The HBO horror-drama’s season 1 finale gets real ugly, real fast.
Infected snarl nearby, hot on her trail.
“It’s me,” she says, but no one’s home.
Ashley Johnson on ‘The Last of Us’.Liane Hentscher/HBO
Frantically, the sounds of Infected in the distance, she runs upstairs.
A grimace of pain.
The baby is coming.
Bella Ramsey’s Ellie in ‘The Last of Us’ season 1 finale.Liane Hentscher/HBO
But a monster is coming.
She readies her switchblade as the door bursts open and a shrieking creature tornadoes in.
In the silence, we see the baby has arrived in a mess of blood and amniotic fluid.
Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) have a rare quiet moment in ‘The Last of Us’ season 1 finale.Liane Hentscher/HBO
She cuts the umbilical cord with her blade, then picks up the the crying child.
“Yeah, you tell ‘em,” she whispers.
“You f—ing tell ‘em, Ellie.”
Merle Dandridge on ‘The Last of Us’.Liane Hentscher/HBO
Yep, the baby is Ellie.
Her mom is Anna (Ashley Johnson, who played Ellie inThe Last of Usgame).
Later, Marlene (Merle Dandridge) arrives at the farmhouse with other Fireflies in tow.
Ellie about to undergo surgery in ‘The Last of Us’ finale.Liane Hentscher/HBO
Marlene finds Anna in the same spot, cradling Ellie next to the body of the dead Infected.
(Interestingly, she lies andsays the umbilical cord was cut before she was bitten.)
But Ellie still cries when Marlene shoots Anna.
Joel (Pedro Pascal) carries an unconscious Ellie (Bella Ramsey) out of the hospital on ‘The Last of Us’.Liane Hentscher/HBO
That brings us to the present.
Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Joel (Pedro Pascal) are navigating an abandoned highway.
The hospital where the Fireflies are residing is nearby.
He muses he should find a guitar and teach her how to play.
But Ellie is quiet and distant, and he’s concerned.
He doesn’t want to lose that version of her.
He knowsthe horrors they’ve enduredare taking their toll.
“After everything I’ve been through?
Everything I’ve done?
She says when they’re done at the hospital she’ll follow him wherever he goes.
“But there’s no halfway with this,” she says.
“We finish what we started.”
He accepts this, but a melancholy persists.
They both can sense an ending is near.
They walk through an old emergency medical camp that was set up in the days following thecordycepsoutbreak.
I couldn’t see the point anymore, simple as that,” he explains.
Still, he flinched when he pulled the trigger.
“So time heals all wounds,” Ellie says.
As Joel flails in the fog, someone emerges and knocks him unconscious with the butt of their rifle.
He wakes to the face of Marlene.
She apologizes: “Patrol didn’t know who you were.”
Looks like they found the right hospital.
Joel asks after Ellie and Marlene informs him she’s being “prepped for surgery.”
“Find someone else,” Joel says, but Marlene says there is no one else.
“There will be no pain,” she promises.
It’s an impossible decision, she acknowledges, but there’s no other choice.
She orders her Firefly soldiers to escort Joel out.
Ellie is still alive, but unconscious and stuck with an IV tube.
“Unhook her,” he demands.
When the doctor says he won’t let Joel take her, Joel shoots him in the head.
Marlene is waiting for him there.
“you’ve got the option to’t keep her safe forever,” she says.
“No matter how hard you try, how many people you kill.”
Marlene says Ellie wouldn’t want the future Joel is giving her.
Ellie would want to do “what’s right.”
Joel looks down at Ellie, then we’re thrust forward in time.
Joel is driving down a fir-lined highway.
A groggy, confused Ellie wakes in the backseat.
“They’ve stopped looking for a cure.”
We flash back to the parking garage, where Joel shoots Marlene.
We see him load Ellie into a car as Marlene begs for her life.
“You’d just come after her,” Joel says, delivering a kill shot.
She asks if Marlene is okay and Joel dodges, replying, “I’m taking us home.”
He says he’s sorry, but we know he’s not.
In Wyoming, not far from Jackson, their car breaks down.
They’re about a five-hour hike from the settlement.
Joel is chipper again, while Ellie remains withdrawn.
He recalls he and Sarah hiking together and muses about how they would’ve been friends.
Sarah was “more girly” than Ellie, but Ellie would’ve made her laugh.
“I bet you would’ve liked her back,” he says.
With Jackson in sight, Ellie takes a deep breath andopens up about Riley.
Ellie pivots from Riley toTessandSam, others killed bycordyceps.
“Swear to me that everything you said about the Fireflies is true,” she says.
Ellie wants to believe him, but her face is filled with doubt.
“Okay,” is all she can say.
