ham” truly breaks theater’s fourth wall when the cast stages a surreal group cover of Radiohead’s “Creep” and then again with its unexpectedly liberatory final scene that invites us to join them in a party filled with glitter, gender fluidity and Black joy. (Read our review of “Fat Ham.”)The Last Season of ‘Succession’Who knew that if you killed off Logan Roy (Brian Cox), the show’s most dynamic character, his children would easily make up for his lost charisma? The “Succession” creator Jesse Armstrong, that’s who knew. I can’t think of three more heart-wrenching performances of parental loss than Shiv (Sarah Snook), her voice breaking as she pleads, “Daddy? I love you. Don’t go, please. Not now,” on the phone; Roman (Kieran Culkin), breaking down during his eulogy; and Kendall (Jeremy Strong), the most tragic, as he loses his bid to replace his father as chief executive. In the end, Kendall simply stares out at the water rather than being buoyed up or submerged in it as he has been in the past. A man without a company, it is a fate that, for him, is far worse than death. (Read our review of the “Succession” finale.)‘A Thousand and One’In “A Thousand and One,” Teyana Taylor plays Inez, a mother scarred by her childhood in foster care. Aaron Kingsley Adetola plays Terry.Focus FeaturesWinner of a grand jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival, A.V. Rockwell’s debut feature, “A Thousand and One,” sensitively explores the failure of society’s safety nets to protect Black families and the lengths Black mothers will go to ensure their children’s future. But underneath that story is another: one about the personal voids we try to fill. Appearing in her first leading role, Teyana Taylor plays Inez, a mother scarred by her childhood in foster care. She infused this character with such electricity and vitality that I found myself championing her every move, even, or especially, her most morally ambiguous decisions. (Read our interview with the director.)‘Past Lives’What if someone you pined for turns out to be your soul mate, not in this life, but another? This tension drives Celine Song’s debut film “Past Lives,” a tender portrait of two adults, Na Young (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), who forged a special bond as classmates in Seoul but lost touch over the years. Their poignant performances and Song’s intimate directing style make the chemistry between these two characters believable. But, we, and they, are left with the sense that the chasm caused by immigration (and the self-invention it requires) is insurmountable, making longing the most consistent emotion available to them. (Read our review of “Past Lives.”)‘Purlie Victorious’When he first conceived of writing a play based on his childhood in rural, segregated Georgia, Ossie Davis tried to write it straight. Once he realized that satire was better suited to capture the absurdity and tragedy of American racism, he premiered his first play, “Purlie Victorious.” Back on Broadway 62 years later, the play, directed by Kenny Leon, stars Leslie Odom Jr. as the ambitious preacher Purlie and Kara Young as Lutibelle, a naïve young woman he brings home to impersonate a dead cousin whose inheritance Purlie wants. The resulting ruckus undercuts an enduring racial stereotype — that all Black people look alike — while sharing a radical vision of Black pride and interracial solidarity. Odom is a mesmerizing triumph and Young a hilarious tour de force, while this is Leon (“Fences,” “Topdog/Underdog”) at his very best. (Read our interview with the cast and director.)Jeffrey Wright in ‘American Fiction’Jeffrey Wright as Thelonious “Monk” Ellison in “American Fiction.” Ellison is torn between staying true to his highbrow literary vision and caricaturing Black life to make money and take care of his mother. via TIFFJeffrey Wright is a consummate screen stealer — this year alone, I wanted more speeches from his General Gibson in “Asteroid City” and more shade from his Adam Clayton Powell Jr. in “Rustin.” But not since “Basquiat” in 1996 have I seen Wright as a lead in a feature-length film, and his performance in Cord Jefferson’s “American Fiction” reminds us what an actual loss this is for those of us who love watching movies. He wholly embodies Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, a novelist who, in the process of mourning the death of his father and sister, is torn between staying true to his highbrow literary vision and caricaturing Black life to make money and take care of his mother. Wright gives a nuanced, captivating performance, punctuated with humor, anger, desire and vulnerability, while his character conveys the frustrations of Black artists who refuse to conform to the white gaze.‘The Last of Us’There are so many painful separations and sentimental reunions on “The Last of Us,” the dystopian HBO series based on the video game of the same name, that it is hard for me to pick the most affecting one. I am choosing the story in which Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a 14-year-old orphan who is immune to the brain infection that has decimated most of the world, reconnects with her former roommate Riley (Storm Reid), who left to join the resistance. When Riley takes Ellie on an overnight trip to an abandoned mall, we see how liberating their adolescent female desire for each other is, making this night of last memories even more apocalyptic. (Read our review of “The Last of Us.”)Jodie Comer in ‘Prima Facie’When Jodie Comer, best known as an assassin on “Killing Eve,” decided to do her first major stage role, she went big with “Prima Facie.” Alone on a Broadway stage for 100 minutes, Comer commands our attention as Tessa Ensler, a barrister who has moved up in the British class system only to be pulled back down as a victim of a sexual assault. Tessa finds herself in a paradox: In the past, she has defended male clients from assault accusations. Comer moves through the emotions of grief, shame, self-doubt, rage and hope with such intensity that it still seems impossible to me that this was her professional stage debut. (Read our review of “Prima Facie.”)‘Reservation Dogs’Graham Greene as Maximus, left, and D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai as Bear in “Reservation Dogs,” a show that redefined American television.Shane Brown/FXDespite its notable lack of Emmy nods, “Reservation Dogs,” the first television show where every writer, director and main character was Indigenous, redefined American television over three seasons. While it is primarily a coming-of-age story, this final season’s episodes veered thrillingly into family drama, horror, science fiction and comedy. I am sad to say goodbye to these characters, but I am grateful for its brilliant ensemble and its affirmation of community, and how a people who lived and grieved together can, through ritual and remembrance, find their way back to each other and teach themselves, and those watching them, how to heal. (Read our interview with the “Reservation Dogs” showrunner.)Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour“Uncle Jonny made my dress,” Beyoncé rhymes on “Heated,” a single from her 2022 album “Renaissance.” “That cheap spandex, she looks a mess.” That playful line reminds us that she dedicated this album to her maternal uncle Jonny, a Black gay man who helped raise her and died of H.I.V./AIDS-related causes. (She released her concert film on Friday, which was World AIDS Day.) The lyric also declares the political aesthetics of “Renaissance” and the house music and Black queer ballroom cultures that inspired its sound and her style on this year’s behemoth world tour. She encouraged us to wear our most fabulous silver fashions and become human disco balls that mirrored “each other’s joy.” And so we came, witnessed and participated in what was more like a Black church revival than just a stadium concert, in which we left feeling as beautiful in our skin (and our clothing) as she appeared to us onstage. (Read our review of Beyoncé’s tour.) More

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      ‘The Last of Us’ Series Premiere Recap: Fungus Among Us

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      It’s too soon to say whether HBO’s big-budget video game adaptation will become a zombie classic. But it delivers one heck of an opening catastrophe.‘The Last of Us’ Season 1, Episode 1: ‘When You’re Lost in the Darkness’Every great post-apocalyptic saga should begin with a killer “here’s where everything went wrong” sequence.Think of George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead,” with its single zombie lumbering through a graveyard, chasing after a young woman and her obnoxious brother. (“They’re coming to get you, Barbara!”) Or think of the 2004 remake of Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead,” or the first episode of “The Walking Dead,” both of which begin as the heroes wake up in a nightmarish world that collapsed while they were asleep. We understand right from the start what these people have been through because we go through it right along with them, minute by agonizing minute, as they panic and flee from the bloodthirsty ghouls and the mounting mayhem.It’s too soon to say whether HBO’s big-budget adaptation of the video game “The Last of Us” will become a classic like Romero’s “Dead” movies. But I’ll say this for the series’s creators, Craig Mazin (the Emmy-winning writer and producer of “Chernobyl”) and Neil Druckmann (a creator of the video game): They do deliver one heck of an opening catastrophe.The first half-hour of the show’s 80-minute premiere is set mostly in Austin, Texas, in 2003, where a construction worker named Joel (Pedro Pascal); his teenage daughter, Sarah (Nico Parker); and his brother, Tommy (Gabriel Luna) endure a harrowing 24 hours. It begins with them minding their own business on Joel’s 36th birthday. It ends with them trying to escape a city that has been devastated by rampaging monsters, trigger-happy soldiers and exploding vehicles.Mazin (who also directed the episode) and Druckmann spend a lot more time than one might expect with these three characters in Austin, given that their story’s primary action is set 20 years later and hundreds of miles away — and especially given that Sarah does not survive the day. Most of the Texas scenes are from Sarah’s point of view, too, although there are sly hints throughout that something bigger is happening. In one scene we hear radio reports about “disturbances in Jakarta.” In another, the next door neighbors’ grandmother twitches in the background, her mouth gaping unnervingly wide.Inside the Dystopian World of ‘The Last of Us’The post-apocalyptic video game that inspired the TV series “The Last of Us” won over players with its photorealistic animation and a morally complex story.Game Review: “I found it hard to get past what it embraces with a depressing sameness, particularly its handling of its female characters,” our critic wrote of “The Last of Us” in 2013.‘Left Behind’: “The Last of Us: Left Behind,” a prologue designed to be played in a single sitting, was an unexpected hit in 2014.2020 Sequel: “The Last of Us Part II,” a tale of entrenched tribalism in a world undone by a pandemic, took a darker and unpredictable tone that left critics in awe.Playing the Game: Two Times reporters spent weeks playing the sequel in the run-up to its release. These were their first impressions.The Austin sequence matters, though, and not only because it grabs the viewer with some thrillingly chaotic spectacle. By the time we leave 2003 — with Sarah laying dead from a soldier’s bullet and Joel emotionally wrecked — we have learned some plot-relevant details. We know that humans all over the world are becoming infected with something that turns them into ferociously violent savages. We see during the escape that Joel is willing to ignore other people’s suffering, or even to inflict harm wantonly, in order to protect himself and his family. And we discover that the government’s response to this crisis can be as destructive as the crisis itself.A short scene before the opening credits is just as important. Set in 1968, the prologue features a TV interview with a scientist who explains that his greatest fear isn’t a “global pandemic” (a term that, in a moment of dark humor from Mazin and Druckmann, is defined by another guest for the blissfully ignorant ’60s audience) but rather a mind-controlling fungus that could one day thrive on a warming planet, turning humans into fiends. This, put concisely, is what the characters in “The Last of Us” are going to be dealing with: “Billions of puppets with poisoned minds.”But as Romero showed over and over again with his zombie pictures, it isn’t always the infected alone who turn monstrous. The second half of this first episode takes us to the overgrown ruins of Boston in 2023, where in a “quarantine zone” Joel is taking odd jobs — some legal, some not. He does general cleanup work for the same kind of gun-toting authoritarians who killed his kid. (In 2023, they are called “FEDRA,” for the Federal Disaster Response Agency.) And he smuggles drugs with his business and romantic partner, Tess (played by the magnificent Anna Torv, beloved of science-fiction/fantasy/horror fans from her days on “Fringe”). They are trying to scrape together enough money to buy a battery and a truck so they can reunite with the still-alive and possibly endangered Tommy in the wilds of America, where the danger of the fungus creatures is rivaled by the viciousness of roving noninfected gangs. Nowhere, it seems, is safe.If the last half of the pilot is less exciting than the first, it also has to do the hard work of setting up the rest of the series. Beyond establishing the miserable conditions of 2023, Mazin and Druckmann must introduce the show’s other leading character: Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a feisty 14-year-old who is the only known person to survive an infection — and, hence, could be the key to saving humanity. When Joel and Tess’s truck battery plan goes awry, they take an assignment from the anti-FEDRA resistance fighter Marlene (Merle Dandridge) to shepherd Ellie to one of the safe houses of her organization, the Fireflies. So the real story begins.Still, even when they’re just moving pieces into place, the creators keep adding fascinating little wrinkles that make their world and its inhabitants more multidimensional. The best touch is also the quirkiest. It seems Joel has stayed in contact with the outside world — including with Tommy — by way of encoded radio messages. With a well-thumbed volume of “The Billboard Book of Number 1 Hits” by his side, he waits to hear specific songs that signal whether it’s safe to venture beyond the Q.Z.Unfortunately, Joel and Tess have already left the apartment when the radio crackles to life and starts blaring Depeche Mode’s “Never Let Me Down Again.” That’s a song from the 1980s, which is a sign that there is trouble all around. Our heroes will have to find out for themselves what bad business awaits out there. And Joel will have to see if he can live up to the song’s lyrics — or if, for the second time in his life, he will fail to save a young girl.Side QuestsBy the way, “Never Let Me Down Again” never reached No. 1 on the Billboard pop charts, but we can let that slide, because it’s a great song. Besides, I believe this show is a work of fiction, given that we don’t live in a 2023 where half the population has been taken over by fungi.Mazin and Druckmann do a good job of setting the stage and telling their story through visual cues and subtle dialogue rather than blunt exposition. The most devastating example is in the first Boston scene, when an injured boy stumbles into town and is immediately checked over by the authorities. We can see in the background that the boy’s fungus test is glowing red, but he is told nothing of it, promised he’ll receive a good meal and a pile of toys once they give him some medicine — “just a little needle.” Later, we see the kid’s body in a pile of corpses Joel is burning. We can fill in the rest ourselves.Full disclosure: I have never played “The Last of Us,” and I am not really a gamer (though I have spent a lot of time watching my gamer wife and gamer kids play the likes of “Breath of the Wild” and “Xenoblade Chronicles”). So as I write about the show, I will be focusing on how it works as a television series, and not on how well it does or does not adapt the game.Make sure to read the extensive coverage of “The Last of Us” that the Times has run this week, including Brian Tallerico’s primer on the show and the game, Conor Dougherty’s behind-the-scenes look at the making of the series, Douglas Greenwood’s interview with Ramsey and James Poniewozik’s review. More

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      ‘The Last of Us’ Creators on Turning Video Games Into TV

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      Hollywood has mostly failed to adapt successful video games into satisfying series and films. In an interview, the creators of this new zombie thriller explain why it can be the exception.When “The Last of Us” came out in 2013, the hit video game’s premise — a fungus turns people into zombies, leaving society in shambles, and what government remains is controlled by fascists — seemed squarely in the realm of fiction. A decade later, an HBO series based on the game is set to be released, on Sunday, to a public that has grown all too familiar with the possibility of a germ apocalypse.The reality of what the world has been through over the past three years is alluded to in a chilling opening scene in which a pair of scientists describe the risk of various pathogens to a talk show audience. After one of them describes something like Covid-19, the other silences both the fictional crowd and us when he expounds upon the ways in which a warmed-up planet could lead to something much, much worse.“Part of writing for an audience is just feeling in your bones what is cultural knowledge,” said Craig Mazin, one of the showrunners. “On the other hand, it’s not a show about the pandemic — it’s about what it means to survive and what’s the purpose of survival. So we get that out of the way pretty quickly.”Over the past decade, as video games have become more vivid and complex, developers have used the medium to spin rich, character-based stories that rival film and TV in quality. “The Last of Us,” for instance, is less about the actual outbreak than the father-daughter relationship between a smuggler named Joel (played by Pedro Pascal in the series) and a 14-year-old girl named Ellie (Bella Ramsey). Their journey across the United States, past zombies and cannibals, raises questions about the limits of love and the atrocities a parent will commit in the name of protecting a child.Acclaimed for its narrative depth, “The Last of Us,” the game, follows a smuggler named Joel and a girl named Ellie across a post-apocalyptic America.Sony Interactive EntertainmentBut while a handful of game-to-screen adaptations like the “Tomb Raider,” “Resident Evil” and “Sonic the Hedgehog” franchises have made enough money to warrant sequels, there is a sense that unlike, say, comic books, the stories in video games have never been properly translated.“A lot of them have been embarrassing,” said Neil Druckmann, who led the creation of “The Last of Us” and its 2020 sequel, “The Last of Us Part II,” and created the HBO show with Mazin. (Druckmann is also a showrunner.)For Hollywood that means a gold mine of intellectual property with a built-in audience of gamers has gone mostly unexploited. Given the pedigree of the creators — Mazin created “Chernobyl,” the Emmy-award winning mini-series, while Druckmann and his studio, Naughty Dog, are considered the benchmarks for narrative storytelling in games — fans are hoping “The Last of Us” will be different. Either way, viewers should prepare to see more games onscreen soon: Other popular video game franchises with film and TV adaptations in the works include “Twisted Metal,” “Ghost of Tsushima” and “Assassin’s Creed.”In a joint video interview late last month, Mazin and Druckmann discussed “The Last of Us,” what they changed from the game and what they didn’t, and why their philosophy for adaptation was to cut away much of the action in order to make the post-apocalyptic world feel more real. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Inside the Dystopian World of ‘The Last of Us’The post-apocalyptic video game that inspired the TV series “The Last of Us” won over players with its photorealistic animation and a morally complex story.Game Review: “I found it hard to get past what it embraces with a depressing sameness, particularly its handling of its female characters,” our critic wrote of “The Last of Us” in 2013.‘Left Behind’: “The Last of Us: Left Behind,” a prologue designed to be played in a single sitting, was an unexpected hit in 2014.2020 Sequel: “The Last of Us Part II,” a tale of entrenched tribalism in a world undone by a pandemic, took a darker and unpredictable tone that left critics in awe.Playing the Game: Two Times reporters spent weeks playing the sequel in the run-up to its release. These were their first impressions.The “Last of Us” games are about a global pandemic in which the cordyceps fungus, a real-life fungus that can take over the bodies and minds of insects, jumps to humans and turns people into zombies. Suddenly that premise feels a lot less fantastical.CRAIG MAZIN Neil made the smart decision all these years ago to say, you know what, instead of some invented no-name zombie virus, or rage serum, or some supernatural hell-has-fallen-and-the-dead-will-walk-the-earth —NEIL DRUCKMANN Radiation!MAZIN Yeah, radiation, which is just an outrage. Instead of all that, why don’t we go find something that’s real? And he did. I mean, that’s what cordyceps does to ants. I love the science of it.“I believe that most fans are going to react positively to it, because we made it with love,” said Craig Mazin, right, on set with Lamar Johnson. “But if people don’t, I get that too.”Liane Hentscher/HBODRUCKMANN Part of the game’s success was that we try to treat it as grounded as possible. And with the show we’re able to take that philosophy even further. So I think why the pandemic [in the games] feels so real, even though it was written before our current pandemic, is we were looking at things like Katrina. Like here’s where government fails, here’s where people can get really selfish, and here’s where we can see these great acts of love.In the games, the outbreak takes place in 2013, whereas in the show it’s 2003. Given that most of the story takes place 20 years later, after the world falls apart, I’m guessing the idea was to place the show in the present day?MAZIN I have this thing about watching shows where a graphic comes up and says, “2053: London.” And I’m like, “I don’t know what 2053 is.” The notion that there’s this twist of fate, and 2023, instead of looking like this, it looks like this — there’s an immediacy to that. I probably inflated its importance in my mind, but it helped me.Gamers are generally of the opinion that game adaptations are pretty horrible. You both seem to agree, and I’m wondering why you think they’ve been such a failure.MAZIN There’s a lot of cringe out there.DRUCKMANN Sometimes the source material is just not strong enough for a direct adaptation. So all you’re left with is a name that has some value to it, but really you’re starting from scratch. Other times it’s that the people in charge are not gamers. They don’t understand what made this thing special. They hang on to really superficial things and they think, for example, plenty of players want to see that one gameplay moment or this one gun from the game.MAZIN Terrific video games are terrific because of their gameplay, but conceptually they may already be copies of something. A copy of “Aliens.” A copy of “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” You adapt that and you have a copy of a copy and can just feel a lack of freshness to it.Bella Ramsey, left and Anna Torv in “The Last of Us.”Liane Hentscher/HBOSo what did you try to do differently?DRUCKMANN The most important thing was to keep the soul of it, what it’s about: these relationships. What makes the show are the characters, the philosophical arguments of, “Do the ends justify the means?” And, “How big is your tribe that you’re going to care for?”The least important part was the gameplay. In the game we have long action sequences to get you into a flow state, which gets you to better connect with the character — you see yourself as that character. But if you just try to throw that on the screen in the passive medium, it’s not going to work. And that’s the thing that people often get wrong. The conversation with Craig and with HBO, the encouragement, which I loved, was, “Don’t focus on the action.”Given how many failures there have been, at least creatively, why do you think the appetite for game to TV or movie adaptations is suddenly so large?MAZIN There’s two possible reasons, one good and one not so good. The video game industry has been putting out some remarkable work. It seems natural that once these games achieve this impressive narrative space, you can start to think about porting them over. That’s the good reason.Here’s the bad reason: Somebody in a room who doesn’t know anything about playing video games looks at a PDF of how many copies are sold, and they go, “Well, let’s just do that. We need the title and the character, and the character should look like the guy in the game, and then, whatever, we’ll hire some people.”What are some of the differences in how you build a character for an interactive medium versus a passive one?DRUCKMANN With a game, there are certain constraints. Joel [the game’s main playable character] needs to be capable enough to mirror what you’re doing in the game. So, for example, he’s crouching and he’s killing. If all of a sudden we had a scene where he’s complaining about his knees, then there’s this disconnect. The Joel in the show, because you don’t have to support him crouch-walking or having to fight all these people, there was this idea of, “What if we explore his age and how broken down he is over the years?” Physically, he becomes a different person that’s more realistic than what we could have done in the game.When translating the game into a TV narrative, “the least important part was the gameplay,” Druckmann said.Sony Interactive EntertainmentMAZIN There are parts of games that, because of their design, have to violate reality. In “The Last of Us” — or really any game where you’re playing somebody that has guns, and you’re fighting against other people that have guns — you’re going to get shot. And then you’re going to heal yourself with a bandage, some pills, power-ups, whatever. So exploring the fragility of the body is part of how we honor this different medium. A single gunshot, if it’s not fatal, can permanently damage you as a human being. There is no bandage for this.Are you anxious about how fans of the game will react to changes?MAZIN My job was to be connected with my own fandom and to think about myself as representative of a lot of people, and to ask what would be important to me, what would hurt if it weren’t in the show. I believe that most fans are going to react positively to it, because we made it with love. But if people don’t, I get that too. It’s part of being deeply connected to something.DRUCKMANN My fear, and this just gets into a general conversation around fandom, is that our cast or anybody from our crew will get attacked or insulted as we make certain changes. After “The Last of Us II,” nothing anybody says online can get to me anymore. But I hate when anybody else gets it.You’re referring to the online harassment, including death threats, surrounding, among other things, the gender and sexuality of certain characters in the “Last of Us” games, which is also explored in the show.DRUCKMANN I’ve learned to just accept it and not to give it too much weight. I tend to not be driven by fear. If anything, I lean the opposite. When there’s a certain backlash to an idea, I’m like, then it’s an idea worth exploring.As a fan of the games, I found myself having a kind of reverse uncanny valley type reaction to Ellie in the show, where I was like, “But that’s not Ellie.” It made me realize how deeply I’ve connected to the game version of Ellie, who is voiced by Ashley Johnson but is a digital character. Unlike a live actress, who you realize is a person and might see in other things, you don’t see Ellie anywhere else, so she almost seems to belong to the story.MAZIN What I said to Bella is, people are going to probably have a reaction to you, not unlike Joel’s reaction, which is: “Who is this? This isn’t my daughter. This isn’t the person I love. The person I love looks like this and acts like this, and you’re not it … but I guess I’m stuck with you for a bit.”And then: “Well, you’re kind of growing on me … Actually, I think you’re pretty great … You know what? I would kill anyone to protect you.”That’s kind of how it works with Joel and Ellie, and that’s kind of how I think it’s going to work with the part of the audience that, like you and like me, has such an attachment to the Ellie that Neil and Ashley created in the game. That’s what Bella does magically. Bella does not beg for your approval — I’m talking about her Ellie — she just is that character and you, like Joel, are falling in love with her. More