What the Game Tells Us Could Happen

[WARNING: The following contains potentially MAJOR spoilers for The Last of Us Season 2, including a major character’s death.]

If the first season of The Last of Us was about healing from the past, the second may likely be about cycles of revenge.

Fans of the dystopian HBO epic can probably already guess that Joel’s (Pedro Pascal) actions at the end of Season 1 — killing the Fireflies to save Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and then lying to her about it — will come back to haunt him. Plus, it’s highly predictable that Ellie, should she ever discover the truth, will undoubtedly be angry about what her adoptive father did.

Looking at what happens in the video game The Last of Us Part II, though, can give us more of a preview of what to expect when the series returns for Season 2, including the introduction of a major character who’ll play a key role in this and future seasons and a moment of violence that’ll reshape the show’s narrative completely.

If you don’t want spoilers about what could be ahead based on the events of the video game (some of which are pretty massive, fair warning), read no further. For everyone else, let’s break it down.

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A Life in Wyoming

Most of the gameplay in Part II occurs four years after the end of the first game. By then, Ellie has learned what Joel did to save her from the Fireflies, and they’re no longer close — she struggles to forgive him, and he struggles with what he did. (It seems that’s where Catherine O’Hara’s new character, who seems to be a therapist, might enter the narrative). Regardless, Ellie and Joel are able to live in relative safety at the community, along with Tommy (Gabriel Luna), Joel’s brother.

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Future Days

If you know a fan of the game, it’s likely several scenes in the trailer made them emotional. That’s because they’re direct nods to certain moments between Joel and Ellie in the source material — and in one case, a trailer shot is taken almost directly from the game. In the game, Joel plays Ellie the song “Future Days” by Pearl Jam. Without getting too far into spoilers, the lyrics of the song are extremely emotional, and they’re relevant to Joel’s hopes for Ellie’s future… as well as his continued regret over what he had to do to save Ellie from the Fireflies. When the trailer shows Ellie and Joel sitting with the guitar, it’s possible that scene is the “Future Days” scene.

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Ellie and Dina

In the trailer, we glimpse a few scenes of Ellie with a new character — Ellie plays the guitar for her (the song is likely “Take On Me” by A-Ha), and they seem to be trapped in a fight against some clickers in a subway station together. This new character played by Isabela Merced is Dina, Ellie’s love interest in the second game and the second season. Dina remains an important person in Ellie’s life throughout the second game, but ultimately, Ellie is unable to set aside a quest for revenge in favor of her affection for, and living a peaceful life with, Dina.

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Abby’s Introduction

The trailer also includes one close-up and clear shot of Abby, played by Kaitlyn Dever. Abby is essential to the second game — and she challenges a player’s empathy after she kills a fan-favorite character and becomes a point-of-view character in the gameplay. Abby is also a member of the Washington Liberation Front, an offshoot of the Fireflies that overthrew FEDRA in Seattle, and then fights against a religious cult called the Seraphites, who also want control of the city. (Jeffrey Wright’s character, who appears briefly in the trailer, is the leader of the Seraphites. They worship the Prophet, who is referred to in the trailer with the graffiti, “Feel her love.”)

Abby and Ellie’s storylines become connected after a moment of shocking violence that ends one of their quests for revenge and begins the other’s. Several shots of Abby in the trailer are taken directly from the game, including one where she crawls under a collapsing fence and is nearly killed by an Infected. We’re unlikely to see much of Abby’s point of view this season, but when we do see her, she’ll undoubtedly make an impression.

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A Tearful, Pivotal Loss

Perhaps the most shocking moment in the game arrives when, early on, Joel dies by Abby’s hand. As it turns out, Abby is the daughter of the doctor Joel killed in the Fireflies’ operating room. From then on, she’d had her sights set on revenge against him. Ellie and Tommy are restrained and can only watch as Abby viciously beats Joel to death with a golf club. In the trailer, we briefly see Ellie crying and yelling, and the snippet is likely from Joel’s death.

From then on, Tommy and Ellie dedicate themselves to killing Abby and taking revenge for what she’s done to Joel. This ends up taking a massive toll on Ellie, who grows increasingly violent and haunted as she goes to further and further extremes in the name of avenging Joel. In the end, she stops just short of ending Abby’s life. The game then concludes with Ellie remembering a conversation she and Joel had on his porch, where she told him she wanted to try to forgive him. It’s a hugely emotional moment, and it seems it’ll be happening earlier in the show than anyone had thought — unless all we see is a glimpse of it in Season 2, and the full memory plays later.

Because much of The Last of Us Part II involves flashbacks, it’s unclear when certain events will take place. Joel could die halfway through the season, or he could die in the first episode. The shot of tears running down his cheeks appears to be from that scene. It’s also possible that the show will rearrange the chronology of the game to play out in order, meaning that the flashback scenes will be integrated into the narrative where they originally would’ve happened. Regardless, our questions will be answered in 2025… and Pedro Pascal fans might need until then to prepare themselves accordingly.

The Last of Us Season 2, 2025, Max