The Last of Us writers reveals important details about Ellie 

The Last of Us Season 2 recently came to a conclusion on HBO Max with the premiere of its seventh and final episode. While the finale of The Last of Us Season 2 did proceed the narrative, it saw Bella Ramsey's Ellie at her lowest and worst condition imaginable.

It is needless to say that Ellie was shook to her core following the violent death of Pedro Pascal's Joel in the previous episodes of The Last of Us Season 2. By the time the finale rolled in, Ellie had lost everything that she ever cared for in the pursuit of revenge that wasn't hers.

Following the death of Joel, Ellie set forth on her trail to track down and kill Abby in order to have retribution. Accompanying her on this disastrous journey was Dina, who herself was pregnant. Ellie was forced to confront the reality of her failure as the conclusion of The Last of Us Season 2 took away everything she had to look forward as by the end Jesse was dead and so was Mel, along with her unborn child.

Here's everything that you need to know.

---

The Last of Us showrunners and writers explain Ellie's mometous failure

Speaking on The Last of Us podcast, co-creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, alongside co-writer Halley Gross, intricately explained the moment of epiphany that struck Ellie in her destructive quest for revenge. Mazin declared:

"She has failed on every possible level. And this is right after an episode where Joel tells her, ‘I hope you do a little bit better.’ She’s doing worse than he did.”

Ellie realizes to her peril that she isn't Joel, after all. The climactic scene in the finale episode presented her with a predicament to forcefully cut open Mel's belly and rescue the baby. Despite believing the contrary, Ellie realized at the last moment that she wasn't quite up to the job. Mazin explained:

"She chokes. This is the same girl who is in a cellar underneath a Cumberland Farms casually making an incision into an Infected man's head out of curiosity, like a kid pulling the wings off a fly. And here with this human being that she feels horrible guilt over because she did not intend for this to happen, she can't do it because she's terrified and because she doesn't have the willpower. And it is a failure and it is choking. And that's why she's sobbing. It's like, ‘I killed you. I killed your baby. And I choked. And I wasn't smart enough. And I was incapable enough. And look at the ruin I have caused. And guess what? I have no idea where Abby is.’”

The pathos delivered by Ramsey's moving performance further deepened the impact of Ellie's failure on her own self. Faced with the enormity of the consequences of her actions, Ellie finally discovered an aspect of her character that she had forcefully been suppressing all this while in order to face up to the task of seeking retribution for Joel's murder. Goss further commented about the moment:

"This moment is the true confrontation that she's not Joel. Because Joel, you know Joel would have been like, ‘Well, f** it, let's do it.’* Let go. And she can't, she's just… to what the guys are saying, she's just not mature enough.”

The Last of Us co-creator Mazin went a step further and presented an interesting parallel. He referred back to the flashback sequence featuring Joe Pantoliano's cameo as Eugene. Upon being infected, Eugene took recourse to childish behavior since he was at his wit's end and didn't know what to say or do. Mazin believed a similar state of mind came over Ellie:

"And that is literally a nightmare. I can imagine a nightmare where I'm being asked to do this and I don't know what this person is saying. They're talking to me in medical gibberish and they're dying in front of me and the seconds are ticking away. My hand is shaking and I don't know — literally Ellie doesn't know where in the belly the baby is. It's somewhere in there. ‘How deep?’ ‘Deeper than you think.’ How is that helpful? The problem is Mel's dying and it is such a horrible thing for Ellie to carry forward. And we know that waiting for Ellie back in a theater is the one person that she loves still in this world who is pregnant.”

Druckmann summed up the contradiction in Ellie's characterization admirably, analyzing the reason why Ellie believed herself to be someone she was not in The Last of Us:

"Even if you know that's the right thing to do, to have the willpower to stab another human being in the stomach and cut like an incision big enough to pull a baby out, that requires an enormous amount of willpower that most people don't have. But what's interesting about Ellie — most people also don't have the power to torture someone. And yet Ellie did that with Nora. So what does that say about Ellie's programming? You know, we've been talking about how people are programmed. Here's an instance where she has insane willpower. And she's lacking and she freezes, she chokes."

---

What to expect from The Last of Us Season 3?

The finale of the second season ended with Abby waking up, along with a title card that read 'Seattle Day One.' With Joel's death, it is now being speculated that the narrative focus might shift from Ellie to Abby.

In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Mazin was careful not to spill any details from the upcoming third season. However, he did comment on the possibility of exploring multiple points of view in terms of the narrative:

"We know this is a challenging thing to keep track of emotionally. We understand people are going to be provoked. But part of this story is about examining why we’re so comfortable with following one person’s point of view about everything.”

The Last of Us is exclusively available on HBO.