If your heart is still racing after last week’s thunderous episode, you’re not the only one. Whether you’re reeling from the scale of the infected attack, or still weeping after that obscenely gruesome scene at the lodge, it’s hard not to feel like Episode 2 of The Last of Us: Season 2 will hang heavy on our hearts.
But just like real life, time moves on. We recover, we rebuild, and so is the town of Jackson. In Episode 3, we’re dealing with the fallout of such an intense and horrifying second episode. Without further ado, we dive in – and one last reminder, here there be spoilers.
Read: The Last of Us: Season 2, Episode 2 recap – This is going to hurt
The aftermath of the unthinkable
It’s the calm after the storm – bodies of infected and townsfolk alike lie crisped and charred in the streets of Jackson, the blackened remains of a truly intense battle. But the grisliest of all the deaths wasn’t found in the fire or embers – it was in the lodge. Joel’s death marks a turning point in The Last of Us: Season 2, and it’s not easy to say goodbye to such a key player in the series.
Tommy enters the town morgue, where an attendant is dutifully beginning to clean the bodies to prepare them to be buried. Covered with a sheet, Tommy ushers her away and starts tending to Joel himself. He cleanses him softly with a damp towel, and in a heartbreakingly soft voice tells his still body, “give Sarah my love”.
Where the morgue has a stillness that seems to hang heavy in the air, across the way in the hospital, it’s unbridled chaos. Patients are lining the halls, and we make our way through a hectic scattering of wounded people to land on Ellie, who has just woken up with tubes coming out of her wrist and chest. She looks ahead and starts screaming, seeing the scene of Abby killing Joel in her mind.
Calmed only by a sedative, it is immediately clear that Ellie is not only wounded physically, but mentally and emotionally she’s very deeply affected – and it’s pretty damn understandable why. Her pain is the heart of The Last of Us: Season 2.
Jackson, rebuilt
Three months later, without Joel’s leadership, the construction crew in Jackson get to work rebuilding, chopping logs and reinforcing the once-broken wall. Over at the hospital, Ellie is getting a final evaluation before finally being allowed to leave – she’s in tip-top physical shape, but she has to see one more person then she’s medically “good to go”. She’s on board, until she realises that that “one more person” is Gail (Catherine O’Hara).
As is her style (both in The Last of Us series and video games), Ellie starts off snarky and sassy, leaning into therapy-speak to convince Gail that she’s fine enough to get out. They both know she’s not taking it seriously, but Gail indulges her nonetheless, prodding her to discuss her regret over not speaking with Joel the night before.
Except, eventually Gail gets real with Ellie, and talks about Joel’s last words to her. “I saved her”. Gail ponders what it could mean, and Ellie makes a point of saying that Joel had saved her many a time. It’s a faux nonplussed reaction, but deep down it’s clear that Ellie does have some lingering curiosity around those words.
Ellie is finally able to leave the hospital, and in a long tracking shot from her room through the halls, we watch as Ellie’s face turns from fake, therapised cheer to sad, hardened resolve. It’s a masterclass in minute facial expressions, which is a hallmark of The Last of Us – full credit to Bella Ramsey for an incredible job.
Ellie returns home to find memorial flowers and letters dotting the fence – and not just a few. Hundreds of them. She holds it together, for now. Walking through the house, she sees her old room, mattress gone from the bed, and turns to Joel’s area. He’s been whittling, and on his bed lies a red box.
Inside the box are all his personal effects – his watch, his gun. Ellie promptly puts it down the back of her jeans and goes to walk away, before seeing his wardrobe. As if drawn to it involuntarily, she grasps the sleeve of a jacket and finally starts to cry, silently pressing her face into the fabric. It’s one of the most tender moments we’ve seen in The Last of Us series so far.
Suddenly she hears her own name, and wipes her eyes. It’s Dina – she’d gone to the hospital to see Ellie, but she’d had already left. Ellie thanked her for all the times she’d visited, and Dina offered her cookies as a peace offering. Why? “Because I’m about to make you angry.”
Dina confesses that she lied when she told Ellie she hadn’t learned anything useful about Joel’s attackers. On the contrary, she knows their names, how many there were, and where they’re from. Ellie is understandably pissed, but Dina rightfully points out that they have to give it time… and that she loved Joel too.
She runs through their names, including Abby, and mentioned the WLF – or Washington Liberation Front – working out of Seattle. “Who else knows?” Ellie asks. “Just us,” says Dina. “I wasn’t gonna tell anyone before you.”
Ellie and Dina approach Tommy with the pitch to go. He’s against going guns blazing for now, and says it needs to go past Maria and the council. He promises to back them, makes a snide comment at Dina for holding back info.
In a final passing moment, Tommy tells Ellie where to find Joel’s final resting place, just out of town, if she wants to say goodbye. But she’s not going to go until they’re on their way to Seattle, she resolves. Not until they’re on their way to avenge his death.
So it was…
Elsewhere, a tall bald man with a deep face scar leads a troupe of people (with matching scars) through a forest. A child and man discuss where they’re going and why, discussing a mysterious figure named The Prophet, who allegedly died a while back. Fans of The Last of Us video games may recognise them, but frankly it’s a surprise to see them make an appearance so early in the series.
They communicate in complicated whistles, giving warnings and clearances to each other from across the forest floor. The child asks the man (who is seemingly her father or guardian) if she can ready herself with a hammer, given they’re striving to protect themselves and defend their people.
He acquiesces, and none too soon, because a sudden frantic whistle indicates that they should all take cover immediately – they’re being hunted. Hunted by Wolves.
Town meeting
Back in town, Ellie is building her case to convince the council to send a crew of skilled townspeople to accompany her to get justice for Joel in Seattle. She tries first to convince Jesse, who has now been given a spot on the council, but he can’t give her any indication of how he’s going to vote. What he can give her, however, is the advice that she should write down her argument instead of going in hot-headed.
In the packed town meeting, the perspectives against Ellie’s mission are making a lot of sense. The brutality of The Last of Us is that there are a lot of casualties, and Joel wasn’t the only person who died that day. Plenty of people lost loved ones, and they’re still mourning too.
Plus, taking a crew of that many defenders away when they’re still rebuilding could be potentially very dangerous for those who remain. What if another attack happens? Will the town be ready and able to defend itself again?
One man advocates mercy, that we should forgive the attackers – which, frankly, is a very idealistic view. The rebuttal, however, comes from a surprise source. Ellie isn’t the one to act emotionally – it’s Seth (Robert John Burke), the man from The Last of Us: Season 2, Episode 1 who talked shit to Ellie and Dina.
He’s adamantly in favour of sending out a posse, and it seems like he’s the one getting all hot-headed about it after all. Let’s be real: Seth is still a bigot, but at least he’s doing his best to repent for how he treated Ellie – and it does seem like he genuinely believes that they should be heading out for revenge.
At long last, it’s time for Ellie to speak. Having taken Jesse’s advice, Ellie’s words are careful and precise. She doesn’t advocate revenge, per se. She wants justice – for Joel, and for the town. Because in her eyes, they’re not just evening the score. They’re making it clear that the people of Jackson aren’t to be messed with.
It’s a really stirring speech, which has the right amount of emotion from Ellie, even though the actual words feel dampened and almost cold in comparison to what we know she’s really feeling. Again, Bella Ramsey does an incredible job at treading that line.
The council votes – eight no, three yes. Ellie’s mission to get justice is denied… At least, officially.
Converse vs. boots
Despite her calm, cool demeanour as she walked out of the town meeting, seemingly accepting their decision, Ellie was very clearly plotting. Later, after dark, we see her packing an exorbitant amount of guns and ammo into her pack – she was always going to go, whether they supported her with a team or not.
We knew this, fans of The Last of Us games knew this, Ellie knew this, and of course, Dina knew this. Rocking up at just the right time, Dina calls her out for packing like an idiot – all guns, no maps or provisions. Not even proper shoes, as she once again calls Ellie out on her impractical (yet iconic) Converse sneakers.
Turns out Dina is a logistics queen, though, and she’s already got it all figured out. She’s “got a guy” for all the equipment and materials they need, and she’s sketched out their route on the map – because let’s be real, she was never going to let Ellie go alone. Dina tells Ellie to meet her at 3am, ready to go.
When the time comes, we watch as Ellie realises that Dina’s “guy” is actually Seth. He clearly meant every word of what he said at the meeting, because he’s outfitted them (and Shimmer!) with all the provisions he had squirrelled away, and even swaps guns with a reluctant Ellie.
Now appropriately prepared for an extensive cross-country journey (minus the fact that Ellie still didn’t change her shoes), they sneak out in the ten minute window between patrols. But before they can get going properly, they have one last stop.
Just outside of town, in a sunlit field, is Joel’s final resting place. In a scene that feels like the mirror image to Abby’s opening moments, Ellie crouches at Joel’s grave, dropping a few coffee beans for him in tribute to the man who was her father in all but name. It’s a really beautiful moment, and really emphasises how willing Ellie is to do whatever it takes to get justice for him.
On the road together
Condensing a whole lot of riding time into a period of maybe 15 minutes, we watch as Ellie and Dina make their way across the country, traversing forest roads on Shimmer together. The conversation is casual and easy, even flirty to a degree. It’s a good choice from the team behind The Last of Us to streamline the journey, given how long it actually takes in real life, but it’s nice to still see these snippets.
As they make camp, things escalate in the flirtation department, as Dina brings up the topic of New Year’s and their kiss. She admits that she’s already back with Jesse, but wants to know how good of a kisser she is, on a scale of 1-10. Ellie says six, and we all know she’s absolutely lying through her teeth.
Unfortunately, not all things are flirty and fancy-free. As they travel further down the road, they stumble upon a disturbing scene. Dina investigates a little ways off the path and comes running back to Ellie, promptly throwing up, and we watch as Ellie checks out what Dina saw. In the forest, strewn over branches and leaves, are the corpses of the whistling troupe from earlier in the episode – even the girl with the hammer.
It’s the Wolves, we know, but this is the first time Ellie and Dina have been faced with the violence that the WLF leaves in their wake – even if they don’t know yet that it was them for sure. They’re all the more motivated to keep going, ready to face down Abby and her crew no matter what.
They ride onwards, arriving at last in Seattle. With a couple of cringy action movie zingers from the pair, they ready themselves to take on the WLF – but in the last few moments of the episode, the audience is able to see that they’re going to face down a much bigger enemy than initially thought: an almost entirely militarised enemy, complete with tanks, watch towers and structure.
The Last of Us: Season 2, Episode 3 verdict
It was always going to be difficult to follow an episode like The Last of Us: Season 2, Episode 2. Joel’s death was confronting even to those who knew it was coming – even if none of us really expected it to happen so soon – so it makes sense that this episode felt more like an exhalation than a bang.
If anything, it was a strong episode to show off the precision of Bella Ramsey and Isabella Merced’s acting. Both Ellie and Dina showcased tiny micro-emotional responses that were masterfully played, and it’s going to be interesting to see how their dynamic grows from here as we see more of The Last of Us: Season 2.
