Ryan Kirksey
The following recap contains spoilers for The Last of Us, S2E6, “The Price” (written by Neil Druckmann and Halley Gross and Craig Mazin, and directed by Neil Druckmann)
Since the chilling ending of The Last of Us Episode 5, when we learned that Ellie (Bella Ramsey) already knew about Joel’s (Pedro Pascal) humanity-altering decision before she tortured Nora (Tati Gabrielle) for information, the conversation has shifted to when Joel told Ellie that information, and how long it affected their relationship before Joel was slaughtered by Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) and her Seattle crew.
Season 2 Episode 6, “The Price,” confirmed that this was, heartbreakingly, the last conversation the two shared before Joel’s life ended.
Much like “Long, Long Time” and “Left Behind” in Season 1, “The Price” is purely a flashback episode. It serves as a way to fill the five-year gap between when Season 1 ended and when we picked up with the events of Season 2. This narrative structure, like many aspects of this episode, mirrors what happens in the video game and builds out the world we have seen Ellie try to survive in for the past five episodes.
Using Ellie’s birthdays as a backdrop to track the timing of those five years serves a few helpful purposes. We see Ellie grow, mature, and watch her preferences change. We also understand that even in a dystopian, apocalyptic world, teenagers can’t deny who they are and will always have the same complications and mysteries that have defined them from the beginning of time.
On her 15th birthday, Joel uses just about every resource he can muster to make Ellie a guitar so she can learn to play. He adds personal touches like using one of her month drawings as a design on the neck, and makes custom touches out of wood, bone, and string. This gift not only shows how much Joel cares for Ellie after their journey across the country together, but also signals that, as they put down roots in Jackson, he wants something that can continue to connect them, even if it’s something as simple as guitar lessons.
In this moment, we see Ellie’s innocence and how childlike she still is. As these birthdays continue to progress, however, we begin to see not only the loss of her innocence in what is a hellscape of a world, but also Ellie’s path into adulthood begins.
At 16, Joel takes her to a science museum he discovered one day while out on patrol. Particularly the beginning of this scene is a beautiful shot-for-shot representation of the pure joy and wonder on Ellie’s face when she sees a life-sized model of a dinosaur for the first time (“I’m riding a motherf***ing dinosaur!”) and especially when Joel shows her the space exhibit that is filled with real landing crafts and spacesuits. Joel somehow (I mean, I was incredibly impressed) found a tape recording of the Apollo mission from 1971 and let Ellie listen to it while she imagined blasting off into space.
This wonder and amazement, at least as far as we see, evolves into more mature behavior by her 17th birthday, when Joel comes home early and catches Ellie in her room, where he finds the holy trinity of a teen parent’s worst nightmare: tattoos, sex, and drugs. Ellie has recruited a 19-year-old friend to not only tattoo over her burned bite mark on her arm but also experiment (to use Joel’s word) sexually. Joel, a single parent who raised a young girl in the 1990s, was shocked by all of this. It’s a reminder that culture and progressive thinking mostly died in 2003 when the normal world ended.
This birthday also serves as a representation of the tension that begins to build in Ellie and Joel’s relationship and will last until she turns 19 and in the months that pass between that birthday and the moment that Joel dies. Joel has been urging her to learn and practice patience to get the things she wants in this world, but teenagers aren’t exactly the best at this attribute, even when the consequences are a cordyceps infection instead of a mean social media comment.
On her 19th birthday, Joel finally believes Ellie is ready to go on patrols outside the gates of Jackson. He starts her off on their “easiest” path, but soon gets a call that other patrol partners are in trouble and pinned down by infected. Joel wants Ellie to go back, but his timing sucks because he just gave her the speech about how partners always stick together while on patrol. Not wanting to be seen as a liar (cough, cough), Pedro agrees to let Ellie come along, where we finally meet Eugene (Joe Pantoliano), who is Gail’s (Catherine O’Hara) husband that we first heard referenced in Episode 1.
Eugene has been bitten on the abdomen, but is still completely lucid when Joel and Ellie find him. All he wants is one more chance to see Gail before he dies. Ellie believes they have time to grant his wish, but Joel does not. After testing Eugene, Ellie convinces Joel to let him come back. But while Ellie goes to retrieve their horses, Joel takes Eugene away and executes him, believing it is far too risky to bring someone who is infected back to Jackson (irony, much?). Ellie discovers them, and it’s at this moment that you can see the cracks in their relationship turn into chasms.
What flimsy relationship they still have when they return to Jackson with Eugene’s body completely deteriorates when Joel tries to lie to Gail, telling her how brave Eugene was, that he didn’t want to risk anyone, and that he wanted her to know how much he loved her. Ellie immediately calls bullshit and tells Gail the real story, that Joel didn’t think it was safe to bring him to Jackson and gunned him down against his wishes. Gail understandably is devastated by this deception, and she is not the only one.
Nine months later, the night of the New Year’s Eve dance, when Joel steps in to try and defend Ellie against Seth, Ellie comes to visit Joel on his front porch (something not shown in Episode 1) and confronts him. For about a year, Ellie has been thinking about Salt Lake City. She has extremely reasonable questions about the story Joel told her five years ago. How did the Raiders sneak up on that many Fireflies? How could Joel escape while carrying someone if everyone else died? If there are so many immune individuals, how come they have never met any of them?
Before Joel can answer, Ellie tells him the same face he gave when he lied to Gail is the face she saw on the mountainside when Joel told her what happened in Salt Lake City. After almost six years, Joel finally admits what Ellie says she has suspected all along. Joel lied. There could have been a cure. Joel damned humanity’s chance to survive, no matter how small that chance might have been. But what’s worse in Ellie’s mind is in her comment, “That was my purpose. My life would’ve mattered! But you took that from me! You took it from everyone!”
And Joel’s response is perhaps the most interesting of the episode, or perhaps even the series:
“And I’ll pay the price, because you’re gonna turn away from me. But if somehow I had a second chance at that moment… I would do it all over again… Because I love you in a way you… 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.”
This references the cold open of this episode, when we see Joel and Tommy as teenagers after they have been busted for trying to score some drugs. Their father, Javier Miller (Tony Dalton), is a bit of a hardass, even beating his kids from time to time. But he is a little bit better than his father. And hopes Joel will be a little bit better than him. That Joel passes on this message to Ellie shows he cares about more than just his relationship with Ellie. He cares about more than just the hope that she will reciprocate that love. He also cares about the fact that he lost his chance to pass on something great to the world with his daughter, Sarah. Ellie represents the chance he lost and how he can she can help make the world even a little bit better.
The crushing finality to this conversation is that Ellie admits, “I don’t think I can forgive you for this. But I would like to try.” The fact that Joel died before Ellie even had the chance to try and forgive Joel now drives her. It now pushes her in Seattle, and it could potentially lead to deadly and devastating consequences.
Next week is the finale of Season 2, where we will be back in the present day and the challenges Ellie will face with the WLF, the Seraphites, and how to get an injured Dina back to safety. All of these, on their own, are nearly impossible to overcome. Together, they seem almost unconquerable. But Ellie’s motivation to do this is not only for the man she lost, but for the relationship she lost, and may be the thing that ultimately leads her to avenge Joel’s death.
