‘The Last of Us’ Bosses on Ellie’s Tragic Revenge Quest Gone Wrong and What’s Next After That Shocking Season 2 Finale Death

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Last of Us Season 2, Episode 7, “Convergence.”]

The Last of Us Season 2 came to a startling conclusion in its finale episode as Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) came face-to-face in the closing moments, but plenty of bloodshed and heartbreak occurred in the moments in between their revenge-driven reunion.

After she reunited with Dina (Isabela Merced) and Jesse (Young Mazino), Ellie resolved to return to Jackson and set out with Jesse to search for Tommy (Gabriel Luna), who had joined him on the journey to Seattle. As they realized how dangerous Seattle was, as they witnessed WLF soldiers attack a Seraphite, Ellie and Jesse hunkered down at the bookstore where he and Tommy had camped before Jesse found Ellie and Dina.

With Tommy nowhere in sight, the duo’s time spent together was disrupted by fighting in the street. But before they went to check if it was Tommy involved in the gunfire, Ellie noticed the aquarium in the distance resembled a clue about a “whale wheel” Nora (Tati Gabrielle) had shared before she was overcome by spores in the hospital’s basement.

As Ellie realized Abby was within reach, she resolved to move forward with her revenge mission, against Jesse’s wishes, and the pair ultimately parted ways. On Ellie’s journey to the aquarium, she was briefly held hostage by Seraphites who were thankfully distracted from gutting her when an alarm sounded with WLF closing in.

HBO

Left behind, she managed to escape and continue her journey across the water. Once she infiltrated the aquarium, she found Mel (Ariela Barer) and Owen (Spencer Lord) in conversation. She threatened the pair to point her in the direction of Abby, even citing a method previously used by Joel (Pedro Pascal) in Season 1 by telling them to point to Abby’s location on the map, and it had to match.

While it seemed as though they’d comply, Owen reached for a gun, and Ellie fired, killing the man with a shot to the neck, but the bullet went through him, and also left Mel bleeding out. As she realized the severity of her wounds, a largely pregnant Mel begged Ellie to cut the baby out of her, to let the child have a chance at life.

Ellie was so overcome with the predicament that she was unable to complete the task as Mel attempted to talk her through the procedure with her dying breaths. As Ellie began to unravel emotionally, Tommy and Jesse found her, and together they returned to the theater they’d set up as their own base camp.

It was agreed that they’d return to Jackson with Ellie having to accept that Abby would go free. It was a tough pill to swallow, but one Ellie would go along with to preserve her found family. As she and Jesse went to exit the performance area of the theater, upon hearing gunfire in the lobby where Tommy and Dina were, Jesse received a fatal shot to the head from Abby, who had hunted them down.

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“I let you live and you wasted it,” Abby said with so much emotion before she went to pull the gun on Ellie, the sound of a shot fired before the screen went black. But that wasn’t the end, as the show flashed back to Day 1 in Seattle, but now we’ve begun to see it from Abby’s perspective.

The shocking and tragic nature of Season 2’s end was further highlighted by the seeming fact that Ellie had begun to loosen her grip on the need for revenge, but do series creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann agree with that perception? When TV Insider participated in a press conference with the duo, we posed the question, Ellie’s been driven by her need for revenge, does that fully disappear when she killed Mel and Owen?

“If you remove the word ‘fully,’ I would agree with that statement,” Drukmann responded. “But there is an obsession there that, in our conversations, the metaphor has always been drug addiction. That you can get over it, and you can release, and the question is, can she fully get over it?”

“Yeah, it’s one of the things I have to remind myself of,” Mazin began to add. “Because… as Ellie moves through Seattle, her focus is so clearly on Abby. Even that moment when Dina tells her their names, Abby is the name she repeats because Abby is the one who did it. That makes sense. But in that horrible scene where Joel dies, Ellie says, ‘you’re all going to effin’ die,’ not ‘Abby, you’re going to die,’” Mazin further pointed out.

Liane Hentscher / HBO

“And there is something kind of prophetic about that, it’s almost as if she put that hex out there that she could no longer control. And I think it’s clear to her that Mel didn’t deserve to die,” Mazin continued. “Mel didn’t hurt her, Mel didn’t hold her down, Mel didn’t hurt Joel, and we saw even more than that. Before Ellie shows up in the room, Mel is trying to help Dina, is horrified by what Abby is doing, and tries to stop it, but fails, which is her own shame.”

As Mazin further noted, “Ellie says ‘So, she gets to live?’” about Abby, “and Tommy says, ‘Make your peace with that,’ and she says, ‘I guess I’ll have to.’ That’s interesting because what if something changes and you don’t have to, now what? I don’t think the story’s over,” Mazin concluded.

Meanwhile, Jesse’s shocking death has barely had time to register with viewers, but how will it register with Ellie and Dina after the evolution of their Season 2 romance? “I mean, how could it not have a drastic impact, especially when he’s the father of this baby, but also a very close friend, a former romantic partner. Yeah, it’s going to mean a whole lot.

“I mean, how could it not have a drastic impact, especially when he’s the father of this baby,” Druckmann told reporters. “But also a very close friend, a former romantic partner… Yeah, it’s going to mean a whole lot.”

“It’s an interesting situation because Jesse dies in part because of Ellie. But Ellie doesn’t pull the trigger; Abby does,” Mazin added. “And we invested quite a bit, going all the way back to Episode 1, the first time Joel looks up and says, ‘Hey, kiddo,’ it’s not to Ellie, it’s to Dina, that’s how we introduce her. And we understand that Dina has this great relationship with Joel. He talks about it with Gail (Catherine O’Hara), that it’s like she’s my kid or something. Dina loves Joel, and Dina has none of the baggage that Ellie has [with him]. She doesn’t know about the things that went on; she just met this nice guy who’s a contractor. And she was there when Joel died. She had to suffer along with him, and she has gone in pursuit of Abby out of a sense of justice for that.”

“So, now the question is, who does she blame? And I’m a big believer that once you start asking, who do I blame, you’re already down the wrong path,” Mazin said. “So, we know that once Ellie gave her this information about… what Joel did… it changes things for her. Jesse’s death is going to change things for her, but how we play that out? We have to wait and see,” Mazin teased.

An added layer to all this, Druckmann pointed out, was, “If [Dina]’s self-reflecting, she was complicit in Ellie coming [to Seattle].”

Viewers will have to wait until Season 3 arrives to see which direction Druckmann and Mazin take the video game-inspired series. In the meantime, let us know what you thought of Season 2’s finale in the comments below, and stay tuned for Season 3 details as they are revealed.

The Last of Us, Season 3 Premiere, TBA, HBO and HBO Max