“I let you live. And you wasted it.”
In the final minutes of the Season 2 finale of The Last of Us, Abby delivers this disdainful reproach to Ellie, right before the screen cuts to black as she fires her gun. After killing Joel in Episode 2, Kaitlyn Dever’s Abby Anderson disappeared from the series, retreating into the background as Ellie began her revenge tour through Seattle. Abby remains absent for the vast majority of the finale as well, returning only for a cruel closing sequence in which she shoots Jesse in the head, holds Tommy at gunpoint, and seemingly shoots Ellie, too, in quick succession. She previously spared Ellie’s life at the lodge just outside of Jackson. And now, three of her friends are dead as a direct result of her mercy.
“Convergence,” directed by Nina Lopez-Corrado and written by Neil Druckmann, Halley Gross, and Craig Mazin, is another brutal, bloody season finale for The Last of Us. Not unlike Season 1’s conclusion, “Convergence” packs a lot into a gripping episode that potentially could have benefited from a longer running time, with the capper to the brisk, seven-episode season coming in at just under 50 minutes. Lives are lost, truths are revealed, and the war between the WLF and the Seraphites reaches its boiling point. Amid all the chaos, The Last of Us highlights the most crucial theme of the season, if not the entire series: Revenge comes at a price.
Before we get back to the climactic reunion between Ellie and Abby, let’s break down what precedes their showdown during an eventful third day in Seattle. After last week’s flashback episode reminded viewers of the relationship—and future—that Ellie lost when Abby killed Joel, “Convergence” features a single-minded Ellie, whose purpose is clearer than ever. As she explains to Dina just before revealing what Joel did to Abby and the Fireflies, Ellie forced Nora to give her Abby’s location—with Nora uttering only the words “whale” and “wheel”—before simply letting the infection take hold of her. “I thought it would be harder to do,” she says while staring blankly into the distance. “But it wasn’t. It was easy. I just kept hurting her.”
The more time Ellie and Dina spend in Seattle, the more fixated Ellie becomes on making Abby pay for what she did to Joel—no matter how much danger it puts Ellie or her friends in. At the same time, Ellie’s sense of morality is growing increasingly murky—perhaps to herself as much as the audience—as she retains remnants of her savior complex while trying her best to approach key decisions as she believes Joel would. When Ellie and Jesse leave a recovering Dina behind at the theater to search for Tommy, Ellie nearly jeopardizes their safety to save a young Seraphite from a pack of Wolves.
Not long after Jesse tricks Ellie into confirming Dina’s pregnancy, which raises the stakes of his survival as a suddenly expectant father, Ellie tries to intervene as several WLF soldiers prepare to execute the Seraphite. But Jesse stops her. “Ellie, these people are shooting each other, lynching each other, ripping each other’s guts out,” he says. “Even the kids. I am not dying out here. Not for any of them. This is not our war.”
As a backdrop to the vicious cycle of violence—and revenge—that Abby and Ellie have perpetuated across this season, the WLF and the Seraphites continue to commit horrific acts against each other. Jesse’s point is well taken, especially in this instance, where it makes no sense for the ever-brash Ellie to risk their lives while they’re well outnumbered. Yet their moral debate doesn’t end there.
Later, Ellie and Jesse determine the location of a mystery sniper who’s attacking the WLF—and who has to be Tommy. But at the exact same time, Ellie spots an aquarium in the distance that features a Ferris wheel and whale mural, and she realizes what Nora’s clues were referring to. Ellie tries to convince Jesse to leave Tommy behind to pursue Abby, and amid their ensuing argument, Jesse reveals that he voted against the Jackson council’s decision to send a posse after Abby and her crew. “Ellie, it wasn’t in the best interest of the community,” Jesse explains.
“Fuck the community!” Ellie yells in response. “All you do is talk about the fucking community. You hypocrite. You think you’re good and I’m bad? You let a kid die today, Jesse. Because why? He wasn’t in your community? Let me tell you about my community. My community was beaten to death in front of me while I was forced to fucking watch.”
Although the dramatic exchange is a contrived way to spotlight it, Ellie’s pointed outburst is essentially the show’s thesis statement on what continues to tear this dying world apart, possibly even more than the infected: tribalism. Dating back to the first season, groups like Kathleen’s raiders in Kansas City and David’s cannibals in Colorado have demonstrated how insular communities across the country attempt to secure the future for their own people, even—or perhaps especially—if it’s at the expense of others. That concept has become even more pronounced in Season 2 as the WLF and Seraphites wage war against each other. And, to Ellie’s point, Jackson isn’t any different. (Well, aside from its relative lack of ritualistic religious executions.)
With that said, Ellie’s argument feels pretty flimsy on several levels—and The Last of Us goes out of its way to quickly manufacture another confrontation with the Seraphites to prove Jesse’s point. After Ellie and Jesse go their separate ways, Ellie steals a WLF skiff and traverses the stormy waters to reach the aquarium, but she gets hit by a massive wave. When she crashes on the shore of a nearby island, she finds an even younger Seraphite kid, who doesn’t hesitate to give her up to be hanged and gutted. However, just before the Seraphites kill Ellie, they hear a warning of the imminent attack on their village, and they simply leave her behind. As Ellie finds her boat to resume her journey, she spots explosions in the distance. She was saved by the same war that Jesse urged her to stay out of.
Earlier in the episode, Jeffrey Wright’s Isaac, the leader of the WLF, returned for a scene with Elise Park, the WLF officer who was forced to sacrifice her son in the Cordyceps-infested hospital basement in Episode 5. Elise informs Isaac of final preparations for the attack and references the massive storm that they’re using to cover it. While they avoid speaking about any specifics of their plan, it’s clear that this battle could be all or nothing for the WLF, and Isaac is prepared to die in it. And yet, he’s more concerned about Abby's whereabouts, as one of his best soldiers—and his potential successor to lead the WLF—has gone AWOL at the most crucial moment.
The WLF’s attack on the Seraphites’ island brings Season 2 full circle, with Ellie’s current revenge quest mirroring the one that Abby carried out in Jackson. Just as Abby took advantage of a snowstorm and an accompanying infected horde to find and kill Joel, Ellie is now using the cover of another fateful weather incident and battle to go after Abby. But first, she needs to go through Owen and Mel.
In The Last of Us Part II, Ellie’s killing of Owen and Mel is one of the most harrowing sequences in the entire game—and the HBO series makes it even more heartbreaking. When Ellie arrives at the aquarium, Owen and Mel are in the midst of an argument that revolves around Abby. Ellie steps out of the shadows, wielding her gun, and employs an old interrogation trick that Joel used when attempting to extract a location from two captives: She orders them to point to where Abby is on a map so she can check their answers against each other. But Owen grabs his gun to shoot her instead, and Ellie fires her weapon in turn. She kills Owen instantly while accidentally nicking Mel’s neck in the process. It’s only after Mel collapses to the floor and unzips her jacket to reveal the bulge in her belly that Ellie realizes that she’s pregnant, just one day after learning that Dina is expecting a child, too.
While blood spills out of her neck, Mel begs Ellie to bring a knife over and tries to talk her through an emergency C-section. Within seconds, Ellie goes from being Mel’s interrogator to her makeshift obstetrician, and she desperately tries to follow Mel’s instructions to deliver her baby. But she’s too afraid to cut into Mel’s stomach, and in too much shock, to act. And so Mel dies along with her unborn child, using her final words to ask, “Is it out?”
It’s a devastating, unforgivable act, even if it was an accident—and Ellie is thoroughly shaken by it. Although she told Dina how easy it was to hurt Nora, Ellie is still struggling to retain her humanity as she loses herself (on the heels of losing Joel). All she can do is sit on the floor next to Mel’s and Owen’s bodies until Tommy and Jesse arrive to take her back to the theater.
As tragic as Abby’s friends’ deaths are, the scene isn’t even the episode’s last moment of distress. Shortly after Ellie, Tommy, and Jesse reunite with Dina at the theater, they get a visit from a surprise guest: Abby herself. When Ellie and Jesse hear a struggle in another room, they rush out of the auditorium, and Jesse gets shot in the face as soon as they open the door. With Abby holding Tommy at gunpoint, Ellie tosses her pistol aside and faces Joel’s killer at last, placing her fate into Abby’s hands again.
“You,” Abby says, as she quickly recognizes Ellie.
“Just let him go,” Ellie replies, with tears streaming down her face.
“He killed my friends,” Abby continues.
“No, I did,” Ellie says. “I was looking for you. I didn’t mean to hurt them. I know why you killed Joel. He did what he did to save me. I’m the one that you want.”
After Abby reminds Ellie of her original mercy, she points and fires her gun in Ellie’s direction before the episode seemingly comes to an end. It’s an excruciating cliff-hanger, except that another scene follows. Much like the previous two episodes, “Convergence” finishes with a brief tease of what’s coming next on The Last of Us. But instead of having to wait only a week for that subsequent episode to arrive, viewers will have to hold off until Season 3 is released, whenever that may be.
The final scene features Abby, who’s abruptly woken up by Manny to go meet with Isaac. As she exits the building and the skies open up, we see the WLF’s impressive operation in the heart of a repurposed stadium. And finally, as the music intensifies, text flashes across the screen to signify our forthcoming trip back in time: “Seattle Day One.”
The end of “Convergence” establishes the imminent shift in perspective that awaits in Season 3, as The Last of Us is primed to become Abby’s story. If the HBO series follows the narrative trajectory of its source material, as it appears to be doing, Season 3 will likely be structured around the same three days in Seattle that Season 2 focused on, but from Abby’s point of view.
As exciting as the season finale is in many ways, it also makes for a challenging—and somewhat frustrating—viewing experience due to how much information is purposefully withheld and how long it’s been since we’ve seen some of these characters. Isaac and Elise allude to the WLF’s pivotal attack on the Seraphites, and they refer to how Abby and her friends (except for Manny) have all gone missing, yet we don’t get to see any of the action unfold on-screen. As the ending of the episode suggests, however, all of that context will come eventually. When it does, it will surely cast the events of this finale in a new light—just not until next season. Although the HBO series is remaining faithful to its source material in how it’s attempting to pace its story, the amount of time it will now take for an eventual payoff to come in Season 3 will require some extra patience from its audience.
The Last of Us Season 2 had some phenomenal moments, including a remarkable hour of television in its shocking second episode. It remains one of the great shows on TV thanks to its stunning production design, prosthetics, practical effects, and star-studded cast, along with its devastating exploration of love—and how dangerous it can be. But Season 2 also shows the pitfalls of adapting the thornier source material of Part II. According to Mazin, Season 3 may afford the creative team the opportunity to space out the narrative across more episodes than it could in Season 2. And instead of rushing to conclude the story in the next batch of episodes, the showrunners might even extend it to a Season 4.
“There’s a decent chance that Season 3 will be longer than Season 2, just because the manner of that narrative and the opportunities it affords us are a little different,” Mazin told Collider. “The thing about Joel’s death is that it’s so impactful. It’s such a narrative nuclear bomb that it’s hard to wander away from it. We can’t really take a break and move off to the side and do a Bill and Frank story. I’m not sure that will necessarily be true for Season 3. … But certainly, there’s no way to complete this narrative in a third season. Hopefully, we’ll earn our keep enough to come back and finish it in a fourth.”
As The Last of Us moves into a new chapter, Joel may be gone, but there’s still a tremendous amount of rich narrative ground left to cover—and potentially expand. Because even after all the lives that Ellie and Abby have already stolen from each other, and the pain they’ve caused those closest to them, their rivalry isn’t over yet.
