The Last of Us Series, Season 2 Episode 7 / Finale
my notes on the episode below.
[Show spoiler]In the season finale episode, Ellie makes one last push to find Abby, is almost killed along the way by the Scars, and fights with and makes up with Jesse, accidentally kills Mel & Owen. She finally gets a confrontation with Abby, and it ends on a massive cliffhanger, with hints we're about to follow Abby's story leading up to this point in the saga.
Day 3 Seattle is highly abbreviated from the game. But we do get some nice additions. However, I did think it was too fast paced for the amount of ground covered. It's not as powerful as I was hoping it would be and I think we could have spent more time with Ellie's trek to the aquarium. Some scenes were really good though and emotionally heavy.
But what this episode did show us is just how far Ellie has fallen, and she knows it. She's had a singular focus on finding and killing Abby, to the exclusion or more pressing concerns, e.g. Dina's health and rescuing Tommy. When Mel asks her to cut the baby out and Ellie doesn't know what to do, she realizes she is helpless and has lost all sense of who she is, and can only sit there and sob.
Later, Ellie admits to Tommy that Abby will get to live, and it will just have to be that way. She has to let it go. To that point, after Jesse is shot she makes the decision to potentially sacrifice herself to Abby, in order to save Tommy and Dina. Unfortunately, we'll have to wait a long time to see how that turns out.
Recall that David (the cannibal), in season 1 Ep 7, said Ellie had a violent heart. And Gail in episode 3 this season implied that Ellie is a psychopath, that it's in her nature, and it can't be changed. We saw how that played out, with Ellie torturing Nora. And Ellie tells Dina she thought it would be hard, but it was actually really easy. Maybe it's good that she realized by the end of the episode that she's turning into an instrument of vengeance, and she doesn't like it. Remember, the day before he died, Joel said that she hopes one day if Ellie has a kid he does a little better than he did. She realizes she's on a path to do worse.
I didn't like how much of a jerk Jesse is to Ellie in this episode. We got a taste of that in episode 5 too when he saved her and Dina but was angry that they came to Seattle. In the game he is sympathetic to their cause. However, it did make for a nice moment at the end when Jesse realizes that, despite her recklessness, Ellie would go to the ends of the Earth to save him if needed, and she replies that she would. I see it as his attempt at an apology for how he’s treated her the past 2 days.
I liked that we got to see some additional Isaac scenes including his plans to attack the Scar/Seraphite island, And he mentions how Abby was missing, and that he's upset about it because he wanted Abby to leave the group after he dies (likely that night, he says). I also liked that we saw Sergeant Park again from episode 5.
The scene with Ellie and Jesse witnessing the wolves attacking a Scar teenager was interesting. Jesse said these people are killing each other and it's not their fight, and they should stay out of this conflict, and this city. Ellie thought they shouldn't have let a kid just die in front of them like that. This probably also a part of why she's so emotional when Mel and her baby die.
I loved the scenes in the storm with Ellie on the skiff. The rain and thunder sounded amazing in my headphones. This was really well done. I also liked they included the giant wave that wipes her out, as in the game.
The scene with Ellie almost being gutted and hanged by the scars was pretty tense and I didn't know how she was going to get out of it. (This is not in the game.) She was saved by the Wolves' attack on the Seraphite island. The warning horn is harrowing and sounds exactly as it does in the game.
The scene with Mel and Owen was pretty powerful, and the addition of Mel pleading will Ellie to cut her baby out was heartbreaking. Bella Ramsey's performance was incredible. I could feel Ellie's sense of helplessness in this situation.
The final scene at the theater with Abby was very well done. Kaitlyn Dever's delivery of the lines "I let you live, I let you live, and you wasted it" cut like a knife. I could feel the ager in her face. This exceeded the delivery of the corresponding lines in the game.
I liked that Ellie was going to have Mel and Owen separately point to where Abby was on a map, a tactic she learned from Joel. But it didn't work out since Owen pulled a gun on her, and when Ellie shot back it killed Owen, and Mel was hit when the bullet passed through him.
I liked the scene with Dina bathing Ellie's back…a very sensual moment.
I liked that Jesse revealed he voted no in episode 3 to send a group of 16 citizens to Seattle to kill Abby. I suspected this based on his reservations in talking about the vote before it took place.
Significant differences from the game:
Dina was not shot with an arrow by the Scars in the game, because she stayed behind on Day 2. But her refusal to drink clues in Jesse she may be pregnant, who tricks Ellie in to confirming that. In the game, he just figures this Dina may be pregnant form her lethargy and asks Ellie if that’s the case (she says yes but don’t tell Dina he knows).
In the episode, Ellie tells Dina what Joel did at the hospital and why Abby wanted to kill him. In the game she never tells Dina this, at least not that we see. We're also not sure in the game if Ellie *ever* find s out that Abby's father was killed by Joel, though in the show Nora told Ellie this outright in episode 5.
As mentioned, Jesse is much nicer to Ellie in the game and wished they would have brought him along in the first place. He is a massive jerk to her in the show and mad that he had to come out to Seattle, to a war zone, to save her and Dina.
Jesse and Ellie do not come across a Seraphite teenager being attacked by Wolves. They have confrontation with infected and Wolves that are primarily gameplay related. It would have been nice if they included the Comics convention center they come across in the game, where Jesse explains to her that comic fans, like Ellie, would gather together. And Ellie says she they were born in the wrong time.
In the game, Norah told Ellie that Abby is at the aquarium. In the show, Ellie has to deduce this, as all Norah manages to say is Ferris wheel (which is at the aquarium).
When Ellie refuses to help Jesse find Tommy, and goes to the aquarium instead, the fight they have is much bigger than it is in the game. They argue about community (Jesse’s says his community is Jackson, Ellie says her was Joel), and what the bigger person should do. In the game, Ellie just tries to convince Jesse that Tommy is probably at the aquarium too, and Jesse is stunned she puts revenge about helping Tommy, but realizes there's no point in arguing with her and simply says, "I really hope you make it."
In the game, we don't find out at this point (Day 3) that Isaac is planning an attack on the Seraphite Island...we don't even know yet that they live on an island. We know Isaac has plans for something big but don't know what. We don't find out yet that Abby is AWOL from the Wolves and that Owen and Mel are missing too.
Ellie does not land on the Scar island (and almost get hanged and gutted) in the game, though apparently this was planned for the game and cut. So now it's in the show.
Ellie's fight with a bloater in an arcade, on the way to the aquarium, is cut entirely. I wish they made the episode 10 minutes longer and kept this in. We've had no infected in episodes 6 & 7.
In the game Tommy found a gold watch to bribe Maria when he returns, fearing her anger at him leaving Jackson. This doesn't happen in the show. Of course in the game Tommy also left for Seattle by himself ahead of Ellie in Dina, in hopes it would stop them from going. Jesse came later, after Dina and Ellie leave, not with Tommy.
In the game, Mel isn't killed by the same bullet that kills Owen. She attacks Ellie with a knife and then Ellie kills her and she dies quickly, no chance to say she’s pregnant. Owen then tells Ellie with his last breath that Mel is pregnant. Ellie is never asked to cut the baby out, never contemplates doing so, and is significantly less emotional about the events. She does not cry, though she struggles to breathe. Tommy finds her quickly so she does not have time to think about it for very long.
Ellie is not attacked by and does not kill the Owen & Mel's dog Alice. They may have cut this out since many gamers did not like having to kill a dog.
In the game, we don't hear a gunshot after Abby says she let them live and Ellie wasted it. It cuts immediately to a flashback of Abby at Salt Lake from the day her father dies. In the show, we hear a gunshot, and it cuts to Abby in the bookstore on Day 1 Seattle (2 days ago), and then we see the massive WLF presence at the Seattle football stadium. We might get the Salt Lake flashback later.
There seemed to be an attempt to imply the Seraphites have more than 1 prophet. Ellie and Jesse see another "Feel her Love" sign and Ellie if there's more than one of them (prophets? signs?). Not sure what she meant, but in the game there's definitely only one prophet.
Ellie's collection of superhero cards is recurring theme in the game, but it was never brought up once the whole season. In the first game, her Savage Starlight comic collection was a recurring theme and that did make it into the show in the first season.
This was a pretty good episode but I think too much happened in too little time. And I worry what show viewers, who haven't played the game, will make of the cliffhanger and cut back to Abby at the football stadium a few days earlier. But I loved how they played "Burden in My Hand" by Soundgarden during the credits. Anyway, the penultimate episode definitely bests this one, but given the narrative structure of the series so far, this was a decent way to end the season.
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