"Bella is a force of nature.": The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 5 director Stephen Williams on directing the Nora Ellie confrontation

The Last of Us Season 2 aired its fifth episode, "Feel Her Love", on Sunday, May 11, 2025. That episode introduced the spores, a key factor from the games, and featured a tense moment in the last act of the episode. The said tense moment came after Ellie finally located Nora in the WLF hospital building. Their tussle begins in a room and ends in the basement of the hospital.

Right in the opening scene of this The Last of Us Season 2 episode, we are told that the basement is filled with an evolved form of the cordyceps virus, the spores. Nora realizes that Ellie is the immune girl that Joel saved by murdering the Fireflies in the season 1 finale. Then, Ellie proceeds to torture Nora for information on Abby's whereabouts, showing that Ellie has crossed the line.

Stephen Williams, who directed "Feel Her Love", episode 5 of The Last of Us Season 2, sat down for an interview with Variety's Matt Minton to discuss what went behind the filming of this episode. Pointing at the scene where Ellie is torturing Nora, Matt Minton asked Stephen Williams how the latter directed the scene. To this, the director had this to say:

"So much of how we approach the work on “The Last of Us” comes first and foremost from the richness of Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann’s scripts and, obviously, the characters that are being developed from the game. If Season 1 was dedicated to notions of endurance and survival, Season 2 delves deeper into questions around vengeance and mercy. Executing the climatic scene of Episode 5, where Ellie confronts Nora, really hinges around Ellie’s decision to continue seeking vengeance for everything that Abby and Nora and their crew did to Joel."

Then, Minton brought up Ellie's stoicism in that particular moment and asked Williams how he filmed this moment. Williams, appreciating Bella Ramsey, responded:

"Bella is a force of nature. They [Bella Ramsey] are so dialed in and just so brilliantly inhabits the character that there was very little that I had to say to them. I just had to stay out of the way, really. And then Tati, who plays Nora, just did an incredible job throughout the whole episode. They both were so committed to the material and committed to the ways their characters function within everything that had been constructed around the scene. It really was just about creating a safe environment for both of them to execute."

Stephen Williams talks more about The Last of Us Season 2 Episode:

Apart from discussing the tense moment at the end of The Last of Us Season 2, Stephen Williams reveals that Jesse helping her hallway through this episode reminded Ellie of Joel a bit. He said this when the interviewer asked Williams's approach to shooting that scene:

"There’s a sort of love triangle that is constantly evolving and fluid between Jesse, Ellie and Dina. When Ellie and Dina set out for Seattle in quest of seeking revenge on Abby and her crew, Jesse belatedly follows and shows up in a very fortuitously timed moment that Ellie and Dina find themselves in with some of the infected. For a moment, as Ellie is saved by Jesse’s timely arrival, it reminds her of the experience that she had on so many different occasions with Joel in Season 1."

Speaking of Joel, the director discussed Pedro Pascal's return in the closing minutes of the episode. When Williams was asked why this flashback was the right scene to end this particular The Last of Us Season 2 episode to end on, the director answered:

"Since Episode 2, everything in this season has been about payback, and this incredible stew of emotions that Ellie is experiencing. The loss and the heartbreak and the things left unsaid between her and Joel is the motivating metronome behind all the narrative beats. It felt appropriate for the episode to end in a reverie of Ellie’s recollection of Joel — especially after the intense scene that preceded it. It was the right tonal gear shift."

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What did you think about "Feel Her Love"? If you haven't seen The Last of Us Season 2 episode 5, catch it on Max.

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