Why on the earth is everybody within the first episode of The Final of Us so obsessive about baked items?
Sarah Miller (Nico Parker) needed her father Joel (Pedro Pascal) to purchase pancake combine for his birthday breakfast. The Millers’ next-door neighbors, the Adlers, are hell-bent on giving them biscuits. Later, cookies and truffles get talked about as effectively. It is a survival present with mushroom zombies, not The Nice British Bake Off, so why does meals get a lot airtime?
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There are just a few causes. On the one hand, it establishes a way of normalcy and serves as character growth. Since Joel is extremely busy at work and does not appear to care about making his birthday particular, he forgets the pancake combine and cake.
However behind that character work lies a extra sinister chance: the chance that contaminated meals induced the lethal cordyceps outbreak.
We by no means see Joel or Sarah eat any baked items.
Photographs taken mere seconds earlier than catastrophe (assembly a cordyceps grandma).
Credit score: Shane Harvey / HBO
Time and time once more, The Final of Us attracts consideration to what Joel, Sarah, and Tommy (Gabriel Luna) do or do not eat. They do eat eggs and drink orange juice, however they do not have fun Joel’s birthday with pancakes or a cake. They refuse the Adlers’ supply of home made biscuits, and Sarah is simply too upset by the prospect of Mrs. Adler’s raisin cookies to truly partake. All through the primary act of the episode, Joel and his household are dodging treats like their lives rely upon it. And actually? Perhaps they do.
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As a result of who does eat a biscuit? Mrs. Adler’s mom, the primary cordyceps-infected particular person we meet on the present. And whereas there are numerous variations between the Millers and the Adlers, the one The Final of Us retains coming again to is what they’ve eaten on the day of the outbreak. The Adlers eat issues like biscuits and find yourself contaminated. The Millers keep away from these and stay wholesome.
The logical conclusion is that cordyceps started spreading because of meals containing a contaminated ingredient. A shared ingredient between pancakes, cookies, truffles, and biscuits — like flour — might be a probable wrongdoer. Transfer over, spinach and Popeye: The brand new transformative foodstuff is something with flour in it. Solely as an alternative of providing you with tremendous power, it turns you right into a cordyceps host stuffed with tendrils of fungus. Yummy.
So… was forgetting pancake combine a very good factor?
The results of consuming a biscuit?
Credit score: Liane Hentscher / HBO
As unhappy as Sarah was that Joel could not have fun his birthday with pancakes or an precise cake, maybe his forgetfulness was for the perfect. Joel could have prevented his household from having fun with a candy breakfast, however he additionally saved them from cordyceps publicity.
It is little near-misses like merely not consuming a biscuit that make The Final of Us‘s apocalyptic outbreak so terrifying. On this world, only a small change in routine might imply the distinction between life and demise, between normalcy and parasitic an infection. With that in thoughts, these opening scenes and their hints concerning the true explanation for the cordyceps pandemic increase the stakes for The Final of Us going ahead. Any little factor can snowball into disaster for our heroes. Hazard lurks round each nook… or generally, it is simply nestled in your biscuit.
The Final of Us airs at 9 p.m. ET each Sunday on HBO and HBO Max.
