How is Ellie playing guitar connected to Joel in The Last of Us Season 2?

Ellie playing guitar in The Last of Us Season 2 has to be one of the most emotional connections to exist between Ellie and Joel. Especially since Joel's death, every time Ellie picks up a guitar is a startling reminder of the fact that Joel, who taught Ellie how to play, the one person who stayed by Ellie, is now dead.

When Ellie picked up a guitar in the music store in Episode 4 and played a rendition of "Take On Me," she healed a part of herself and of everybody watching, who sobbed with her as Joel died a harrowing death at the hands of Abby. In that moment, when Ellie played the song for Dina, she appeared almost incandescent and happy.

In Episode 5, however, Ellie picks up a guitar again and strums a few chords, but soon she puts it down and appears upset. There is a very subtle reason why Ellie was upset in The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 5, and it has everything to do with Joel and his death.

Ellie playing guitar is heavily connected to Joel in The Last of Us Season 2

HBO's The Last of Us does the best it can when it comes to staying true to The Last of Us Part II video game, but there are certain subtle hints in the show that only the most loyal players of the game will understand and connect to. One such scene was in The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 5 when Ellie picks up a guitar and strums a few chords and sings a line before she stops, appearing upset.

Ellie getting visibly upset while playing a guitar is in stark contrast to the previous episode, where she played "Take On Me" for Dina and appeared happy. To understand this moment, we have to recognize that the song that Ellie strums on the guitar was "Future Days" by Pearl Jam. The dedicated video game players will recognize this song as the first song that Joel played on the guitar for Ellie after he promised to teach her how to play. As Ellie strums the chords of "Future Days" on her guitar, she is once again thinking about Joel, forced to tackle her grief.

If the fact that playing the guitar reminds Ellie of Joel, then one would question why she wasn't equally upset in the music store. This again brings the viewer's focus back to the exact song that Ellie plays in The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 5. In The Last of Us Part II, the game opens with Joel picking up his guitar and playing "Future Jams" for Ellie as he starts teaching her how to play. And, throughout the rest of the game, this song becomes a recurring motif, where Ellie strums this song every time she picks up a guitar and thinks about Joel.

So, when Ellie plays this song on the empty stage, she is once again reminded of Joel, her loss, and her grief. She starts singing the first line of the song:

"If i ever were to lose you"

She isn't even able to complete the lyric, which says:

"If I ever were to lose you / I'd surely lose myself"

When Joel sang this song for Ellie, he was trying to express his feelings for Ellie, telling her in music how much he loved her and how he would lay down his life for her. Singing those lyrics for Ellie was a stark reminder that she, in fact, did lose him. She gets visibly upset because she's once again consumed by her anger about his death and by her burning desire for revenge. She has lost him, and now she's going to lose herself in her quest for revenge against Abby and her WLF team.

This is why when Dina enters the room, Ellie looks up at her and asks her:

"Did you figure it out?"

When Dina replies in the affirmative, Ellie resolutely says,

"Good"

Ellie is referring to Dina triangulating their way into the hospital so that Ellie can confront Nora, which we get to witness later in the episode, and, through her, Abby.

The Last of Us Season 2 has an extremely special and beautiful motif of expressing deep feelings through the background score, and in the last few episodes they've been doing a great job of exploring Ellie's journey of grief through such moments.

HBO's The Last of Us Season 2 is streaming on Max, and new episodes air every Sunday.

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