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This article contains spoilers for the The Last of Us season two. Please do not read unless you have seen episodes one to five.
She may be an impulsive 19-year-old but we know Ellie (Bella Ramsey) isn’t stupid. Her headstrong nature may have something to do with her immunity to the cordyceps infection that has ravaged the world for more than two decades, but she could still have been shot or drowned or mortally wounded in countless other ways. Even if she has not been a particularly good student – “Non-school-oriented,” is how the diplomatic Dina (Isabela Merced) puts it – she has been smart enough to navigate the brutal realities of the post-apocalypse.
So perhaps it should not be a surprise that Ellie has worked out the secret that the rest of us have been carrying since the season one finale. Five years ago, her surrogate father Joel (Pedro Pascal) would not simply abandon her to die even if it meant the possibility of creating a cure, so he gunned down 18 soldiers and a doctor – Abby’s father – to save her. Then, crucially, he lied to Ellie about it.
At the climax of this episode, when the desperate, wheezing Nora (Tati Gabrielle) threw that sharpened truth at her tormentor in the hope of inflicting some reciprocal pain, it simply bounced off. “I know,” replied Ellie. When did she put it together? Why is she still so focused on avenging Joel’s murder at the hands of Abby (Kaitlyn Dever)? Those seem like burning questions for this season to address. But first let’s review how we ended up in that horrible, spore-filled Seattle hospital basement.
‘It’s in the air …’
Until now, the infected in The Last of Us have broadly followed classic zombie rules: you get bitten, you turn into a horrible mushroomy monster. But tonight’s opening scene reveals that the threat has evolved again. A tense debrief between shellshocked troop leader Elise (Hettienne Park) and veteran Washington Liberation Front (WLF) lieutenant Hanrahan (Alanna Ubach) – who we last saw recruiting Isaac (Jeffrey Wright) in episode four’s opening flashback – confirms that the infection can now be transmitted via airborne spores. The immediate upshot of that knowledge was Elise sealing off the contaminated basement floors of the hospital, abandoning her son and his recon squad members to a horrible fate. No wonder she is chain-smoking hand-rolled cigarettes.
Behind enemy lines
The blissfully unaware Ellie and Dina have that same hospital in their sights as the last known position of Nora. (As the person who held Ellie down while Joel was being killed by Abby, Nora is presumably near the top of the hitlist.) By monitoring the constant WLF radio chatter, Dina has plotted what she thinks is a safe route to the hospital that avoids various patrols. She also theorises that the WLF are unconcerned about broadcasting their troop movements because their enemies the Seraphites do not use technology. (It still seems like bad operational security.)
Advancing through the deserted streets of Seattle, Ellie and Dina see a pile of Seraphite bodies dumped in front of a makeshift shrine to their late prophet, complete with “Feel Her Love” graffiti. Dina opens up about her life in Santa Fe before she and Ellie met in Jackson. She took her first life when she was eight years old after a raider murdered her mother and sister. It’s a disturbing origin story but it clearly informs Dina’s decision to support her new girlfriend in their revenge quest. “I’ll go back if you want; I’ll go on if you want,” she says. They resolve to keep going.
Jesse to the rescue
That soon seems like a terrible decision. During Ellie and Dina’s nocturnal attempt to sneak through an abandoned building they stumble on a pack of stalkers, that particular strain of infected smart enough to flank their target. Having just discussed the importance of stealth and how “shooting is a last resort” the pair are firing wildly and about to be torn apart by shrieking infected when an unexpected saviour appears. Jesse (Young Mazino) has tracked them all the way from Jackson. While his booming shotgun neutralises the infected threat, the trio are rapidly pursued by WLF troops alerted by all the gunplay.
They find refuge in a nearby park that the WLF seem very reluctant to enter. That’s because this is Seraphite territory. If Dina and Ellie have already pieced together some idea of how the whistling cult operates, Jesse gets a crash course in their love of ritual disembowelment as the three of them watch a Seraphite priest string up a WLF soldier and carve him open with a wicked-looking sickle. They may eschew tech but it turns out the Seraphites are pretty handy with a bow and arrow. When Dina takes a hit to the leg our heroes split up to evade capture, hurriedly agreeing to rendezvous at the theatre later.
Going underground
Having escaped the park alone, Ellie sees that the hospital is temptingly close, even if she will need to sneak past a vigilant guard dog to infiltrate it. At this point, our viewpoint switches inside to Nora, tending to WLF wounded from what sounds like an escalating war with the Seraphites. When Nora heads to a supply room, Ellie holds her at gunpoint and demands to know where to find Abby.
If it initially looks as if Nora is shaken enough to beg for her life and give up her friend, it’s all a feint. She flings some sort of medical solvent at Ellie and makes a run for it. Unfortunately, the only escape route is into a lift shaft leading to a basement level absolutely choked by mulchy cordyceps corruption. Under hellish red emergency lighting, Nora ends up coughing on the floor while Ellie – whose lifelong immunity seems to be holding up even in the face of airborne spores – looms over her.
That’s when Nora thinks she’ll score a hit by revealing the truth about Joel’s violence and why Abby was so determined to kill him. But if anything it just seems to harden Ellie’s resolve. She holsters her gun and picks up a nasty-looking pipe to start beating the information she wants out of the already doomed Nora. It seems a deliberately bleak and ugly note on which to end. But there’s a dream-like chaser: a brief, gauzy glimpse of Joel and Ellie in better days. “Hey, kiddo,” he says, and all the ugliness melts away. From hell, to a kind of heaven.
Notes and observations
Something intangible in the air that could infect and kill you horribly? The dread-inducing descent into the hospital’s B2 level felt as if it had some thematic overlap with Chernobyl, the previous HBO series from The Last of Us co-showrunner Craig Mazin.
Anyone hoping for another lovely acoustic singalong from Ellie was disappointed. She barely got through the first few chords of Future Days by Pearl Jam before ditching the guitar and tooling up for revenge instead.
Thank goodness shotgun-toting Jesse turned up to save the day. But when he first appeared in deliberately vague silhouette it looked briefly as if Joel had somehow returned to save Ellie again.
That’s presumably the last we’ll see of poor Nora, but actor Tati Gabrielle is keeping busy. She plays the bounty hunter lead in upcoming PlayStation 5 adventure Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet from Naughty Dog, the game development studio that created The Last of Us. Perhaps she and The Mandalorian star Pedro Pascal exchanged notes on how to play cool sci-fi outlaws hunting down bad guys?
What did you think? Has Ellie gone too far? How did it feel to see Joel again, albeit briefly? Have your say below, but please avoid spoilers from the game …
