Hello and welcome back! We are gathered here today to go through what would have originally been the last half of HBO’s The Last of Us but as it turns out, I had too much to say! So here is my run down mostly analysis of episodes six and seven. Episodes eight and nine will be coming soon. So, let’s jump into it…
Episode Six, “Kin”
Episode six titled “Kin” really serves as a pivotal time of exploration and deepening of Joel and Ellie’s relationship. Opening with the death of Henry and Sam shows audiences this loss has affected Joel and Ellie and their relationship.
Joel for one, is still trying to fight the idea that Ellie is someone he cares for. He doesn’t want to let her in because he doesn’t want to open himself up to the possibility of being deeply hurt again. But the reality is he has already allowed himself to care for Ellie and the death of Henry and Sam has only shown him how much he cares. Until they get to Jackson, where he eventually accepts the pain that comes with loving Ellie, all the times he has failed to protect her are running in the back of his head. Ellie having to be the one to pull the trigger on Brian in Kansas City, not being able to hear Henry and Sam sneaking in on them, falling asleep when he’s supposed to be on watch. He’s very aware of his old age and with that his strength and stamina are depleting. The panic attacks and sleepless nights he is experiencing out of a constant state of fear also aren’t helping. When they get to Jackson, and they’re touring the place, Ellie makes a comment about how they’ve done a lot worse than the old house that Tommy offers them to stay in and Joel gets defensive. He’s hurt that Ellie thinks he is weak and can’t provide for them. He says they’ve been doing just fine but he’s also realizing that he couldn’t protect and provide for Tommy. If he had successfully provided and protected Tommy, he wouldn’t be thriving with Maria in Jackson. It’s more proof that Joel needs to pass Ellie to someone else that can take care of her better, and so he asks Tommy.
But Ellie is extremely smart. She recognizes that Joel has been going through something the entire time she has known him. And when she is with Maria, she learns about Sarah, and Joel starts to make sense to her. Maria warns Ellie about trusting and following Joel but Ellie doesn’t want to hear it. In this moment she realizes why Joel has tried to be so aggressively detached from her and her mind is completely made up as to where her loyalty lies. She understands that Joel has pushed her away to keep himself safe. Because he cares about her the way he cared about Sarah and doesn’t want to lose her. This makes Ellie feel good. It makes her happy to know that she means something to Joel because he means something to her. But she doesn’t fully comprehend the amount of hurt it would cause Joel if he were to lose her.
When she can finally slip away from Maria’s watchful eye, she goes to find Joel with this new understanding of their relationship. This is where she overhears Joel asking Tommy to take her to Colorado. And she feels so frustrated and angry because she knows why he’s doing it, but he hasn’t been able to tell her why. Just everyone else. She doesn’t want him to lie and pretend to be detached from her because it’s so clear now that he does. And she wants to hear him say it to her face.
The fight they have in Ellie’s borrowed bedroom is Ellie’s understanding of Joel vs. Joel’s unwillingness to let her in. She gets him to see that she understands him, and he feels backed into a corner. With mention of Sarah, Joel becomes angry with Ellie. He can’t hide what she means to him anymore and he feels exposed, and that fear takes control again. Ellie keeps pushing to make Joel see he doesn’t have to keep pushing her away. “I’ve lost people too” is trying to persuade him to let her in. She’s saying “see we’ve experienced the same thing, felt the horrible pain of loss, and I want to let you in even with that possibility. Won’t you do the same?” And he denies her again and denies her experience of loss. And with Riley, Tess, Sam, and Henry ringing in her ears, Ellie starts yelling at him. Everyone she has cared for is dead and gone, and here is the last person on earth she cares about, and he’s going to leave her too. And she is so angry and so scared because she doesn’t want to be alone again. Doesn’t want to go with Tommy because she doesn’t know him, doesn’t trust him, and doesn’t care for him the way she cares about Joel. And Joel leaves the room destroying whatever understanding Ellie thought she had about their relationship. “You’re not my daughter, and I sure as hell ain’t your dad” is what Joel leaves her with.
But Joel does see Ellie as his daughter. He thinks about this as he thinks about Sarah. But this time he isn’t thinking of the pain that the loss of Sarah brought, he’s thinking about the joy and love she brought to his life. And he knows that he has to let Ellie in. Has to risk the pain for the joy and love that he has been missing for 20 years.
In the morning he wakes to leave, but this realization keeps him in Jackson. He waits for Ellie in the stables and tells her she deserves a choice. She doesn’t need to hear him try to explain it, she already knows. So, without hesitation she chooses Joel and says, “let’s go” and they go.
Before they take off, Tommy promises them a place in Jackson, and they are both counting on it. Earlier in the episode Ellie asks Joel that if he could go anywhere and do anything, what would he do? And it’s in this moment that he knows if he could go anywhere or do anything, it would be in Jackson and it would be with Ellie.
For the rest of the episode, it’s all bonding on the road to Colorado. Joel and Ellie’s relationship at the best it will ever be. They’re camping out, making conversation while riding their horse, Joel teaches Ellie to shoot, and for the first time Joel openly tells Ellie about his life before the outbreak. Ellie loves the idea of Joel being a contractor even if she has no idea what that means. But it’s cool to her because its Joel and Joel leans into it. Telling her that everybody loved contractors, which is a lie, but he wants her to think of him as a cool guy which is such a fatherly thing to do. As they get to the university Joel is teaching Ellie about football and shares that he wanted to be a singer when he was young, and then Ellie sees her first monkey and gets really excited, and he’s excited for her. Their relationship is so father/daughter by the end of the episode that you would never believe that their only interactions in the first couple episodes was just beefing with each other.
I will say that the University chapter felt rushed in the series, but I understand why it was so short in comparison to the game. In the game, most of the University chapter was gameplay. You were fighting infected inside the dorms, a bloater, and then the raiders at the end. They had to cut this out for sake of storytelling in this medium but everything they change still serves the same purpose. Joel gets impaled by a broken baseball bat rather than falling a couple stories onto a broken pipe of some sort, and kills the one raider, rather than numerous raiders. This man that Joel kills, even though it’s only one man, seals Joel and Ellie’s fate later in episode eight. And Ellie still has to be the one to save Joel and get them both out safe.
At the end of the episode, we are left with Joel bleeding out and Ellie terrified that he isn’t going to make it and she’ll be alone in the middle of nowhere. She doesn’t know what to do and where to go without him and more than that, she doesn’t want to lose him. But she is resourceful and scrappy, and she will do anything she can to save him. Which is where we pick up at the beginning of episode seven titled “Left Behind.” Ellie is doing whatever she can to help Joel, and he decides to tell her to leave him there. He knows he is making her weak and putting her in danger and so he pushes her away again. And for a moment he believes that she will.
Episode Seven, “Left Behind”
Episode 7 is probably my favorite episode. The relationship that Riley and Ellie have and the love they feel for one another is beautiful to see in a world like the Last of Us. You can feel it though the screen. Bella Ramsey who plays Ellie, and Strom Reid who plays Riley both give stellar performances. I felt every emotion down to the micro expressions that these two portrayed. Bella Ramsey does an amazing job at portraying sapphic longing and the relationship that these two have is just so precious.
This episode has been described by many critics as “filler” and “not necessary,” but I believe very strongly that this episode is one of the most important. Along with episode three, where we get Bill’s letter to Joel that really impacts the future thought process that Joel goes through in the final episode. This episode is where we see where and how Ellie had been living and who she is without the promise of immunity. She’s just an angry teenager. She’s miserable at this military school. More miserable without her best friend there with her. And even more miserable when we find out that she wants it to be more than friendship.
Ellie’s character up to this point has been revealed though how Joel interacts with her. Everything we know about her has been from Joel’s point of view. We don’t know Ellie on her own and we don’t know Ellie without Joel. But episode seven allows us to see this version of Ellie that is necessary for us to understand her experiences with loss and her experiences of love.
In the FEDRA military school that she has been placed in, she is defiant and angry and wishes more than anything to see her best friend again. But she believes that Riley is dead, and she becomes even angrier. She hates everyone else in her small world of FEDRA military school and gets into fights and other trouble all the time. But when Ellie is reunited with Riley, we see her at her happiest.
The two shared a room and assumedly spent every second of everyday together. No wonder when the two are reunited after about a month of being separated, Ellie is so relieved to see Riley again but also so angry that Riley put her through that fear. She cares so much for Riley that yes; she is angry but though that anger she’s happy that Riley is okay and that she can be back in her presence. And you can feel the love these two characters have for one another right off the bat. Even and especially though their bickering, arguing, and fighting. They know each other so well and can argue with each other in such a way that they already know what the other is going to say.
All the things Riley plans to show Ellie in the mall are such a testament of her love for Ellie. The lights that only the two of them can see, the electric stairs (as Ellie calls them) that blow Ellie’s mind, the carousel, the photobooth, the arcade, the joke book, and then the Halloween store. All these things Riley knows Ellie will not only enjoy, but find pure innocent amazement in. She wants to be the one to gift that amazement to Ellie. And she wants this night to be the thing that Ellie remembers when they’re no longer together.
The whole night is filled with tension between the two of them. This question lingers in the air, “does she like me like I like her?’ Both are thinking it, but Riley is much better at hiding it. The whole night the two try to figure it out. Riley pokes fun at Ellie in front of the Victoria’s Secret store and it hurts Ellie. She walks up to the glass to check her reflection to see what the girl she likes is seeing, and here she decides that Riley will never like her like that, that she never could. But still following Riley, she can’t help but think “what if” and if she really is picking up clues that Riley likes her. She gets on that carousel and allows herself to think of what a life together would look like. She looks at Riley like she puts the sun in the sky and for Ellie, she does. She looks at her like this repeatedly and tries so hard to play it off and cool. But it’s a feeling in her heart full of excitement and joy and she can’t help but want to be closer to Riley. She does this in the photobooth when she tells Riley to get off her and then again in the arcade where she just wants to be able to kiss her. And after Riley walks away from that would-have-been-moment Ellie is left thinking, “how stupid of me.” And it makes her want to call it a night.
Everything leads up to their big fight where it is revealed that Riley has been making bombs for the Fireflies that could be used to bomb the FEDRA school and everything still standing comes crashing down when Riley tells Ellie that she is leaving the next morning. Ellie asks her why she even took her to the mall if she was just going to leave the next day. She’s thinking the ultimate “how stupid of me,” if Riley doesn’t say right here in this moment that she wanted to see her because she wanted to confess her feelings to Ellie. Ellie gives her that chance and she doesn’t take it. Instead, she says she wanted to say goodbye. Ellie storms out because of her frustration and realization that there is no hope that Riley likes her, and she is sick of embarrassing herself. But she gets to the end of that hallway, eyes full of tears, and she turns around. She turns because it doesn’t matter if Riley doesn’t like her, she’s leaving. It doesn’t matter because Ellie still loves her and wants to be there with her in these last moments.
They meet up again in the Halloween store, the final planned wonder of the mall. Ellie puts on a brave face for Riley because she knows how much being a Firefly means to her even if she doesn’t understand it. She wants her to be happy. Ellie tells her that she can go and with that, Riley pulls out Ellie’s Walkman to play some music to lighten their moods. Etta James’s, “I Got You Babe” blasts on the store speakers and attracts the one infected inside the entire mall that was woken up by the sounds of their laughter in the arcade. As the two dance, Ellie comes to a stop and she’s thinking “this is my last chance.” Riley notices her change in demeanor and she stops too. And again, Ellie looks at Riley like she is everything to her and as a last resort, complete shot in the dark, begs her not to go, begs her not to leave her behind and Riley agrees. They share a kiss that answers both questions and at first Ellie apologizes. She’s worried that she just done something horrible, and Riley will hate her forever. But Riley just smiles at her and says, “for what?” And in this moment, they laugh at how ridiculous they have been the entire night, and even longer, how ridiculous they’ve been for years.
Riley and Ellie get to experience their first love and first kiss in a world where these things are extremely rare. In this moment, the idea of a life together seems possible. They don’t know what they’re going or how they’re going to survive, but if they have each other, they don’t care how hard it will be.
And then it all shatters with the infected person running into the Halloween store. They both get bitten and Ellie goes into a fit of rage. The idea and possibility of a life with Riley were just given to her, the girl she loves loves her back and in seconds it’s ripped from her hands. And not only was the idea of their future together destroyed, but also the idea of a future at all. They face the fact that they are both going to die in two days.
Riley sits with this silently because she has experienced the loss of her parents. But up to this point Ellie has never experienced a loss. Riley doesn’t let Ellie kill herself even though that’s the option Ellie wants to take. Riley saves her and tells her that they don’t give up on each other. They don’t give up on the people they love. Ans so, Ellie doesn’t give up on Riley, even watching her turn. Eventually Ellie has to be the one to kill Riley. She is Ellie’s first experience with love and now her first experience with loss.
And this is what’s running though Ellie’s head after Joel pushes her away in that basement. Joel is the person she cares about most in this world and she is not going to give up on him. She will fight to the bitter end for the relationship she has with him. That is exactly what she does.
There is so much more I could say about each of these episodes, but for your sake and my own, this is where I leave you. See you here next time for episodes eight and nine!