The Last Of Us Episode 7's Mall Was One Of The Show's Priciest Special Effects

This post contains spoilers for "The Last Of Us" episode seven.

Last night, "The Last Of Us" went full "Dawn of the Dead." Like the 1978 classic, the zombie show took a detour to an unexpected place: an abandoned shopping mall. And while infected eventually did show up to ruin Ellie's (Bella Ramsey) date with Riley (Storm Reid), much of the episode plays out like a teen romance, using the mall setting as a classic coming-of-age backdrop for the pair's special — if emotionally fraught — night together.

The shopping mall setting is a hallmark of teen movies, but it's also significant in the world of "The Last Of Us." Just like last night's episode, the game's DLC chapter "The Last Of Us: Left Behind" takes place at a mall that's at once rundown and still in possession of some sense of pre-outbreak magic. It's a place that inspires wonder, and Riley presents it to Ellie like a grand gift: we see as much in the show when Ramsey's eyes light up in stunned awe when the lights turn on, revealing the vibrant storefronts and displays.

The mall reveal shot is a great one, and apparently also an expensive one. According to series co-creators Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin, who spoke to Troy Baker for the official "The Last Of Us" companion podcast, the establishing shot of the mall was actually accomplished largely via CGI. "It was VFX," Mazin shared, explaining that while the crew gained access to an actual mall in Calgary, it wasn't exactly aligned with the vision they had for the scene.

"I was in love with the mall from the DLC, and we needed it," Mazin explained. "I wanted, as much as Neil wanted, to see Ellie experiencing what we all took for granted for the first time, and how magical it is." The filmmaker explained that he and Druckmann "got kind of lucky," as they were able to acquire access to a mall in Calgary that was due to be demolished soon anyway. According to Mazin, the team behind "The Last of Us" was told they'd basically have free reign of the place: "You can break up the floors, you can gack up the whole place with mud and vines and everything," he recalled.

But apparently, the mall was pretty puny, not at all like the one featured in "The Last Of Us: Left Behind." By Mazin's account, it had a Winners, and a clinic, and not much else. "It was a sad mall. It was a one-story mall," he said. They were able to use an escalator at the mall for their shoot, but as Druckmann puts it, "if you're standing at the top of that escalator looking out, you just see a wall." So the team got creative, and decided to build the establishing shot largely from scratch with visual effects.

"The shot where we're behind Ellie and we see that mall coming on, that wasn't at the mall, that was on a soundstage," Mazin says, referencing one of the best shots of the episode, in which Ellie takes in the surprise sight of the electricity-filled shopping center. According to the filmmaker, the team built a railing and a blue stripe at the real mall that indicated where the first floor ended, then tasked visual effects supervisor Alex Wang with "building out and set-extending with visual effects." Wang was understandably nervous about the task according to Mazin. "He was scared," he recalled. "That was one of the few times I saw him scared, because that is a very difficult thing to pull off."

Druckmann and Mazin also revealed that the shot was pretty pricey and complex: Druckmann called it "one of the hardest VFX" moments, while Mazin recalls a bit of Hollywood vernacular he says he hates: "Is the juice worth the squeeze?" In this situation, when the entire episode relies upon the tenderness and care we see communicated between these two girls through the gift of the mall experience, it's obvious: "The answer is, 'Yes, it is,'" Mazin says. "It is worth the squeeze. And is it worth it for this one marquee shot where this world comes to life?"

In the end, Wang and the VFX team were able to craft a shot that Mazin calls "just absolute f***ing magic." In a CGI-heavy filmmaking era, below-the-line effects workers often don't get their due, but the crews that worked on "The Last Of Us" definitely deserve recognition for their fantastic work. Several effects companies, including RVX, Track VFX, Outlanders VFX, Crafty Apes, Digital Domain, and Peter Jackson's legendary Wētā FX, are all credited on the episode. Mazin also acknowledged how hard the artists, many of whom are fans of the game, worked on the shot. "It's the love of the game that brought all these visual effects artists to the show," he says, "and it's the love of the game that kept them working at their computer and their tablets for iteration after iteration to make it great."

I'll admit that in today's age of muddy blockbuster visuals, digital effects-heavy filmmaking tends to make me cringe, but "The Last Of Us" seems to be working in the David Fincher school of subtle, realism-enhancing effects, and it works. This shot and this episode looked fantastic, and more importantly, it telegraphed exactly the feeling it needed to for viewers. No matter how dark Ellie's world gets, we know she'll always have the memory of that awe-inspiring moment at the mall to return to.