Only a few weeks after the conclusion of The Last of Us season two, co-creator Craig Mazin reunited with many of the craft team at IGN Live. They all reflected back upon the most recent season discussing how it all came together.
When sharing their favorite episode of the second season, two came up over and over again. The first was the flashback heavy “The Price” which followed the highs and lows of Joel and Ellie’s relationship after Salt Lake City. The other was “Through the Valley” which depicted the battle for Jackson and had the heartbreaking dramatic ending.
Mazin watched a scene from The Last of Us on stage showing the town’s preparation as the infected horde approached. Many of Jackson’s vulnerable began bunkering down for safety, which reminded him of another iconic pop culture siege that took place in Middle Earth.
“We had always talked about this as kind of like our Helm’s Deep,” he said. “And then you know we got this comment back which I thought was really astute, that just a little glimpse of who was at stake here, the civilians. And that’s what they did in Helms Deep also. So we Helm’s Deeped, which is a good thing to do.”
Bringing that action sequence to life took a lot of preparation and hard work. Costume designer Ann Foley and her team performed close to 600 fittings for infected and Jackson residents. Despite the number of cast members, the craft team still paid close attention to detail. Another scene was shown on-screen with the infected horde advancing towards the town. It was a combination of practical and special effects as many of the faces are prosthetics while others were VFX. Yet, you wouldn’t be able to decipher which is which.
Adding to the grand scale of the fight was the accompanying score. The Last of Us co-composer David Fleming shared his process. “This one was really challenging because I think right from earlier in this episode when you first see the infected come out of the snow, Craig was like how do we start this at 11, but then keep going up after the whole episode. This was a real trick of building momentum and feeling like it was just relentless, relentless, and relentless. And it was a bit of more is more.”
