All about the abandoned Apollo capsule in ‘The Last of Us’ (Season 2, Episode 6)

Whether you are a fan of space exploration history or of the game on which the series is based, “The Last of Us” has just delivered a real blast from the past.

In the penultimate episode of the second season, which premiered Sunday night (May 18) on HBO Max, the story briefly visits the Wyoming Museum of Science and History.

Warning: If you have not yet watched Season 2, Episode 6 of “The Last of Us,” you may want to stop reading here, as there are minor spoilers ahead. If you have never seen the series or played the game, for the purposes of this article you only need to know that it is about Joel (Pedro Pascal), a hardened survivor of a global pandemic that has destroyed civilization, and Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a teenage girl who Joel has taken charge of and who may be humanity’s last hope.

As part of the episode, Joel is shown surprising Ellie with a visit to the museum. Inside, they enter the space and astronomy hall to Ellie’s delight (her interest in flight and what it represents — escape and being able to control her own destiny — is a recurring theme in both the game and the television adaptation).

The two find a working, floor-to-ceiling solar system orrery, historic spacesuits on display and, at the center of the main hall, an Apollo command module.

“Is it real?” asks Ellie, almost in a whisper.

“It is real,” replies Joel. “That one went up and back, Apollo 15 in 1971.”

After picking out a helmet to wear (the type worn by Gemini astronauts), Ellie climbs into the capsule, followed by Joel, who closes the hatch behind him. Ellie immediately starts flicking switches, making sound effects and calling out commands to accompany each click. Joel then surprises her with a tape cassette.

“Happy birthday, kiddo,” he says. “This is something that took a mighty effort to find. Play it.”

Ellie inserts the cassette into her Walkman and, following Joel’s suggestion, closes her eyes as the audio begins to play.

“Thirty seconds and counting,” says a man’s voice. “The astronauts report it feels good. T-minus 25 seconds…”

What Ellie (and those watching the episode) are listening to is the actual audio of NASA public affairs officer Jack King counting down to the launch of Apollo 11, the first mission to land humans on the moon, on July 16, 1969.

As King continues to narrate, the sounds of the spacecraft come alive and the lights grow dim. At nine seconds and “ignition sequence start,” Ellie starts to rattle side to side in her seat. The light from the engines igniting pours through the window, lighting up her face as she begins to shake more rapidly. “Liftoff, we have a liftoff, 32 minutes past the hour…”

The sound and motion of the launch are soon replaced by the serenity of what Ellie imagines it is like being in space. The light from the sun dances across her face until she slips back into reality with a wide smile.

End scene.

The real Apollo 15 command module, which its crew named “Endeavour,” is on display today at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, and, unlike the spacecraft in the show, it is exhibited without its interior control panels and equipment.

It also does not have vines growing all over it. Otherwise, the two might be twins. Well, almost.

“Interestingly, it was 110% of the real thing. We bumped it up just slightly [in size] for all sorts of reasons,” said Don Macaulay, the production designer for this season of “The Last of Us,” in an interview with collectSPACE.com. “We tried to stick pretty true to the game in terms of how we shot that and how it was lit. That is so much easier to do in a digital set than on a real set.”

The scene in the series was directly inspired by a segment in “The Last of Us Part II,” a game released for Sony’s PlayStation 4 in 2020.

To achieve the desired look, Macaulay and his team began with a softball-sized, 3D-printed model of the command module that they used to work out what pieces they needed to be removable so they could insert cameras and lighting. They then advanced to a full-scale foam version, so they could test the lighting and views.

“And then, yeah, we built a complete interior and exterior,” said Macaulay. “We shot them separately, but it was all one set. We took the module to a separate stage to shoot the interior, and then we brought it back to the museum to shoot the exterior of it, but it was all one set.”

In addition to having the game, Macaulay also referenced the drawings and diagrams of the command module that NASA has posted online. He took the same care when recreating the orrery from the game, which worked just as shown. (He admitted, though, that he had to look up the word “orrery” when he first found out he had to build one; Macaulay has led the production for a number of science fiction projects [“Tomorrowland“, “Star Trek Beyond”], but this was his first to be based on real space exploration and astronomy.)

The spacesuits were rented from a prop house. Macaulay wanted to mach the look of the game, so he also arranged for a full-scale lunar rover, a display of scale rockets and built a model of the moon, although only the latter made the final cut.

“It’s one of those things where we provided a ton and then, just based on how it’s shot and edited, some of it doesn’t make it on screen. In fact, we built and shot an entire dinosaur exhibit [inside the museum] and it didn’t make it into the show,” he told collectSPACE.

The television series often veers far from what was seen in the game, which is why, Macaulay said, sets like the space museum were so important to get right.

“It’s so iconic in the game that we do try to be fairly true to it. I mean, we can never take the [virtual] models they used in the game and just build from them. Their sets are usually way over scaled, and we build sets specifically for the action required. So getting the essence of the set is more important in this case,” he said.

“There was the iconic image of [Joel and Ellie[ standing in front of the capsule, so, that was something — and the capsule itself — we tried to replicate as best we could,” said Macaulay.

So that leads up to an obvious question: After all of that attention to detail and care to get the look just right, what becomes of a command module that was abandoned in the context of the show’s (and game’s) plot, and now is no longer needed in terms of the production of the show?

“We still have it,” said Macaulay. “I don’t know if there’s a lot of demand, but someone could want it for their prop house, or maybe HBO Max will keep it for use on some other show down the line.”

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