Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Episodes 1-7 of The Last of Us.
While Episode 7 ofThe Last of Us, showed us a bit more of Ellie’s (Bella Ramsey) past, it also gave us new information on how the world of the series works, especiallyFEDRA. The police state took over right after the Cordyceps outbreak started in the USA, becoming the de facto new government an establishing Quarantine Zones in every major city. As we know from our own world, whenever there’s an escalation in authoritarianism, rebellion tends to escalate in the same measure. That’s how the conflict between FEDRA and the Fireflies began, and Ellie is an important example of how effective the fascist military government manipulates people inside the QZs.
In “Left Behind,” Ellie and her partner Riley (Storm Reid) spend their last night together before Riley moves to Atlanta QZ for an assignment for the Fireflies. The whole episode, they debate their views on the world as they attempt to figure out who they are to each other, and the politics of their world is a big part of that. Earlier that same day, Ellie heard from Captain Kwong (Terry Chen), the headmaster of her FEDRA-managed high school, that the military regime is the only thing keeping the world together after the zombie apocalypse. “If we go down, the people will starve or murder each other, that much I know,” he says, making a strong impression on the young girl. But we know that’s not the only option, right?
Is FEDRA Really Holding It All Together?
As Season 1 draws to a close, we’ve already seen some things about how the world ofThe Last of Usworks. Captain Kwong may even believe what he tells Ellie, and FEDRA QZs are indeed the dominant form of public administration in that universe. It’s easy to understand why, though.
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When Outbreak Day happened, FEDRA was already an existing institution within the U.S. government. Their job was literally to deal with disasters such asthe Cordyceps pandemic, being a last line of defense from total annihilation whenever an apocalypse level event took place. And, to be fair, they did their job pretty well, taking over command and establishing QZswithin only four daysfrom Outbreak Day. The problem is, of course, they are a military organization in nature, and have already demonstrated they don’t hold respect for human life in general. They killed people who didn’t fit inside QZs because they posed a threat of infection. This may sound practical and even somewhat reasonable, but defending life can never meantaking livesas premise or consequence. No one has to die because the government doesn’t have the means for taking care of them.
That said, being a military institution also means having a highly practical mindset, geared towards optimizing resources while following hierarchy — in other words, keeping their own people on top. But, deep down, this has nothing to do with following orders or “keeping it all together,” but with fear of losing power, coupled with having a monopoly on lawful use of force. Also, when military mindset is imposed on society in general, it quickly turns into fascism, creating the self-feeding war machine that is something like FEDRA.
The thing about fascism is that it can’t last forever, because people will eventually have enough. That’s what happened in Kansas City, as seen inEpisode 4andEpisode 5. As Henry Burrell (Lamar Johnson) explains, people started mobilizing to take down FEDRA, with Michael as leader. We’ve already established that those in power fear to lose it, so FEDRA reacted to it, arresting and killing Michael. What happened later is that his sister, Kathleen (Melanie Lynskey) takes over the movement and achieves his goal: she leads a popular movement that actually takes down FEDRA. We all know how that turned out, though.
Thinking about how Kansas City becomes Killer City is when Kwong’s words to Ellie may sound the truest. The rise of Kathleen and her Raiders happened with what can only be described asThe Purgelevel massacre. After that, they started throwing around words like “free” and “liberated,” but that’s not how it really worked. In practical terms, what happened in Kansas City was the exchange ofone brutal police state for another, the first being slightly more qualified than the second.
There Are Always Alternatives To Fascism
With cities becoming such dangerous places, moving away from them is the ideal scenario, if one can survive it. We’ve met a few people who can, like Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett), inEpisode 3, and theelderly couple(played byGraham GreeneandElaine Miles), inEpisode 6. But humans are social animals, we are meant to live in a society, unfortunately. Luckily, there is one model of community that seems to be working inThe Last of Us, the commune of Jackson.
When Joel and Ellie first arrive in Jackson, they find something that seemed impossible up to that point: people living together in peace. Imagine that! There, as Tommy (Gabriel Luna) and Maria (Rutina Wesley) explain, everything is shared, and, because of that, there’s plenty of food and basic resources for everybody. When Tommy explains that they are not communists, Maria corrects him and states thatthey are, actually, since they live in a commune and practice “collective ownership.” That word, “communism,” may seem scary, but truth is, there never was an actual communist experience in our world, as they are often perverted and become authoritarian regimes.
In that sense, Jackson is basically a utopia, as it has all the basic traits of a commune (is small and focused on local community, has collective ownership and a small leading council), and can’t really expand in any direction, with mountains, infected and FEDRA being limiting factors. But, instead of labeling Jackson, it should really be celebrated by what it accomplishes, and that’s providing a safe environment for people to thrive. And, where people thrive, the infected can’t enter. There are walls, gates and patrols around Jackson, but they serve a different purpose than those of FEDRA’s QZs, not limiting transit, for example.
This is not a defense of communism or any other ideology, of course, merely an analysis of how society is structured in a TV show. What’s important, in fact, is to keep in mind that no, fascism and authoritarianism are never “what holds things together.” Not in the zombie apocalypse, not in the real world. There are always alternatives when it comes to preserving life and having peace.
