The ?? ??? ??Last of UsSeason 2 dropped a major bombshell in its fifth episode. The Cordyceps fungus is no longer just transmitted through bites. You can also become infected through airborne spores.
This revelation won't come as news to The Last of Us game fans, as spores have been a mechanic since the very first game. However, the scene that introduces spores to the show also hints at a major Infected enemy from The Last of Us Part II: the Rat King.
The Rat King is a boss from the second half of The Last of Us Part II, and it's without a doubt the most disgusting creature in both games. It's based on the real (but rare) phenomenon of rat kings, which occur when a group of rats gets their tails irreversibly tangled.
When it comes to the Rat King in The Last of Us Part II, replace rats with the bodies of the Infected, and the tangled tails with the Cordyceps fungus, and you have a pretty good idea of how this unholy amalgamation was formed. Seriously, you thought a Bloater was bad? Well, a Rat King is Clickers on top of Stalkers on top of a Bloater, so it's just bad news all around.
In The Last of Us Part II, the Rat King lurks in the basement of the WLF-controlled hospital the series introduces in episode 5. Even though we don't meet it in this episode — and with two episodes left, it's unlikely we'll meet it in Season 2 — The Last of Us still finds a way to hint at its existence.
In the episode's opening sequence, Hanrahan (Alanna Ubach) talks to WLF soldier Elise (Hettienne Park) about why she made the decision to block off all entry points to the hospital basement, dooming several of her men to die.
The reason Elise gives is the spores, but she adds that even though the hospital basement was where the first Cordyceps patients were brought when the outbreak started, it was oddly devoid of Infected.
"Nothing, the whole floor was empty," Elise tells Hanrahan of what's in the basement. "Not even rats."
The specific mention of rats feels like a pretty clear hint to The Last of Us gamers that the show writers are thinking about the Rat King. But even the basement's emptiness is a chilling reference to what's coming. It's been 25 years since the Cordyceps outbreak — enough time for the basement to get horribly overgrown with fungus. And if those first Infected bodies were left down there, undisturbed, for 25 years, that's also enough time for them to become fused together into the mass that is the Rat King.
That means the basement floor isn't actually empty. All the bodies just grew into one giant enemy that no one knows is down there. Maybe the missing rats even fused with the Infected Rat King. (Or maybe they were an early food source.) Either way, we're in for a nightmare whenever the Rat King finally shows up.
New episodes of The Last of Us Season 2 premiere on HBO and Max Sundays at 9 p.m. ET.
Topics HBO Streaming The Last of Us
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