Please note there are spoilers for episode 3 of The Last of Us below. Proceed with caution.
With the collective pop culture emotions still running high after last week’s big death so early in the season, it was hard to know what to expect from episode 3. (I personally would have left episode 2 on a cliffhanger with Ellie arrive at the lodge and the hope that she might save him, only to finally kill him in the opening moments of episode 3 to really emphasize the anticipation and tragedy, but that’s neither here nor there.) Even for those of us who played the games and know the general shape of things to come, the show is not a direct one-to-one recreation and story beats are liable to change.
Episode 3, titled “The Path” is a tremendous shift in pace from the first two episodes of Season 2. There are no big action beats and no zombie kills. There is an air of unease and uncertainty all throughout the episode, which almost feels like a season premiere in that we’re gearing up for our characters to venture forth on their adventure, except that the inciting incident that pushes Ellie on her path of vengeance has already happened.
But let’s get into the recap.
The episode opens on the city of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in the wake of the last episode’s epic invasion of infected clickers and bloaters. The settlement is in flames, buildings have been wrecked and we see a woman in the tending to the dead in a makeshift morgue. As she cleans one body, Tommy (Gabriel Luna) walks in and the woman leaves to give him some privacy. Tommy takes over cleaning the body, and tells it to “give Sarah my love.” Sarah was his niece and the body of course was his brother Joel.
Elsewhere in town, the hospital is buzzing with activity as the medical staff rush to treat the injured and wounded. Among those receiving medical care is Ellie (Bella Ramsey) who was beaten by Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) and her crew. She wakes up screaming, reliving the trauma of Joel’s death, and has to be sedated.
Three months go by and Jackson Hole has started to rebuild. Life seems close to normal, or as normal as it could possibly be in a post-apocalyptic world plagued by mushroom zombies. Ellie is finally ready to leave the hospital, but not without one last visit with the town’s psychotherapist Gail (Catherine O’Hara). As Gail tries to gauge Ellie’s mental health and stability, the conversation shifts to Ellie’s interactions with Joel on the night of the New Year’s Eve party and how during his therapy session Joel said that he wronged Ellie by saving her. Ellie plays these moments off with her usual snark and sass. Of course, she’s fine, so Gail allows her to go. As Ellie walks down the halls of the hospital, her grin fades. She’s not fine.
Ellie returns home to the house she and Joel shared where offerings in Joel’s memory have been placed by other residents. She walks around the empty house and revisits the memories she has of him and the ghosts of things he left behind, like the woodcarving of an owl he would never finish. Ellie finds a box of his belongings on his bed, including his gun, then goes into his closet and cries into one of his coats. After all this time, she’s finally allowed to be alone with her grief.
Dina (Isabela Merced) then comes to the house to visit Ellie with a batch of cookies “because I’m about to make you angry.” Though she hadn’t said anything before, Dina remembers the names of Abby and her group, the militia group that they belong to (the Washington Liberation Frong or WLF) and that they were headed back towards Seattle. Though Ellie is angry that Dina has cost them time by not revealing these details sooner, but “if you’re trying to find someone and the only thing you know about them is where they’re going to end up, maybe let them get there.” Dina also tells Ellie that she loved Joel too, snapping Ellie out of her misery and reminding her that there were other people in Jackson that cared about her late father figure.
Ellie and Dina go to Tommy with this new information, but instead of immediately riding out with a posse like Ellie would prefer, he urges her to wait and go through the proper channels. This means holding a town meeting, allowing citizens to speak and offer their views and putting it to a vote before the council. Tommy assures Ellie that he will vote in favor of sending a group out to hunt Abby, but in the meantime he tells her where Joel is buried in case she wants to visit him. No, she’ll visit him on the way to Seattle.
Here we are introduced to something new. Somewhere in a forest, a group of what look like religious refugees wander through the trees. They are led by a man and his young daughter Constance (Makena Whitlock). These are the Seraphites, also known as the Scars due to the religious scars they bear on their faces. They are fleeing a war but don’t know where they are really going, relying only on the words of their long-dead prophet to guide them. The group signal to each other through a series of whistles and hide from danger. Constance asks her father if they are hiding from demons, but he tells her that it is “wolves,” referring to the WLF.
The day of the town meeting has finally arrived. Ellie’s friend Jesse (Young Mazino) is one of the council members. Many community members give their opinions on whether or not to go after Joel’s killers, however most people are against it, citing that Joel wasn’t the only one who died, that the town was already lacking resources and manpower and that perhaps to forgive and forget might be the best option. However, Ellie finds an unexpected ally in Seth (Robert John Burke) who warns that if the people of Jackson Hole grant the killers mercy, then they would just come back and hit them harder. When it is Ellie’s turn to speak, she has (at the advice of Jesse) written down her remarks rather than give an impassioned speech driven by anger. She says that the issue at hand is not about revenge, but about justice because of the people of Jackson Hole would not seek out their own justice then no one in the outside world would do it for them. When put to a vote, the proposal to send 16 citizens to track down and kill Joel’s murderers is denied, with eight members against and only three for it.
In the wake of the unsuccessful vote, Tommy is worried about Ellie, who promised that she would abide by whatever the council’s final decision would be. He seeks out Gail, who is watching a little league baseball game, and the two discuss Ellie’s fate. Tommy is afraid that spending too much time with Joel rubbed off on Ellie in the wrong way and would lead her down the same dark, violent path as his brother. However, Gail believes that Ellie’s own nature is more powerful than any of Joel’s nurture. If Ellie decides to walk down a dark path, it’s because that’s just who she always was meant to be.
Ellie, of course, is not going to sit idly by and accept the decision and has started packing. However, she has only packed weaponry and hasn’t event thought about bringing medical supplies, sensible shoes or even planned out her route. Luckily, Dina has thought of all these things and volunteered herself as Ellie’s travelling vengeance partner. She even has a lead on a donor for all the supplied they need. Her source turns out to be Seth, who insists they take his gun and makes peace with Ellie before they head out.
On their way out of town, Ellie and Dina stop by Joel’s grave. She doesn’t say a word, but leaves him behind a tribute of coffee beans. During their travels, Dina tries to entertain Ellie by playing games with her, asking her about the people she’s killed and even discussing their New Year’s kiss. Dina gives mixed signals, one minute saying that she’s not gay and has already gotten back together with Jesse but asking her to rate the kiss, and the next minute saying that she really wasn’t that high when she kissed Ellie. For the record, Ellie rated the kiss a six out of 10. “That’s not bad,” she says.
Back on the road, the pair encounter an overturned cart then find a dead Seraphite close by. While Ellie is inspecting the body she notices that there are a number of different caliber bullet shells and wonders if Abby and her crew are responsible. Meanwhile, Dina has wandered off but runs back and violently throws up, disturbed by something she has seen. The entire Seraphite congregation from earlier in the episode has been killed, including young Constance and her father. Convincing herself that Abby and the other WLF members are to blame, Ellie is even more set on putting them down.
Eventually, Dina and Ellie make it to Seattle and without further incident. The two remark about how beautiful the city looks from a distance and that since no one has shot at them so far, there must not be very many Wolves. Getting justice for Joel might actually be an easy task.
Of course it’s not. In the final scene of the show, Manny (Danny Ramirez), who was part of the group who killed Joel, is on lookout duty and gives a group of Wolves the all clear to proceed to a new base. When we see them, they are far from the ragtag bunch of survivors with guns that we might have expected. They have tanks, military vehicles and proper equipment. And there are a lot of them.
Like I said at the beginning, The Path is a much slower episode than the two before it. That’s not necessarily a bad thing though. The Last of Us is a story that is just as much about how humans cope and move forward after unspeakable tragedy as it is about them fighting against mushroom zombies.
After the violence and trauma that we’ve already experienced this season, I think we need to breathe. We need to grieve. We need to see how the rest of the characters in this world are responding not only to Joel’s death but the attack on their town and the deaths of many other people. It’s an opportunity to remind us that although we love Joel and want to see him avenged, for most of the other characters in this world he was just another guy and it doesn’t make sense to risk the lives of sixteen more people to make up for one death.
This is also a new beginning. While not truly a season premiere, it’s the end of Joel’s story and the transition into Ellie’s story. We’re taking the appropriate time to leave him behind and get ready for another quest for revenge. We’re leaving Jackson Hole for Seattle and beyond. We’re given a very cryptic introduction to the Seraphites and a threatening revelation about the Wolves.
As Ellie decides to walk down the dark and violent path of revenge, this was the calm before the storm.