Last Of Us review: Dark twist in final episode whets appetite for more
Bella Ramsey in episode nine of The Last of Us.
If you are familiar with The Last of Us video game, then this is the episode for which you will have been waiting.
Ellie and Joel’s story ends with a traumatic twist – and the suggestion that perhaps the hero in our tale has been the villain all along. Above all, it is a powerful conclusion to a series that has demonstrated that digital entertainment can be adapted into emotive and gripping TV – and which lays the groundwork for a second season (already green-lit and potentially filming this year).
After last week’s stomach-turning run-in with creepy cannibal preacher David (a taste for human flesh was by far his least upsetting attribute), Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) are pushing on. They’ve reached Salt Lake City – reportedly HQ of the Firefly rebels and the research facility that can use Ellie’s immunity to the Infected to create a cure for all mankind.
Ellie and Joel have changed. Ellie has become more introverted – presumably a result of her encounter with the loathsome David. Joel is different too. That surface-level gruffness has fallen away. He sees Ellie as a substitute for his daughter, killed by the military in the early hours of the Infected take-over.
This follows a flashback in which a woman named Anna flees an Infected. She is heavily pregnant – so heavily she gives birth fighting off the monster. She looks down to see that she has been bitten – and that the umbilical cord is not yet cut. Anna – played by “video game” Ellie, Ashley Johnson – is involved with the Fireflies, as we discover when their leader Marlene (Merle Dandridge) arrives. Anna begs Marlene to take care of Ellie and to kill her – which Marlene reluctantly does before her friend can turn into one of the Infected.
Back in the present, Ellie and Joel gaze in wonder at giraffes wandering the city. Joel also reveals the scar on his head is the result of a botched attempt to kill himself after the loss of his daughter. “Sarah died. I couldn't see the point anymore, simple as that.”
To lighten the mood, Joel invites Ellie to quote from No Pun Intended, Volume Too. But they are interrupted as they are ambushed by Fireflies. Joel is knocked out and wakes to see Marlene standing over him. She got out of Boston and, just like Joel and Ellie, travelled West. But at a far higher cost – she barely got here, despite having five bodyguards.
Great, says Joel. But where’s Ellie? About to undergo surgery – an operation that may well produce a cure, but at the price of Ellie’s life. “Find someone else,” says Joel. There is no one else. Marlene says that Ellie will not have known she is going to die when she went under– but that, anyway, it’s probably what she would have wanted.
Then comes the climactic moment that will immediately sear itself into the minds of viewers. Joel – whom we know was a killer in his past life as a bandit with brother Tommy – flips and massacres, one by one, all the Fireflies.
He reaches the operating theatre and tells the doctor to unhook Ellie. When the surgeon refuses, Joel kills him at point-blank range and leaves with his surrogate “baby girl”. He is reliving the trauma of his daughter’s death through Ellie, trying to change the past by altering the present.
In the basement, as he’s about to steal a car, he is confronted by Marlene. We fade to black and see Joel driving back towards Wyoming and Tommy. Ellie is in the back, the anaesthetic wearing off. She wants to know what happened. Joel shrugs: “There’s a whole lot more like you who are immune, dozens of ‘em,” he says. “They've stopped looking for a cure.”
It’s a lie. He knows it and she knows it. We flashback to the Firefly hospital where Joel executes Marlene, having shot her once already. “You’ll just keep looking for her,” he says as he pulls the trigger.
This is true. Does that, however, justify Joel’s actions? The Fireflies robbed Ellie of agency by deciding she would willingly give up her life but without thinking to ask her. Joel did something similar. Ellie lost so many people to reach the Fireflies – and Joel has decided it was all for nothing.
The Last Of Us lays out the moral complexity of the decisions required of Joel and Ellie. It is a powerful twist at the end of a series that has both redeemed the video game adaptation and the zombie apocalypse genre (though the “z” word was reportedly banned from the set).
As Joel and Ellie look down at the twinkling lights of Jackson, she gives him one more chance. “Swear to me that everything you said about the Fireflies is true,” she says.
“I swear it,” he says, doubling down on the lie. “Okay,” she says – a single word that speaks multitudes.
Has Ellie lost all trust in Joel? Will Joel be called to account for the violence he unleashed in Salt Lake City? Those questions will be addressed in series two. But what about the other big imponderable? Can video games make for good TV? The Last Of Us answers gloriously in the affirmative.
