The fifth episode of The Last of Us’ second season is the shortest of the series so far, but includes a few major story points that have consequences for Ellie, Dina, the WLF and, dare I say it, the wider world.
Please be aware of spoilers for The Last of Us, both the show and the game, below.
The episode begins with a cold open, showing WLF member Hanrahan (who we first saw last episode inducting Isaac into the WLF) walking through the halls of a hospital with many anxious soldiers looking on. A door to the basement is barricaded in a rather ominous way. Hanrahan then meets with another soldier alone in a separate room – Hettienne Park’s Elise.
Anyway, Hanrahan wants to know why Elise seemingly killed her own men, including a chap named Leon. Elise reveals her team was responsible for securing the hospital the WLF are using, but the group she sent to clear the basement came across more than just some Infected. “It’s in the air,” Elise was told, before she sealed her team in, including Leon – her son. Ooft.
There was talk when the first season of The Last of Us aired that the showrunners decided to do away with spores to save having to cover up Pedro Pascal’s Joel with a gas mask. Maybe that was the case, but their introduction in season two – particularly this episode – was important to set up for a key character death later on (more on that in a moment). After weeks of waiting, I am glad to finally see spores make their TV debut.
We were then reunited with Ellie and Dina in the Seattle theatre, as the two – well, mainly Dina – plan how to get to the hospital and to Nora, following the end of episode four.
To be honest, episode five, while including some pretty intense scenes such as the duo getting surrounded and overwhelmed by Stalkers before getting rescued by Jesse (who had made his way to Seattle along with Tommy to bring Dina and Ellie back to Jackson) and a torchlight confrontation with Scars in the park (which mostly served to separate Ellie from her friends), felt a bit slow for me.
As always, the show has a high production value. The sets, music and special effects are really very impressive, especially when Ellie makes her way through the hospital basement, which is now a fungal forest with spores dancing in the air in an almost magical, fairy-like way.
But otherwise, I personally felt like the episode was a lot of little chunks of things, only there to set up the next thing. Did we really need 45 or so minutes to get to Nora?
We did get to Nora, though, and while this sequence was perhaps not as harrowing as it is in the game, it was still far from an easy watch. This is the moment when viewers finally see the mist of Ellie’s revenge fully descend, and just how far she is willing to go to find Abby.
The moment Ellie first confronts Nora in the hospital in the show plays out almost identically to The Last of Us Part 2, and ends with the two face to face at the end of a spore-infected corridor bathed in red light. As soon as that light went on, those who had played the game would have known exactly what was coming.
In the game as in the show, Nora is infected due to the spores of the air, and is on the verge of dying. Nora knows this, and soon realises that Ellie is unaffected by the spores in the air.
Tati Gabrielle does a wonderful job here, showing both fear and defiance. Despite being on the edge of death, Nora doesn’t want to give up her friend Abby. Ellie tells Nora she knows what Joel did to the Fireflies, but even so she still wants to know where Abby is. She then proceeds to beat Nora with a pipe as the former-Firefly cries out in pain.
Personally I found this moment more affecting in The Last of Us Part 2, perhaps because with the game, we not only had to sit through this torture scene in that dark red soaked basement, but also actively engage as Ellie to beat Nora to a pulp. It is distressing, and when I was playing the game I did not want to push the button I was being asked to push. I was uncomfortable, even more so as the camera at this point remained focused just on Ellie instead of Nora.
Maybe this moment would have had more impact on the show if I had been watching it without prior knowledge of the source material. It was still uncomfortable to watch, don’t get me wrong. Again, Bella Ramsey’s acting here was brilliant, and they embody every facet of Ellie, including her declining mindset and disassociation. When no one else is around, her mask of normalcy slips away to reveal something much more terrifying. But, I wish the showrunners had spent less time getting us to Nora, and instead given us more time actually with Nora to really make this moment more impactful.
There are three other moments in particular that I would like to further highlight from this episode. The first is, I love hearing more of Dina’s backstory. Hearing how she killed the person who beat her sister and her mother, while of course a sad tale, further back up her reasons for wanting to be with Ellie to find Joel’s killers.
Second, I love the small moment we have alone with Ellie in the theatre, when she starts to play Future Days by Pearl Jam, a song those who know the game will know well.
Ellie only sings a small section of the song here, but it clearly means a great deal to her, and when she stops singing you can see a clear look of revenge set on her face. This felt like the moment something in Ellie switched during this episode.
Third, the episode’s closing shot. Flashing back to a sunlit Jackson, Ellie awakes from her bed to Joel walking through the door. “Hey Kiddo,” he says, before the credits run. It’s a stark reminder of where Ellie is now, and what she has lost. Next week is going to be an emotional one, no doubt.
We only have two more episodes left of The Last of Us season 2. I actually thought we would be further along through The Last of Us Part 2’s narrative by now, and I now wonder how they are going to fit in story beats for the final two episodes of season two. I have an idea in mind of where this series is going to wrap, but I hope things don’t suddenly feel too rushed to get there.
What did you think of The Last of Us season 2 episode five?
