At no point could you accuse “The Last of Us” of being a happy show, nor could you say the same of the video games on which the HBO series is based. There are times when it seems to be about the perseverance of the human spirit, our capacity to heal and rebuild, and moments of joy hidden amidst dark times. But more often than not, the bigger ideas are death, grief, and revenge.
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Joel (Pedro Pascal) embodies these two sides of the story well, showing a loving side to Ellie (Bella Ramsey) but a brutal one whenever violence is called for. While Joel’s death in “The Last of Us” season 2, episode 2 is gut-wrenching, it’s also hard to see it as out of place in a show like this.
In the wake of that heartbreak, Ellie is taking on Joel’s mantle with some new story threads pushing her further and further toward darkness, even as her burgeoning relationship with Dina (Isabela Merced) offers an optimistic alternative to her quest for vengeance. In “The Last of Us” season 2, episode 5, Ellie tracks down Nora (Tati Gabrielle), part of the crew led by Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) that murdered Joel. Their confrontation is one of the darkest scenes of the show so far, and certainly the darkest for Ellie, showing just how far she’s now willing to push her own brutality to get revenge. While the TV series takes many liberties with the source material, those who haven’t played the games may be surprised to learn that this particular scene is basically a shot-for-shot recreation of the same moment from “The Last of Us Part II.”
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Ellie tortures Nora in the exact same way in The Last of Us Part II
There are few differences to the setup in Ellie’s encounter with Nora in the “The Last of Us Part II,” but it’s mostly the same there as well. She finds Nora in a makeshift hospital for the Washington Liberation Front (WLF). Nora gets the better of her and flees, prompting a chase. When Ellie is confronted by armed soldiers, she drags Nora down to a deserted floor of the building that’s been covered in cordyceps spores. The soldiers follow with breathing masks, and Ellie defeats them, then hunts a wheezing, infected Nora down to a solitary corridor.
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Save for the extra action of the game (hey, it’s a third-person shooter), this is basically what happens in the show as well, though the spore floor gets a little added oomph by virtue of it being the show’s first introduction of the airborne cordyceps. All prior encounters in the HBO adaptation involve bite-based infections.
In both versions, Nora tries to make the case for why Joel had to die, going into a bit more detail in the show (as in the game, certain details are still hidden from the player at this point). Unphased, Ellie demands Abby’s location, and when Nora refuses to cooperate, she takes a bit of pipe and begins to beat her with it until she gets what she wants. Both scenes are staged and lit the same way, with Abby looming over a crumpled Nora in a dark hallway lit only by a dim red warning light. It’s an intentionally hellish setting for what’s arguably Ellie’s darkest moment, and it plays just as well (or horribly, depending on your point of view) in the show as it did in the game.
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How will HBO’s The Last of Us deal with Ellie’s trauma?
In the game, Ellie is immediately traumatized by her choice to brutally torture Nora. It’s the moment when her bluff is called — when the circumstances demand her to prove her own capacity for severe violence, which turns out to be quite high. Ellie returns to Dina a shell of herself, barely focused as the thing she has just done torments her. We don’t get to see that reunion in “The Last of Us” episode 4. Instead, the episode cuts from the torture scene to a brief flashback of Ellie sharing a happy moment with Joel.
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Presumably, this scene will impact her in the same way on HBO as it does in the games, though there are still some question marks concerning Ellie’s overarching arc. There have been some big changes to Tommy (Gabriel Luna) in “The Last of Us” season 2, which could mean that he’ll be less of a force goading Ellie toward vengeance later in the story, as happens in the games. We’ll likely have to wait for season 3 to see just how differently these events could impact Ellie on the show.
