‘The Last of Us’ Season 2 review

We’ve reached the end of The Last of Us Season 2 and it’s been a rollercoaster of emotions. The finale covered a large section of the game in about 40 minutes of runtime, which both helped and hurt the plot. Let’s break down what happened in the finale and what it means for the next season and beyond.

The episode starts by catching up with a wounded Dina and Jesse back at the theater trying to get the arrow out of her leg. Jesse pulls it out safely but picks up on a few tells that Dina is hiding something from him. Ellie arrives back at the theater and immediately goes to check on Dina. The two talk as Dina tends to Ellie’s wounds and Ellie reveals the truth about what Joel did to make Abby and her group so angry. This moment shifts the relationship between Dina and Ellie. Ellie also reveals the brutal lengths she went through to get information out of Nora at the end of episode five. The information being the words “wheel” and “whale”, which makes no sense…yet.

The next day, Ellie and Jesse prepare to go out and find Tommy so they can get Dina and take everyone home. This mission is intense and sees Ellie and Jesse both expressing their strong feelings for Dina and (after he figures it out on his own) the pregnancy. They come across a young Scar who is being hunted by several WLF’s. Ellie wants to step in and stop them, but Jesse points out “this isn’t our war”. This causes a fight between Jesse and Ellie that ends in a split up: Jesse goes to find Tommy and Ellie, having figured out that Nora’s intel was referring to the aquarium, heads off to confront Abby.

We briefly check in with Issac and the WLF army as they prepare for some sort of big assault, but the absence of Abby and her group is worrying them. We then see Ellie making her way to the dock in the heavy rain and lightning so she can take a boat to the aquarium. She witnesses a fleet of WLF boats pass by on their way to an island off the coast as she makes her way to the boat. The water turns out to be to rough and causes Ellie to crash her boat and wash up on a shore. She is immediately taken by a group of Scars who string her up, ready to kill her until explosions are heard in the distance, presumably from the WLF attack.

Ellie finds another boat and makes it to the aquarium. She immediately runs into two of Abby’s people: Owen and Mel. After a short standoff, Ellie is forced to shoot Owen and accidentally shoots Mel, who reveals she’s pregnant. As Mel attempts to walk Ellie through how to get the baby out of her before it’s too late, Ellie can’t figure it out and she dies. Of all the dark moments that Ellie has been part of, this is the darkest. Tommy and Jesse arrive at the aquarium and take Ellie back to the theater. They regroup and Ellie and Jesse put aside their differences and prepare to return home to Jackson. They hear a struggle and race to the lobby where they find Abby who immediately kills Jesse and hold Ellie and Tommy at gunpoint.

The scene ends with Abby telling Ellie that she wasted her chance at life as the screen goes black…but that’s not the end. The episode ends with Abby living in a camp built inside a football stadium, and the time stamp appears “Seattle, Day One” indicating next season will focus on Abby’s story.

This episode covered some of the most talked about moments from the game. The lengths of Ellie’s thirst for revenge with Owen and Mel, the death of Jesse, the switch of perspective from Ellie to Abby. These were moments that the player either thought “I’m 100% in now” or “What are they thinking?”. These moments are important to the story and deserved a slow and thoughtful unfolding as the game did.

The show had seven 45-minute episodes to tell a large section of the game. This decision worked for the first season where they managed to cover the entire first game in a single nine-episode season, but the first game is also about half as dense as its sequel. This seven-episode run was a little too short to do this part of the story justice and caused the whole season to feel rushed, especially this episode.

As far as the episode’s faithfulness to the game, there were some truly well-done moments throughout. This has been the show’s one consistent strength, pulling scenes and moments from the game with almost pinpoint accuracy. Along with this, they also manage to add new aspects to these original scenes that (most of the time) improve them. Changing Mel’s death scene to include Mel asking Ellie to cut the baby out of her was so unexpected but it made the scene even more of a gut punch than it already was in the game. Also, the slow buildup of Issac and his history have made the WLF’s feel more threatening and ominous.

The Last of Us Season 2 had a much different feel to it compared to its predecessor. While the first season focused on the father/daughter relationship and feelings of hope and human connection, this season focused on much more negative things like revenge, grief, conflict and suffering. If last season was about establishing a base of characters, this season was about expanding that character base with new and layered characters while building up our existing ones.

While the story may have felt a bit rushed this time around, the character work has been truly great and getting to know characters like Issac, Dina and Jesse more intimately and getting to know new characters like Gail (played beautifully by Catherine O’Hara). Even with the flaws, it was still an enjoyable season of television that stuck pretty close to the source material.

Despite the rushed finale, The Last of Us Season 2 as a whole was solid overall. Adapting this game was always going to be a challenge compared to the first game due to it’s length, story density and the mixed reception the game got upon release. And with the next season being Abby’s point of view, who knows what audiences will say. But, I can tell you from the eyes of a fan of both games that while I may not have loved how they handled this season finale, I did overall enjoy this season as a whole and I’m optimistic about next season.

The Last of Us Season 2 is available now on HBO Max. 

Tyler Carlsen

From a young age, Tyler has been amazed by filmmaking and writing. When he’s not watching movies in theaters, he also enjoys playing video games and binging one of the numerous shows he’s watching at any given moment. Working with The Young Folks was a highlight of his writing career and he is looking forward to this new adventure with In Between Drafts!