If The Last of Us is going to do anything, it’s hit viewers with an overly emotional penultimate episode.
Spoilers for The Last of Us Season 2, Episode 6 below.
The highly anticipated flashback episode shows a glimpse of how Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and a very much alive Joel Miller (Pedro Pascal) spent the last five years in Jackson. But first, the show took viewers even further back to Austin, Texas, in 1983.
A young Joel (Andrew Diaz) comes face to face with his father (Tony Dalton) for an emotional discussion about parenting — which comes into play later on in the episode. Joel’s watch (the one he never took off even though it was broken) is revealed to have originally belonged to his dad.
Flashing forward to 2024, Ellie and Joel have lived in Jackson for two months, and it’s her 15th birthday. Joel gets her a cake and gifts her a guitar that he made. (Yeah, he called her “babygirl” at one point too, but let’s not talk about that.)
The following year, Ellie turns 16 — and their relationship is still very much intact. Joel takes Ellie to “space” by bringing her to an abandoned museum he finds while patrolling the woods.
Things start to change on her 17th birthday, however, with Ellie doing “all the teenage s*** all at once,” including getting a tattoo, doing drugs and hooking up in her bedroom. In the middle of the night, Ellie starts making moves to create a bedroom in the garage and Joel agrees that they need their space.
“You may not like the rules, but this is my house,” Joel states. Ellie replies, “No, it isn’t. You don’t own it. They gave it to you. Sorry, to us. You don’t own anything.”
The show then jumps two years, which puts viewers in 2028 (the year before Joel dies), and Ellie spends her birthday morning rehearsing a conversation she needs to have with Joel about what really went down in the hospital with the Fireflies when he “saved” her. The conversation never happens because Joel offers Ellie her birthday gift — her first-ever patrol. This is where, for lack of a better term, s*** really starts to go down.
Ellie and Joel are having a peaceful patrol with him teaching her the ropes when they find a Jackson community member, Eugene (Joe Pantoliano), who has been bitten by Infected. Joel promises Ellie that they will take Eugene back to Jackson so he can say goodbye to his wife, Gail (Catherine O’Hara). However, he lies and shoots Eugene dead. Ellie, in a rage, realizes that Joel lied to her about what really happened in the hospital all those years ago.
A nine-month time jump brings viewers back to New Year’s Eve in 2028 — the day before Joel gets murdered. He and Ellie finally have a much-needed conversation.
“You’re such an a******. You lied to me. You looked me in the eyes, and you lied, and it was the same face. Same f***ing look,” Ellie says. “I think I knew already. I knew this whole time. So I’m going to give you one last chance. Tell me what happened with the Firefiles. If you lie to me again, we’re done.”
Joel admitted to killing everyone in the hospital at the end of season 1, telling Ellie that she was the only one immune to the Cordyceps virus and a cure could have been made from her brain — but it would have killed her.
“Then I was supposed to die. That my purpose, my life would have f***ing mattered, but you took that from me! You took that from everyone,” Ellie yells. Joel replies, “Yes, and I’ll pay the price because you’re going to turn away from me.”
Joel admits that if given a second chance, he wouldn’t have changed a thing.
“Because you’re selfish,” Ellie declares.
Joel responds, “Because I love you in a way you can’t understand. Maybe you never will. But if that day should come, if you should ever have one of your own, well then, I hope you do a little better than me.”
Both Ellie and Joel are sobbing at this point.
“I don’t think I can forgive you for this,” Ellie says. “But I would like to try.”
New episodes of The Last of Us premiere on HBO Sundays at 9 p.m. ET.
