‘The Last of Us’ Season 2, Episode 6 Recap: Past Days
In the season’s penultimate installment, a trip back in time
The first season of The Last of Us included two episodes that primarily featured flashbacks: “Long, Long Time,” which chronicled Bill and Frank’s postapocalyptic love story; and “Left Behind,” which centered on Ellie and Riley and the day that they were both bitten. Each of these episodes was a detour from Joel and Ellie’s journey to the west, interrupting the main story line of the season to provide a reflection of the duo’s evolving dynamic. These echoes of the past helped convey what was at stake for them in the present, with Joel gaining another daughter to love—and fear losing—and Ellie finding someone who would never abandon her.
The first and only flashback episode in The Last of Us Season 2 arrived on Sunday: “The Price,” which was directed by Neil Druckmann and written by Druckmann, Halley Gross, and Craig Mazin. But unlike its Season 1 counterparts, Episode 6 doesn’t exactly return to the past to illustrate what’s at stake in the present. Instead, “The Price” illuminates Ellie’s ongoing, troubling evolution by showing the life—and the person—she lost and what her future could have been had Abby not robbed her of it.
After Joel’s death in Episode 2, the beloved contractor made his presence felt from beyond the grave in “The Price.” Following the disturbing conclusion to last week’s installment, in which Ellie brutally beat Nora to extract information on Abby’s location, Episode 6 takes a step back to fill in some crucial narrative gaps. It finally reveals what transpired between Joel and Ellie during the five-year time jump between the ending of Season 1 and the start of Season 2, and how their relationship dissolved so dramatically. In doing so, The Last of Us allows the audience to better understand Ellie’s current struggles. But it also goes a step further to delve deeper into the core of Joel’s character.
“The Price” begins 20 years before the Cordyceps outbreak in Austin, Texas. The cold open is set in Joel and Tommy’s home during the aftermath of an incident in which young Tommy (David Miranda) was buying drugs from another kid when the dealer tried to rip him off. Joel (Andrew Diaz) happened to be walking by, and he stepped in to defend his brother, beating the other kid until the police arrived. Despite Tommy’s role in inciting this confrontation, Joel is prepared to take the blame—and physical punishment—when their father, a policeman himself, returns that night.
The scene is an early example of who Joel always was: a protector, ever inclined to defend his loved ones through the use of violence. But the flashback lesson is more than that. When Joel’s father (Tony Dalton) arrives home in his patrol car, Joel braces himself for another beating. Although the elder Miller is initially angry with Joel, once he cuts through Joel’s lies and sees that his son is just trying to protect his brother from the inevitable abuse of his belt, he softens his tone—and even brings over a pair of beers for them to drink together. He proceeds to tell Joel a story about a time from his childhood when his own father hit him so hard that he had to have his mouth wired shut for two months.
“If you know what it feels like, then why?” Joel asks in response.
“That’s not why I’m telling you this,” Joel’s father replies, as tears begin to swell in his eyes. “OK, yeah, I’ve hit you. And I’ve hit Tommy. But never like that. Not even close. I mean, maybe I go too far. I don’t know, I just … I don’t know. But I’m doing a little better than my father did. And, you know, when it’s your turn, I hope you do a little better than me.”
The cold open is an unexpected window into Joel’s past that helps establish “The Price” as an episode not just about Joel and Ellie’s relationship but also about fatherhood. The show shifts back to Joel’s perspective, for the most part, as he fully embraces his second chance at being a father to Ellie. Starting two months after their initial return to Jackson, “The Price” is told primarily in one-year intervals, with each extended sequence falling on Ellie’s birthday.
At first, the 15-year-old Ellie is about as joyful and childlike as she was at the outset of her traumatic cross-country trip with Joel in Season 1, if not more so. Meanwhile, Joel’s earnestness as a parent shines through. He goes above and beyond to make his adopted daughter happy in a world where that feeling is a fleeting luxury. But with each successive birthday, what’s left of Ellie’s blissful innocence fades as, like most teenagers, she begins to wonder about her place in the world. The crucial difference between Ellie and other kids her age is that she thought she already knew what her greater purpose in life was, because Marlene and her Fireflies had seeded it in her mind: to use her immunity to the Cordyceps fungus to provide a cure for humanity. But for reasons still unknown to her, that destiny was never realized.
For Ellie’s 15th birthday, Joel crafts a guitar for her, commissions a (misspelled) cake from Seth, and even sings her a song: “Future Days,” as previewed by an older, more somber Ellie in last week’s episode. (Well, Pedro Pascal speaks through his performance as much as he sings it, but it’s a tender moment all the same.) In a faithful re-creation of a flashback from the video game, Joel then takes Ellie to a museum for her next birthday. The show’s production design is stunning, as usual, as the HBO series brings us through this awe-inspiring relic of the old world, now tinged with overgrown vegetation. Again, Joel goes to tremendous lengths to please Ellie, and we get a glimpse of this peaceful, wonderful life that they’ve built together under extraordinary circumstances.
And yet, at the end of this birthday celebration, Ellie sees fireflies in the distance as they’re leaving the museum, and she’s reminded of what she—along with the rest of humanity—has lost. After this near-perfect day, Ellie and Joel’s relationship slowly starts to unravel. By Ellie’s 17th birthday, she’s entered her rebellious teenage years, and Joel barges into her bedroom with another cake in hand as she’s fooling around with Kat. “So all the teenage shit all at once, huh?” Joel asks, spotting Ellie’s freshly inked tattoo and a still-lit joint. “Drugs and tattoos and sex and experimenting with girls?”
The scene is Joel’s introduction to Ellie’s sexuality, and he doesn’t respond to it gracefully at all. Although they’re eventually able to resolve their immediate tension by moving Ellie into the garage to allow her to have more space, the underlying issue beneath Ellie’s familiar teenage angst emerges two years later.
For Ellie’s 19th birthday, Joel gifts her the chance to join him for her first patrol. Despite the ever-protective father choosing an easy route for his adopted daughter, they’re called to action when Jackson radios in to inform them that another patrol group has encountered infected. When they arrive at the scene, they discover that Eugene (Joe Pantoliano) has been bitten.
What follows is a tragic end for Gail’s husband, as Eugene pleads for Joel to let him return to Jackson so that he can say goodbye to his wife, only for Joel to shoot him on a nearby cliff instead. At this point, Ellie still has some of her persistent desire—even need—to save others from the plague she’s immune to. Although there isn’t much she can do for Eugene in this instance, she tries her best to convince Joel to satisfy Eugene’s dying wish. But Joel lies to and manipulates her, sending her off to get their horses to buy himself enough time to kill Eugene.
Before this betrayal, this birthday sequence began with Ellie practicing how she would finally ask Joel again about what really happened to the Fireflies at the Salt Lake City hospital, just as she did at the end of Season 1. Ellie isn’t present for the exact moment that Joel shoots Eugene, so she doesn’t see the small act of kindness that Joel provides during the infected man’s final moments: Joel helps Eugene visualize Gail’s face and find a sliver of peace in the face of his imminent death. It might not be much, yet Joel still demonstrates a morsel of empathy that was completely absent when he massacred the Fireflies. However, for Ellie, the way that Joel lies to her with such ease all but confirms what she already suspected about his flimsy explanation for what occurred in Salt Lake City.
Much like the introduction of Joel’s father at the start of “The Price,” Eugene’s death is an invention of the TV show, as The Last of Us continues to create narrative avenues to expand on the game’s characters and story. How it all plays out is a microcosm of the more significant chain of events that culminated in Joel and Ellie’s return to Jackson without a cure for the Cordyceps infection, when Joel swore to Ellie that the Fireflies were hit by raiders and that there were “dozens” of other people who were immune.
Instead of standing by as Joel lies to a mourning Gail and Tommy back in Jackson, Ellie interjects and explains what really happened to Eugene, sacrificing the more convenient story that could’ve spared Gail some pain in favor of the cold, harsh truth. “You swore,” Ellie says to Joel through angry tears. Although it seems as if she’s referring to Eugene, it’s clear enough that Ellie is really speaking about what went down in Salt Lake City.
The final flashback sequence occurs nine months later, as The Last of Us returns to New Year’s Eve in Jackson. After retelling the night of the dance from Joel’s perspective, “The Price” reveals a pivotal conversation that occurred between Joel and Ellie in the aftermath of the messy Seth incident. They don’t know it, but this will be the last time that they ever speak to each other, with Joel’s demise awaiting him the very next day. And they just so happen to spend it discussing the most important topic they could’ve chosen: what really happened with the Fireflies in Salt Lake City.
Ellie does what she couldn’t bring herself to do on her most recent birthday and confronts Joel about finally revealing the truth. Despite knowing that their already fractured relationship may never recover from it, Joel confesses to all the horrific things he did, yet he still stands by his decisions. “Making a cure would’ve killed you,” Joel explains to Ellie.
“Then I was supposed to die,” she replies, tearfully. “That was my purpose. My life would’ve fucking mattered! But you took that from me! You took it from everyone.”
“Yes,” Joel continues. “And I’ll pay the price, because you’re gonna turn away from me. But if somehow I had a second chance at that moment … I would do it all over again.”
“Because you’re selfish,” says Ellie.
“Because I love you,” Joel replies. “In a way you … you can’t understand. Maybe you never will. But if that day should come, if you should ever have one of your own, well, then … I hope you do a little better than me.”
In his final act as Ellie’s adoptive dad, Joel channels his own father as he admits to his shortcomings as a parent. This moment, which brings the episode full circle by recalling the cold open, might be a bit too neat, yet the symmetry of the scenes resonates on an emotional level, thanks in large part to Pascal’s and Dalton’s impactful performances. Joel does terrible things out of his love for Ellie, clinging to his greatest strength—and flaw—to protect the person he loves most in the world. That might not make him a bad parent, but his decision has cost every kid who will grow up in this postapocalyptic society the chance to live without fear of becoming infected. And, just as he predicted, he’s paid the price for it—just not quite as he expected.
“I don’t think I can forgive you for this,” Ellie says at the end of their conversation. “But I would like to try.”
Perhaps the most tragic part of their final talk is the fact that, with the truth revealed, they were finally on a path to healing. Although we don’t know for certain that Ellie would’ve made peace with what Joel did, and the greater purpose he stole from her, Abby prevented Ellie from even having the opportunity. As the season finale approaches next week, the emotions brewing in Ellie as she pursues her new calling have become clearer. Abby has already paid a price for what she did to Joel, with Nora becoming the first victim of Ellie’s revenge tour. What remains to be seen is how much more she’ll have to lose, and what Ellie herself will have to give up, as the show’s cycle of violence continues.
