Summary
The episode includes both new and familiar flashback scenes from The Last of Us games.
The new scenes successfully add depth to Joel and Ellie’s relationship, notably in domestic settings.
The final arc, while impactful, takes up a lot of time, leading to rushed scenes and missing emotional impact in key moments.
The penultimate episode of The Last of Us Season 2 has arrived, and it is somewhat underwhelming. Episode 5 ended with Ellie revealing to Nora that she already knew about Joel’s actions at the Firefely hospital. Fans who played the game would have known this already. Still, to new viewers, this would have been new information, so Episode 6 is dedicated to explaining how Ellie came to learn this crucial information that drove the two iconic characters apart.
Episode 6 is made up of almost entirely flashback scenes. Some of these flashbacks were seen in the game series, interspersed throughout Ellie’s chapters. Usually one flashback level would occur at the end of each of Ellie’s Seattle days, which slowly revealed to players some of the major events that happened in the time gap between The Last of Us Part 1 and 2. However, in this retelling, the showrunners decided to go in a different direction. It was clear from the teaser trailer that this episode would be solely dedicated to filling in the blanks and based around only Joel and Ellie. This is reminiscent of how Season 1 took a break from the main narrative in Episode 3: “Long, Long, Time”. This episode told the story of Bill and Frank, and it spanned across decades of events based on just these two characters. The episode was beautifully gut-wrenching and introduced new scenes, giving the characters more depth. Episode 6 of Season 2: “The Price”, sadly missed the opportunity to replicate a similar feeling.
Related
The Last of Us Season 2, Episode 6 Ending Explained: Did Ellie Ever Try To Mend Her Relationship With Joel?
The relationship between Joel and Ellie became tumultuous after the events of Salt Lake City, but did they ever mend their relationship?
The Old Flashback Scenes
Episode 6 showed a lot of new scenes that were only briefly referred to but not shown in the game series. However, there were also some of Joel and Ellie’s flashbacks seen in The Last of Us Part 2, re-imagined in this episode. The most significant one was Ellie’s birthday trip to the museum. This was a very poignant moment in the game, and it came as a wholesome relief from the violence and suffering, so it was probably an obvious decision to include this arc in Episode 6.
This arc was very faithful to the events of the game. Joel takes Ellie for a walk, not revealing her surprise. Ellie discovers the giant dinosaur and climbs it. They make their way to the planetarium, and then Joel plays Ellie an audio tape of a space launch while the two characters sit in a space pod wearing astronaut helmets. It was a cute moment that could not have been more faithful to the source material, yet it still didn’t quite have the same effect as the game, where the player could explore the museum at their own pace, finding a series of other installations and discussing them with Joel. However, the nature of the television medium obviously doesn’t allow for this kind of interactive freedom, so there’s not much the show could have done to be on par with the games’ version of this story.
The New Flashback Scenes
The new flashback scenes with Joel and Ellie are the closest the season comes to having their “Long, Long, Time” moment. At the beginning of the episode, Joel is building Ellie a guitar for her birthday when Tommy bursts in with a wounded Ellie. Ellie reveals to Joel that whilst working in the kitchen she intentionally burned her infection mark on her arm so she could have an alibi for the disfigurement on her arm. Ellie is dazed from the painkillers she’s on and states that she just wanted to be able to wear short sleeves again. Joel is visibly frustrated and deeply concerned that Ellie would do this to herself, but manages to calm himself down and tells Ellie that she understands why she did this. In the game, Ellie mentions to Dina that the mark on her arm is a burn that she gave to herself, and now the audience of the TV show gets to see how exactly this unfolded. This is a good example of the TV retelling enhancing the source material rather than trying to exactly replicate or replace it.
There is also a scene where Joel bursts in on Ellie and her girlfriend Cat in her room. Where they had also been smoking weed and Cat had given Ellie a tattoo, Joel remarking “So, all the teenage sh*t all at once, huh?” This scene wasn’t seen or mentioned in the game, but it works very well in this episode, as it shows Joel and Ellie having a classic parent and teen struggle, where Ellie is starting to grow more independent and rebellious and this is clearly something Joel is not equipped to deal with, having not reached that stage with his own daughter. It’s an oddly wholesome scene, as the audience had mostly only seen Joel and Ellie’s relationship existing on dangerous high-stakes adventures, so seeing them having a very domestic conflict in a post-apocalyptic world is, in a way, something to be grateful for. These new scenes played very well, but sadly, the episode did not counter on this potential as much as it should have.
The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 6 Has a Pacing Issue
The final story arc in Episode 6 shows Joel taking Ellie on her first patrol. Everything seems fine and mundane until Joel receives a radio call for help. Joel and Ellie rush to help and end up finding an infected Eugene. Eugene begs to be taken back to town so he can say goodbye to his wife Gail before being executed. Joel agrees to both Eugene and Ellie to go along with this plan, yet when Ellie leaves to go and get the horses, Joel shoots Eugene in the back of the head, taking no risks in true Joel fashion. When they return to town, Joel lies to Gail saying Eugene ended it himself, and he wasn’t afraid. Ellie, feeling betrayed, calls out Joel’s lie and tells Gail the truth.
This is an interesting new arc to tell, and it has a very good payoff at the end, because Ellie can see Joel lying to Gail with the same eyes he lied to her with when he told her about what happened at the Firefly hospital. Which is likely why Ellie interjected and told Gail the truth, as she would have wished someone had done for her at that moment. However, as effective as this arc is, it takes up a lot of time in the episode and, as a result of this, the remaining scenes feel very rushed.
Episode 6 actually shows the game’s very final scene, where Joel and Ellie have a heart-to-heart on Joel’s porch after the New Year’s Eve incident. It was doubtful this scene would be included at all, as Ellie had stated that she should have joined Joel on the porch but didn’t. The TV show retelling of this scene is very similar with a lot of the same dialogue. However, there is a crucial difference. At this point, Ellie still doesn’t know the truth about the Firefly hospital. She certainly didn’t believe what Joel had told her, but she never fully confirmed it, whereas in the game Ellie had found out a couple of years prior. Meaning in the TV show retelling, Ellie finds out the truth about what Joel did and all the people he killed, including Marlene, and starts crying, only for her to then almost immediately state that she would like to try and forgive Joel for his actions.
This doesn’t have nearly the same emotional impact as the game, where the two characters had a rift between them for years as a result of the truth coming to light, so when Ellie tells Joel that she wants to try and forgive him, Joel is so visibly moved by this he almost breaks down crying, because he spent years thinking he’d lost any potential relationship with Ellie as a result of his actions. But because of the way the TV show re-imagined this scene, a lot of the emotional feel is missing, and it all seems very rushed.
Episode 6 is by no means a bad episode of TV, yet it could have been a lot more effective. With only one episode of The Last of Us season 2 remaining, and a lot of viewers stating that Season 2 isn’t quite hitting as hard as Season 1 did, this could have been HBO’s opportunity to have their “Long, Long, Time” moment as it had been rumored they might be doing. The new scenes that didn’t take up a lot of time were very effective and gave more depth to the source material. If the showrunners prioritized these scenes, this would also have allowed them more time to show Joel and Ellie’s final moments together in a way that is respectful of the characters with such a long and profound history. Yet the pacing and decision-making made in Episode 6 feels very much like a missed opportunity to create something special for new audiences and fans of the game.
