Liane Hentscher/HBO This flashback episode shows Joel and Ellie celebrating her birthdays in Jackson, including a memorable trip to the science museum. Their rift begins the day Ellie turns 19 and Joel lies about killing Gail's husband, Eugene, after he was bitten. On New Year's morning, Ellie joins Joel on the porch and finally asks for the truth about Salt Lake City. Joel Miller was always willing to pay a price for the people he loves. Taking a punishment meant for Tommy when they were boys. Bearing the weight of a cruel decision for the good of Jackson. Dooming the world to save Ellie's life. Joel paid and paid, but in the five years before Abby came along to collect that final debt, he was also rewarded with moments of fierce joy. The penultimate episode ofThe Last of Usseason 2 takes us back to Jackson, where Joel (Pedro Pascal) makes plans to celebrate Ellie's (Bella Ramsey) birthday a few months after they arrived in town. He uses his smuggler skills to scrounge up a bag of toys for Seth's (Robert John Burke) grandkids in exchange for a cake (vanilla, not chocolate, unfortunately) and a bone (animal, not human, hopefully). Wait, Seth has grandkids? That's a surprise! And Seth was a cop in Milwaukee before the world ended? That's... actually, come to think of it, that tracks. After checking that Ellie's not at home, Joel retreats to his bedroom woodworking station to continue his painstaking restoration of the guitar he intends to give her as a gift. The process involves shaping the bone into a saddle and donning safety glasses to etch the moth design he found among her drawings onto the neck of the instrument. But the birthday plans are put on hold when Tommy arrives with Ellie in tow, high on painkillers after intentionally burning her bite-scarred arm while on kitchen duty. When an incredulous Joel asks why she'd do that, she loopily apologizes. It's just that she wanted to wear short sleeves again. Liane Hentscher/HBO Unlike herflippant delivery to Dinatwo episodes ago, Ellie's so sincere and so young in this moment that Joel's confusion vanishes, and he pulls her into a hug. (He probably also loses his taste for bacon because she describes the burn as "all red and melty and gross, and you know what it smelled like? Pork.") After a nap, Ellie strolls into the kitchen to find a small cake wishing "Eli" a happy 15th birthday, and the instant Joel's back is turned, she plunges her lil' raccoon paw right into it to grab a mouthful. Joel rolls with it and gives her the guitar, but instead of reaching for it, she asks him to play her something. He hesitates at first, but eventually he agrees. Of course, he agrees. It's his baby girl's birthday wish. Ellie listens raptly as Joel sings Pearl Jam's "Future Days," the song shestarted to play on stagein the previous episode, and she glows with a love that's bright and pure and almost painful to witness. It's different from the love Dina radiated while Ellie played the guitar in the music shop, but both come from that same place of vulnerability and discovery and joy. We now jump ahead a year as Joel leads the new 16-year-old through the woods. He asks if anything's going on between her and Jesse, and Ellie drily promises not to get pregnant if he'll let her start going on patrol. Ha! She then badgers him about her birthday surprise, asking if it's a dinosaur or a convertible or a litter of kittens. (Well, she says "lotter of kittens," which tells you everything you need to know about the sad state of cats in the Cordyceps world.) Her birthday surprise is, in fact, a life-sized dinosaur statue, which Ellie scales with a whoop. From atop this apex predator, the future apex predator spots the rest of her gift: a remarkably well-preserved science museum. Ellie's eyes pop as she and Joel wander through the overgrown space and she discovers that the large solar system model still rotates. "Someone must've greased it," Joel says, quietly relishing her delight. And he's not done. In the next room is Apollo 15, which traveled to the stars and back in 1971. Before she climbs inside, Joel tells her to pick a helmet from one of the nearby displays. (This involves smashing the glass with a rock, but it's not like there are any docents around to stop them.) Once she's properly suited up and they've settled into the seats, Ellie flips switches and makes spaceship noises. Joel, though? Still not done. He hands her a Walkman with a hard-to-find recording of the1969 Apollo 11 launch sequencethat took the first humans to the moon. Ellie settles in, closes her eyes, and escapes the planet with those three astronauts. The lights of another world play across her face as the capsule rumbles and shakes, and she slips free of Earth's gravity for a few brief moments. Her euphoria doesn't fade once she's back inside this moldering spaceship in a long-abandoned museum, which leaves Joel's cheeks wet with tears. But on the walk back to Jackson, her mood dims. She doesn't tell Joel why, but we spot the fireflies she glimpsed winking among the trees. Another year passes, and Joel comes home with Ellie's 17th birthday cake (chocolate this time!) to find her and Kat (Noah Lamanna) messing around in her room, having first smoked weed and worked on Ellie's new arm tattoo. Liane Hentscher/HBO Joel's furious that Ellie's experimenting with "all the teenage things at once" and refuses to discuss it until she's herself again. But thisisEllie being herself, and that night, she starts to drag her mattress to the garage. Thankfully, Joel listens a little better this time, cautiously compliments her tattoo, and asks for a few days to fix up her new living space. It leaves him curious about the meaning behind Ellie's moth obsession, so he tracks down Gail (Catherine O'Hara), who's grumpy about her solitary meal being interrupted. She says moths don't mean growth and change, as Joel thought. They actually symbolize death ("If you believe in that s---." Gail's not much for dream analysis.) Ellie, meanwhile, left her own clues for Joel to find if he only looked; written on one of her moth sketches is, "You have a greater purpose." Two years later, Ellie's alone in her garage room, practicing the questions she has for Joel about Salt Lake City and raiders and their unlikely escape. But Joel's arrival to take her on her first patrol pushes them from her mind. She's bored and mouthy on their route until they get a call that two nearby scouts had a run-in with some infected. She refuses to let Joel leave her behind (Dina was nicerwhen Ellie tried the same thing), and they dismount to approach on foot. The screech of an infected is the first sign of trouble. The second is a horse racing by with its former rider trailing behind, one foot still in the stirrup. The other half of the patrol party is Gail's husband, Eugene (Joe Pantoliano), who initially seems to be in better shape than Hopalong Cassidy. But Eugene's been bitten, and he asks Joel to take him to the city gates so he can say goodbye to Gail from a safe distance. Liane Hentscher/HBO When Joel refuses, Ellie urges him to reconsider, arguing that Eugene has enough time before he turns. Joel relents and promises that they'll head toward town while she fetches the horses. Ellie gives him a long look but leaves to do as he asked. Once she's gone, Joel steers a babbling Eugene at gunpoint toward a gorgeous lake, where it dawns on the dead man walking that he's about to be dead a lot sooner than he expected. Eugene begs to see Gail one more time, but Joel replies that if you love someone, you can always see their face. Eugene accepts his fate and turns toward the water, picturing Gail one last time. Then we cut to a wide shot as a flock of birds suddenly takes flight over the trees. When Ellie arrives with the horses, she's horrified by what Joel's done, despite his attempts to justify his actions. And Eugene returns home the same way that Joel will in a few short months: wrapped in cloth and strapped to a travois, blood from his wound staining the white fabric. In Jackson, a devastated Gail falls into Joel's arms after he tells her that Eugene was brave and pulled the trigger himself, wanting to keep his wife safe. Then Ellie's voice cuts through the quiet with the truth. Eugene was scared. Eugene begged. And Joel shot him in the head. Gail slaps Joel before staggering away, but the hardest hit comes from Ellie, who says in a low, vicious voice, "Youswore." Nine months later, it's New Year's Eve, and Joel watches Ellie and Jesse (Young Mazino) watch Dina (Isabela Merced) on the dance floor. He's visibly glum, but Maria (Rutina Wesley) reminds him that he's part of the community, part of her family. Liane Hentscher/HBO Ellie says she had Seth under control, and Joel needs to stop trying to get her taken off patrol. Joel asks about Dina's intentions and says she'd be lucky to have Ellie as a girlfriend. And Ellie finally asks the questions that have been haunting her for months. Foryears.Why did Joel lie to her about Eugene the way he lied to her about Salt Lake City? And slowly, painfully, he gives her the answers. No, there weren't any raiders at the hospital. No, he doesn't know about other immune people. Yes, those doctors could've made a cure. Deep down, Ellie's always known the truth, but she still needed to hear him say it. And she weeps now as she thinks about the people he killed for her. Weeps as she accuses him of taking away her life's purpose. "Yes," Joel agrees. "And I'll pay the price." But he'd do it all over again. Just like his father told him back in Texas in 1983, Joel says that he always tried to be a little better than his old ma, and if Ellie ever has children of her own, he wants her to be a little better than he was, too. Sign up forEntertainment Weekly's free daily newsletterto get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more. Ellie takes this all in, then cracks Joel's heart in two when she says she might not be able to forgive him. But a beat later, she adds, "I would like to try." And then we cut to present-day Seattle, where Ellie walks through the rain to the theater. Her chance to reconcile with Joel ended on the floor of a Jackson Hole ski lodge, but her chance for revenge is still alive. Spores for Thought So that's the story of Eugene, and of Joel and Ellie's falling out. Not only did we get the answers that have dogged us since the season premiere, but we also get to experience the gorgeous museum scene from the game. What a gift to spend that time with the original "us," down to the two figures at the end of the credits again. The Last of Uscontinues to kill it with guest stars, from Pantoliano bringing his Joey Pants energy to poor Eugene andTony Daltonmaking a huge impact in his short scene as Joel and Tommy's gruff cop father. Two birthday-related questions: how did they celebrate Ellie's 18th, do you think? And is vanilla cake easier in the zombie apocalypse because extract has a longer shelf life than cocoa powder? So moths symbolize death, and Ellie's preoccupied with finding her life's purpose. Combine those two, and Gail would roll her eyes but acknowledge that Ellie's purpose in life is death. But is it her own, or is it what she brings down onto others? One more episode to go this season, friends. Gird your loins, and maybe see if you can dig up a gas mask in case of spores. Read the original article onEntertainment Weekly
