The third episode of The Last of Us season two has aired, and we returned to Jackson to see the aftermath of last week’s assault on the settlement.
Please note there will be spoilers for The Last of Us, both the show and the game, below.
The third episode of The Last of Us season 2 is a significantly quieter one compared to last week’s infected-laden turn. It is also the first episode of The Last of Us in which Joel – played by Pedro Pascal in the show – does not appear, and his absence is felt from the off, with his silhouette even removed from the opening credits.
Now it is just Bella Ramsey’s Ellie facing this world alone.
Except, she isn’t alone. She does have Jackson, along with Dina, Tommy, Jesse and a surprising ally in Seth (the chap Joel pushed to the ground in the first episode after he made homophobic remarks towards Ellie).
Ellie is grieving Joel’s death, but this is a shared grief. The entire Jackson community is grieving its losses, both of Joel and the many others who died during the events of episode two. At one point during the episode, Dina (played in the show by Isabela Merced) states the town had been “wreckage and funerals for weeks”.
But while much of the episode takes place three months after the events of episode two, we do see a brief moment of the more-immediate aftermath of the infected attack that ravaged Jackson.
The episode opens with Tommy spending a quiet and emotionally affecting moment with Joel’s body, where he tenderly asks his brother to “give Sarah my love”. Gabriel Luna again delivers a powerful performance as Tommy, and even though he doesn’t say much verbally here, his actions and expressions really show his heartbreaking acceptance of Joel’s death.
Tommy’s quiet moment with Joel is immediately contrasted with Ellie’s own more guttural reaction to what has just happened, as she wakes up in Jackson’s hospital screaming, before the intro credits begin to play.
This episode of The Last of Us is indeed a solemn one, and is essentially a ‘mourning period’ for viewers and its characters. It was a little slow in parts, if I am honest.
To its credit, though, unlike The Last of Us Part 2, where we are put back into ‘action’ fairly quickly after Joel’s death – something that makes sense for a game – the show does give us and the cast a moment to breathe and really think about what happened in last week’s episode. It’s a somber watch (although, shout out to Dina for again offering a warming spark for Ellie and viewers).
At one point, Ellie makes her way through Joel’s house, where she finds his handgun, a shirt and his watch. The watch, which was so important to Joel, is basically cast aside by Ellie, as she fixates on his gun (the shirt, she later wears). While she may be putting on a face of bravado for Jackson, including Catherine O’Hara’s shrink Gail, she is clearly in deep mourning for Joel and needs to find some resolution. The gun, she believes, will help her do this.
Meanwhile, as Ellie buried her face into Joel’s jacket with silent tears running down her face, silent tears fell down mine as well. Her pain is very, very real, no matter what she tries to tell others. She wipes her tears away though, as soon as she hears Dina enter Joel’s house. She isn’t letting anyone see her like that. Not even Dina.
I appreciated how other characters in the show reminded Ellie how they were hurting too, and she is not the only one feeling grief at this moment. Both Dina and Tommy make a point of telling Ellie they also loved Joel when it appears that she is forgetting this.
Meanwhile, another Jackson resident highlights it was not just Joel who died that day. While only Joel died at the hands of Abby, she lost a sister during the attack on Jackson.
As for Gail, she knows Ellie is hurting more than she is letting on, and at one point later in the episode she outright calls her a liar to Tommy.
As the TV series allows for moments to be shown in a way they weren’t in the game, we were also given a rather insightful look into Jackson’s council meetings.
The community gathered together to vote on whether they should send a party to Seattle to track down those responsible for Joel’s death. Ellie prepared a passionate speech, stating it is not about revenge but about justice for Jackson. It isn’t about her, it is “about us” she says to the room. Her words don’t fully ring true though, however it is only Gail that outwardly shows she doesn’t seem to believe Ellie.
Despite Ellie’s speech, the ultimate vote is a firm ‘no’, leaving Ellie and Dina to planning to go after Abby and her group secretly and alone, with a little help from Seth. Unlike in the game, though, Tommy does not set off for Seattle, a change that I personally am not fully sold on as yet.
Ellie and Dina ultimately set off on their journey to Seattle, with some beautiful and very scenic shots of America offering a backdrop for their journey. The sweeping images of cliffs and forests really give a sense of how big the world really is outside of Jackson, something that could be forgotten after so much time inside the town.
This is quite symbolic, in many ways, as Ellie and Dina are not aware of how out of their depths they really are, having wildly underestimated the resources and man power the group of which Abby is a part of truly has.
The third episode closes with a dominant display of the power the WLF has, with rows upon rows of troops and armoured vehicles. It’s an impactful and daunting tease for the coming episodes.
Meanwhile, other than a brief flash of last week’s episode, Abby is not shown at all. The only familiar face from the WLF we see this time around is Manny.
A few other points I would like to highlight from this episode. First, the Serphites (and their communicative whistles) were actually introduced earlier in the TV series than I was expecting. In this episode, the religious group was being used to further paint a villainous picture of the WLF in the eyes of Ellie and Dina.
We are seeing the duo’s journey through the eyes of Ellie, who upon coming across a group of slaughtered Seraphite bodies on their way to Seattle (a group of which included a young girl), immediately pins their death on Abby’s group, painting the WLF and specifically Abby as monsters. This is exactly what Abby did with Joel following his massacre of the Fireflies in Salt Lake City.
Second, I was slightly disappointed that the show was quite reserved with the scene between Ellie and Dina in the tent.
I assumed this was going to be the same moment from the weed den in The Last of Us Part 2, where the two sleep together. In the show, so far at least, Ellie and Dina are not a couple. There still seems to be an attraction between them, particularly on Ellie’s part, although Dina didn’t hide the fact that she had been back together with Jesse since the infected attack on Jackson.
Dina seems to be toying with Ellie a bit more than she did in the game. She says she isn’t gay to Ellie, but still flirts with her.
Last up, towards the start of the episode, we saw Tommy working to rebuild Jackson. However, he struggles with hammering in a post, and soon the younger and more able Jesse takes over from him. I feel this could be a bit of foreshadowing for later in the series.
We still have four more episodes left of The Last of Us season two. What did you think of the third episode?
