The Last of Us bosses tease how Ellie got her eyebrow scar

The latest episode of The Last of Us pulled back the curtain to reveal how Ellie (Bella Ramsey) was originally bitten by an infected during a fateful evening at an abandoned mall with her first crush Riley (Storm Reid). Over the course of an hour, “Left Behind” took us deep into Ellie’s past, giving a ton more context for why she refuses to leave Joel (Pedro Pascal) even as he lies dying after being ambushed at the University of Eastern Colorado.

As many questions as “Left Behind” answered about Ellie, it also raised a few. For example, how did Ellie get the scar on her eyebrow? The episode didn’t give us an answer, but it did give us a pretty big clue.

How did Ellie get her scar? “Violence is permanent and leaves marks.”

The clue comes early in the episode, when Ellie and Riley are making their way toward the abandoned mall. At one point, as the pair avoid dangers like patrolling FEDRA trucks and falling to their death from rooftops, Riley offhandedly asks Ellie, “Do you want another 7-Eleven situation?”, alluding to a prior adventure that seemingly went sideways.

It’s a quick enough moment that’s easy to miss, but The Last of Us Podcast host Troy Baker knows this story pretty well, since he played Joel in the video game (and will be appearing in Episode 8 of the show as the cannibalistic raider James). He made it a point to put showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann on the spot and ask exactly what they were getting at with that line.

“Well one, again, that conversation is just like things could go wrong. Someone could get hurt,” replied Druckmann, who wrote The Last of Us video game as well as this latest episode of the show. “But there’s also…you know, I get this question so many times of like, ‘how did Ellie get her scar?’ on her eyebrow. And then Craig and I discussed it, and I told him like, just some of the thoughts I had about it. So I was like ‘I don’t necessarily want to answer that, at least not yet. And like, we could just hint that there is a story there.'”

The Last of Us bosses (sort of) reveal how Ellie got her eyebrow scar

Craig Mazin then painted the picture for us of what may have gone down with Ellie and Riley at the 7-Eleven, while still leaving plenty up to the imagination:

"So something happened in a 7-Eleven that obviously is in the QZ and abandoned, where, in my mind it happened together, right? Ellie and Riley must have been together. They must have broken in. They must have had to run out fast. There was some glass, going through a window. Something happened."

Mazin mused on the concept of “stitches” being used to close up wounds, a recurring theme in both the episode’s opening and closing minutes. We see it in Ellie’s frantic search to literally stitch up Joel’s wound, and in the way she and Riley have both had to dust themselves off and keep moving forward in spite of all the traumas they’ve suffered. This idea of the “7-Eleven situation” is another example from even deeper in Ellie’s past, which left a permanent scar on her right eyebrow.

"But the notion that there are scars from living in this world is a really interesting one. And it was important to, since Joel and Ellie talk about Joel’s scar early on in episode three, this was an interesting opportunity to at least acknowledge that something happened. And here it’s like, well, we don’t know exactly how Ellie got her scar. We also don’t know exactly how Joel got his scar. All he says is, you know, “there was a shootout…and the other guy missed.” (Laughs)So we’re hinting at these things. But we are saying explicitly is, violence is permanent and leaves marks. And sometimes, the only way to close up a wound is to stitch it."

The Last of Us premieres new episodes on HBO and HBO Max on Sundays.

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