The Last of Us Season 2 star reveals what was Tommy’s vote for Joel’s justice

The aftermath of Joel’s death still haunts every corner of The Last of Us Season 2, and episode 3 forces both the characters and the audience to confront what justice really means in a world already broken.

Months after Abby’s brutal attack, Jackson’s council gathers to vote on Ellie’s plea for revenge: A mission to send sixteen people after the one responsible. The decision? Rejection. Silence. Disbelief.

But now we know where Tommy stood. Gabriel Luna, who plays the character in The Last of Us Season 2, has confirmed that Tommy voted yes. Without hesitation. For him, it wasn’t just about protocol or safety, it was about standing by Ellie and honoring Joel’s memory. In a series where justice is murky and loyalty often costs everything, that quiet yes just became one of the season’s most meaningful moments.

Tommy’s vote in The Last of Us Season 2 wasn’t just a choice. It was a quiet act of rebellion

On screen, the vote in Jackson plays out with deliberate restraint. The scene cuts to faces, glances, silences. Never the ballots themselves. We’re left with an 8 to 3 verdict, but no confirmation of who voted which way. It’s a tension that mirrors the show’s central theme: how personal pain is often swallowed by collective survival.

However, off-screen, Gabriel Luna clears the fog. Tommy didn’t hesitate. He voted yes. Loud in conviction, quiet in delivery. And in a show where emotional weight often hides beneath stoicism, that quiet speaks volumes.

According to Luna, Tommy’s choice wasn’t strategic or calculated. It was immediate, instinctual, born from the same place Ellie’s rage comes from: loyalty and grief, the hollow ache of losing a brother and watching the world move on too quickly.

Tommy may live in Jackson now, but he was forged in fire long before he found peace behind its walls. When the moment came to choose between safety and justice, between order and love, he didn’t blink. He aligned himself with Ellie, not out of obligation but out of shared loss. And that choice, silent as it may have been, cracked the illusion that Jackson was ever fully united.

The vote that broke more than the silence

Ellie’s speech in the council wasn’t just a cry for justice, no; it was raw, calculated desperation. She wasn’t asking for vengeance. She was asking not to be alone in her grief. She laid Joel’s death at their feet and waited to see who would help carry the weight.

And the room, so quiet moments before, answered with even more silence. When the ballots came in, the result was definitive. Eight said no. Three said yes. And somehow, that hurt more than the killing itself.

But a vote like that doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It revealed everything about who Jackson is and what they fear. The town isn’t cruel. It’s scared, practical. Focused on survival, not sacrifice. They weren’t dismissing Ellie but protecting themselves.

That’s what makes Tommy’s yes so powerful. It cut through the numbness. Not enough to change the outcome but enough to remind us that in The Last of Us, standing with someone doesn’t always mean standing victorious. Sometimes it just means not walking away.

A character defined by conflict

Tommy has always been torn between two identities. He’s a survivor of brutal wars, both literal and emotional, but he’s also a man who tried to build something better. In Jackson, he became a husband, a father and a leader. He chose peace. But peace doesn’t erase history, it only buries it until something rips it back to the surface. Joel’s death did exactly that.

In The Last of Us Season 2 episode 3, when Ellie speaks, Tommy isn’t just listening as a council member. He’s also listening as a brother, a man who once owed Joel everything and now owes Ellie more than he can say. That’s what makes his vote so layered. It’s not a rebellion against the community and a reckoning with himself. He respects the structure Jackson offers, but in that moment, structure wasn’t enough, protocol didn’t matter: Only memory did.

Luna even says that Tommy accepts the outcome because that’s what the process demands. However, acceptance doesn’t mean agreement. He doesn’t storm out, he doesn’t lash out. He simply stands by Ellie in the only way the system allowed him to. With a single word: Yes.

A turning point for Ellie

There’s a moment after the vote where Ellie doesn’t say a word, but everything about her posture shifts. The silence around her becomes heavier than any denial. This wasn’t just a political failure, it was personal abandonment.

For Ellie, losing Joel was already an open wound. Watching Jackson decide not to act only deepened it. Even with Tommy’s support, the vote proved what she had feared from the start: No one else would carry this with her, not fully.

And so she makes her choice, one she was always going to make even if the council had said yes. She leaves. Quietly. Without permission. With Dina at her side, she heads to Seattle not for closure, but for something to anchor her grief to.

Tommy’s yes may have been a moment of solidarity, but it couldn’t stop what was coming. That vote wasn’t the end of the conversation, it was the beginning of a war Ellie had already declared in her heart.

What Tommy’s vote tells us about The Last of Us Season 2

Gabriel Luna’s confirmation might seem like a small detail, but in a show like The Last of Us, no detail is ever small. Tommy’s yes wasn’t just a vote, it was a map, a glimpse into who he is now, what still matters to him, and how far he’s willing to go for the people Joel left behind. It shows that grief doesn’t just paralyze. Sometimes it pushes. And for Tommy, that push meant standing up even when he knew the room wouldn’t follow.

As the season unfolds, that yes lingers, echoing in every step Ellie takes toward Seattle, in every decision Jackson avoids, and in every quiet scene where Tommy says nothing but carries everything.

His vote might have not changed the outcome, but it exposed the cracks. And in The Last of Us? The cracks are where the story lives.