The Last Of Us Finale Kills [Spoiler], Teases Abby's Side Of The Story — Plus, Grade It!
At a certain point in The Last of Us Part II, the storytelling perspective shifts, and gamers begin playing as Abby. The TV equivalent of that POV change happens at the end of The Last of Us' Season 2 finale, setting up a Season 3 that could potentially have us spending a lot of time with the young woman who killed Joel.
Read on for the highlights of Episode 7, then make sure to check out what executive producers Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann have to say about where the story is headed next season.
POST-NORA HAZE | After last week's Joel-tastic hour, this week's episode brings us right back to where we left off: with Dina bleeding copiously from the Seraphite arrow through her thigh. She and Jesse are at the theater, where he has had to push the arrow through her leg in order to get it out, when Ellie returns from pulverizing Nora.
She finds Dina resting on a lounge in the dressing room. The mom-to-be reassures Ellie that the baby is OK ("How do you know?" "I just do"), and then Dina slowly sits up and has Ellie take off her shirt so she can tend to her pretty messed-up back. As Ellie reports what happened, it seems like she's in shock. "I made her talk. I thought it would be harder to do, but it wasn't," she babbles. "It was easy. I just kept hurting her."
Ellie adds that Nora only said "wheel" and "whale," and that she didn't kill her. When Dina remarks that maybe Abby's friend got what she deserved, it brings Ellie to the verge of tears. "Maybe she didn't," she whispers, telling her girlfriend about Joel's massacre at the hospital in Salt Lake City.
This news shakes Dina badly, and things don't get better when Ellie confesses that she didn't know who Abby and her friends were when they arrived in Jackson... but she DID know what Joel did. Ellie apologizes, but Dina's entire affect has changed. She just says that they need to return to Jackson, then she turns on her side — away from Ellie — and tries to rest.
SEATTLE DAY 3 | The next day, Jesse and Ellie leave to find Tommy; Dina puts her bracelet on Ellie's wrist for good luck. On the way, Ellie inadvertently lets it slip that Dina is pregnant — he suspected, but she confirms it — and then they take shelter in a garage when it starts to pour.
They quickly hide when Wolves in their vicinity grab a Seraphite, beat and strip him, then drag him away. Ellie wants to intervene, because the Seraphite was a kid. But Jesse is vehemently opposed. "This is not our war!" he says.
They make it to the rendezvous point, but Tommy isn't there. While they wait for him, Jesse tells her that he loves Dina, but "not the way you do," and that he fell in love with someone in a group of survivors that was headed to New Mexico. When the object of his affection asked him to go with her, he wanted to, but ultimately he stayed because he felt loyalty to Jackson. Ellie is like, OK WE GET IT, YOU'RE A SAINT, but he points out: If he'd gone, who would've saved her in Seattle?
They're interrupted by a report on the radio: It sounds like the Wolves have captured Tommy.
ELLIE GOES ROGUE | But when the pair get to a higher point in order to try to see where the Wolves are/where Tommy might be, Ellie is distracted by a nearby aquarium, which has a giant ferris wheel nearby. She realizes that Nora's "wheel" and "whale" might mean that Abby is holed up there, so she suddenly decides that maybe Tommy is OK, after all, and that she's going to set off for the aquarium instead.
Her choice incenses Jesse, who blurts out that he was one of the Jackson council members who voted against her mission "because everything you do, you do for you." But she refuses to feel bad, pointing out that his loyalty to one group allows him to be brutal to others: After all, he didn't do anything to stop the Wolves harming the Seraphite kid. "I really hope you make it," is all he says as he walks away.
A SLIGHT DETOUR | Ellie goes to the waterfront and is able to get a motorboat running, so she sets off for the aquarium. She's capsized by a giant wave, though, so she and the boat wash up on shore where a Seraphite child watches her. Before Ellie knows what's going on, there's lots of whistling, and then two Seraphite adults pick her up and walk her to a noose in the woods.
Ellie yells that she's not a Wolf and she's not a local, but that doesn't stop them from stringing her up. A woman with a scimitar seems to be in charge; when there's a horn in the distance, the woman yells, "The village! Leave her!" and Ellie crashes to the ground as the bald-and-braided ones run.
She recovers her boat and speeds away while a huge fire burns in the background; ostensibly, this is the work of Isaac and his soldiers, whom we saw getting in their own watercraft earlier. (We also know that Abby and her unit went missing earlier that evening, a loss that Isaac sees as substantial.)
COLLATERAL DAMAGE | When she arrives at the aquarium, Ellie gains entrance to the building via a broken skylight. She creeps up on Owen and Mel, aka the other female member of Abby's group, as they talk about how to get Abby.
Once Ellie makes her presence known, she realizes they have a map: Ellie demands that they hand it over. Owen pretends he will but grabs a gun instead. In the process of shooting him first, Ellie hits Mel in the neck.
Don't worry, things get worse: As Mel's jacket falls open, we see that she's very pregnant. As her life drains away, she begs Ellie to cut the baby out of her. Mel's clearly had medical training, but all she can choke out is "transverse" — as in, "make a transverse cut in my abdomen" — but Ellie sobs as she yells that she doesn't know what that means. This is traumatic, and I'm very sorry to Mel's baby, but I'm also super glad I don't have to watch an uninformed person try their hand at an emergency C-section on the floor.
Mel bleeds out. Ellie cries. She's traumatized — like, post-steakhouse traumatized — when Tommy and Jesse suddenly appear and lead her out, returning to Dina at the theater.
'YOU WASTED IT' | Later, Tommy, Jesse and Ellie talk about how it seems like Abby will get to live, after all; Tommy wonders if Ellie can make her peace with that. "I guess I'll have to," she says. After he steps away, she thanks Jesse for coming back to help her. He teases her a little before adding that if he were out there somewhere, lost and in trouble, "you would set the world on fire to save me." She agrees that she would. Then they're interrupted by a noise from the lobby, and everything gets much worse from here on out.
As they run toward the noise, Jesse immediately goes down, taken out by an unseen assailant. Ellie sees that Tommy, too, has been hit and is unconscious (at best). And that assailant? It's Abby. "He killed my friends," she tells Ellie, who corrects her: "No, I did. I didn't meant to." She begs Abby to let them go, but Abby won't hear it. "I let you live," she points out. "I let you live, and you wasted it." And as Ellie yells, "No!," Abby shoots.
SEATTLE DAY ONE REDUX | Does her bullet hit its mark? We don't know. Because suddenly, we're watching Abby nap on a couch. She's woken by another Wolf who lets her know that Isaac wants to talk. As she stands and makes her way outside, we see that they're in a football stadium that has a lot of military-looking hustle and bustle happening. "SEATTLE DAY ONE," some on-screen text reads. Looks like we've arrived at a POV shift, everyone.
Now it's your turn. What did you think of the finale? Grade it, as well as Season 2 as a whole, via the poll below. Then hit the comments with all of your thoughts!