SPOILER ALERT! This publish comprises particulars from the Season 2 finale of HBO‘s The Final Of Us.
The Final Of Us Season 2 has come to an finish, however Ellie and Abby’s story is way from over.
Sunday evening’s finale is ends on fairly the cliffhanger, however it’s a 50-minute episode full of motion that must be unpacked earlier than we get to that ending. The episode picks up moments after the occasions of Episode 5, as Jesse (Younger Mazino) is trying to extract a crossbow bolt from Dina’s (Isabela Merced) leg. Bear in mind, Episode 6 was devoted to flashbacks of Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Joel (Pedro Pascal) resulting in the enduring porch scene, the place Joel lastly tells Ellie the reality about what he did on the hospital in Salt Lake Metropolis.
So, when Ellie arrives again on the theater after torturing Nora (Tati Gabrielle), she decides to disclose every little thing about Salt Lake to Dina, together with the knowledge she simply acquired from Nora that Abby’s dad was the unarmed physician who Joel killed. Dina appears to take the revelation in stride, relieved that Ellie has lastly instructed her the reality, however given every little thing they’ve already sacrificed to get up to now, that is the second the place just a few big questions begins to linger over everybody’s head: What wouldn’t it value them to maintain going? And, at this level, what’s Ellie’s honesty even value?
“Look the place Ellie tells the reality. She tells the reality on the center of probably the most non-public and shut relationship she has after — not earlier than, main as much as, throughout, or instantly after — confirming that she and this different individual are in love,” co-creator Craig Mazin instructed reporters throughout a press convention forward of the finale. “Telling the reality is weak, and on this world, you inform the reality, you’re weak, you’re giving one thing away…Then, on her face, take into account how shut it’s to the best way Joel regarded when he was speaking to her. It’ll at all times be exhausting.”
He continued: “What we ask of the viewers is to grasp why they’re mendacity. They’re not mendacity to govern. They’re not mendacity to be evil. They’re mendacity to guard themselves. After they cease mendacity, it means that there’s a unprecedented belief there. However in each instances, once they fess up, Joel or Ellie, they imagine they might be shedding the individual that they love due to it.”
Telling the reality does carry Ellie nearer to Dina, at the very least in the interim, however that will not essentially be the case by the tip of the episode, when Ellie’s actions start to actually meet up with her.
By now, we additionally know that Tommy (Gabriel Luna) can also be in Seattle, so Jesse and Ellie got down to discover him. It’s a short-lived joint quest, although, as tensions between the 2 of them start to develop nearly instantly, particularly after they encounter a gaggle of WLF troopers torturing a Seraphite youngster. Ellie desires to intervene, however Jesse holds her again. Tensions escalate once more when Ellie spots the aquarium and realizes that have to be the place Abby is, given Nora’s trace concerning the whale and the wheel. Jesse tries to dissuade her from going, insisting they need to discover Tommy and go away Seattle, which prompts an outburst from Ellie who’s, fairly frankly, bored with Jesse performing as if he stands on an ethical excessive floor.
To make issues worse, that is additionally when Ellie finds out that Jesse voted towards sending a crew to Seattle within the first place. Notably within the present, Mazin defined that he and co-creator Neil Druckmann needed to place extra emphasis on Jesse’s standing in Jackson to, hopefully, make him seem to be some of the reliable, level-headed characters — which solely makes this confrontation from the sport much more emotionally salient.
“She makes a degree that I feel is so stable that I begin to suppose, ‘Oh, yeah, so there goes one other hero,’ as a result of she’s proper,” Mazin mentioned. “It’s not that what she’s doing is correct, however his perception that he’s ethical is so challengeable, and it’s so arbitrary that ‘I’m ethical and upstanding and sacrificial to folks so long as they’re on the within of this picket fence, but when they’re exterior the picket fence, I’ll simply allow them to die, even when they’re a child.’”
However, to be truthful, he and Druckmann mentioned they have been aligned early on about the best way that Jesse would vote.
“I feel in our conversations of how Jesse voted, we have been each beneath the identical sort of notion. He would vote to guard Jackson, as a result of Jesse is extra concerning the bigger group, at the very least the group he belongs to, not the group of mankind, than concerning the particular person,” Druckmann mentioned. “There’s some overlap there between Jesse and Joel, as a result of I imagine in comparable circumstances, Joel would have voted the identical method.”
As soon as they cut up, Ellie units off for the aquarium. On the similar time, as a large storm is brewing, it appears as if the WLF are launching an assault towards the Seraphites. Ellie finds a small boat and launches it into the water, however a wave shortly overturns the boat, sending it and her washing ashore on an island off the coast of Seattle. And on that island, she is confronted by Seraphites who very almost hold her. They’re stopped solely by the sounding of an alarm that tells the Seraphites their village is beneath assault.
Extra on that later, Mazin guarantees.
“I’ve so many questions, and I perceive that the viewers does too. I type of wish to guarantee them that these questions are right and will likely be answered,” he says. “What’s going on? How did that warfare begin? Why? How did the Seraphites begin? Who’s the prophet? What occurred to her? What does Isaac need? What’s occurring on the finish of Episode 7? What is that this explosion? What’s all of it? And all of it’s going to change into clear.”
It’s principally a stroke of luck that enables Ellie to flee and make it to the aquarium, which is the place issues actually begin to go off the rails. She finds Mel (Ariela Barer) and Owen (Spencer Lord) arguing within the depths of the constructing and holds them at gunpoint, demanding to know the place Abby is.
She tells them to level to Abby’s location on a map, however when Owen reaches for a gun as an alternative, Ellie instinctively fires her personal, killing them each. Relaxation assured, the viewers shouldn’t be presupposed to be rooting for Ellie at this level, Mazin and Druckmann say.
Someway, they managed to make this sequence much more jarring than within the video games by including a horrific interplay between Mel and Ellie. As Mel, who’s pregnant, is bleeding out, she instructs Ellie to chop the newborn out of her. Ellie is in shock, and she will’t even make an incision earlier than Mel stops respiration, however Jesse and Tommy discover her nonetheless kneeling over Mel’s physique, knife in hand, who is aware of how lengthy later, haunted by what she’s carried out.
“I bear in mind when [Craig] described it earlier than I learn it, he’s like, ‘Oh yeah, I made it darker.’ And I’m like, ‘How might it’s darker?’ After which I learn I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, it’s darker,’” Druckmann mentioned. “However… generally now we have to go there, and it was essential for this second to, for those who’re rooting for Ellie, make you are feeling soiled, as a result of that’s what collateral injury does.”
At this level, everybody, even Ellie, is beginning to query this mission. Ellie has extra blood on her palms than she ever anticipated, and she or he hasn’t even discovered Abby but.
“This second additionally referred to as for Bella to have and show such a profound degree of remorse and failure. On this second the place you do really feel like, ‘Oh my god, how am I nonetheless on this journey with you?’ I feel it’s essential for folks to see that it’s not like Ellie goes, ‘I’m cool, no matter, it occurred, let’s preserve going for Abby.’ This breaks her,” Mazin defined.
However, will this be the factor that lastly will get Ellie to drop her vendetta and go residence? It actually looks as if it, as Tommy and Jesse collect her up and convey her again to the theater, the place she resigns to the concept that she will likely be leaving Seattle with out confronting Abby — or, at the very least, she thinks she is going to.
As Ellie and Jesse are speaking within the theater, they hear a commotion within the foyer. They run out to search out Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) holding Tommy at gunpoint. She shoots Jesse within the head earlier than pointing her gun at Ellie, who’s begging for her to not shoot anybody else. The display cuts to black because the gun goes off once more, leaving audiences to query what the hell goes to occur subsequent.
Within the last scene of the episode, Abby wakes up in what seems to be a WLF compound, and the phrases “Seattle Day 1” pop up within the nook of the display, indicating that we’re about to relive these nightmarish three days yet again, simply from a special perspective this time.
It’s troublesome to select a spot to begin dissecting these last moments. Initially, Mazin sought to quell anxieties concerning the upcoming third season by letting viewers know “we haven’t seen the final of Kaitlyn Dever, and we haven’t seen the final of Bella Ramsey, and we haven’t seen the final of Isabela Merced, and we haven’t seen the final of lots of people who’re at the moment lifeless within the story.” And that’s all he’s keen to say, for now.
However, the place do any of those characters stand with one another anymore? With Jesse lifeless, the place does that go away Ellie and Dina?
“I imply, how might it not have a drastic influence [on their relationship], particularly when he’s the daddy of this child, but in addition a really shut pal, a former romantic accomplice?” Druckmann mused. “Yeah, it’s going to imply an entire lot.”
Finally, they need audiences to really feel unsettled. In any case, there may be much more story to inform.
“What I need the viewers to really feel thematically on the finish of the season is that they aren’t the place they have been, however they’re not but the place they will go. That there has at all times been a narrative that we’ve been telling concerning the good and unhealthy of affection, however we change which facet is sweet and unhealthy generally…” Mazin mentioned. “We perceive that each Ellie and Abby are shifting ahead in hassle. They’re in ethical hassle, as a result of their certainty is starting to fail them, and we are able to see it right here with Ellie, for positive, as a result of confronted with the results of the issues she’s carried out and the people who didn’t should die, she’s beginning to really feel perhaps a swing of the pendulum. We don’t know the place these two are going to finish, however what I might hope the viewers feels is that they aren’t carried out. They aren’t carried out rising, or they aren’t carried out falling. We’ll have to attend and see which it’s.”
The Season 2 finale does appear to point that, on the very least, the start of Season 3 will focus largely on Abby. Nonetheless, Druckmann assures audiences who haven’t performed the sport and aren’t aware of the place this story goes that there’s an “epic nature to it of what’s about to occur, however this different story goes to be actually essential coming again to Joel and Ellie and every little thing that you just’ve seen up to now.”
“The query that we’re asking, and the factor we’re interrogating on this story is, whenever you’ve dedicated such horrible issues, relying in your circumstance, are you able to ever come again from that?” he mentioned. “We see in that porch scene, Joel is making an attempt to come back again from what he’s carried out, although he doesn’t remorse it. Now, now we have these two characters which can be on this downward spiral, making an attempt to do justice for the people who they love, and we’ll see how far that goes.”
At this level within the story, it’s not simple to root for Ellie, however she’s nonetheless our major protagonist. To date, we’ve been on her facet. We’ve needed to see her search justice for Joel. After the finale, it’s pure to be questioning whether or not Ellie is admittedly justified, particularly given all of the collateral injury.
“As Ellie strikes by way of Seattle, her focus is so clearly on Abby. Even that second when Dina tells her their names, Abby is the title she repeats, as a result of Abby is the one who did it, that is smart. However in that horrible scene the place Joel dies, Ellie says, ‘you’re all going to effin’ die’ not ‘Abby, you’re going to die,’ ‘you’re all going to die.’ There’s something sort of prophetic about that. It’s nearly as if she put that hex on the market that she might now not management,” Mazin says. “I feel it’s clear to her that Mel didn’t should die. Mel didn’t harm her. Mel didn’t maintain her down. Mel didn’t harm Joel. We noticed much more than that, earlier than Ellie exhibits up within the room, Mel is making an attempt to assist Dina, is horrified by what Abby is doing and tries to cease it and fails, which is her personal disgrace.”
However, Mazin factors to Ellie’s dialog with Tommy towards the tip of the episode to offer audiences a touch as to the place all that is headed and whether or not Ellie will see the error of her methods.
“Ellie says ‘So, she will get to stay?’ and Tommy says, ‘are you able to make your peace with that?’, and she or he says, ‘I assume I’ll need to.’ That’s attention-grabbing, as a result of what if one thing modifications and also you don’t need to. Now what? I don’t suppose the story’s over,” he teased.
Added Druckmann: “There’s an obsession there that, in our conversations, the metaphor has been, typically, drug habit. You could recover from it, and you’ll relapse, and the query is, can she absolutely recover from it?”
Begged to tease just a bit extra of what’s to come back in Season 3, each Mazin and Druckmann replied cheekily with transient solutions which can be positive to excite players and go away those that haven’t performed much more confused.
“Rats, what ought to we speak about?” Mazin requested, to which Druckmann replied: “You already know, there’s a sure crane that you just’re seeing in Episode 7 that may be very telling.”
