After seven gripping episodes and hundreds (thousands?) of ravenous zombies, The Last of Us Season 2 has come to an end. How did the show do with its second season finale? How has the loss of Joel warped our perception of the series? And what should we make of that tense, cut-to-black cliff-hanger? The answers to those questions, and more, below:
1. What is your tweet-length review of the Last of Us Season 2 finale?
Daniel Chin: Jesse died so the Knicks’ playoff hopes could live. What a Sunday night on Max HBO Max.
Justin Charity: Abby in the game is built like Marisa from Street Fighter 6. Abby in the show is built like a random zoomer. Joel getting bodied by Amy Antsler from Booksmart is nasty work. This is my main complaint.
Claire McNear: There’s another episode coming next week featuring the battle we just spent an hour building up to, right? Right??
Ben Lindbergh: Snoopy did it first—and it was kind of a cliché even then.
2. What was the best moment of the episode?
Chin: When Ellie kills Owen and Mel in the aquarium. It’s even more devastating in the TV show than it is in the video game. Mel appealing to Ellie’s humanity to save her child in her dying moments, and Ellie being too shocked to even react, is heartbreaking. And it’ll be interesting to see how this incident changes Ellie, and maybe even her relationship with Dina.
Lindbergh: Mel’s death was suitably harrowing—even more so than the video game version. Ellie’s revenge quest is bad and she should feel bad.
McNear: The show is most effective when it zeroes in on people just trying to live their lives in spite of the hellscape around them. That’s been true for Ellie and Dina throughout their time in Seattle. (Wolves? Scars? Who cares? We’re hunting Abby.) And that was especially the case in the finale as Ellie continued her search while Seattle broke into sectarian conflict around her. Imagine getting within 30 seconds of being hanged and then immediately turning tail and jumping back in a boat to carry on with the bloodlust. Sensational stuff.
Charity: I’ll do you one better and extend this to the whole season: Pedro Pascal will obviously win an Emmy, Oscar, Grammy, and Tony for his sad nodding on that damn porch.
Surrey: Not to be a hater, but it’s probably when Jesse speaks on behalf of the audience when he grows tired of Ellie’s bullshit. Someone had to say it.
3. What was your least favorite part?
McNear: Where my seasick homies at? No more boats on rough seas, thanks!
Charity: I strongly dislike the baby-mama drama of the second game, and this dislike extends to the relevant episodes of this season, including the finale.
Surrey: It’s bothering me that we still know next to nothing about the conflict between the Wolves and the Seraphites? And that The Last of Us had to gall to end on a cliff-hanger where Ellie is shot at, even though she’s definitely not going to die?
Lindbergh: Either Ellie’s abrupt, confusing encounter with the Seraphites, or Jesse insisting—in separate scenes—“I can’t die” and “I am not dying out here.” He essentially said, “Got me a future, partner,” just before his fatal shooting. MENDOZAAA! I mean, ABBYYY!
Chin: Ellie’s near execution by the Seraphites. The scene felt like a wasted few minutes in what was already a brisk season finale. Considering that the Scars simply left Ellie behind in the end, the detour didn’t do much beyond providing a little more context on the WLF’s attack on the Seraphites’ island and reaffirming Jesse’s point that this war between the two factions isn’t their concern.
4. That cliff-hanger between Ellie and Abby and the subsequent time jump back to “Seattle Day One” … what’s your initial reaction?
Charity: Damn, so we’re really doing this. Welcome to the cursed video game discourse of 2020.
McNear: Can I live in the Seahawks stadium? Seems great!
Lindbergh: For gamers, it wasn’t unexpected, but it sure hit harder the first time around, when we still didn’t know who Abby was or what she wanted. Given that Season 3 probably won’t come out for another two years—if you were hoping that the series’ early renewal might expedite its return, don’t count on it—The Last of Us is asking its audience to dangle on that cliff for an awfully long time. In light of the extended break between seasons, the absence of Pedro Pascal, the increasingly bleak tone, the prospect of reliving Season 2’s timeframe from a less familiar perspective than Ellie’s, and the knowledge that this saga won’t resolve itself in three seasons, I’d be surprised if the show’s audience doesn’t dwindle.
Chin: I like the episode’s true cliff-hanger of Ellie and Abby in the theater, but showing Abby as the series returns to “Seattle Day One” felt a little unnecessary to me. The ending was very similar to how the previous two episodes concluded, with abrupt time jumps that tease what’s coming next. But it’ll be a long time until we return to the world of The Last of Us, and a little bit of mystery doesn’t hurt—the lack of it has been a criticism of mine throughout this season. The bolder (and possibly even more frustrating) move would have been to just end the season with Ellie staring down the barrel of Abby’s gun.
Surrey: The cliff-hanger insults the audience’s intelligence; the show hasn’t done nearly enough legwork to make me care about what’s happening in Seattle. (No shade to present-day Seattle; love its seafood.)
5. How did you feel about Season 2 as a whole? Does the absence of Pedro Pascal affect how you view the show?
Lindbergh: Despite some exhilarating set pieces, emotional moments, and top-tier acting, it felt like what it was: incomplete and an unsatisfying setup for the season(s) to come. Losing Pascal’s Joel was always going to hurt, but the shift from game to TV—and some of the choices the creative team made in an attempt to ease that transition—didn’t do this challenging story any favors.
Surrey: Joel’s death notwithstanding, this season has felt like an extended teaser for bigger and better things to come. Hopefully everyone can remain patient, since it’ll probably take another two years for Season 3 to arrive.
McNear: It’s telling that the powers that be felt the need to engineer a full-episode flashback with Joel. Dina is a great foil for Ellie, but boy, am I missing the zombie apocalypse’s grumbliest surrogate dad.
Charity: It’s certainly weaker without Joel, which was also the case with the second game. A lot of people seem to think it’s a problem of Ellie not being able to carry the story on her own strength, but I think it’s more so a problem of Dina and Jesse being somewhat lame characters made to fill a void that’s much deeper than them.
Chin: Although I was disappointed by some adaptation choices, I enjoyed Season 2 overall, and I’m hopeful that Season 3 (and a potential Season 4) can be even better. The absence of Pascal might be unfortunate from an entertainment standpoint in the long run, but Joel’s death provided the narrative space for one of the best episodes of the series so far, and it served as the inciting incident for the rest of this show’s story. Hopefully there will be more flashbacks that feature Pascal in the future.
6. What was your favorite zombie moment of the season?
McNear: Is this a real question? The subway horde!
Charity: The scene with Abby nearly getting crushed under the fence during the assault on Jackson is so goddamn metal.
Chin: I loved the depiction of the stalkers in this season, but the Battle of Jackson was the biggest infected highlight to me. The spectacle of it all was so well done, and I continue to be amazed at this show’s ability to blend practical and visual effects to bring the infected to life in all of their terrifying yet strangely beautiful glory. That’s true for every infected sequence, but the scale at which it was done in the Battle of Jackson was astounding.
Surrey: The only answer is the all-out assault on Jackson—the Cordyceps was grinding some White Walker tape.
Lindbergh: As much as I enjoyed the stalker encounter in the premiere and the Battle of Jackson in Episode 2, I have to hand it to poor Leon and his fellow ill-fated former Wolves in the spore-suffused hospital basement.
They looked like the Three-Eyed Raven and sounded like Anakin Skywalker with his helmet removed, but their fungus breath was weirdly beautiful.
7. Who was the sneaky MVP of Season 2?
Chin: Jesse. I would’ve loved to see more of Jesse in this season, but his final, extended appearance in the season finale makes the emotional impact of his death hit even harder. Jesse is just the latest cost in the collective price that Ellie and Abby are paying in the show’s vicious cycle of revenge, as both of them continue to lose their loved ones amid their ever-growing pain and anger. Jesse dies unceremoniously, yet the weight of his loss is heavier after hearing him talk about how he can’t die now that he knows he’s going to be a father.
Surrey: If I were stuck in the zombie apocalypse, I, too, would love to have Catherine O’Hara as my therapist.
McNear: Let’s hear it for Shimmer, patiently awaiting Ellie’s return. Not that you asked.
Lindbergh: The character who’s spent her time in post-apocalyptic Seattle the way I would: safely holed up inside a store. Shout-out to Shimmer. (Real answer? Jesse, who didn’t deserve his fate. At least his death was swift and unexpected, which is more than most of this season’s victims could say.)
Charity: Unfortunately, Joel.
8. What are you most looking forward to in Season 3?
Surrey: Kaitlyn Dever actually getting screen time.
Charity: I want to see Dever get jacked. I want her to look like 50 Cent on the Get Rich or Die Tryin’ album cover. Come on now!
Chin: As The Last of Us gets ready to switch to Abby’s perspective, with the series retracing its steps to Seattle day one, I’m excited to see Season 3 become Abby’s story. Dever was great in her very limited screen time in Season 2, and there’s a lot of rich source material for the series to utilize as it begins to focus on Abby’s side of the story.
Lindbergh: Partly, learning more about the WLF-Seraphites conflict that’s been background noise thus far. Mostly, though, Kaitlyn Dever’s transition from murdering main characters to truly becoming one. Abby’s portion of The Last of Us Part II is actually more interesting than Ellie’s, so it’s too bad this accelerated, seven-episode stopgap came first.
McNear: While I’m miffed that we didn’t get to see the Wolves vs. Scars battle—my kingdom for a show that doesn’t juice its final season by splitting it into two less (or more!) effective demi-seasons—it will obviously be sensational whenever it does air. Long live the creepy braid cult.
