This is a recap and review of the seventh and final episode of the second season of HBO’s The Last of Us. Expect spoilers for season 1 and game 1 (and the episode itself, of course), but also some references to and comments about the second game (though without spoilers).
In the seventh and final episode of the second season — titled Convergencee — Ellie (played by Bella Ramsey) and Jesse (played by Young Mazino) search the streets of Seattle for Tommy (played by Gabriel Luna. However, when Ellie sees something in the distance, she parts ways with her friend. Convergence was written by Neil Druckmann, Halley Gross, and Craig Mazin (Chernobyl) and directed by Nina Lopez-Corrado (Supernatural; Mayor of Kingstown).
“Whale and wheel,”
The episode opens more or less where we left off with Ellie returning to the theater. Before we see that, though, we do get an important scene between Jesse and Dina, in which he is treating her wound, and she declines a drink with such insistence that it is very clear to Jesse that she is choosing not to drink because of a pregnancy. Sure, later he makes an estimated guess when talking to Ellie, but he absolutely knew what was up here.
After Ellie is let back into the theater, she goes to see Dina, who has a bandage around her thigh. When Dina notices how Ellie is looking, she insists that she must clean Ellie’s back, which is clearly bruised. This is another moment lifted more or less straight from the game, though Ellie’s state in the game is much more shellshocked.
Here, Ellie reveals two things: 1) that Nora’s last words about Abby’s location were “whale” and “wheel,” which don’t mean much to Ellie at this point, but she also reveals to Dina 2) what Joel did. Knowing the details changes things for Dina despite her big speech about going all the way regardless of what he did. Like how Ellie was cold to Joel’s lie, Dina, too, is immediately quite cold to and unhappy with the news. It’s now clear to her that they should go back.
Jesse and Ellie part ways over a difference in perspective
But the fact of the matter is that Dina isn’t fit to travel through Seattle searching for Gabriel Luna’s Tommy, who hasn’t yet met with them at the theater. As Ellie and Jesse prepare to search for him at Jesse and Tommy’s rendezvous point, Dina extends an olive branch in the form of the lucky bracelet. Make no mistake, Dina still feels unhappy with what she just learned, but she is understanding how messed up Ellie’s emotional state is. She is willing to forgive.
On the streets of Seattle, Jesse and Ellie eventually part ways, but not before she confirms Dina’s pregnancy, hears how Jesse knows what Dina and Ellie have is special, and they have an argument about Ellie choosing her thirst for vengeance over the Jackson community. How is this exemplified? Well, when WLF soldiers on the walkie-talkie speak of a sniper firing bullets at them, she makes up the excuse that ‘maybe it isn’t Tommy.’ But, let’s be clear, Ellie, it can almost only be him, as the Seraphites are Luddites and thus would not use guns. Once more, she is choosing vengeance over community and logic.
There is one important scene, here, though, and that is the scene in which Jesse and Ellie witness six soldiers torture a lone scar. Ellie is desperate to help the Seraphite, but Jesse won’t allow it, as it would put them in danger. This, to Ellie, is the immoral move, as it reminds her of what she went through with Abby’s group, but Jesse knows that in this post-apocalyptic world, you have to take into account when you are outnumbered, because you risk losing everything by stepping out of the shadows hastily.
This is a very effective scene, but I emphasize it here because it is another incident in which I don’t think the writing of Ellie is true to her capabilities and smarts in the world of the game. Too often this season, other characters have taken charge, made the smart call, and called out that Ellie is wrong or, as Ellie puts it in one episode, is stupid. Ellie isn’t stupid, and she ought to be portrayed and written as much more competent. It is my most significant issue with this season of television. Because while yes, Ellie is blinded by her thirst for vengeance (as her decision to leave Jesse indicates, in a really well-acted scene from Bella Ramsey), she isn’t stupid. Moreover, as the extended sections in the game prove, she is competent enough to sneak out of the way of groups, outsmart them, and take them down one by one. Yes, mediums are different, but this is a slippery slope for the writers to have fallen into, given that she is the main playable character in the game and is thus someone whose skills gamers have quite an attachment to.
The monster at the end of this book
Ellie opts to leave Jesse because she sees a Ferris wheel by an aquarium, which makes her put two and two together — that was what “whale and wheel” meant. And so she goes to find a boat to take her there during the wild storm, but not before she witnesses multiple WLF-controlled boats head for a nearby island. A nearby island that Ellie, in a change from the game, washes up on after a wave takes her away from her boat. There, she is taken by a group of Seraphites who choose to hang her and disembowel her, which is something that a young kid even signals for to happen. The deus ex machina moment is the WLF attack on the island, which gives Ellie an opportunity to escape.
Was this moment needed in the show? I am of two minds, although in the long run, it may be satisfying to see how Ellie and Abby’s storylines could’ve converged earlier than they do, it feels like a poor decision to include this moment as it takes away from the time this season finale has to deliver on some pretty pivotal moments. I can understand why they opted to include a scene here that was apparently cut from the game, but it is too short a moment to fully work. It also makes it less believable that she would still make it to the aquarium on the same day.
Anyway, Ellie gets into the aquarium, overhears an argument about Abby shared between Owen and Mel, and she then has them at gunpoint. Ellie tries to use Joel’s ‘point it out on the map’ tactic, but it goes poorly when Owen reaches for a gun, and Ellie, naturally, fires at him. Owen is shot dead, but the bullet goes through him and also strikes Mel on the neck. While she is bleeding out, she begs for Ellie to save the child that is in her belly, but Ellie doesn’t know what to do and ends up taking the life of not just two people who wronged her, but also an innocent unborn baby.
The scene is slightly different in the game. The location inside the aquarium is different, and the way Mel dies is somewhat different. Yes, in the game, Mel is also pregnant, and Ellie also ends up accidentally killing her. But there, Mel is attacking Ellie with a knife, and Ellie defends herself by turning that knife on Mel (in the neck), only to then find out she was pregnant, and there is no suggestion that she should do a C-section. Still, I think the changes here work quite well to make the events much darker.
Earlier in the episode, Ellie had picked up a Sesame Street children’s book titled “The Monster at the End of This Book,” and now Ellie is forced to reckon with the fact that she may be that monster. Furthermore, to bring it back to the previous episode, she also has to reckon with the fact that she hasn’t done a little bit better than her father figure.
And you wasted it!
Tommy and Jesse then arrive to console a shaken Ellie and bring her back to the theater, where she and Jesse have a nice heart-to-heart. Furthermore, after a conversation with Tommy, she agrees to live with the fact that Abby will live. She has seen the darkest depths of vengeance, and she is willing to try to put it behind her. However, right as she is opening up to that possibility, a struggle is heard from the lobby, which makes Jesse and Ellie run towards it. Jesse is swiftly gunned down and killed, Abby has Tommy at gunpoint, and Ellie is begging Abby to let them go and only take her, because they are innocent. Still upset over the loss of her friends, Abby, with an iconic line from the game, says: “We let you live, and you wasted it,” before we cut to black, and we hear a gunshot. Huge praise should go to Kaitlyn Dever, who sells this moment extremely well, and, truth be told, even though they’ve changed the character’s physique for the show, Dever’s been uniformly great this season. On the other side of the cut to black, we jump back a few days and see Abby wake up inside Seattle’s SoundView Stadium, where WLF’s base is located.
Glimpses of the WLF / Abby narrative
At different moments in this episode, we get glimpses of the larger WLF and/or Abby narrative that the final scene indicates we’ll get much more of in season three. There are things here, such as something in the distance while Jesse and Ellie are walking through Seattle (or the WLF attack on the Seraphites), that I can’t really comment too much on due to spoilers for the ongoing narrative, assuming it’ll follow the game relatively closely. But what I will say is that I do appreciate what I’m seeing, including the scene in which Isaac explains that Abby has the potential to take over as a WLF leader. It’s a tease, a glimpse, and not much more than that, but it’s also an interesting show inclusion that was most likely opted for so as to give the great Jeffrey Wright more to do. I welcome that, as he is just so good in this role.
Judging it as a single episode versus judging it as a season finale
Look, here at the end of the season, I think some of my fears were proven true. While yes, I have enjoyed the season a great deal despite my issues with changes in structure and character writing, one thing I was always concerned about was the way the show appeared to be condensing days one through three in Seattle for Ellie. Things do indeed feel rushed as a direct result of a shorter season, as well as the cliffhanger ending it opts for. Every game-first viewer will have had a good idea that this was where they were going to split up the narrative of game two, but, in execution, it feels far too abrupt. I think the right decision would’ve been a ten-episode order where the ninth episode had ended after the events at the theater that were instigated by Abby’s arrival.
But, as it is, the show is ending the season with an abrupt cliffhanger that is not only extremely unsatisfying, given the second loss of a beloved character at the hands of Abby (this time Jesse) and the ‘up in the air’ place we leave Ellie, Dina, and Tommy. But also one that is tough to stomach because the very final images of the season are selling you on a perspective change and a backwards time jump that viewers likely won’t get to see until 2027.
I think there is a conversation that needs to be had about how to evaluate this episode. As a season finale, it is unsatisfying, abrupt, and a bit of a tough sell. As a single episode of television, it is solid enough or, at the very least, decent enough, despite pacing and character complaints. In actuality, I think people would’ve been perfectly OK with it if this were a mid-season finale that would be followed up on with a second half in a few weeks’ time. But it is the extended waiting period that is going to dominate the frustration with the silent majority of viewers, and understandably so. Because, as I understand it, they have not yet started filming or writing the third season. It feels like a false step on the part of the showrunners or whoever decided it was a good idea to split up the narrative like so, and with only a seven-episode season.
That said, I still think this season has had some incredible highs, with episodes two and six being the standouts. Pedro Pascal and Isabela Merced have been the standout performers, but Ramsey, Dever, Luna, Mazino, and Wright have all had incredibly well-acted moments. Also, the production quality and attention to detail when adapting specific moments that are iconic to the game have been extremely satisfying. One episode and an ill-judged cliffhanger do not necessarily mean it is a bad season, when there’s been so much good. But it has definitely not been as effective and rich an adaptation of the second game as season one was for the first. As for this episode, it’ll have to settle for this grade:
B-
– Recap and review written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.
I'm Jeffrey Rex 