Every Death In The Last Of Us Season 2

The Last of Us season 2 has come to an end, and it brought some truly shocking character deaths on both sides of the conflict. The finale episode — The Last of Us season 2, episode 7 — ended the season on a jaw-dropping cliffhanger. Adapted faithfully from the video game, this cliffhanger saw Ellie and Abby finally coming face-to-face. Just when Ellie was about to abandon her mission to track down Abby, Abby surprisingly tracked her down. The road to that climactic confrontation was paved with the bodies of Ellie and Abby’s loved ones.

Mercifully, some of The Last of Us’ most beloved characters were spared. Dina, Tommy, and Maria all live to fight another day. But a lot of the show’s protagonists weren’t so lucky. The season’s entire story arc of Ellie’s quest for revenge was built on a major character’s death. And since then, just like in the game, there’s just been more and more death over the course of Ellie’s futile pursuit of justice. Half of the major characters who died in season 2 were killed by Ellie on her vengeful rampage through Seattle.

6Joel

Abby Kills Joel To Avenge Her Father

The first major character death of the season was also the most shocking by far. In just the second episode of the season, “Through the Valley,” Joel was murdered by Abby in retaliation for killing her dad and preventing the creation of a cure for humanity. Of course, players of the video game knew it was coming, but TV audiences were caught by surprise. Even some gamers expected the series to delay Joel’s death to keep Pedro Pascal around for a few more episodes, so the fact that it happened so early surprised everyone.

But that’s what makes Joel’s death so impactful in the game (aside from the sheer brutality of it). Killing off Joel in just the first act is what tells the audience that this won’t be the predictable sequel story they were anticipating, and they have no idea what to expect. The TV show made a lot of changes to Joel’s death — giving Abby her speech, swapping out Tommy for Dina, keeping Ellie conscious after the fact — but it didn’t tone down that disarming brutality.

5Nora

Ellie Tortures Nora To Death To Get Abby's Location

When Ellie gets to Seattle, the first member of Abby’s group that she manages to track down is Nora. Ellie finds Nora at the hospital and chases her into a basement full of spores, where she viciously tortures an infected Nora for Abby’s location. Up until this point, the TV show’s version of Ellie hadn’t been quite as ruthless in her pursuit of vengeance as she is in the game. But when she picked up that pipe and started beating Nora’s leg with it, she descended to the same level of darkness and cold-bloodedness as her video game counterpart.

This torture scene in episode 5, “Feel Her Love,” is an almost shot-for-shot recreation of the same scene in the game. It has the same red lighting, the same intimidating low-angle framing of Ellie, and even the same exact shape of lead pipe. In the season 2 finale, Ellie reveals that she didn’t even put Nora out of her misery; she left her in the basement to succumb to her infection and become a spore incubator.

4Eugene

Joel Kills Eugene After He Gets Bitten

After two straight episodes of Ellie’s vengeful crusade through Seattle, The Last of Us took a trip down memory lane in episode 6, “The Price.” This episode brought back Joel and went back to show how his relationship with Ellie soured over the course of the five-year time jump. In the game, Ellie’s growing distrust of Joel finally consumes her when she sees some Jackson runaways who got infected. She starts poking holes in Joel’s story about the Fireflies and their potential cure, and Joel angrily shuts her down, so she goes to the hospital to get answers for herself.

In the TV show, it goes a little differently, as it reveals why Gail is so standoffish towards Joel over her husband Eugene’s death. Joel and Ellie came across an infected Eugene on patrol, and he begged them to take him back to Jackson to hear Gail’s last words. Joel promised Ellie he would grant Eugene’s final wish, but by the time Ellie came back with the horses, Joel had killed Eugene. This showed her how easy it was for Joel to lie to her, and all but confirmed he wasn’t telling the truth about what happened at the hospital.

3Owen

Ellie Kills Owen In Self-Defense

In the season finale, although Ellie tells Jesse she’s happy to abandon her mission and head home as soon as they find Tommy, she remains determined to kill Abby. While Jesse goes to the marina to help Tommy, Ellie leaves him to go to the aquarium, where Nora told her Abby is hiding. When she gets inside, Abby isn’t there, but her friends Owen and Mel are. Just like in the game, Ellie tries to use Joel’s signature interrogation technique to get Abby’s location out of them, but it goes horribly wrong.

Owen grabs his gun and opens fire. Ellie shoots back, and while Owen’s shot misses, Ellie’s shots hit both Owen and Mel. Owen is the first to drop dead, with a shot to the neck. In the game, Ellie shoots him in the gut as he tries to wrestle her gun out of her hands.

2Mel

Ellie Accidentally Kills Mel After Owen

After Owen drops dead, Mel realizes that Ellie has also shot her. In the game, Ellie doesn’t shoot Mel; Mel attacks Ellie with a knife and Ellie turns the knife on her and stabs her in the neck. Then, a dying Owen tells her through a gargle of blood that Mel is pregnant. Ellie rolls over Mel’s corpse and opens up her coat, and she’s horrified to see a baby bump. The TV show makes this moment even more disturbing, as Mel realizes she’s dying and begs Ellie to cut the fetus out of her.

In both cases, Mel’s death brings Ellie down to a new low. Ellie only found out a couple of days ago that Dina is pregnant, and now, she’s unwittingly murdered a pregnant woman (and, by extension, her unborn child). In both the game and the show, Tommy and Jesse arrive at the aquarium and find Ellie traumatized by her own actions. The guilt is unbearable.

1Jesse

Abby Shoots Jesse In The Theater Lobby

The last major character death in The Last of Us season 2 is also the least deserved. Joel slaughtered the Fireflies, including Abby’s dad, so it’s understandable (as horrifying as it is) that Abby wanted to kill him. Nora, Owen, and Mel all took part in Joel’s murder, so they essentially brought Ellie’s particular brand of justice on themselves. And Eugene got infected, so Jackson protocols dictated that he needed to be put down (and Joel got in a world of personal trouble simply for following those rules). But Jesse didn’t deserve to die at all.

Jesse doesn’t have a stake in the revenge plot, and he doesn’t have a stake in the Seattle civil war. He only came to Washington to stop his friends from getting themselves killed, and all he wanted to do was go home and raise his child. But, at the end of the season finale, Jesse becomes collateral damage in the endless cycle of violence. When Abby finds them at the theater and attacks Tommy in the lobby, Ellie and Jesse race in to help him. Abby blindly fires at the door and hits Jesse in the head, killing him instantly.

The untimely end of Joel was undoubtedly The Last of Us season 2’s most shocking death, and arguably its most heartbreaking, largely owing to the fact that a devastated Ellie was there to witness it. But Jesse’s death is a very close second. It happens so unceremoniously and unintentionally. As The Last of Us goes forward, Ellie will learn the wrong lesson from Jesse’s death. It won’t teach her to let go of her desire for revenge to protect the loved ones she has left; it’ll just compound her hatred of Abby.