Every episode of The Last of Us, ranked worst to best

5. Episode 9, “Look For The Light”

The first season of The Last of Us ends with a morally thorny bloodbath. Joel and Ellie finally find the Fireflies, the resistance fighters who have the equipment and expertise necessary to test Ellie and see if her immunity can be used to create a cure to the cordyceps virus. And good news: they can! But bad news: in order to synthesize a vaccine, they’ll need to perform surgery on Ellie, and the surgery will kill her.

Joel, who by this point considers Ellie a daughter — a replacement of sorts for Sarah, who he lost in the premiere — isn’t willing to let this happen. He mows down all the Fireflies protecting Ellie and absconds with her, choosing his daughter over a new hope for humanity.

Many have talked about whether Joel “did the right thing” in saving Ellie, and it’s cool that the episode inspired those kinds of conversations. More pertinent here is the question of “did the episode work?” And I’d say yes, but I agree with critics who felt that Joel’s rampage didn’t quite have the punch it should. Maybe it’s because we didn’t spend enough time with Joel and Ellie as a surrogate father-daughter pair before they reached this inflection point. We didn’t feel Joel’s desperation to save her as acutely as he did.

But even so, the episode is painfully well made, and Pascal turns in a fantastic performance as the tortured Joel. The final moments between him and Ellie, where he lies to her about what happened (she was unconscious for the whole thing) are full of fascinating texture, although I could have done without ending on Ellie’s uncertain “Okay.” I know that’s how the original video game ended, and it works, but for this new version of the story, I wanted something a little more lyrical heading into the off-season.

Still, “Look for the Light” effectively takes us into the long dark between seasons 1 and 2, and sets up many conflicts to come.