The Last of Us seems to introduce a new type of infected — new, at least, to people who have yet to play developer Naughty Dog’s video game. It’s early on in The Last of Us season 2 when Ellie and Dina, on patrol, enter an abandoned grocery store to pick off a couple infected. When Ellie falls through the second-story floor and onto the main level, she quickly realizes that she’s being hunted.
The Last of Us creator Neil Druckmann hinted at the inclusion of the evolved infected type in an interview with Empire Online from March: “It’s kept certain parts of their brain alive, so they are smarter,” he said. “They coordinate and hide and do things that we’ve never seen any other infected do on this show.” And the show’s version differs somewhat from its game counterpart — for starters, the audience sees it hunting Ellie before she does, so we see a lot more about what goes into its stalking skills.
Ellie can hear the Stalker before she sees it. It sounds noticeably more human than the eerie sounds of Runners and Clickers; it more resembles a human moan than anything else. Stalkers are dangerous in the game because part of their brain is still alive: They won’t just run directly at a human, instead opting to hunt their prey very similarly to how humans — like Ellie and Dina — hunt infected. They can stay low, under cover, to keep from being seen. They hide and bait humans out to make the perfect attack. The one that attacks Ellie has fungus growing out of its head like a crown, but otherwise looks pretty much like a human — albeit a pretty beat-up one.
Moments before Ellie encounters the Stalker, she and Dina are making a plan to bait out an infected. Then the scene is flipped on its head, when the Stalker does the same to Ellie. Naturally, Ellie and Dina report the infected back to the Jackson council, who are somewhat skeptical of the claim.
In the world of the show, Stalkers seem to occupy a middle space between Runners (the super-fast infected) and Clickers (the infected that use echolocation due to mushrooms in their eyes); Runners are the fast, aggressive type that seems to be acting on pure animal instinct, while Clickers are an advanced form of the fungal disease, which relies on other senses to make up for extensive fungal growth. Stalkers have brain activity, but keep the same athleticism as Runners, as the fungus hasn’t limited their body just yet.
There’s only that one Stalker in the first episode of The Last of Us’ second season, but given the introduction, it’s likely we’ll see much more — either here or in the freshly greenlit season 3.
