Joel may have left us, but new faces are arriving in The Last of Us universe to take his place.
Episode 4 saw yet more new arrivals, one of which marks the first onscreen appearance for a character who is briefly mentioned right at the beginning of the season.
So who is Isaac (Jeffrey Wright), and what part is he going to play in the action going forward? Let's unpack it.
Who is Isaac in The Last of Us Season 2?
If the name sounds familiar, it's because Isaac first gets a mention in the opening scene of Season 2.
When Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) and her gang are standing at what remains of the Firefly base and trying to decide what to do next, Isaac's name is dropped by Owen (Spencer Lord).
"Ed has a brother who runs an outfit in Seattle," Owen says. "A guy named Isaac. Supposedly, he'd take us all in."
As we learn five years on, when Abby and her crew appear outside Jackson to kill Joel, they are part of a military outfit known as the Washington Liberation Front (WLF) — but we don't see Isaac, one of the outfit's leaders, until episode 4.
As the start of the episode reveals via a flashback to 2018, Isaac is a former FEDRA sergeant who joins the WLF because he's become disillusioned with how FEDRA is treating people in Seattle (so disillusioned that he casually murders his entire platoon, in fact).
The next time we see him is in present-day 2029, still in Seattle — and now clearly one of the WLF higher-ups, locked in an endless war with the forest-dwelling Seraphites.
Isaac's character reenforces a depressing Last of Us message.
The cycle of violence is a theme that crops up a lot in The Last of Us, and is perfectly encapsulated in Isaac's character. When we first see him, he's marked out as different from his FEDRA colleagues by his apparent disgust at the way they think of people who aren't FEDRA.
"We took away their right to vote, and somebody started calling them 'voters' to mock them," mutters a younger Isaac in response to a story told by one of his soldiers about civilians being murdered by FEDRA.
"I didn't mean anything by it, Sarge," the soldier replies.
"'Course you didn't," comes Isaac's response. "You're thoughtless."
We don't know what exactly has happened to Isaac in the 11 years since that flashback and the present day, but it's clear that his experiences have hardened him. When we first meet modern-day Isaac, he's torturing a naked Seraphite in a kitchen by burning him repeatedly. When the man doesn't give him the answers he wants, he shoots him dead.
As a leading figure of the WLF, it seems likely that Isaac will play a larger role in the story ahead. But for now, his character is the embodiment of a depressing message: People in The Last of Us may start out with a certain set of ideals, but they ultimately turn into the monsters they're trying to leave behind.
The Last of Us Season 2 is now streaming on Max. New episodes air weekly on Sundays at 9 p.m. ET.
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