THE LAST OF US – Season Two

When we last saw Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Joel (Pedro Pascal) in The Last of Us, their relationship appeared fractured. After learning that using Ellie’s DNA to manufacture a cure for the Cordyceps virus that turned the world into a dystopian future would mean her death, Joel killed everyone in the hospital to get her out and save her life. As they stood on the mountainside overlooking the community of Jackson, Wyoming, their new home, Ellie asked Joel if he was telling the truth.

“Swear to me that everything you said about the Fireflies was true,” Ellie demands. “I swear,” Joel replies, without conviction.

This lie and this violent action continue a cycle of violence in a world where family and relationships are so vital. However, where Season 1 felt like a cohesive narrative whole, blending the story’s central relationship with larger world-building that added to the emotional core of The Last of Us, Season 2 falls flat, juggling too many separate events that dilute the emotional themes of the story. And, most frustratingly for players of the original game, it butchers or completely eliminates key moments from the video game.

Series creators Neil Druckmann, who also directed the video games, and Craig Mazin (Chernobyl), return for a truncated second season based on half of The Last of Us Part II. After a shocking murder stuns Ellie and the residents of Jackson, Ellie and her friend Dina (Isabela Merced) head to Seattle, Washington, to seek revenge. For those who’ve managed to avoid one of the video game industry’s biggest spoilers since the game came out in 2020, then the show’s shocking murder completely upends the status quo of what we’ve come to love about the characters and forces us to confront the darkness of endless violence.

Season 2 of The Last of Us begins after Joel’s shooting at the Firefly hospital. Five survivors of the attack stand in front of the graves of the fallen. Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), the daughter of the doctor who was poised to do the operation on Ellie, vows revenge on her father’s killer. Five years later, we join Ellie and Joel in Jackson, Wyoming. Ellie, now 19 years old, has new friends and a new life, living in the garage behind Joel’s home. There’s still a rift between Ellie and Joel, showing the fallout of Joel’s decision. All emotions come to a head in episode 2, “Through the Valley”. Directed by Mark Mylod, the filmmaker behind many of Game of Thrones’ biggest battles, Season 2’s standout instalment is able to juggle the intimate and the spectacle.

As Joel and Ellie battle a raging New Year’s Day storm, the town of Jackson is under siege by the largest group of infected we’ve seen. It’s the kind of large-scale spectacle that HBO constantly tries to recreate after Game of Thronesepisodes like “The Battle of the Bastards” or “The Long Night”. Recreating the zombie carnage is very well done, but what’s more impressive and the best thing to come out of the episode is in a tiny room in an abandoned ski lodge. Kaitlyn Dever’s fierce brutality shows that her addition to the show will be powerful throughout the next few seasons. And even more so, Bella Ramsey’s ability to capture sadness followed by blinding rage is one of the show’s shining moments.

Unfortunately for them, Ramsey has been subject to hateful and misogynistic criticism from trolls online for their portrayal of Ellie in Season 2. While many claim it’s because they don’t look like game Ellie or there isn’t enough change in their appearance to match the five-plus year time jump, I think that’s just hidden hate. There’s no such hate for Joel or Dina who don’t match their game counterparts. Looking past the internet vitriol is a truly impressive performance, matching their incredible work last season. The best highlight of this is the shift from episode 5, “Feel Her Love”, to episode 6, “The Price”. Where the former ends with Ellie channelling uncharacteristic hatred, “The Price” begins with a flashback to her 15th birthday party, where she’s very much a kid. A kid who has gone through a lot, but still much more naive. Ramsey is able to portray the different ages of Ellie so effectively and subtly, it’s hard to imagine they were shot at the same time.

Overall, “The Price”, a flashback consisting of what Ellie and Joel went through during the years in between seasons, is another shining example of what makes the show so powerful. Seeing Joel do his best to be a father figure to Ellie while there’s real death and memories driving a wedge between them is gut-wrenching. Their relationship is the heart of The Last of Us, and the incredible dynamic between Ramsey and Pascal (Gladiator II) fuels that.

Season 2 also introduces us to a wide variety of new characters. In Jackson, Jesse (Young Mazino) is like an older brother to Ellie, calling her out when she’s selfish or impulsive. Gail (Catherine O’Hara) is the town’s connection to the old world. O’Hara (Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice) is fantastic, though her addition feels like an easy way for characters to vocalise themes that could have gone unsaid.

Dina is the best of the bunch. Merced (Alien: Romulus) plays her with an assuredness it’s hard to believe she hasn’t been a part of the show the whole time. Dina is Ellie’s best friend, and her romantic crush. While Dina’s a smart and confident fighter, a great companion for Ellie’s journeys, her character is the prime representation of love and connection in the broken world. Ellie doesn’t just have Joel anymore. Even with Tommy (Gabriel Luna), Jesse, and Dina, Ellie’s world is bigger, making any moments that put others at risk carry that much more weight.

The acting is once again strong. However, I think the writing undermines the character work the actors are doing, especially with Ramsey. She’s great at capturing the hate that fuels Ellie and the naivety that brings her back down to earth. But, weirdly edited episodes and timelines tend to undermine how fundamentally changed Ellie is. The dialogue sometimes makes the trip to Seattle feel like a field trip rather than a suicide mission to mend her broken heart.

Five years since the second game’s release, it’s impossible to separate that experience from the series, especially as to how different the adaptation is between seasons. Season 1 didn’t take many detours from the source material, only adding backstory to the side characters, resulting in some genuinely breathtaking episodes, like Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank’s (Murray Bartlett) sequestered love story. But Season 2 makes a lot of changes that are confounding and lessen the impact of the story in the game.

TV is a whole different genre, of course, but it’s not like adapting Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) into a narrative. The Last of Us and Part II are deeply rooted in a cinematic experience. So, when there are changes to the narrative, it begs the question of why the change was made. And in many cases, I can’t think of a good enough reason to make changes that don’t undermine the emotional and thematic development the show is trying to articulate. Even with this in mind, taking the show at face value and not comparing it to its source material, it still falters. For one main reason: the length of the season.

Jumping away from the main narrative of the story isn’t new to this series. Season 1 had nine episodes, with one flashback episode focused on Ellie and two episodes focusing on side characters. This gave six episodes to follow this main arc of Joel taking Ellie to the Fireflies in Utah. Season 2, with seven episodes and only one focusing on flashbacks between Joel and Ellie in the five-year gap between the seasons, still has the six episodes devoted to the main story, yet it feels like not enough. This season brings this revenge narrative and exploration of the circle of violence that is just non-existent for many of its episodes. Episodes 4 and 5 are so removed from this development, which would be fine if the season had given more full pictures of the new characters introduced or the world-building taking place in the Pacific Northwest. The plot points that are left to dangle until a new season just do a disservice to Ellie’s main journey.

All of these new characters are introduced in Season 2: Abby, Isaac (Jeffrey Wright, reprising his role from the game), Nora (Tati Gabrielle), Mel (Ariela Barer), and Owen (Spencer Lord). However, so little of them is given to us. Even though these performances are captivating and there are interesting elements there, such as Isaac’s brutal, cold introduction in episode 4, “Day One”, the moments don’t feel as powerful without backstory. Too much of Season 2 is setting up these new characters and elements of this world that are only to be addressed in Season 3. Leaving viewers with important questions is one thing, but making them care about these things after a two-year break is another. The act of Isaac torturing a Seraphite isn’t enough to sustain questions. The show has to make us care for either group. As the show is right now, there’s a war between two groups and that’s it. Why should we care? Because we care about Ellie? Is that enough to make the rest of the world-building interesting?

With a video game, the player has the control to decide how fast or slow to play and beat a game. In the game, you may have to wait a few hours until you learn more. You can do that at your own pace. In a show, you have no choice but to wait until 2027 to learn why these characters were introduced, what motivates them, and why you should even care about their existence in this world.

The second season of The Last of Us did have high points, always bolstered by a dedicated production team and a cast that’s fully dialled into the themes sometimes lost in the narrative. It’s just frustrating to see the story fall short of both Season 1 and the game itself, a story readymade for a television adaptation. With only seven episodes, Season 2 should have been longer; it could have cut out its clunky scenes and given viewers a more satisfying conclusion to the chain of events. Its cliffhanger ending only reminds us how little we’ve learned and how unconvincing any character growth and plot development was this year.

USA | 2025 | 7 EPISODES | 16:9 HD | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

writers: Craig Mazin, Neil Druckmann & Halley Gross (based on the video game created by Neil Druckmann).
directors: Craig Mazin, Mark Mylod, Peter Hoar, Kate Herron, Stephen Williams, Neil Druckmann & Nina Lopez-Corrado.
starring: Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey, Gabriel Luna, Isabela Merced, Young Mazino, Kaitlyn Dever, Rutina Wesley, Robert John Burke, Spencer Lord, Tati Gabrielle, Ariela Barer, Danny Ramirez & Catherine O’Hara.