Please note there are spoilers for episode 4 of The Last of Us below. Proceed with caution.
Here we are, the moment it’s all been leading up to at least for this season, which at the same time both doesn’t go as far into the story as I had hoped, but also ends at a natural place in the narrative.
So anyway, let’s break down the Season 2 finale.
The episode opens back at the theater, where Jesse (Young Mazino) is trying to remove the arrow from Dina’s (Isabela Merced) leg. Luckily, her arteries weren’t hit, but he can’t pull the arrow out in case he accidentally nicks one, so he needs to push it through. Dina tries to tell him that she’s pregnant, though Jesse tells her to keep calm and quiet as possible, and she refuses to drink any alcohol to numb the pain.
Ellie (Bella Ramsay) returns to the theater, and immediately goes to see Dina, who is resting and recovering. After a brief greeting, Dina starts to help clean the dirt off Ellie, who tells her about the encounter with Nora. She says she thought it would be easier to do, and that she just kept beating on her, though the only two words she was able to get out of Nora about Abby’s location were “whale” and “wheel” before the infection took over. And rather than killing her, part of Ellie’s revenge is to leave the infection to take Nora over. While Ellie later realizes that maybe her treatment of Nora was too harsh and that Nora may not have deserved such a grim fate, Dina says that perhaps she did. In her emotional turmoil, Ellie reveals to Dina the truth about the Fireflies in Seattle and what Joel did to save her. She didn’t know who Abby and her crew were when they came to kill Joel, but knowing what he did, she connected the dots. Now that she has the whole story and the weight of her pregnancy, Dina decides that the best plan of action is to return home to Jackson.
The next day, day three in Seattle, Jesse and Ellie head out to rendezvous with Tommy so they can all head to Jackson together. When Ellie asks how Jesse found the theater, he tells her all the steps he took, explaining that it took two days and involved many close calls, but that it was relatively easy. Based on his interaction with Dina (her saying that she “can’t die” rather than her not wanting to die and her refusal of the alcohol), Jesse can piece together Dina’s pregnancy. When Ellie accidentally confirms it, he says that now he, too, can’t die, but because of Ellie, they’re all trapped in a warzone.
As she and Jesse make their way to the bookstore rendezvous, they see another mural of the Seraphite prophet. However, Ellie notices that it’s an entirely different woman that they’ve seen before. “There’s more than one of her?” she asks. Suddenly, a gunshot rings out, and WLF soldiers yell that they’ve spotted a Scar hiding in the parking garage where Jesse and Ellie have taken cover. As they hide, a WLF patrol corners a fleeing Seraphite, who Jesse and Ellie can see is a young boy, close to their age. Ellie is about to fight off the Wolves, but Jesse holds her back as they drag him away, screaming. This infuriates Ellie, mainly because the Seraphite was so young, but Jesse reminds her that they were outnumbered six to two and that young people on both sides of the conflict have been doing terrible things to each other during this war, which they have no stakes in.
Hopping over to the WLF camp, we find Isaac (Jeffrey Wright) as he receives a report that the storm is only going to get bigger, as it starts to rain. The WLF are planning something big, and while all the leadership are prepared, the regular soldiers are scared. However, Isaac’s primary concern is that Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) and two members of her crew, Owen (Spencer Lord) and Mel (Ariela Barer), are missing. By the end of whatever the WLF has planned, there is a good chance that Isaac and all the other leaders will be dead, and he had planned for Abby to lead in his stead.
As the storm continues to gain in strength, Ellie and Jesse make it to the bookstore, but there is no sign of Tommy. The two finally have a chance to talk. Jesse recounts a story of how long ago he had an opportunity to leave Jackson with the family of a travelling merchant girl he fell in love with. Still, he passed on the chance because he felt a responsibility to the people and community that had raised him, and he was expected to take over the town’s leadership one day. Ellie teases him about his feelings of superiority, calling him “Saint Jesse,” but he shuts her up when he asks who would have saved her now in Seattle had he left to follow the girl to Mexico all those years ago.
The tension between the two is broken when a WLF patrol sends out a radio message that they are being pinned down by an unknown, non-Seraphite sniper. Of course, this can only be Tommy, and Jesse and Ellie scramble to reach the roof of the bookstore to gain a better vantage point and possibly locate Tommy. While they are up there searching, they hear gunshots in the distance. However, Ellie also notices an aquarium in the distance, featuring a whale mural, and a nearby Ferris wheel. Suddenly, Nora’s directions of “whale” and “wheel” make sense.
Ellie’s priority immediately shifts from saving Tommy back to killing Abby, and she tells Jesse that Tommy can continue to pin down the WLF soldiers while they go to the aquarium. As Ellie tries to convince him to go with her, she says that if three more people in the community voted along with Jesse, he’d already be going after Abby with her. At this point, Jesse reveals that he voted not to go after Joel’s killers because of Ellie’s inherent selfishness. “Everything you do, you do for you,” he tells her. In her rage, Ellie berates Jesse for always claiming to be about being good and community, and yet he refused to save the Seraphite boy just because he wasn’t part of Jesse’s community. He wishes her luck, then leaves to help Tommy.
With Jesse gone, Ellie goes to the nearby pier to locate a boat, which she does, but then runs into a WLF patrol. Just as she is about to go in guns blazing, a whole fleet of WLF boats turns on their lights. Woefully outnumbered, Ellie watches as a large number of WLF soldiers, including Isaac, head off to sea. When she is finally alone, Ellie takes one of the boats and heads toward the aquarium, but the rough, stormy sea knocks her out of the boat.
She awakens on a nearby island and is immediately taken prisoner by a group of Seraphites who mistake her for a member of the WLF. She pleads to be released and looks to a Seraphite child for mercy, but he makes a gesture for her to be executed. A noose is used to string her up, and right as she is about to be gutted, an explosion rocks the island, and the Seraphites release her and run back to aid their settlement. Ellie then returns to her boat and eventually makes it to the aquarium, sneaking in through a broken window.
Unfortunately, Abby is not there. Her accomplices, Owen and Mel, are caught unaware by Ellie, who is holding a gun on them and demanding to know where Abby is. Owen initially pretends to cooperate but tries to shoot Ellie. She fires back and immediately kills Owen, and the bullet also passes through him and hits Mel in the neck. The dying woman is also pregnant, and in her dying moments, tries to instruct Ellie how to perform a Cesarean section to save her baby. Overwhelmed and under-skilled, Ellie can do nothing but sit helplessly as Mel dies. Eventually, Tommy and Jesse find her there and bring her back to the theater, where they make plans to return home.
As Tommy packs up, Ellie thanks Jesse for coming back to save her, and after some initial posturing, he says that he knows if their positions were reversed and that if he needed saving, Ellie would stop at nothing to get him back. Suddenly, the sound of commotion and gunshots fills the theater. As Ellie and Jesse rush to check it out, Jesse is shot in the head and immediately killed. Abby has found them and is holding Tommy at gunpoint. Ellie pleads for her to let him go, instead offering herself.
We then shift to another point in time, now from Abby’s perspective. She wakes up and goes to look out over the massive WLF settlement nestled inside a baseball stadium. The text on screen informs us that we’re back to Day One, when Ellie and Dina first arrived in Seattle.
Cut to black.
Final Thoughts
While this season has been uneven and somewhat unpredictable tonally, it has been consistent in its brutality and in Ellie’s transformation from the fun and lovable sidekick in season one to the selfish, depraved, and violent monster we have seen this season. Almost overshadowed by the meme-worthy dialogue and Ramsay’s often wooden acting, a real evolution is underway, rooted in an unstoppable thirst for vengeance. Like the games, Ellie becomes an irredeemable character before our very eyes, and we can only watch in fascinated horror as she continues down her dark and lonely road.
Unlike the games, the show overall has struggled to be as compelling as its first season. Season one was full of surprising hope and nuance. While the game version of The Last of Us was criticized mainly for its depressingly bleak tone, it was at least more engaging because of the interactive nature of video games. It’s a lot harder to connect with the misery parade of the show this season without that extra level of connection to the characters.
It is hard to imagine that audiences, who, based on the prevailing internet sentiment, are either apathetic or openly negative towards the show, will stick around for another season, let alone two, especially without the draw of Pedro Pascal. With the beloved character of Joel Miller already gone, there isn’t much of a draw anymore. Anyone curious about the story can either play the game or look online for a story synopsis or a cutscene compilation, rather than waiting at least two years for Season 3 and two more for the finale season.
Overall, I liked the increased action sequences this season and the more visible presence of the infected. Ellie’s character was clunky, and both Ramsay and the writers missed the mark in trying to inject humor into such a brutal story. However, it was satisfying to see her turn towards her baser impulses and succumb to violence and selfishness. My hope for season three is that it rewards viewers with more action, including mushroom zombies, and more complex character moments. The writers need to abandon their ineffectual attempts at humour and instead focus on the brutality of the world. As bleak as it is, that’s what we’re watching it for.
Otherwise, the fans that managed to stay until the end of this season might really be the last of us.
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