We spend most of our time with Ellie and Dina in this episode, and they make the most of it. Ellie is driven by revenge: she wants to kill the people who killed Joel. But Dina wants to be with Ellie. That's been clear ever since she drunkenly made out with her at the New Year's dance. Ellie wants to be with her too. We even learn this week that Dina is pregnant with Jesse's baby; the three of them could have a life to look forward to, together. "I'm gonna be a dad," Ellie says, adorably.
But if Ellie really wanted that life, she and Dina could leave Seattle right now. The place is crawling with WLF soldiers, who I'm just going to call Wolves for the remainder of this review to save myself some keystrokes. The Wolves are well-armed and well-trained. Ellie and Dina will not be able to walk into and out of this situation easy-peasy. No sooner does Ellie find something to live for than she puts it at risk.
That's one of the deeper themes running under this episode, but I didn't think about it while watching; I just enjoyed the action and the tender love story between Ellie and Dina. Those things are really two sides of the same coin. Let's take a closer look at both.
The Last of Us season 2, Episode 4 review
I was struck by how lock step this episode was with The Last of Us Part II video game; I remember a lot of the areas that Ellie and Dina visit, from the overgrown Seattle streets, to the music shop, to the skyscraper where they find the bodies of the Wolves, to the movie theater where they hide out afterward. You can definitely feel the influence of co-showrunner Neil Druckmann, who also worked on both The Last of Us games.
Take the scene in the ruined music shop, which Ellie and Dina come across while they look for Abby and her posse. Ellie finds a spare guitar and starts to play "Take on Me" by A-ha, a pop song that Joel taught her; he was Gen X, so it tracks. Bella Ramsey has a lovely clear voice; she's able to pull out a plaintiveness of the lyrics you don't usually hear in the normal version. And Isabel Merced is wonderful as the rapt Dina; Merced has a very expressive face and I bought that Dina was falling deeper in love here. As far as I'm concerned, she's becoming the MVP of the season.
It's a really nice scene. And it looks exactly like it did in the games, down to the dappled lighting coming in from a hole in the wall. I'd accuse it of being gratuitous if it wasn't so effective.
Ellie and Dina eventually get back on mission and raid a skyscraper occupied by Wolves, which takes us into the action portion of the episode. I enjoyed this stuff, but it felt a little prosaic next to Ellie and Dina's blossoming romance. They stalk through dark halls with flashlights. They come upon a grisly scene: several Wolves have been strung up from the ceiling, their intestines hanging out. Ellie and Dina have stumbled onto a turf war between the Wolves and the Seraphites, aka the Scars, that group of religious types we saw walking through the forest in the last episode. But they don't know that, so all Dina can say is: "What the fuck is wrong with Seattle?"
Ellie and Dina kill a few Wolves and escape that encounter with their lives. They crawl through a tunnel into a subway and encounter their next disaster: not only are the Wolves after them, but these tunnels are filled with infected, although that ends up being an advantage when the infected attack the Wolves rather than them. After navigating through and on top of train cars, the pair once again makes it out alive, although not before Ellie shoves her own arm into a zombie's mouth so it can't bite Dina.
These action scenes are moody and fun to watch; I liked the drama of the red flares in the subway tunnels. I wish I had more to say about them: they're good action scenes, but they lead to better character scenes.
Love in the time of zombies
When Ellie and Dina get back to the theater and finally find a moment to catch their breath, Dina points a gun at her beloved, convinced she'll have to kill Ellie lest she turn into a zombie. It's time for Ellie to come clean about her immunity. She doesn't explain everything, but she explains enough to let Dina give her a chance. After Dina is finally convinced and knows that Ellie isn't going to die, the two make love for the first time.
In a way, Dina and Ellie's relationship is moving very fast. They had their first kiss a couple episodes ago and now they're committing to raising a kid together. In another way, who's to say what qualifies as fast after the fall of civilization? They're already fully functional adults contributing to society. They don't have other boxes to check off. And when you meet the one, you meet the one.
And Ellie and Dina do seem perfect for each other. Their connection is built in the details. I loved how they both rode through the gay part of Seattle, with rainbow flags hanging from the buildings and a giant rainbow heart painted onto a wall, and have no idea what it means. "Maybe they were optimistic," Ellie theorizes. I love how they chew what I'm guessing are fragrant leaves to deal with morning breath. It's adorable how Ellie is woken from her sleep by water leaking onto her head and quickly assures Dina that she's just jerking her head back and forth because she's wet, not because she's infected. Their chemistry is fantastic. I could watch it all day.
And yes, the fact that two women are in love and leading an incredibly popular major tentpole action show about zombies is subversive and worth celebrating. Dina has a nice speech about her mom pushing her into heteronormativity in her youth, but overall the show treats Ellie and Dina as two characters in love, rather than two gay characters making a statement. And that in itself may be the most powerful statement the show can make.
The clock is ticking
Like the last episode, this one ends in a "tune in next week" sort of way, which is to be expected; this second season is less episodic than season 1 and more of one long story told back to front...with the important caveat that we won't reach the end of it by the finale.
And really, that's the biggest problem with this episode. I've played the games and know how much more story there is to tell, and while the show has covered a lot of ground in four episodes, there's still a ton to go, and we only have three episodes left before the season is over. It's feeling like every episode of The Last of Us is going to hit it out of the park this season, but it's impossible not to feel disappointed that we're going to have to wait heaven knows how long to see what comes after that. I'll admit that is dragging the experience down a bit for me.
That said, just looking at this episode, it's quality stuff. We got good action, great character work, gorgeous sets and wonderful worldbuilding. I didn't even mention Jeffrey Wright showing up as Isaac, the leader of the Wolves. He has a killer of a cold open where we see what he was like back when he was working with FEDRA. He was unhappy there, unhappy enough to do something shocking and join the Wolves. The opening scene gracefully sets up how ruthless he can be, and lets us know that he does have a moral center of a sort. With Jeffrey Wright playing him, there was no way this character was going to step wrong.
Wright also shines in a later scene where Isaac tortures a Seraphite, who is naked and bloodied and tied up in a kitchen while Isaac gives a great Bond villain speech about cookware. The nudity may be the most extreme image the series has shown us yet, but Wright grounds the scene in a way that kept it from tumbling over the line into exploitation. It tells us a little more about the Wolf-Seraphite conflict and sets up Isaac as a character to look out for.
The only problem is: will we get enough episodes for him to become a danger to Ellie and Dina? Where are Abby and her friends in all of this? So much goodness, so little time!
The Bullet Points of Us
- In movies and TV, if a character coughs once, they're going to die. I've gotten pretty good at spotting those kinds of things. So I give the show a lot of credit for fooling me not once but twice with Dina's puking. I chalked it up to her being disturbed by the sight of bodies, not stopping to think that she sees this kind of thing all the time. Of course it was foreshadowing her pregnancy.
Episode Grade: B+
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