or whatever it\u2019s called by then<\/a><\/span>)? That would be something!<\/p>\nEllie holds the two at gunpoint and tells them to put their hands up. When she asks where Abby is, Owen realizes who she is and points out that he was the one who kept her alive. Ellie isn\u2019t swayed by this, so he says they don\u2019t know where Abby went. But, of course, they were just talking about her, so Ellie knows that\u2019s not true. She spots a map on the table and decides to pull out an old Joel Miller standard: She tells Mel to bring her the map and point to where Abby is, saying that next she\u2019s going to ask Owen the same question, and the answers had better match. Owen looks at Mel and says that Ellie will kill them either way, so there\u2019s no reason to comply. Ellie says she won\u2019t because she\u2019s \u201cnot like\u201d them. When she crosses state lines to torture and kill someone who killed somebody important to her, it\u2019s very different than when they do it, of course.<\/p>\n
Owen stops Mel from grabbing the map by saying he\u2019ll do it. He slowly turns to the table, but instead of picking up the map, he grabs a handgun stowed under it. Ellie is quick with her trigger finger and shoots him right in the throat. The bullet goes straight through him, and hits Mel in the neck as well. She falls onto her back and, instead of cursing Ellie, she asks for her help. Not to save her life, but someone else\u2019s. She opens her jacket to reveal her pregnant belly, and asks if Ellie has a knife to cut the baby out of her before she dies. Ellie is in shock and doesn\u2019t know what to do. Mel tells her she just needs to make one incision. That isn\u2019t enough direction, and Ellie panics. She doesn\u2019t know how deep or which direction to cut. As Mel starts to become delirious, she repeats \u201clove transfers\u201d and then asks Ellie if the baby is out. But she hasn\u2019t even made one cut. Mel finally drifts off, and Ellie realizes it\u2019s too late. She sits there until, eventually, Tommy and Jesse find her. Tommy attempts to comfort her, but she\u2019s in shock and doesn\u2019t speak. Finally they leave and head back to the theater.<\/p>\n
Why can\u2019t this show stop giving the audience outs to not turn against its leads? The death of Mel, specifically, feels like the show bending over backward to teach Ellie a lesson without laying blame at her feet. Mel\u2019s death here is an accident. She\u2019s an innocent bystander who dies because Owen and Ellie made choices, and she was, quite literally, caught in the crossfire. In Part II<\/em>, by contrast, Mel \u201cshot first.\u201d Well, she tried to stab Ellie, but that doesn\u2019t have the same ring to it. Ellie reacts in self-defense and stabs her right back, but she did it fully knowing she was about to send Mel to an early grave. The gut punch Ellie feels upon learning that she\u2019s pregnant is a moment of dramatic irony, because the game\u2019s shifting perspectives had already revealed her pregnancy to the player way back in the opening hours. So when you\u2019re slamming the square button to fight back, you know that Mel isn\u2019t the only one about to reach her untimely end. Here, she doesn\u2019t even get that moment of agency to fight to protect herself. She\u2019s just collateral damage. It\u2019s a small but important distinction. At this point in the show, Mel\u2019s only real trait is a clear distaste for Abby\u2019s violence, and now, when she finally shows up again, she\u2019s just an unintended victim of Owen pulling a gun on Ellie. Sure, season three will fill in those gaps, but the end result will be the same. Mel died not because she was fighting back, but because she was an inch too far to the left.<\/p>\nThen there\u2019s the matter of her pregnancy. Again, in the game players already knew about this by the time Ellie reached the aquarium, while the show kept it secret until the end. It\u2019s hard not to see this last-minute reveal as a knife being twisted for shock value, but that\u2019s only half the problem. My friend Eric Van Allen (co-host of the Axe of the Blood God <\/em>podcast) would often joke with his college friends about how Michael Caine\u2019s characters in Christopher Nolan films so often show up just to tell you, the viewer, in very literal terms what the story is about. Throughout most of this season, Gail has been this character, the one burdened with the heavy task of diegetic literary analysis, but Mel\u2019s delirious \u201clove transfers\u201d line may be even sillier than anything Gail spouts; homegirl is bleeding out and telling Ellie that pain is not the only thing we inherit from our parents? Just one week after Joel tearfully told Ellie that he hopes she does better when she has a kid than he or his abusive cop father did?<\/p>\nPerhaps in a show that hadn\u2019t already spent two seasons using literalism as a writing crutch, Mel speaking her final hopes for her unborn child might have landed for me. But I think I\u2019m just too jaded towards it now for even what should have been a genuine expression to feel like anything other than a heavy-handed, patronizing declaration of what lessons I\u2019m supposed to take away from the story. I don\u2019t think characters overtly communicating their beliefs and feelings about a situation is an inherently poor way of writing dialogue. In fact, some of my favorite works have managed to execute this well thanks to strong acting and stories that lent themselves well to this style of writing. The Last of Us<\/em>, a series that often relishes in grounded dialogue that forced you to read between the lines and unearth that meaning yourself, the Last of Us<\/em> show\u2019s inability to let nearly any emotion, belief, or theme go unspoken feels so contrived and tiresome that even someone expressing something thematically resonate feels like being told what to feel. Mel uses her last words to tell me the themes of the story. Just in case I forgot. Thank you, Last of Us<\/em> show, I don\u2019t know how I would have ever understood your thematic richness if you didn\u2019t make your characters tell me about it, even in their death gasps.<\/p>\nThe other side of the coin<\/h2>\n The group makes it back to the theater and Ellie is still in shock, so much so that she doesn\u2019t even look at Dina as she enters the building. Some time passes, and Tommy and Jesse are mapping out their route home on the stage. The storm is still pretty rough, so they\u2019ll stay overnight and hope the sun is out when they wake up. Ellie finally joins the group, and Tommy reassures her that Mel and Owen played their part in Joel\u2019s death, and they made the choices that brought them to that fateful end. Ellie can only fixate on what she didn\u2019t get to do.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut Abby gets to live,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah,\u201d Tommy responds. \u201cAre you able to make your peace with that?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess I\u2019ll have to,\u201d she says, defeated.<\/p>\n
She looks to Jesse, who won\u2019t even look up at her. Tommy realizes they might have something to talk about and walks to the lobby to pack. After some awkward silence, Ellie thanks Jesse for coming back for her, even though he had no reason to after the way they clashed.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe I didn\u2019t want to,\u201d he says. \u201cMaybe Tommy made me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDid he?\u201d Ellie asks.<\/p>\n
After a second of contemplation, Jesse drops the act and says, \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause you\u2019re a good person,\u201d Ellie responds.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah,\u201d Jesse agrees. \u201cBut also the thought did occur, that if I were out there somewhere, lost and in trouble, you\u2019d set the world on fire to save me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ellie says she would, and the two finally see one another, even if just for a moment. Jesse acknowledges that Ellie\u2019s vendetta isn\u2019t entirely selfish, and that when it comes to defending the people she cares about, dead or alive, you won\u2019t find someone more loyal in all of Jackson. It\u2019s good that they finally had this moment of connection after all this drama. But damn, I miss Ellie and Jesse being bros, and I miss her giving him shit for being a sap in these final moments. But most of all, I miss that dopey good ol\u2019 boy with a heart of gold saying his friends \u201ccan\u2019t get out of their own damn way.\u201d<\/p>\n
All that understanding is short-lived, as the two hear some ruckus in the lobby, grab their guns, and book it to the entrance. The second Jesse opens the door, bam. A gunshot rings out in the lobby, and he is on the floor. We don\u2019t even see that it was Abby who fired it until after we get a gnarly shot of him with his face blown open. He\u2019s gone. It was instant. The Last of Us Part II <\/em>tends to draw out death. It\u2019s either long and torturous like it was for Joel or Nora, or it\u2019s short like Owen\u2019s and Mel\u2019s, but in any case, the game typically lingers on the fallout for a bit. Jesse\u2019s death, by contrast, happens so fast that you can\u2019t even process it before you have to deal with the situation at hand. The show follows suit, and it\u2019s recreated practically shot for shot. But that\u2019s hardly the most disorienting (complimentary) thing that happens in these final minutes.<\/p>\n\u201cStand up,\u201d Abby growls forcefully from the other side of the desk Ellie has taken cover behind.<\/p>\n
She repeats herself: \u201cStand. Up. Hands in the air or I shoot this one, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ellie can see Tommy on the ground with a pistol aimed right at his head. He tells Ellie to just run, but she tosses her gun where Abby can see it and crawls out from cover. Abby recognizes her immediately. Ellie asks her to let Tommy go, to which Abby replies that he killed her friends. Ellie says no, she did.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was looking for you,\u201d Ellie says. \u201cI didn\u2019t mean to hurt them. I know why you killed Joel. He did what he did to save me, I\u2019m the one that you want. Just let him go.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hm. Okay. We\u2019re almost at the end. I gotta get another little quibble in before the curtains close. I mean, come on, we\u2019ve been through seven episodes of me complaining together. You can\u2019t take one last gripe? This line from Ellie is slightly altered to account for the fact that she knows more about Abby in the show than in the game, and it means we miss one of the most important subtle interactions in all of the story. As I mentioned earlier, Ellie doesn\u2019t know anything about Abby\u2019s father in Part II<\/em>. She assumes that Abby killed Joel because he took away any chance of the Fireflies developing a cure, so she cites that in this high-stakes moment. The original line is almost identical to the one in the show, but instead, Ellie says \u201cthere\u2019s no cure because of me\u201d and suggests that killing her would be the extension of Abby\u2019s presumed vendetta. Then, we get some incredible, subtle acting from Abby actor Laura Bailey, who hears what Ellie\u2019s saying, has a brief moment of angry disbelief on her face, and then scoffs under her breath before picking right back up where she left off. In just a few seconds, you see Abby realize that, after everything, these fuckers have no idea how much pain she\u2019s been through over the past five years. But they\u2019re not worth the breath it would take to explain herself. They don\u2019t deserve to know the man her father was and what he meant to her. All that matters right now is that Ellie pays for what she\u2019s done.<\/p>\nAbby still views herself as the righteous one here, as she points out that she let Ellie live when she did not have to do that. It turns out that Ellie wasn\u2019t deserving of her mercy, that she squandered it by killing her friends. Part of me has wondered if all the exposition-heavy dialogue in this show, such as Dever\u2019s villain monologue in episode two before she murdered the shit out of Joel, was written to give its actors more words to say in front of a camera. When you\u2019ve got big names like Kaitlyn Dever, Catherine O\u2019Hara, and Pedro Pascal in your cast, you don\u2019t want them to not talk, right? But all these elongated exchanges have also robbed actors like Dever of those subtle moments. Hell, she led an entire film with next to no dialogue in 2023\u2019s No One Will Save You<\/em>, and was great in it, so she has the chops to pull off that kind of acting. Communicating something through body language and expression is just as powerful as a poetic piece of dialogue (or in this show\u2019s case, the most literal, unpoetic dialogue a person can fathom), but this show rarely, if ever, understands that.<\/p>\n\n<\/p>\n<\/span><\/p>\n
Image: HBO<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\nAnyway, Abby says that Ellie wasted the chance she was given when the ex-Fireflies spared her, and points her gun right at Ellie. We hear a bullet fire and Ellie shouts before a hard cut to black. But wait. That\u2019s the season finale? You expect us to wait for two years, probably, to find out what happened? Well, about that. You will probably have to wait even longer.<\/p>\n
We do have one more scene this season, however: a flashback. We see Abby lying down on a comfy couch with an unfinished book resting on her stomach. She\u2019s in a deep sleep before Manny (Danny Ramirez) loudly enters the room and wakes her up. He says Isaac wants to see them, and she stirs awake. She gets up and walks out of this cozy living space and into a giant football stadium. The entire field has been repurposed for agriculture, manufacturing, and housing. Abby takes a second to look at the whole operation before heading to Isaac\u2019s, but the camera lingers over the field as bold white text flashes on the screen: Seattle, Day One.<\/p>\n
Alright, TV newbies, welcome to the second divisive twist of The Last of Us Part II<\/em>. In the game, the player goes through Ellie\u2019s three days in Seattle, killing Abby\u2019s friends and mostly ignoring the war between the W.L.F. and the Seraphites. Meanwhile, Abby has been kind of an enigma the whole time. Every time Ellie finds a new lead, Abby has already come and gone. When Abby finally shows up at the theater for another round of vengeance, it\u2019s clear that a lot of the story happening in this game has happened off-screen. That\u2019s because you\u2019re about to see an entirely different perspective on the last three days, and you\u2019re going to play as Abby when you do it.<\/p>\nAs you can imagine, this shit drove some players nuts at the time, and you\u2019ll still find angry people online complaining about it to this day. For all my problems with this season, I have to commend the show for actually going for it. HBO has taken the coward\u2019s route in adapting this story for so long, it\u2019s almost surprising that it\u2019s ending here and, from the sound of it, season three will be entirely about Abby and what she\u2019s been doing these past three days. It\u2019s very likely we won\u2019t see Ellie again until next season\u2019s finale after we\u2019ve followed Dever\u2019s character for several episodes. Despite some ham-fisted attempts by the show to build sympathy for Abby early on, it seems like swaths of TV newbies still demand blood. Will viewers complain for an entire season as Dever takes on the lead role? I\u2019d like to think they won\u2019t. I hope that new audiences are more open to her than the worst people you\u2019ve ever met were<\/a><\/span> when the game launched.<\/p>\nDespite all the golf club swings I\u2019ve taken at this show, I\u2019m looking forward to examining it further as HBO rolls out the next two seasons. The Last of Us Part II <\/em>is one of my favorite games of all time, but I genuinely fucking hated The Last of Us<\/em>\u2019 second season. I don\u2019t expect my feelings to improve in season three. At this point, the rot of Mazin\u2019s poor creative decisions runs too deep for the show to be salvaged and reach the highs of the games. But if nothing else, it\u2019s been a rewarding ride. Thank you for joining me on this seven-week journey. I think I\u2019m due for a replay of The Last of Us Part II<\/em> to wash off this stink. This shit was ass, HBO. I\u2019ll see you in the ring again next time.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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