‘The Last of Us’ Season 2 Finale Recap: The Monster at the End

‘The Last of Us’ Season 2, Episode 7

In an interview with Collider last week, “The Last of Us” co-showrunner Craig Mazin estimated that it will take four seasons for him and the video game’s co-creator Neil Druckmann to adapt the two “Last of Us” games properly. I found this comment a bit surprising. Mazin and Druckmann covered most of the first “Last of Us” game in an action-packed Season 1. After this week’s Season 2 finale, is there enough story left in “The Last of Us Part II” for two more seasons?

Having never played the game, I do not know the answer to this. But I do know that Season 2 — as good as it has generally been — has raised some questions about where this show is ultimately headed. Season 1 was something of a quest saga, about a one-of-a-kind hero traveling to the place where she was meant to sacrifice herself and save the world. Then Joel ripped up that script. In the Season 1 finale, Joel didn’t just move the narrative goal posts, he tore them down.

So what’s the endpoint now? What does a “chosen one” do when she is no longer chosen?

The Season 2 finale wrestles with these questions in ways both exciting and somewhat perplexing, before ending in someplace unexpected and potentially promising. If nothing else, the episode does have a strong arc for Ellie, as she realizes that missions of vengeance are messy and unsatisfying.

We begin with Ellie’s return from Lakehill Hospital, where — contrary to how it appeared in last week’s episode — she did not club the infected Nora to death. As Ellie explains to Dina, she beat on Nora until she gave up clues Abby’s location. (The words “whale” and “wheel” were mumbled.) Then Ellie took off, leaving Nora to get zombified.

Ellie says all this in hushed, even tones, admitting that torturing Nora was easier for her to do than she had expected. Still in a confessing mood — and in an especially vulnerable place, as Dina is washing the wounds on her bare back — Ellie finally tells Dina why Abby and her crew came after Joel in the first place. Dina’s icy reply? “We need to go home.”

After this opening, much of the first half of the episode follows Ellie and Jesse as they head out to find Tommy so that the Jackson contingent can get the heck out of Seattle. This is not a happy journey. Jesse, understandably, is in no mood for Ellie’s flippant attitude; and Ellie does not have much use for Jesse’s sanctimony.

The two have one brief warm moment together, when Jesse tells Ellie that he never loved Dina the way Ellie does. He reminisces about the one woman who did capture his heart, when she and her people were passing through Jackson. Then Jesse turns this wistful memory into a stern lecture about the importance of accepting one’s responsibility to the community. Ellie gets surly again.

This conversation takes place in a bookstore, where Ellie flips idly through a copy of “The Monster at the End of This Book.” Anyone who has read this beloved 1971 “Sesame Street” picture book should catch the extra layer of meaning. A classic piece of metafiction, the book has the muppet Grover directly addressing the readers throughout, warning us to stop turning pages in order to avoid the title monster. But because stories are meant to resolve, we keep pressing forward. And what do we find at the end? An embarrassed Grover, who was the monster all along.

It seems we are headed toward a similarly stark moment of self-awareness for Ellie. At the root of the dispute that she and Jesse have throughout their trek is the idea that Ellie is so used to being treated as special (for reasons Jesse still does not know) that she thinks only about her own immediate needs and desires, at the expense of the bigger picture.

We see that ourselves, when it comes to the Wolf-Seraphite war. While Ellie and Jessie are making their way through Seattle, we get a short scene between the Wolf leaders Isaac and Elise. They wonder where Abby and her crew have gone, and they discuss some big plan they are about to execute. It all sounds very ominous — and certainly dangerous for any ignorant civilian who might be about to stumble into a war zone. Yet when Ellie is scanning the horizon and sees a distant Ferris wheel (Nora’s “wheel”) next to an aquarium (Nora’s “whale”), she immediately abandons the hunt for Tommy, leaving a stunned Jesse to mutter, “Really hope you make it.”

The episode’s second half is a real trip into the darkness for Ellie. After a harrowing motorboat ride across choppy seas, in the middle of a ferocious storm, Ellie washes up on a beach outside a Seraphite camp, where she is dragged to a torch-lit noose. The noose is just like the one we saw in the Seattle park two episodes ago, where a Wolf was hung and disemboweled. Fortunately for Ellie, the Wolves are in the middle of their move against the Seraphites; so before she can be ritually slaughtered, Ellie’s tormentors are forced to flee.

Undaunted, Ellie gets back on her boat and motors to the aquarium, where she finds two more of the people who joined Abby in Jackson: Mel (Ariela Barer) and Owen (Spencer Lord). Again, Ellie is so focused on her goal that she pays very little attention to the conversation these two are having — an argument about Abby’s orders — before she walks in. Instead, she points her gun at Mel and Owen, demands to know where Abby is and makes a little speech about how she is better than them because she is not a murderer. Then Owen pulls a gun on Ellie, and she kills them both.

To be fair to Ellie, her shot is defensive. It just happens to pierce both Owen’s and Mel’s necks. Owen dies instantly. Mel — who is pregnant — takes a few minutes to die, using that time to ask Ellie to perform an emergency C-section. A shocked and horrified Ellie can’t even bring herself to make an incision. Nevertheless, as Mel passes, she tells Ellie what a good job she is doing.

None of this happens as Ellie had pictured it. After Tommy and Jesse find her at the aquarium and hustle her back to the Pinnacle Theater, Ellie seems resigned — at last — to leaving Seattle, with Abby still alive. But before they can regroup, a gun-toting Abby barges into the lobby, wounding Tommy, killing Jesse and aiming at Ellie.

Abby grumbles about the mistake she made in letting Ellie live, and then — as the screen cuts to black — we hear a shot. The season ends on a cliffhanger.

Well, sort of. In an epilogue that sets up Season 3, we get a glimpse at Abby’s daily life as a Wolf, living inside a sports stadium that has been repurposed into a combination fortress and farm. Before the credits roll, we see the words “Seattle Day 1” — the day Ellie and Dina arrived. It seems likely that at the start of Season 3 we will revisit those days, from Abby’s perspective.

This is not a bold prediction. Even I, a non-gamer, know that “The Last of Us Part II” was criticized by some fans for telling some of its story through the eyes of Abby, the enemy. Also, we have now seen enough of Seattle to know that there is a lot to dive into here regarding the intertwined histories of the Wolves and Seraphites. The world of this show remains richly populated, with much to explore.

But once we are all caught up with the Seattle story, then what? I remain unsure about that. Is Ellie still the hero, or is she just one element in a larger portrait of survival and human connection? It appears we will have to wait to find out. All we do know is that next season, at some point, we will likely wind back to the scene at the Pinnacle.

The pages, as they always do, will keep turning. A monster awaits.

Side Quests

I have to give one last round of applause to the “Last of Us” design and effects teams for how visually arresting this show is. The shot of the stadium at the end? The scene where Ellie is staring at the aquarium while standing on the crumbling floor of an office building? Breathtaking, all of it.
There is a nifty callback to Season 1 when Ellie asks Owen and Mel to point on a map — separately — to Abby’s location so she can see if they name the same place. Joel made this same demand of a kindly couple when he and Ellie were headed to Jackson.
Isaac is upset by Abby’s absence before the big attack on the Seraphites because she has been groomed to be one of the Wolves’ future leaders. Despite the Wolves’ cool name, Isaac complains that most of them “are very much sheep.” Meanwhile, adding to the mystery of the Seraphites: Ellie and Jessie see a painting of the group’s prophet that looks very different from the ones they have seen before, suggesting that the Seraphites may, at some point, have replaced their guru. So much back story still to reveal.
Jesse’s death is tragic for multiple reasons, including the fact that, before he died, he learned about Dina’s pregnancy. It also hurts that it comes after he and Ellie have had a moment of real reconciliation. When she asks him why he came to the aquarium, he says that for all her faults, “You would set the world on fire to save me.” She agrees she would. Seconds later, Jesse is gone.
Etched into the wall of the bookstore: “Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.”