Best of KC 2023: The Last of Us showed the world how inviting KC can be, even in the apocalypse
The Last of Us. // Photo by Liane Hentscher/HBO)
This month, we published The Pitch’s annual Best of Kansas City issue. You can browse the results of the readers’ poll here. The issue also included a list, compiled and written by our editorial staff, of some of our current favorite things about Kansas City in 2023. We’ll be publishing these items online throughout November.
The HBOMax—now, “Max” or perhaps an even stupider moniker by the time you read this—TV series The Last of Us gave a several-episode arc to its main characters’ journey through a post-apocalyptic Kansas City. Adapted from a PlayStation video game, the original story saw these plot events occur in Pittsburgh, making the move to KC quite the glow up—or grow up—as it follows sentient plant life reclaiming the Earth.
For locals, it was a delight to watch Joel and Ellie navigate familiar sections of the metro, including the WWI Memorial, parts of downtown, and a disastrous series of events in even North KC. The show’s resistance leader for this area was played by actress Melanie Lynskey who, despite being from New Zealand, really felt like the perfect KC mom who takes no shit from anyone. The production team hammered in a number of incredibly small details, perhaps most notably a shot where an abandoned store’s windows were covered in newspaper—featuring actual pages of The Star from the days leading up to the September 2003 “Outbreak Day.”
The only other PlayStation game adapted into a TV show this year—Peacock’s Twisted Metal—also decided to center around a post-apocalyptic hub in our vicinity: Topeka, KS. While we appreciate all the love video game TV shows seem to be giving our neck of the woods, the shots of Topeka that included palm trees really hammers home the idea it would be nice to offer tax credits to get these Midwest-set shows to actually come film here.
