Seattle. Day two. And things are about to get very, very bad. The fifth episode of The Last of Us season two continued Ellie and Dina’s journey through Seattle, on the hunt for Abby, the woman who killed Joel. And they finally have a lead. One of Abby’s friends is in a nearby hospital. They just have to get through a city overrun by a raging war between a major military presence in the WLF and a dangerous religious group, called the Serephites or Scars. Both of them would get their shot at Ellie this week but, ultimately, it would be Ellie giving the shots in one of the best scenes in Last of Us history so far.
Before the story could shift to Ellie, though, The Last of Us once again started with the WLF. Soldiers awkwardly stand around a hospital as Hanrahan, established as one of the leaders in the previous episode, sits down with Sgt. Park, the woman tasked with clearing the hospital. Park looks absolutely drained and defeated as she explains that things were going well until her soldiers started to clean the basement. In the basement, specifically on level B2, a group led by someone named Leon began to encounter the deadly vegetation all over the walls. Five minutes later, Leon told Sgt. Park that the disease was in the air, and to seal them in. Which they did. Hanrahan tells Park she dealt with the situation “heroically and permanently,” before adding, “I’m sorry about your son.” Yes, the aforementioned Leon was Sgt. Park’s son, and he knew he had to have his mom sacrifice him for the greater good of his friends.
It’s a scene that, once again, ever so slightly, humanizes the WLF even though they are being set up as the bad guys in Ellie’s quest to find Abby. A quest that is being aided greatly but the fact that the WLF are speaking so freely on the walkie-talkie she and Dina stole the previous night. Dina is using it to figure out when and how to sneak through the city undetected, but fully aware that the brazen, open communications of the WLF show they are not scared in the slightest of their enemy, the Scars, hearing them.
Once Dina charts the path, she and Ellie head out. Their goal is to find the hospital where they believe they’ll find Nora, one of Abby’s friends who was in Jackson when they killed Joel. Along the way, Dina reminds Ellie she never asked her about the first person she killed and we’re hit with the gut-wrenching Dina origin story. As a young child, she watched as a raider killed her mom and sister and was forced to kill him in retaliation. The revelation pulls the curtain back a bit on Dina’s love of Ellie. She, too, understands what it’s like to watch a loved one be killed. She understands that need for vengeance and it’s why they are so good together.
Part of Dina’s plan to get to the hospital is to sneak through a large abandoned building that the WLF is ignoring for some reason. They know there are infected in there but also agree to not use their guns to avoid attracting any WLF soldiers. That goes well for about two minutes until they realize the building is crawling, literally, with smart infected, much like Ellie encountered back in Jackson. Ellie knows there was only one of them that time, and she didn’t get out unscathed then. Now, up against at least half a dozen of them, she doesn’t like their chances.
The “no guns” thing goes immediately out the window as Ellie tries to draw the infected’s attention away from the much more at-risk Dina. It works for a second, but these infected are fast, strong, and about 10 seconds from killing both girls when other shots ring out. Out of nowhere, it’s Jesse, who saves the girls and makes a break for it as the WLF takes chase.
Jesse, Dina, and Ellie make it into a park where the WLF stop, refusing to go in. That’s a bad sign. We learn that Jesse and Tommy followed Ellie and Dina to Seattle (without permission) a day after they left, and figured out where they would be thanks to Dina’s map back at the theater. Unfortunately, they don’t get too much more info because the whistling starts. Again, that’s not good. This park is Scar territory, and something is going down.
The trio watch as the Scars tie up a member of the WLF and gut him as he promises he has no information about Isaac’s plans. As they watch in shock, an arrow comes out of the darkness and pierces Dina through the leg. Jesse grabs her and runs while Ellie heads her own way, narrowly escaping the Scars again. (By the way, if ever you needed a reminder that The Last of Us is based on a video game, it was this episode where the characters run into something bad, fight it, get chased, then escape over and over again.)
Ellie then sees something in the distance. It’s the hospital she and Dina were looking for, and despite her friends going home without her, she decides to venture forward. In what seems like nanoseconds (at least way too fast for us not to at least mention), Ellie finds Nora in the hospital. Nora can’t believe what she’s seeing and tells Ellie about how much Joel’s death impacted her. Which is a lie. She then says that “the bitch got what he deserved” as she throws chemicals at Ellie and makes a run for it.
Here’s where things got really good, though. Ellie chases Nora through the hospital, avoiding all sorts of WLF gunfire along the way. But, because of the locked basement we heard about at the beginning of the episode, Nora is trapped. She jumps into the elevator shaft and quickly finds herself on B2. Ellie follows, seeing not just the deadly flora all around, but specks of something in the air. Leon Park, who we see still half alive, was right. The disease is in the air and Nora is infected.
Ellie finds her at the end of a hall, and Nora laughs. She thinks they’re both dead. “You stupid bitch,” Nora says. “We’re breathing spores. We’re infected. You killed us both.” “Did I?” a scarily confident Ellie replies. Then Nora realizes who Ellie is. She’s the immune girl they heard rumors about. The immune girl who was going to save everyone at the hospital Joel attacked. And, in this moment, she tells Ellie what Joel did. That Joel killed everyone in the hospital, including the only person in the world who could’ve made a cure. And that person was Abby’s dad.
“I know,” Ellie coldly replies. It’s a shocking moment because, up until this point, we assumed Ellie didn’t know what Joel did. His actions and subsequent lie are a cloud that’s been lingering over the show and their relationship since the end of last season. But we can see it in Ellie’s eyes. She did know. And, somehow, she’s okay with it. She continues to press Nora for Abby’s location, but Nora won’t budge. So, Ellie grabs a pipe and begins smashing her with it, committing a type of torture we didn’t know she was capable of
The moment of pure hatred in Ellie is quickly cut off, and she’s in bed back in Jackson. She wakes up and Joel is there. What the heck could that mean? What it means is that Ellie torturing Nora is us seeing her at her very worst.
Though the fifth episode of The Last of Us season two was a little repetitive, it was worth it for that incredible moment of revelation and tension at the end as Ellie finally came face to face with one of Joel’s killers. But not the one she’s looking for. Not yet.
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