I didn’t think it was possible, but the second episode of The Last Of Us was even better than the first – even if we did wind up bidding a very sad goodbye to Tess (Anna Torv).

Of course, Tess went out with a bang. Literally. And, of course, her final words changed the destiny of Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey).

Before we get ahead of ourselves, however, let’s wind it back a bit…

A frightening reality

In a stark Chernobyl-esque flashback, we wind things back to 24 September 2003.

Two police officers in Jakarta, Indonesia walk into a restaurant and unceremoniously escort Ibu Ratna, a professor of mycology at the University of Indonesia, into a waiting car. Without much explanation at all, they drive her to a laboratory at the Ministry of Health, where they ask her to look at a slide prepared under a microscope, and tell them what she sees.

We all know the answer, of course. It’s a fungus: ophiocordyceps, specifically, which – as we all learned last week – famously alters the behaviour of its hosts and driving them mad, solely so it can ensure it is spread more effectively. Once done, the fungus kills its host and then grows its fruiting bodies from their ruined heads.

Ratna asks why the slide has been stained with chlorazol (a chemical which, I have on good authority, is commonly used to identify elements taken from human hair, nails or other specimens).

“Cordyceps cannot survive in humans,” she tells the police officer.

The dead body waiting on the autopsy slab, however, tells another story.

The Last Of Us episode 2 recap: why those 5 little words are so important