(Spoilers ahead for episodes 1 and 2 of The Last of Us) Since the January 15 premiere of The Last of Us, a specific fan theory about flour exploded, caking everyone in dusty remnants of flour. In an interview with Variety, co-creators Neil Druckmann of Naughty Dog and Craig Mazin, best known for his work on Chornobyl, confirmed what fans thought. For Druckmann, it was “pretty explicit.”
The first episode has an easy connection to make that differs from the game. Joel (Pedro Pascal) and his daughter Sarah (Nico Parker) manage to avoid certain foods throughout the episode. She was going to make him pancakes for his birthday breakfast but did not have the right ingredients. Their neighbors made biscuits and cookies in two different scenes, which the father and daughter did not eat. Joel was supposed to bring a cake, which he forgot. So, nobody could blame The Last of Us viewers from the starting the theory.
Things thicken from the latest episode, which aired last night (January 22). The beginning shows Jakarta (which was mentioned in the first episode), featuring a scientist learning about an infected woman being killed at a flour mill. Druckmann and Mazin took real science and research about the largest flour mill in the world, the Bogasari Flour Mill in Jakarta, Indonesia. Tie those two things together; you get a more direct connection to confirm The Last of Us fan theory about flour.
The Last of Us fan theory about the flour confirmed
The zombie infection of the games and show is based on cordyceps, a fungus that infects insects in real life. The idea is to look at a mutation that makes the fungus live in the temperature of a human’s body, leading to a losing battle against a zombie outbreak.
The Last of Us airs on HBO and available to stream on HBO Max every Sunday at 6 p.m. PT/9 p.m. ET.
