- "The Last of Us" episode seven takes place primarily in a decayed shopping mall.
- Insider spoke with production designer John Paino about building the mall.
In episode seven of "The Last of Us," Ellie — a teen who has never experienced life prior to the show's cordyceps pandemic — encounters her first taste of mass consumerism.
Based on the original video game's "Left Behind" DLC, it serves as a kind of prequel to the main events of the show, following Ellie and her friend Riley as they explore an abandoned mall that was accidentally connected to the Boston power grid. Through Ellie's eyes, the place is nothing short of a wonder, with even mundane things like escalators blowing her mind.
Insider spoke with production designer John Paino about creating the technological paradise, from building an arcade to recreating an American Girl store housing an Infected.
'The Last of Us' turned an abandoned Canadian mall into a 2000s-era American paradise
The mall in the show features a full slate of stores, ranging from Foot Locker to The Body Shop to Victoria's Secret. Most of them exist in a state of destruction or decay, some having been looted during the outbreak of the pandemic. Others carrying less-necessary items (say, lingerie) remain intact.
According to Paino, the show's crew built out the entire mall, which was a "stripped to sell" property located in Canada. While it wasn't quite big enough to possess "that American over-stupidity," they added a floor with VFX and built out the rest of the mall. Being able to bring in real stores, something that Paino said wasn't as easy in the original game, also helped to ground the mall in the 2003 era when the show's pandemic began.
All in all, Paino told Insider that the crew built approximately 40 stores, creating them "from scratch" only to dress them in 20 years of desiccation and rot.
"It's fun making all these high-end stores that we had, and they're all broken down and everything," Paino said. "It was a lot of fun social commentary. Lingerie, Starbucks, CVS, and Target — none of 'em survive."
The mall's arcade and carousel presented specific and thrilling challenges
When Ellie sees the mall's arcade, she's awestruck, telling Riley that it's "the most beautiful thing I've ever seen." A neon paradise filled with classic arcade cabinets, pinball machines, and star-patterned carpet, it contrasts starkly with the show's typical post-apocalyptic aesthetic.
Paino told Insider that as a child of the 1970s, it was "so awesome" to recreate the environment in "The Last of Us." Still, doing so for television meant that it was difficult.
"Old TV screens, what we call CRTS, cathode ray tubes, they all roll on digital films, so the image just goes like —" Paino said, waving his hand up and down. "So all of those had to be rebuilt and with monitors that were rigged so that we would see them when they're on."
The carousel, too, was a challenge. While there was originally one in the mall, it was sold when the mall went out of business, Paino told Insider. The crew then located a new one, rigging it so that it was suitable for filming and could move at different speeds and stop at specific points.
"This is a real, actually a quite nice, carousel, which we painted and restored and stuff," Paino said. "We restored it and then we made it look like crap again."
"The Last of Us" is currently releasing episodes on Sundays on HBO and HBO Max.