A decade later, she gets to approach the scene in a new light.
Warning: This article contains spoilers fromThe Last of Usseason 1 finale.
The ending ofThe Last of Uswas just the beginning forMerle Dandridge.
Merle Dandridge as Marlene in ‘The Last of Us’ series versus Marlene in the game.Liane Hentscher/HBO; Naughty Dog
“And it’s so rife with conflict and negotiation and, ultimately, resolve.
Dandridge, obviously, got the job.
The premise remains largely the same from game to show.
Merle Dandridge reunites with fellow game veteran Ashley Johnson in ‘The Last of Us’ season 1 finale.Liane Hentscher/HBO
They reach Salt Lake City, where the Fireflies have turned a local hospital into their base.
Removing the fungus, which has grown with Ellie since birth, will result in her death.
The circumstances are made more tragic bythe sequence that opened the episode.
She kills the creature, but she’s been bitten.
It’s presumed thecordycepstransferred to Ellie before Anna could cut the umbilical cord.
She also asks her friend to kill her before she can turn.
Dandridge had most of this background when making the game.
“I’ve known the kind of relationship that Marlene and Anna have had.
She didn’t, however, know that Marlene was the one to kill Anna.
“That never occurred to me,” she adds.
“That was another big gut punch.”
Dandridge’s performance inThe Last of Usfinale becomes all the more richer for this backstory.
you might read the history on Marlene’s face as Joel argues to save Ellie.
(The actress, for example, always thought that Marlene and Tommy had a romantic entanglement in Boston.
“Without a doubt.
There was a thing 100 percent,” she says.)
“But there were adjustments to be made in this framework,” she continues.
It’s bound to be divisive, and interpretations will likely change over time.
To this day, Dandridge finds Marlene’s dilemma uniquely painful.
“Marlene is a soldier.
She’s a survivalist.
She is trying to do better for the whole.
“She had love and friendship and family.
That was something other than [being] a soldier.
To be asked to sacrifice that one last shred of who she was is extraordinarily painful.
I ache for her for that.
But she does very much believe she is doing the right thing.”
“Does Merle think she’s doing the right thing?”
“Golly, I couldn’t even venture to put myself in her shoes.”
