With four episodes already out, a good amount of drama has occurred. So, if you haven’t caught up, no need to worry.
Episode one starts off in 1968 with a scientist professing his fear of brain-controlling fungi in a talk show. He talks about how there is a possibility of someday humanity being controlled by them. “Billions of puppets with poisoned minds permanently fixed on one unifying goal: to spread the infection to every human alive by any means necessary.” It foreshadows what will happen later in the episode.
Flash forward to 2003, we meet our first character Sarah, who’s Joel’s 12-year-old daughter. As the episode continues, we discover that she is trying to get her father’s watch fixed for his birthday. She wants to do something nice for him because he rarely does anything for himself. The watch isn’t the only thing Sara decides to get her dad, she also hands him a DVD of a movie he's been wanting to watch. They end up falling asleep while watching the movie together. Time skips and we see Sara waking up to utter chaos. The neighbor's dog is barking at their door and Sara decides to take him back to his home after searching for her father who is nowhere to be seen. While at her neighbor’s house, she sees her elderly neighbor eating someone. The Zombie apocalypse has begun.
Sara runs away and catches up to Joel. Joel, Tommy (Joel’s brother), and Sara drive away to try to escape the insanity. Unfortunately, they don’t get far before a military plane crashes into them. The car flips over and breaks down leaving them on foot. Tommy separates himself from Sara and Joel telling them he'll catch up later. Joel keeps running with Sara and they find a military man on the way. He holds his gun up at them and Joel yells at him that neither of them is infected.
The man fires anyway and manages to hit Sara. Tommy shows up and shoots the military man before he can shoot Joel as well. Sara is seen on the floor, shot in the abdomen, and starts losing a lot of blood. Joel doesn’t want to accept that his daughter is dying. He holds on to her and tells her everything is going to be ok.
The episode then jumps ahead 20 years, and Joel is still in pain and the world has just become more vicious. Joel now works odd jobs in a quarantine zone to get paid. He wants to get enough currency to leave the QZ to look for his brother Tommy. We find out that Tommy has joined the Fireflies, a rebel cause. But recently he hasn’t been contacting Joel and that kickstarts Joel’s mission to go find him. He needs this money in order to purchase a car battery to look for Tommy. But he’s not doing this alone, Joel has a partner named Tess working with him.
Tess learns that the car battery they purchased from the seller has been given to someone else. To get their battery back, Joel and Tess make the decision to pursue the seller. They learn about his location in advance. When they locate him, they find that he has passed away. It appears that he attempted to offer the fireflies group the same battery. One of the firefly leaders enters hurt; Joel is familiar with her because Tommy had previously worked with her. With her is a furious teenage girl who we later learn is immune to the fungi. Her name is Ellie, and she becomes Joel’s new mission. After being promised weapons if he safely delivers her to another firefly camp, Joel takes the opportunity.
The episode ends with Joel getting aggressive and punching a QZ security to death to not get caught leaving the QZ. We can see Ellie enjoy the moment of someone protecting her for the first time.
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