TL;DR: The Last of Us Season 2 wraps with a bang, a scream, and a pile of emotional wreckage. While performances shine and the story moves key pieces into place, the finale’s breathless pacing and structural hiccups keep it from being truly devastating.
The Last of Us season 2
Let’s be honest: watching the season 2 finale of The Last of Us felt a bit like trying to outrun an avalanche in flip-flops. Not because it wasn’t gripping. Oh no, it had me by the throat from the first frame. But because it never stopped coming. Scene after scene, decision after decision, blood after blood—until suddenly, boom: credits.
This is not a complaint born out of cynicism, but out of reverence. I’ve long admired the show’s commitment to emotional realism and character-driven storytelling. And for the most part, the second season held up that torch. But in its final hour, the show falters—not in intent, but in execution. And nowhere is that more evident than in Ellie’s descent into emotional purgatory.
We pick up after last week’s poetic detour into Eugene’s past, only to find Ellie knee-deep in the consequences of her own. Having just murdered Nora, Ellie stares into a mirror and sees, perhaps for the first time, someone unrecognizable. It’s a beautiful bit of visual storytelling—Bella Ramsey’s reflection isn’t monstrous, but it’s empty. Like she’s not entirely sure where Ellie ends and the violence begins. This isn’t the cathartic aftermath of the David ordeal from season 1. This is psychological erosion. This is Ellie without a Joel to fall into.
Except now, she has Dina. And a baby. And Jesse.
Young Mazino’s Jesse is the low-key MVP of this episode, if not the entire season. His quiet maturity and the way he tries to guide Ellie without overstepping feels deeply authentic. There’s a tenderness in his performance that plays beautifully off Ellie’s growing ferocity. When he reveals he voted against going after Abby back in episode 3, it’s not a gotcha moment. It’s heartbreaking honesty. He wants Ellie to stop, to come home, to see what’s left to lose. But she can’t—or won’t.
And therein lies the tragedy.
The first half of the episode works like a slow burn, fueled by real conversations and believable tension. It’s when we shift gears into the second half that the wheels start to wobble.
Ellie’s confrontation with Owen and Mel is framed to mirror a moment of no return. That the show chooses to make Mel’s death accidental is… puzzling. In the game, this scene is horrifying not just because Ellie kills a pregnant woman, but because she does it with full agency. She becomes someone we’re terrified of. The show undercuts that terror, softening the blow. Ellie is remorseful before the blood is even dry. And while Ramsey delivers another powerhouse performance—her horror, her disgust at herself is visceral—it still feels like a missed opportunity to fully commit to the darker arc the story so clearly wants to explore.
The whiplash of the final 20 minutes doesn’t help. Isaac’s war machine is mobilizing. Abby is on the move. Ellie gets captured, nearly hung, then saved by sheer chaos. These sequences are visually stunning but emotionally empty. I kept feeling like I was watching cutscenes from a game I hadn’t played—powerful, but disconnected. And maybe that’s the point. Maybe we’re supposed to feel unmoored, like Ellie herself. But without a solid emotional anchor, the final moments lose their punch.
Then there’s Jesse’s death. Blink and you miss it. One second he’s alive, the next he’s gone, and we don’t even get a second to process it before we’re thrust into another flashback. It’s not ineffective—it’s infuriatingly effective. But it’s not satisfying. And I don’t mean satisfying in the fan-service sense. I mean narratively. Cathartically. We need a beat. A breath. Anything.
By the time the final scene hits—a literal crash into the next timeline—I felt dazed. Impressed, yes. Moved, yes. But also slightly underwhelmed. The story is clearly not over. In fact, it’s barely halfway. But as a finale, this episode needed to feel like a culmination, not a transition.
I admire the structural choice. I really do. Ending the season with a hard pivot into Abby’s story mirrors the game, and gives us a rare opportunity to truly walk in someone else’s shoes. But the question remains: will the audience follow? Without the slow simmer of hate and empathy that the game allows, Abby’s story may feel like an intrusion, rather than a revelation.
Still, I’m here for it. Even with its uneven pacing and frustrating restraint, the finale succeeds in one key area: I care. Deeply. About Ellie, Dina, Jesse (RIP), and yes, even Abby. That’s no small feat. And it’s why I’ll be tuning in the second season 3 drops.
The Last of Us Season 2 finale stumbles under the weight of its ambition but still delivers enough emotional resonance and narrative intrigue to leave us craving more. Let’s just hope next season lets us breathe.
