Note: This story contains spoilers for “The Last of Us” Season 2, Episode 7.
Ellie’s revenge quest came to a climatic head in Sunday’s Season 2 finale of “The Last of Us” as she finally came face-to-face with Abby (Kaitlyn Dever).
Episode 7 picked up shortly after Ellie interrogated Nora (Tati Gabrielle), who told her Abby was hiding out somewhere where there’s a whale. After returning to a wounded Dina at the theater, viewers start to see both the physical and emotional toll the mission has taken on Ellie, as her back is covered in wounds and she tells Dina that it was “easy” to torture Nora, and that “maybe she didn’t” get what she deserved by being leaving her alive.
“She’s already starting to become a shell of a human,” Bella Ramsey told TheWrap in an interview. “The weight of what she did to Nora is terrifying to her and I think she really hates herself for it. It’s just battling extreme loathing but at the same time, her goal hasn’t changed: this need to find and kill Abby. She’s still so driven but she’s running on empty.”
In a notable change from its source material, Ellie then tells Dina the truth about why Abby and her crew came after Joel in the first place.
“Ellie just feels like such an awful person. So in many ways, I think the least she can do for her own sense of self and any morality that she has left inside her is like, ‘I have to tell the love of my life who’s coming with me on this journey and is now pregnant and injured. I probably needed to tell her the truth about this’,” Ramsey said. “There’s nothing she wants to do less than tell that truth to Dina, but she does because she loves her that much.”
The next day, Ellie and Jesse (Young Mazino) head out to go find Tommy (Gabriel Luna), where the former accidentally confirmed that Dina is pregnant with his child. Ellie and Jesse’s tension hits a boiling point when the latter reveals that he voted no on going after Abby and her crew back in Episode 3, because community comes first.
Their argument is interrupted by a WLF member describing Tommy on the radio. But Ellie realizes in that same moment that Abby is hiding out in the aquarium and goes after her instead on her own.
“There’s no reasoning with her. She’s so far gone. The reason she’s so defensive with Jesse is because it’s a perceived threat on her goal and need to find and kill Abby,” Ramsey said. “I think she’s always been been a bit pissed off with him talking about community and all of that, but that’s the thing that she decides to go in on. It’s not that deep and she doesn’t feel that deeply about it. Her emotions are just so heightened.”
As Ellie heads out to the aquarium by boat, she’s thrown off course by a storm, landing at the Seraphite’s island, who capture her and are about to kill her when they are diverted by the war with the WLF.
“It’s really scary. Ellie really thinks she’s going to die the whole time. If she was running on empty at the beginning of the finale, by the time we’re halfway through, she’s sub-minus empty,” Ramsey said. “Her survival instincts kick in and she survives it all but is really a wreck by the end of it. The Seraphites are the scariest part of the season to me.”
When Ellie finally reaches the aquarium, she runs into Mel (Ariela Barer) and Owen (Spencer Lord), who are arguing about going to find Abby. The former’s attempt to find out where the latter is ultimately goes awry and she kills both of them in the process — including a very pregnant Mel.
“I remember Craig [Mazin] sort of giving us a warning. He’s like, ‘so I’ve just written the most brutal death and awful thing that’s going to probably happen in the whole of ‘The Last of Us’ series,” Ramsey recalled. “It’s almost worse than Joel’s death. This is a pregnant woman, and Ellie’s girlfriend is pregnant, and in that moment Ellie is just seeing Dina and the weight of her whole journey just crashes down on her. She’s so broken in that moment. That’s as dark and as low as I think she’ll ever be. It’s the grief of Joel, of who she’s become, of killing this woman, it’s all come to a head and she’s an absolute wreck.”
After reuniting with Tommy and Jesse and heading back to the theater to get Dina, Ellie is upset that she’s leaving Seattle without finding Abby. But then, Abby holds Tommy at gunpoint in the final minutes of the episode and kills Jesse in the process. Abby is about to shoot Ellie when everything cuts to black.
“You’re going to have to wait and see [what happens]. But the scene was hard to film, actually. There’s so many things happening for Ellie — this grief of suddenly Jesse has been shot and having to immediately process but not really process that, and then the fear of Abby threatening Tommy,” Ramsey said.
“If it was any other person it would be a much easier scene to play, but because it’s Abby there’s this layer of complexity. Ellie is seeing her goal standing there right in front of her but is in a submissive position,” they added. “There’s an element of her feeling like she’s failed in every way in that moment. That’s definitely one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to play in my life.”
While Ramsey admitted she knows where everything is going in Season 3, she declined to say when we may see that moment play out. The final shot of the finale travels back to Seattle Day 1, setting the stage to focus on what Abby has been up to following Joel’s death.
“You’re not going to get anything out of me. I’m under strict instruction to keep quiet, but it’ll be interesting,” Ramsey said of the HBO adaptation’s next installment. “It’s so fun to get to continue the journey and explore the second game more and the different parts of it. It’s exciting.”
Executive producer Craig Mazin teased that both Ellie and Abby are moving forward in “moral trouble.”
“Their certainty is beginning to fail them, and we can see it here with Ellie for sure, because faced with the consequences of the things she’s done and people that didn’t deserve to die, she’s starting to feel maybe a swing of the pendulum, and we don’t know where these two are going to end,” he explained. “What I would hope the audience feels is that they are not done. They’re not done growing, or they are not done falling. We’ll have to wait and see which it is.”
“All I can say is we haven’t seen the last of Kaitlyn Dever and we haven’t seen the last of Bella Ramsey,” Mazin added. “And we haven’t seen the last of Isabela Merced and we haven’t even seen the last of a lot of people who are currently dead in the story.”
The first two seasons of “The Last of Us” are available to stream now on Max.
The post ‘The Last of Us’ Star Bella Ramsey Says Ellie’s Revenge Quest Turns Her Into a ‘Shell of a Human’ by Season 2 Finale appeared first on TheWrap.