Why I Stopped Watching The Last of Us on Max

Warning: This post contains spoilers.

I love a good apocalyptic story. Z Nation, I Am Legend, The Book of Eli—give me a world in ruins, and I’m there for it. Despite the chaos, destruction, and imminent danger, there’s usually one redeeming thread that runs through most apocalyptic films: humanity. People helping people. Strangers becoming family. And above all, hope.

That’s what I sign up for when I watch these kinds of stories. Hope.

So when The Walking Dead first aired, I dove in headfirst. Season one delivered exactly what I expected—survivors dodging zombies and slowly learning to lean on each other. But as the seasons wore on, the zombies took a backseat. The real villains became other humans—twisted, sadistic groups of people whose goal seemed to be mass murder and domination.

Let’s be real: the zombies are fiction. The psychopaths? That’s a little too close to reality. If we ever do face an actual apocalypse, the real danger won’t be the infected—it’ll be the unhinged. The people who feel no empathy. No remorse. The ones who would kill without hesitation to survive.

Fast forward to The Last of Us. Season one had me hooked. The relationship between the two main characters was powerful and raw. The threat of those fungus-faced creatures kept the tension high. It was everything I wanted in a series.

Then came season two. Episode two, specifically.

SPOILER ALERT: One of the main characters is beaten to death. Not by a monster. Not by some towering mutant. But by a teenage girl with a golf club and dead eyes. I was stunned. But I kept going. Episode three, maybe it’ll redeem itself.

It didn’t.

In that episode, an entire cult-like group is wiped out while peacefully walking through the forest—men, women, and children—all murdered without mercy.

And that was it for me.

The Last of Us joined the ranks of shows that start strong but ultimately devolve into senseless brutality. I didn’t sign up for a series where the biggest threat isn’t the apocalypse, but the sheer cruelty of surviving humans.

So I’m done. I’ll be sticking to apocalyptic movies from now on. They’re short, intense, and most importantly—they usually end with a flicker of hope. The series? They all seem to end in the same place: human darkness on full display.

And honestly, I get enough of that in the real world.