It seemed that over the course of the first season of HBO’s The Last of Us, Bella Ramsey won haters over with their charming performance as the gun-wielding 14-year-old apocalypse survivor Ellie. But, with Season 2, fans of the original games once again have begun to berate the actor and their performance, claiming them to be mistcast.
Since the second season began on April 13, people have taken to the internet to complain that Ramsey—who portrayed Season 1 Ellie with a staggering ease—wouldn’t be able to portray the older and hardened version of this character present in The Last of Us Part II video game, which HBO is adapting with Season 2 and 3.
(Warning: Spoilers ahead.)
Although the actor would have been around 20 years old when this season was filmed, a year older than Ellie is when the second game takes place, they’ve maintained a youthfulness that the character shed quickly as the game progressed. While the show hasn’t reached the fervent heights of the game just yet, Ramsey’s youthful portrayal of Ellie, even after her surrogate father Joel’s (Pedro Pascal) death, has already begun to make the bleakness of this world hit harder than anticipated.
Part II is a story in which the main character is molded by their circumstances, changing before viewers eyes from a child into a grief-fueled killing machine. The adaptation has been taking its time to showcase the weight of Ellie’s choices, and with Episode 5, her darker nature has finally reared its ugly head.
In one of the game’s most infamous scenes, this episode finally forces Ellie into close proximity with one of Joel’s killers, and Ramsey out of the childlike box their performance has at times been stifled by.
When Joel was being bludgeoned by Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), Nora (Tati Gabrielle), unlike some of their other companions, seemed to take a sick pleasure in the man’s demise.
At first it seems like she’s sympathetic to Ellie’s pain, before she snarls that he “got what he deserved.” She throws chemicals into Ellie’s face, and a chase breaks out, as the two take off through a dilapidated hospital. They end up in the desolate spores-infested basement, only accompanied by the sound of Nora’s steadily growing wheezing. “You’ve killed us both,” she gasps at Ellie, who slowly walks into frame like a predator stalking its prey.
“Did I?” Ellie taunts back, revealing to Nora her immune nature and ultimately, her identity as the reason Joel shot and killed Abby’s father. Ramsey’s eyes, illuminated only by the harsh red lighting in the scene, emulate pools of black liquid. They look otherworldly as Ellie stares into the face of a woman not much older than herself, realizing that now she has her pinned just like Abby had Joel. Her eyes never leave Nora’s face, unwavering in their focus, almost all if when confronted by Nora’s mortality, she’s not quite sure how to proceed.
This shift within Ellie, laid so openly upon Ramsey’s face, is not simply a moment that fans have been wanting to see on screen since this adaptation was announced. It is ultimately a pivotal moment in the character’s arc, and one that Ramsey would need to nail to prove that Ellie’s descent into madness would be just as tragic as it was in the games.
The actor gives it their all, as Ellie picks up a crowbar, glancing at it indifferently before she proceeds to beat Nora with it, feverishly screaming at her and asking where Abby is. Backed by a hauntingly composed score that whirs through the background like the buzzing of a swarm of bees, we’re forced to watch as Ellie gives herself over to her grief.
Every acting choice Ramsey has made, even if it has made this version of Ellie feel younger than her game counterpart, makes this scene all the more haunting. Because the Ellie we know after this season’s time skip still harbors a sense of childlike wonder within her, this monstrous version of her comes as a bit of a surprise.
Gone is the heroic figure the series set her up to be, and in its place is a girl whose childhood was stolen from her, succumbing to the brutality of the world Joel so desperately tried to save her from. Drenched in darkness, eyes widened with a sickening interest for Nora’s pain, Ellie’s true form has finally been revealed to us.
While the game’s version of Ellie seems disgusted by her actions even as she’s committing them, Ramsey portrays this violence with a sense of fascination, as if she’s realizing that she is now capable of the very thing that captivated her about Joel. In enacting the same violence on Nora that Abby enacted on Joel, Ramsey’s version of Ellie seems imbued by the idea that her violence on earth can connect her to the man even in death. As she unmasks her true desires, she also in turn unmakes herself.
The episode quickly cuts to a flashback which will lead into next week’s episode. We see Ellie, illuminated by the sun instead of the hospital’s harsh lighting, waking up in her bed in the home she shared with Joel, the man at her door waiting for her to awaken.
They smile at each other, a picture-perfect portrayal of the innocence they once shared, leaving viewers with a reminder of who Ellie could have been if her grief hadn’t swallowed her whole. Juxtaposed with her first act of uncontrollable violence since the series began, The Last of Us forces us to confront the fact that Ellie has ushered herself onto a deadly path she can never turn back from, and proves that Bella Ramsey is the perfect actor to portray this descent into madness.
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