By Nermeen Nabil Khear 
What’s the only thing scarier than a fungus trying to turn every living person on the planet into a twisted meat puppet? That exact same fungus with the power to think. That’s the terrifying new type of monster HBO’s The Last of Us introduced in its season two premiere. Ellie encountered the show’s first Stalkers, one of The Last of Us franchise’s most dangerous forms of Infected.
Ellie and Dina’s (begrudgingly) sanctioned foray into an old supermarket in The Last of Us‘s season two premiere quickly went downhill. Or rather, it went straight down. Ellie crashed through the building’s upper story when the floor collapsed. After successfully killing clickers up above, Ellie thought the silent shopping floor was safe. In reality, it posed one of the greatest threats mankind has faced since cordyceps turned the world into a wasteland of monsters. While Ellie looked around in The Last of Us season two’s premiere episode, an infected crawled around and observed her in silence. Here’s how Ellie later described this new type of smart creature, which we know as Stalkers, to her commune’s leaders:
I’m not saying it could do math or anything, but it didn’t run at me. It did what we do. Took cover, planned, waited, lured me in. Stalking.
That’s exactly what we (and not Dina!) saw. Not only did this Infected creature silently scurry in the shadows like a spider, but it also observed Ellie before attacking. The Stalker also hid from her before luring Ellie in. It tricked her into thinking it was in one spot when the creature had already moved to another. Only then did it unleash a violent, brutal attack. Like clickers, it was also fast. Ellie might have died if not for Dina’s timely return. Even then, its bite would have led to any other human becoming infected.
This is the first infected Stalker to appear on HBO’s series, but gamers had to deal with them in both installments of The Last of Us. Like their show counterpart, the stealth creatures make an unholy croaking noise when they do “speak.” The Last of Us‘ Stalkers also have long spores growing out of their heads, retaining just enough of their human face to serve as a horrifying reminder of what they once were and what their victims will become. But there does seem to be one major difference between the games’ stalkers and the show’s. In The Last of Us games, Stalkers represent Stage 2 of an infection and came into existence at a much faster rate.
The Last of Us series introduced its first stalker 25 years after the outbreak of the Cordyceps virus. That’s five years after the end of season one. Even if those creatures adapted long before the people of Jackson, Wyoming learned about them, it still appears to have taken much longer for the fungus to evolve into this form than it did in the video games. Joel and Ellie encountered them for years in The Last of Us—Part II.
But Stalkers’ delayed introduction on HBO’s version of The Last of Us is a fitting one. They only appeared a couple of times in the first game. While still rare in the sequel, they had a bigger presence in The Last of Us—Part II. They were also a bigger threat thanks to the game’s greatly improved enemy AI. That made Cordyceps’ smartest monsters even more terrifying, as Naughty Dog was truly able to deliver on the terrifying possibilities of infected that can outthink their human counterparts.
The Last of Us‘s season two premiere showed just how scary Stalkers are with Ellie’s encounter in that abandoned supermarket. But the real horror of their introduction lies in the fact that it was most certainly not a “one-off” like Tommy hopes.
Surely there are more stalkers out in the world of The Last of Us hiding….
Planning….
Waiting for the perfect moment to attack.
The post THE LAST OF US Season 2 Premiere Introduces Stalkers, a New Kind of Infected appeared first on Nerdist.
This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak
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