After an intense first episode of The Last of Us: Season 2, we are back to see the ramifications and consequences that followed that iconic New Year barn scene. Players of The Last of Us: Part II are undoubtedly aware of what’s to come, but what we don’t know yet is whether it’ll be hitting us in this episode or the next.
As is always the case, now is your last chance to turn away from spoilers – and you better take our word on this one, because in The Last of Us: Season 2, Episode 2, some really intense stuff goes down. And so, without further ado, let’s get stuck in to what is easily going to go down as one of the biggest television gut-punches of the year.
Read: The Last of Us: Season 2, Episode 1 recap – Tension, tempers and a curtain of light
Wakey wakey
As we open episode 2 of The Last of Us: Season 2, we emerge in the very same hospital that Joel had rescued Abby from in the last episode of the first season – only, instead of the doctors and carnage, we see two versions of Abby herself. It’s clear that this is a dream sequence, with one version of herself begging the other not to go into the operating room.
The acting from Kaitlin Dever in this moment is extraordinary, warring between the two versions of Abby as one knows exactly the kind of devastating scene that the other is about to step into. It’s brutal, and heavy, and there’s a really impressive weight to the scene despite Dever playing it solo.
Upon waking up, we learn that the lodge is closer to the town than previously thought – and the overlook shows that the town is also more fortified than expected. It’s a bonafide city, with high walls and defensive structures. The team watch over the town, and we get a glimpse of the first Chekhov’s Gun of the episode – some very important set dressing in the room at the lodge, which players of The Last of Us: Part II will clock.
Within the town, we watch as Ellie wakes up too – awoken by the sound of Jesse at the door, rapping hard on it so she wakes up to go on patrol. It’s the night after the New Year party, and things are a little awkward – or at least, that’s how Jesse plays it for laughs. Kissing my ex-girlfriend? How dare you! Just kidding!
As they walk to the patrol zone, Jesse inquires a little about the tussle with Joel the night before, and Ellie shows a rare moment of defensiveness around the relationship she shares with him. She acknowledges that there are dramas, for sure, but that they’re always going to be bonded: “I’m still me, he’s still Joel, and nothing’s ever going to change that, ever.”
She indicates that she’d rather go on patrol with Joel, actually (no offence Jesse, I guess), but learns that he’s already gone out early with Dina because he wanted to let Ellie sleep in. They continue, stopping briefly in for a Town Hall meeting, where Tommy reminds everyone of the emergency procedures (the second Chekhov’s Gun of the episode), and Maria forces Seth to apologise for his shitty behaviour from the night before.
Danger from beneath
From a high-up vantage point, Abby takes first watch of the morning. She scans the environment from her ledge with binoculars, and as luck would have it, spots two riders on horseback below. She approaches slowly and cautiously, until she gets just a little too bold and winds up sliding feet-first down the snow-covered mountain.
She lands hard on the ground, and upon taking stock of her surroundings, she realises that she’s landed on a frozen mess of infected corpses, half sticking out of the ground in a grotesque mess of limbs and malformed Clickers. As a rumble shakes the ground and the weather worsens, Abby clocks that not all the infected are dead.
She starts sprinting down the hill as a massive amount of infected rise up from beneath the corpses of their fallen – hundreds of them, all running full pelt after her. It’s easily one of the most ominous wide shots of The Last of Us series so far. Abby makes it to a town, but the distance between them is too close and it gets extremely real as she sprints between a fence and a building.
The infected collide hard with the fence, scrapping and scrambling to clutch at her, and the fence gives in, creating only a tiny triangle for Abby to crawl her way through. As they finally break through, it seems like the end is near, until a gun shot rings out. She’s saved… by Joel. She doesn’t realise at first, until they make it to cover and hears Dina call out Joel’s name. With the weather now escalating to terrifyingly ominous storms, they need to find shelter, so Abby suggests going to the lodge to wait out the impending blizzard.
Meanwhile, taking shelter at a secret grocery store location that Jesse had been keeping secret (largely because of the wild amount of weed it contains), Ellie and Jesse learn that all the patrols have checked in except for Joel and Dina. They immediately head back out into the snowstorm, splitting up to cover ground and see if they can recover their missing loved ones.
Home turf, but not enough advantage
The rumbling horde of infected turn face towards Jackson, seemingly communicating with the spores that emerged from the pipe in the middle of the town square. Hundreds approach, and as the lookout initiates emergency procedure with the clanging bell, we see why that emergency meeting had such fortuitous timing.
Tommy and some of the town members try to thin the herd with explosive barrels, creating a colossal wall of fire – which seemingly doesn’t stop the infected all that much, despite the clear destruction. They fire gunshot after gunshot towards the infected that clear the wall, but the sheer scale of the attack is impenetrable.
In our first Bloater sighting of The Last of Us: Season 2, we watch as the big guy slams his way through the wall and breaches the town. Infected and Clickers pour through the gap, and Tommy races back down off the wall to rejoin a line of men wielding flamethrowers. Meanwhile, the rest of the able-bodied members of town man the rooftops, including Maria.
Some of the men aren’t so brave though, and they break the line to go run back to safer distances. As the Bloater and horde approaches, Tommy rains fire upon them all. It’s indiscriminate, until Tommy realises that the Bloater has its eyes set on Maria, who has been firing down upon it from above. The Bloater turns towards her building, seemingly smarter than the rest of the gaggle, so he hollers and shoots to grab its attention.
He lures the Bloater into a deserted corner, but realises too late that there’s no escape for him – it’s a dead end. The Bloater makes headway and Tommy unleashes the entire tank of his flamethrower upon it, singing its infected flesh. It seems like it’ll be the first major character death of The Last of Us: Season 2, but at the very last second, the Bloater collapses. It’s a huge sigh of relief.
Outside, the infected seem to be making too much of a dent to stem the tide. They crack open the doors to the roof, going after the townsfolk, until Maria takes decisive action – she runs, not following Tommy, but instead going to the kennels. She sets the dogs loose, and they go absolutely wild, taking down infected left, right and centre. It’s a decisive victory, one of the only optimistic moments in this episode of The Last of Us: Season 2, and in a truly emotional moment, Tommy and Maria reunite.
Tee off time
Back at the lodge, things are uneasy. Abby, Joel and Dina arrive, and the team who remained in the room immediately go to give Dina medical aid… until Abby reveals Joel’s identity. As soon as they clock it, the energy in the room completely shifts – here comes the biggest moment of The Last of Us: Season 2.
They knock Dina out, and shoot Joel point-blank in the knee with a shotgun to prevent an escape attempt. Abby delivers a rockin’ monologue about the Fireflies that Joel killed, including the fact that one of them was her Dad. She goes on for a while before Joel spits out: “Oh, just shut the fuck up and do it already.”
This clearly does not go down well, and the second Chekhov’s Gun of The Last of Us: Season 2, Episode 2 – a golf bag, which was only set dressing in the first lodge scene – comes into play as she takes one of the irons and starts viciously attacking him with it.
Meanwhile, Ellie has trudged through the snow on her horse to see Joel and Dina’s horses tied at the lodge. As she enters to investigate, she spots Joel bloodied on the ground, Abby smashing the club into him and kicking him.
She tries to stop her, running into the room with a battlecry, but is almost immediately brought to the ground (so much for those fighting lessons in episode one, right?). As the rest of Abby’s crew encourage her to finally end it, Ellie is forced to watch as Abby thrusts the broken golf club through Joel’s neck.
It’s a truly upsetting scene, with a much more graphic depiction than many people expected – even those who had played The Last of Us: Part II. Joel’s death marks a pivotal point in both the game and the series, with it triggering Ellie’s drive for revenge – mirroring the revenge journey that Abby herself took.
The Last of Us: Season 2, Episode 2 – The Verdict
We knew that this episode was coming, but it was still a gut punch to see it happen. There’s no way for a show to not cause shockwaves when they kill off a main character – even though the spoiler was technically there for people to see if they’d played the games.
Between the infected and the brutal murder, the entire episode was extremely intense. We know that the fallout will be equally heavy, but the fact remains: this episode has truly set a new standard for brutality in The Last of Us.
