The third episode of The Last of Us season two has aired, and we returned to Jackson to see the aftermath of last week’s assault on the settlement.
Please note there will be spoilers for The Last of Us, both the show and the game, below.
The third episode of The Last of Us season 2 is a significantly quieter one compared to last week’s infected-laden turn. It is also the first episode of The Last of Us in which Joel – played by Pedro Pascal in the show – does not appear, and his absence is felt from the off, with his silhouette even removed from the opening credits.
Now it is just Bella Ramsey’s Ellie facing this world alone.
Except, she isn’t alone. She does have Jackson, along with Dina, Tommy, Jesse and a surprising ally in Seth (the chap Joel pushed to the ground in the first episode after he made homophobic remarks towards Ellie).
Ellie is grieving Joel’s death, but this is a shared grief. The entire Jackson community is grieving its losses, both of Joel and the others who died during the events of episode two. At one point during the episode, Dina (played in the show by Isabela Merced) states the town had been “wreckage and funerals for weeks”.
But while much of the episode takes place three months after the events of episode two, we do see a brief moment of the more-immediate aftermath of the infected attack that ravaged Jackson.
The episode opens with Tommy spending a quiet and emotionally affecting moment with Joel’s body, where he tenderly asks his brother to “give Sarah my love”. Gabriel Luna again delivers a powerful performance as Tommy, and even though he doesn’t say much verbally here, his actions and expressions really show his heartbreaking acceptance of Joel’s death.
Tommy’s quiet moment with Joel is immediately contrasted with Ellie’s own more guttural reaction to what has just happened, as she wakes up in Jackson’s hospital screaming, before the intro credits begin to play.
This episode of The Last of Us is indeed a solemn one, and is essentially a ‘mourning period’ for viewers and its characters. It was a little slow in parts, if I am honest.
To its credit, though, unlike The Last of Us Part 2, where we are put back into ‘action’ fairly quickly after Joel’s death – something that makes sense for a game – the show does give us and the cast a moment to breathe and really think about what happened in last week’s episode. It’s a somber watch (although, shout out to Dina for again offering a warming spark for Ellie and viewers).