The Last of Us season 2 concluded on a cliffhanger, and dropped a clue as to what will happen in season 3. One could argue that season 2 went as expected, for better and for worse.
The season began with the death of Joel, Ellie's surrogate father. He was killed by Abby, whose own father was killed by Joel in the season 1 finale; Abby's dad was a doctor at the Firefly-operated hospital in Salt Lake City. So far as we know, he was the only person capable of creating a cure to the zombie pathogen that has collapsed civilization. But in order to make it, he would have had to kill Ellie, who is immune. Joel wasn't willing to let that happen, so he massacred everyone in the facility.
Afterwards, Joel lied to Ellie (who was unconscious at the time) about what happened, which led to them falling out. After Joel's death, Ellie headed to Seattle to hunt Abby down, with help from her friend Dina. A romance budded between the two. Eventually we learned that Dina was pregnant with Jesse's child. Unfortunately for the father-to-be, he was killed during the season 2 finale.
Joel's death was very controversial when it happened in The Last of Us Part II, the video game on which this season of the show. After all, he's one of the two main characters, and his bond with Ellie is forms the backbone of the story itself.
But looking back, we can clearly see a pattern forming. Season 1 was very clearly Joel's story as season 2 is Ellie's. That begs the question: will season 3 become Abby's story? Judging by the last few minutes of the season 2 finale, it seems that way.
Near the end of the episode, Abby finds the theater where Ellie and her friends are holding up. In revenge for Ellie killing her friends, Abby wounds Joel's brother Tommy and kills Jesse. Turning the gun on Ellie, Abby pulls the trigger, and we cut to black. We fade in on Abby awakening in a what used to be a football stadium, now converted into a living and working space for the Washington Liberation Front, of which she is a part. A subtitle tells us that it's "Day 1" in Seattle, meaning we've gone back in time to when Ellie first arrived in the city, only now we're seeing it from Abby's perspective.
This is precisely what happens in The Last of Us Part II; we play as Ellie for a while, then switch to Abby and see what she was doing while Ellie was hunting for her. Season 2 told us almost nothing about Abby outside of her determination to get revenge. Season 3 will fill in those gaps, leading to her reunion with Ellie at the theater. Kaitlyn Dever, who plays Abby, made a fantastic impression in the little time we saw her in season 2.
Dever will have big shoes to fill next season if she hopes to gain the support from audiences, as Joel has not only become a popular character but is played by one of the most popular men in all of Hollywood, Pedro Pascal. We don't know exactly when The Last of Us season 3 will air, but it won't be for a while, quite possibly not until 2027.
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