The previous episode of The Last of Us ended with a young Ellie waking up in her bed, her dad knocking on her door. The opening credit sequence for this new episode, the second-to-last for the season, feature Joel and Ellie walking side by side, even though he'd been cut out of the credits following his death in Episode 2. The flashback episode has landed.
And it was due. There have been a lot of questions bubbling under the surface of the season. What happened to Eugene, the husband of Joel's therapist Gail (Catherine O'Hara)? We've heard that Joel had to kill him but we don't know the details. Now we do. What did Joel and Ellie talk about the night of the New Year's dance? Why had she softened on Joel the following day? This episode fills in the gaps.
There are only seven episodes this season and it might feel wasteful to spend time exploring backstory, but this is all stuff we need to know. This episode has the most powerful emotional gut punches of the season so far. If anything, I wish we'd seen all this earlier, but I'm glad we're getting it now.
The Last of Us review: Season 2, Episode 6
The episode skips forward years at a time, showing us what happens on Ellie's 15th, 16th, 17th, and 19th birthdays before finally telling us what happened between she and Joel on New Year's Eve. What we get here is a beautiful, panoramic picture of their lives together as father and daughter.
The episode is wonderfully written, with lots of jokes, references and pain points introduced in one segment and returning later. On Ellie's 15th birthday, Joel trades some LEGOs to Seth (his grandkids will love them) in exchange for Seth making Ellie a birthday cake, only Seth misspells her name as "Eli." A couple birthdays later, Joel gets Seth to make another cake and he spells it right (Side note: I like how much use the show has wrung out of Seth, who was introduced in the season premiere as a homophobe from central casting only to deepen as the season's continued).
There are othe throughlines. On her 16th birthday, Joel teases Ellie about liking Jesse, and she dismisses him with a teenagerly "okay," clearly aware of her attraction to women but not quite ready to share that infoformation with her dad. The next year, Joel comes home to find Ellie necking with a girl and accuses her of "experimenting"; by that fateful New Year's Eve, Joel is saying Dina would be lucky to have someone like Ellie in her life. And in every time period, Ellie is always eager to go out on patrol. She isn't old enough at first, until she is, and everything goes wrong.
The time jumps don't feel like a gimmick. We get a great sense of what these two means to each other, which helps us better understand how Ellie is feeling in the present, and why she would move heaven and earth to get revenge after Joel is killed. The sweetest flashback is the one where Joel takes Ellie to an abandoned museum for her 16th birthday, which is pulled straight from the video game. Remembering her fascination with outer space from the first season, the pair get into a module that actually broke the atmosphere, and Ellie imagines starlight kissing her face. The scene is a Norman Rockwell card from the zombie apocalypse. It's very wholesome.
But things get really interesting when Ellie grows up and starts rebelling, getting tattoos and sneaking girls into the house when Joel isn't home. It's not just "all the teenage stuff at once," as Joel puts it; Ellie has good reason to be upset. She's long suspected that Joel didn't tell her the full truth about what happened in the season 1 finale, when Joel killed a hospital full of Fireflies to save her from a surgical procedure that would have killed her...but also would have resulted in a cure for the infected plague. That subtext runs under a lot of their scenes, even the ones before Ellie starts taking her inquiry seriously. After their trip to the museum, Ellie is distracted by a group of fireflies hovering over a glade. She develops an artistic interest in moths, which symbolize death. When she's older, she wants to move out of their house and into the garage. Joel doesn't like it, but helps her for fear of her pulling even further away from him. Pedro Pascal plays Joel's fatherly worry with an aching vulnerability. He and Bella Ramsey are both racking up new scenes for their Emmy reels.
Then comes the day of Ellie's 19th birthday, when Joel takes her out on her first patrol. By this point, Ellie is planning to ask Joel exactly what happened at the hospital in Salt Lake City, but she's hesitant, because she knows the answer might change their relationship forever. Things are decided for her when the pair come across not a rabid zombie, but Eugene (Joe Pantoliano), someone they know from Jackson. Eugene is the husband of Gail (Catherine O'Hara), Joel's therapist. We learned earlier in the season that Eugene grows pot outside the city walls, which explains what he's doing here. You don't have to know that to appreciate the scene, but I appreciate the setup.
Eugene has been bitten by a zombie. He hasn't turned yet, but he knows he's done for, and so do Ellie and Joel. Joel wants to shoot Eugene right then and there — it's protocol — but Eugene begs to be allowed to return to town and see his wife one last time, before he's too far gone. Ellie tests Eugene to make sure he has enough time. He does. "Joel, let him see his fucking wife!" Joel acquiesces, and tells Ellie to go ahead and ready the horses. He and Eugene will follow.
I think a lot of people will be able to guess what happens next; I certainly did.
Joe Pantoliano is only here for the space of this one scene, but he manages to build a complete character out of Eugene. He's a bit doddering, a thinker; he muses about how getting infected by cordyceps feels different than he thought it would as Joel escorts him down to a scenic lakeside cove. Once Eugene realizes what's happening, he pleads with Joel not to do it. Eugene isn't begging for his life — he knows that's over — but he needs to see Gail again so they can say the things they left unsaid. Joel shoots him in the head.
When Ellie finds them and sees what Joel did, something shifts in her. After what I imagine is a very tense ride back to Jackson, Gail leaves the town walls to see her husband's body. Joel feeds her a line about Eugene bravely shooting himself, which is the last straw for Ellie, who tells Gail what really happened. Gail slaps Joel, and we now know why she has problems with him at the start of the season; if anything, I think she's treated him too nicely. Ellie, meanwhile, spits venom at her father. "You swore," she hisses. They're done.
This is the beginning of Ellie icing out Joel. She doesn't know exactly what Joel did, but she knows he's a liar, and that's enough for her to feel betrayed. This goes down a bit differently in the game, where Ellie actually travels all the way back to Salt Lake City to investigate that Firefly hospital. Joel tracks her down and finally confesses what he did. Only then does Ellie cut him off. It always felt a little unrealistic for Ellie to travel cross-country like that on her own in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, so I'm glad the show took this subtler route. And the show's version gets to the heart of the problem: it's not just that Joel did what he did, but that he lied about it afterwards, breaking the bond of trust that he and Ellie shared. The show's version takes direct aim at Ellie's emotions. It's simpler, cleaner, killer.
As a bonus, this version gives performers like Catherine O'Hara and Joe Pantoliano chances to shine. In the games, we spend a bit of time in Jackson and then most of the rest elsewhere. In this season, The Last of Us has succeeded in making Jackson feel like a vibrant location all its own, complete with a thriving community of colorful characters. The show is better for it.
The moment of truth
This brings us to our last important scene, which I admit brought me to manly tears. We see what Joel and Ellie talked about the night of New Year's Dance, after Ellie comes out of her garage to tentatively join Joel on the porch. In a combination of a couple of different conversations from the video game, Ellie gives Joel one last chance to come clean with her and tell her what really happened in Salt Lake City. He does, admitting to each beat point by point, not with words but with tiny nods; these confessions are too big for words.
This is an enormous scene built out of subtle cues, perfect for live-action. Pedro Pascal and Ellie are both wonderful here, especially Pascal. He's vulnerable in a way the game version of Joel wasn't, openly fearful that Ellie will now turn away from him. But his honestly is rewarded: Ellie doesn't know if she can forgive him, "but I'd like to try."
So that's why Ellie was feeling more warmly towards Joel the next day, the day he died. And that's why she's so hell bent on hunting down his killers afterwards: it's not just that they took Joel away from her, it's that they took him away just as things were getting better between them, just when they were getting on the path to reconciliation. Ellie tells Joel that if she had died in the hospital, if the Fireflies had been able to use her immunity to create a vaccine, her life would have meant something. Well, everything she went through with Joel — growing up, drifting away, and drifting back — would have meant something...if she and Joel could have worked out their issues. Now they never will, and that fills Ellie with guilt. Like Eugene and Gail, they never got a chance to say the things they left unsaid. And that has Ellie stuck.
That's where we'll pick up next week, to see what Ellie does. This episode was about why, and I think it was the strongest of the season so far.
The Bullet Points of Us
- The episode opens with a flashback to Joel as a teenager. His police officer dad gives him a talking to about getting into fights, but mostly just seems tired. He shares a beer with Joel, and apologizes for hitting him and Tommy. "When it's your turn, try to be a little better than me." This comes back at the end of the episode, when Joel tells Ellie the same thing.
- At first, I thought the opening flashback to Joel's childhood was a little obvious and trite, but damn if it didn't come back to punch me in the gut later. The point about parents passing down their trauma to their children has been made before, but it rings true and it still hits when it's delivered this well.
- Joel's words to Ellie may be on her mind now that she has her own child on the way. Is she honoring Joel by putting that child at risk? She could travel back to Jackson right now with Dina if she wanted to, and forget her revenge quest. Is she being as "selfish" as she accused Joel of being?
- In the first flashback, Joel makes a guitar for Ellie, having promised to teach her to play. To demonstrate what it can do, he plays the Pearl Jam song "Future Days" for her. That's the same song that Ellie played part of in the theater last week.
- It's also a little continuity error, since "Future Days" came out in 2013 but the zombie apocalpyse happened in 2003, at least in the show. In the games, the infections started in 2013, so having Joel play "Future Days" was more plausible. I guess they wanted to keep in a touching moment whether or not it made sense, and fair enough.
Episode Grade: A
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