[Editor’s Note: The following review contains spoilers for “The Last of Us” Season 2, Episode 5. For previous coverage, check out last week’s review.]
“I know.”
Who knew two little words could evoke so many questions? From the second Season 2 began, “The Last of Us” has kept audiences in the dark over how much Ellie (Bella Ramsey) knows about what Joel (Pedro Pascal) did for her (or, more accurately, what he did for himself). The opening moments (which revisit the final scene from Season 1) see Ellie asking Joel to “swear” that the story he told her is true; that what he said happened with the Fireflies in the Salt Lake City hospital was what really happened. He swears, promising her there was no other choice, but the expression on her face doesn’t reflect a person who’s convinced; it’s more like a person who’s resolved.
Five years after that vow, when Season 2’s story picks up, Joel and Ellie are in a silent feud. He doesn’t know why, and she won’t explain it to him (or anyone), but the implication — brought about by Joel’s guilty conscience as much as writer/director Craig Mazin’s choice to frame their fight as the very first thing that happens in Season 2 — is that she’s mad at him for lying to her, or hiding something from her, or killing dozens of innocent people to “save her” from giving up her own life in order to save the rest of humanity. We don’t know if that’s why Ellie’s mad. We don’t even know if she knows Joel lied to her. But it’s all we have to go on, and very purposefully so.
Then, Joel dies. Gail (Catherine O’Hara) tries to ask Ellie about their fight, months after her recovery, but Ellie isn’t talking. She’s still in the “anger” phase of her grief, which means she’s not ready to talk about regrets or guilt. She’s not ready to talk about anything, really. She’s only ready for revenge.
In that same episode, Gail raises another point about Ellie — she says Ellie is a liar. “There’s a difference between lying and being a liar,” Tommy (Gabriel Luna) says, trying to defend Ellie. But Gail doesn’t soften. “Oh, I know,” she says. “And that one? Liar.” At the time, Gail was calling bullshit on Ellie’s speech to the council, when she plead with the powers that going to Seattle to find and kill Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) was in everyone’s best interest. Was Ellie lying? Absolutely. Is she a liar? That’s harder to say.
The same questions linger after Episode 5, when Ellie claims to already know what Joel did. Is she lying or not? Did she really know what Joel did before Nora (Tati Gabrielle) tells her? Or is she only saying she knew what he did so she can keep playing the righteous avenger? So she can stick with her mission to kill Abby? So she can prove to herself that nothing will stop her, because nothing is more important than getting revenge?
Is Ellie lying or is she a liar? Does Ellie lie sometimes, like kids do to avoid trouble or get what they want, or is she a perpetual liar who can’t stop lying, even to herself? If it’s the latter, Gail might be right: Ellie may already be beyond saving.
Episode 5 gives Ellie plenty of reasons and opportunities to reconsider her plan. At times, it even seems like her doubts may overwhelm her resolve. The ending proves it’s too strong to ignore — staring death in the face makes some people run the other way, but it has a hardening effect on Ellie, who’s seen it too many times, with too many loved ones, to back down over a stranger’s disembowelment or fungal entombment — but getting there may have still seeded enough doubt to save her… eventually.
Take Ellie and Dina’s first moment of hesitation. After Dina (Isabela Merced) charts a “safe” course to where they think Abby is hiding, they stumble across a mural on the side of a building. It’s a portrait of a woman with the words “Feel Her Love” written underneath. But directly under that are a pile of dead bodies — all Scars (or “Seraphites,” as they’re labeled in the credits) — with another message written in graffiti just above them: “feel this bitch.”
It’s enough to make Dina throw up and Ellie reconsider the plan. She tells Dina they don’t have to keep going; that it’s crazy to send a pregnant woman on a mission this dangerous; that Dina can go back, and Ellie will finish the job without her. That, of course, doesn’t fly with Dina, who shares with Ellie the brutal story of what happened to her family when she was eight years old. Telling the story, remembering her anguish, steels Dina again, and it reassures Ellie that the two of them should keep going.
But the doubt doesn’t disappear. It shifts, back and forth, between two stubborn parties reluctant to waver — in front of each other and to their own beliefs. After their failed attempt to cut through the big not-so-empty building (gee, I wonder why the W.L.F. isn’t patrolling in there?), Jesse (Young Mazino) says the new plan is to head back to Dina and Ellie’s hideout at the theater, meet up with Tommy, and get the heck out of dodge. “No,” Ellie says, almost instinctively. This time, it’s Dina whose doubts prevail, if only for an instant. She looks at Ellie and says her name, wordlessly implying that what Jesse says makes sense. It’s too hard to get to Abby. Seattle is too dangerous to survive on their own.
But before they can hash it out, the danger catches up to them. Dina gets shot in the leg, and Ellie splits from the trio. She ends up in the Seattle hospital, where she surprises Nora (as she tends to injured patients, no less) and then chases her into the contaminated basement. There, she gets a taste of vengeance for what the wolves did to Joel.
“Don’t you know what he did?” Nora says, before Ellie starts beating her (presumably to death) with a pipe. “He killed every person in that hospital, including the only fucking person alive that could make a cure from you. That was Abby’s father. And Joel, Joel shot him in the head. That’s what he did.”
“I know,” Ellie says.
Did she? Did she really? What does it mean if she did? If she didn’t? If she knew and sought vengeance anyway, might that help her see the cycle of violence she’s continuing? If she didn’t know and she’s lying to Nora, is there still a chance Ellie wakes up to what she’s doing? If learning what Joel did wasn’t enough to shake her convictions, what could?
Before Joel died, when Ellie was getting ready to go on patrol with Jesse, she told him, “My shit with Joel is complicated. I know that. From the outside, it probably looks really bad. It has been really bad. But I’m still me, he’s still Joel […] and nothing’s ever going to change that. Ever.”
Whether or not Ellie knew then what she certainly knows now, the fact remains: Something needs to change in Ellie’s relationship with Joel. If it’s not this, then… what?
Grade: A-
“The Last of Us” releases new episodes Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and Max.
Stray Tendrils
• Episode 5’s closing tease — a momentary flashback to when Ellie was still living with Joel (before she moved into the garage, so before the events in the Season 2 premiere) — implies there’s still something to be learned from Joel and Ellie’s time together. We’ll find out more in Episode 6, but for now, I gotta say, it felt really good to see Joel again. Even for a second, even in flashback, I welled up.
• Last week’s opening scene introduced Isaac (Jeffrey Wright). This week’s opening scene spent more time with the wolves, and it sure seems like Season 2 is threading in their story as more than just an explanation of what Ellie and Dina are up against.
Hanrahan (Alanna Ubach) questions Sgt. Park (Hettienne Park) about what went down with her unit in the hospital basement. Turns out, the lower levels were where the first infected patients were brought for treatment back in 2003. Now, it’s grown into a hotbed of unprecedented cordyceps activity. Sgt. Park says things seemed fine on the first floor, although the emptiness was its own eerie warning. But when she sent her best team to clear the second floor, Leon — Park’s son — never came back. (It seems safe to assume the second body Ellie finds down there later on, an Asian man attached to a wall of fungus, is Leon.)
“He said it’s in the air,” Park tells Hanrahan, by way of explaining why they sealed off the exits and left valuable soldiers to die. Hanrahan commends her for bravery and quick thinking, but the real message of the scene — besides the terrifying evolution of the cordyceps infection — is that Sgt. Park did what Joel couldn’t: She let her child die to protect the rest of humanity. Maybe it makes a difference that Leon was older than Ellie. Maybe it makes a difference that there was no actual way to save him. Or maybe none of that matters, when it comes to choosing the nameless masses over your own loved ones.
•“Why because I’m stupid?”
“That’s not the word I would use.”
“What word would you use?”
“Non-school oriented.”
– Dina’s got jokes!
• “Haunted and empty.”
“Aw, just like us.”
– Dina’s got jokes! (Though this one was a groaner.)
• Horror sequels sometimes have a hard time upping the ante when it comes to their scary monsters, but I gotta say, the “smart” infected in Season 2 are messed up. The way they kind of dance around in the distance, waiting for who knows what before they attack, is deranged. Their speed and ferocity is just as rabid as their more mindless brethren, and their warehouse attack this episode is shot so well, it feels like they’re roaring in from every direction. (Kudos to Emmy-winning episode director Stephen Williams.)
• Another savvy directorial design: framing Jesse’s heroic entrance. Not only does all hope seem lost by the time Jesse blasts the first infected off of Ellie, but there’s zero indication as to who could possibly have shown up to save them. Is it a wolf, killing off the infected clickeres before interrogating the uninfected intruders? Is it someone from Jackson with miraculously good timing? Is it… Joel?
No, of course it’s not Joel, but don’t blame yourself for thinking it might be, if only for a second. He is, after all, the hero we’ve come to expect will save the day. Keeping Jesse at a distance, his face and other distinguishing features out of frame, allows the viewer to remember when Joel was able to come to Ellie’s aid, and seeing Jesse’s entrance from her vantage point provides a little pang of grief-tinged nostalgia. Not only are we hoping against hope for Joel’s return, but so is she. Has somehow, someway, her hero returned? No. Of course not. But Jesse may just be the hero she needs, if not the one she wants.
• “Hey kiddo.” 😭
