Ryan Kirksey
The following recap contains spoilers for The Last of Us, S2E7, “Convergence” (written by Neil Druckmann and Halley Gross and Craig Mazin, and directed by Nina Lopez-Corrado)
Other acclaimed shows from last year, like The Bear, Daredevil: Born Again, and Squid Game, did it to us. We shouldn’t be at all surprised that The Last of Us Season 2 did it as well. What do these four wildly popular shows have in common? Each of them gave us a season in the past year, which ended with a clear understanding that—if we’re being honest—what we just watched was just the first part of one long, continuous season.
But what season finale “Convergence” introduces in its final moments hints at the idea that this story from the second season (and from one video game, The Last of Us Part 2) might even be stretched out into three seasons. This is all complete speculation, of course, since there has been no date announced for the third season and there has been no official renewal for a fourth season. But what it appears showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann want to do is split the story of one video game into three distinct narratives that won’t fully intersect until a fourth season.
Call it the anti-Game of Thrones strategy. There are only two Last of Us video games that exist. The show has become one of, if not THE most popular show on HBO. The game’s parent company, Naughty Dog, is not working on a third version of the game presently. And since Mazin and Druckmann don’t want to step on any toes of potential future gaming possibilities or start creating content that isn’t complete yet (a.k.a. Game of Thrones), they are going to stretch out the existing content they have for as long as HBO will let them.
After last week’s flashback episode, “Convergence” picks up where Episode 5 left off, with an injured Dina (Isabela Merced) and Jesse (Young Mazino) fleeing the Seraphites and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) torturing Nora (Tati Gabrielle) for information about Abby’s (Kaitlyn Dever) whereabouts.
Ellie makes her way back to the theater, which has become their home base, and demands to know if Dina is OK, which further raises Jesse’s antenna after Dina said she “can’t die” and refused alcohol while he was removing the arrow that was causing her wound. Ellie and Dina do reunite, and Ellie is forced to come to grips not only with the fact that she just tortured Nora for information (and only got “whale” and “wheel” out of her), but that it wasn’t hard to do.
“I thought it would be harder to do. But it wasn’t. It was easy. I just kept hurting her.”
By this point in the story, Ellie is singularly focused and mission-driven for revenge, and nothing, not even a little torture, is going to get in her way of what she wants. So much for the lesson Joel wanted to teach Ellie about her doing “a little bit better” than he did in the last episode. It turns out, Ellie is just like the torturing, murdering Joel that he had to be to survive the first 20 years of the cordyceps apocalypse.
This singular focus also comes to bear in the next several scenes when Jesse and Ellie go out on their own (leaving an injured Dina behind? OK.) to try and meet up with Tommy so they can go back to Seattle. They run across the WLF torturing a Seraphite teenager, and Ellie insists they retaliate, but Jesse has to hold her back, explaining that he knows she wants to kill them, but the WLF outnumber them six to two.
Jesses and Ellie overhear radio chatter about a sniper, and deduce it must be Tommy (Gabriel Luna). Jesse wants to go straight to him for rescue, but Ellie and her gray moral line want to continue to the coast to try and find Abby at the aquarium with the large Ferris wheel. In one of the most interesting conversations of the season, Jesse and Ellie argue about the value of a community, and what it means when that community is destroyed.
For Jesse, he is still working to try and protect and build their community in Jackson, but Ellie pushes back that her community was killed when she was made to watch while Abby killed Joel. This is what the show is trying to talk about. What is the price of revenge? When is it worth it, and when is it not? I often quote my favorite Star Trek movie, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, but an ongoing conversation between Kirk and Spock is about how the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.
In this situation, Ellie and Jesse are just Kirk and Spock arguing about what community should be, but also what the reaction should be if it’s lost. That loss leads Ellie on her own to try and track down Abby across choppy waters and in a dangerous boat. The boat inadvertently takes her to Seraphite Island, where she narrowly escapes hanging and disembowelment because Isaac (Jeffery Wright) attacks the island with the help of the WLF.
In this moment, Ellie does not lick her wounds and get back to the safety of her community (Jesse, Tommy, and Dina), but instead continues towards the aquarium to hunt Abby. When she arrives, she finds two of the members of Abby’s team who were present for Joel’s death—Owen (Spencer Lord) and Mel (Ariela Barer). Ellie insists she is different, or maybe even better, than Abby and doesn’t want to kill them, and will let them live if they give up her location. But when Owen attacks, Ellie fires once and kills Owen, and mortally wounds Mel.
It’s only then that Ellie discovers Mel is pregnant (a lot of unprotected sex happening during this apocalypse, if you ask me). She has a chance, a small chance, but still a chance, to cut open Mel and save the baby, but she chooses not to. As Neil Druckmann states on the “Behind the Episode” for this episode, there is no justification for this choice. Ellie chose not to try and save a child because of her goal and how this might complicate the outcomes she wants in Seattle.
Jesse and Tommy eventually find Ellie and get her back to the theater, where Ellie is struggling with her choice. But one of the great pieces of acting by Bella Ramsey in these last moments of the episode is that you don’t quite know if she is struggling with the choice she made because it essentially took three lives (including one completely innocent one) or if she is struggling with it because she did not get the information regarding Abby’s location.
As she and Jesse talk and reconnect over their compassion for one another, the Abby problem solves itself in a sense. Jesse and Ellie rush towards some commotion, and Abby, shockingly and quickly, shoots Jesse in the head, immediately killing him. Before Abby can do the same to Tommy and Dina, Ellie surrenders, pleading with Abby not to kill them all.
“I was looking for you. I didn’t mean to hurt them. I know why you killed Joel. He did what he did to save me. I’m the one that you want.”
Gunshot and fade to black. I think it’s safe to say that neither Abby nor Ellie is dead in this Schroedinger’s break between seasons, but it’s how the episode wraps up, and something confirmed by Catherine O’Hara, that perhaps causes the episode to end on a frustrating note.
The last scene of Episode 7 is Abby waking up and going outside the WLF main headquarters, which is located at the Seattle Seahawks football stadium. It’s quite the intricate operation inside, and Abby clearly has an important role. As the title card shows us SEATTLE: DAY ONE, we now know that the next season is going to follow Abby in the three days in Seattle, the same way Season 2 followed Ellie’s three days in Seattle.
I remain open-minded about how this series will end, because the second game is so well-done and narrative driven, but this show could be creating a problem for itself if it chooses to have a third season with no Pedro Pascal as Joel (that’s unavoidable now) and potentially no Bella Ramsey as Ellie (as she will be in other parts of Seattle). That’s a bold choice, Cotton, and we will have to see how it all plays out as details begin to emerge about Season 3 in the months and years ahead.
There is a lot left to cover in terms of the plot and narrative in the game, but if the team behind the show chooses to take a creative left turn and do a season based only on Abby and the WLF, it may be a “Long, Long Time” until this story is resolved.
