In “The Last of Us” recap, Ellie and Dina forge a path through Seattle to find one of Abby’s closest allies but soon discover that revenge is the least of their worries…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
Apocalyptic TV series like “The Last of Us” and “The Walking Dead” before it often present us with an inherent danger — Cordyceps infected zombies or actual reanimated zombies — but the real threat comes from the humans left behind struggling to find any way to survive.
That’s been heavily evident throughout “’The Last of Us” season 2 because for all the infected that have shown up — and even broken through the walls of Jackson, Wyoming — the greater peril seems to come from the humans still alive out there.
But this week’s episode brings things back into a focus a little bit when it comes to the fungal threat that effectively ended the world. We learn the awful truth about how this infection can actually spread without physical contact — it’s almost reminiscent of that scene in the film “Outbreak” when doctors realize that the deadly virus spreads like the flu through the air.
It turns out, the same thing is true with this ever evolving Cordyceps infection.
That said, the fungus among us isn’t the only danger in this episode because we also learn just how far Ellie is willing to go to avenge Joel’s death. She crosses a line in her hunt for Joel’s killers that she may never be able to walk back from but at this point, she’s got bloodlust on the brain and nothing is going to stop her until Abby is dead.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of “The Last of Us” titled “Feel Her Love”…
In the Air Tonight
The episode begins with an interrogation of sorts when WLF leader Hanrahan (who we met briefly last week when Isaac joined the team) sits down with one of her officers, who is accused of killing her own men while carrying out an assignment. The officer’s name is Elise Park and she’s visibly shaken from the ordeal she’s just encountered.
Because Issac didn’t show up to carry out the interrogation himself, Elise assumes she’s not going to be executed but she doesn’t seem all that interested in living right now anyways.
Elise explains that her team was sent into clear the lower levels of the hospital to ensure there were no infected hiding in the basement levels where the Cordyceps fungus loves to thrive. She sent her best man Leon down to investigate but after getting through the first level, he didn’t find any infected whatsoever.
It was only after Leon got down to the second basement level that he found the walls covered in Cordyceps fungus and when he called to check back in with Elise again, he was struggling to breathe. His call became urgent after realizing that the Cordyceps infection was already in his lungs just from breathing the air on this basement level.
“He said it’s in the air.”
~ Elise Park
Realizing that the aerial infection must be contained to those basement levels because nobody in the above floors was affected, Elise ordered her team seal off everything, which meant leaving the members of her team to die. This was a particularly tough decision because it turns out Leon is Elise’s son.
After learning that the Cordyceps infection can now spread through the air, Hanrahan realizes they have an even bigger problem to deal with but for now, the basement is sealed up and the problem is contained. She knows the hospital is far too valuable to sacrifice so for the time being, the basement remains completely off limits and she congratulates Elise on a job well done.
Insane in the Membrane
Back at the theater where Ellie and Dina are holding up and trying to find a way through Seattle to get to Abby, we hear radio chatter over the walkie talkie they took from a dead soldier. Dina has been listening to every word to map out the movements and patrol patterns for the WLF soldiers so she can hopefully find a way to break through without getting caught.
Ellie attempts to lend a helping hand but Dina proves she’s better suited for the strategy part of this endeavor as she triangulates a path that gets them closer to Abby without getting caught or killed.
Ellie eventually leaves to continue to explore the building and that’s when she finds an auditorium where a concert was once held but all that’s left now are empty seats and some guitars on stage. She picks up one of the guitars and tunes it just like Joel taught her and she plays the first few chords of the song “Future Days” by Pearl Jam before stopping herself from going any further.
A moment later, Dina arrives to inform Ellie that she’s found a way through the WLF defenses but nothing is ever just that easy.
Through the radio chatter, Dina has plotted out the paths of the WLF patrols and there’s one major gap that she maps out as a big building sitting right in the middle of everything. While going through that seemingly abandoned building gives them a chance to slip through undetected, Dina knows that the only reason the WLF wouldn’t be patrolling that area is most likely because there are infected inside.
She also tells Ellie that the WLF soldiers share all of their secrets over the radio because clearly they don’t believe anybody is listening — that includes the cult-like Seraphites, who are involved in some kind of war against the soldiers. Dina educates Ellie about the Amish and she wonders if the Seraphites live under a similar set of rules — they don’t believe in technology or even electricity — and that’s why the WLF doesn’t hide anything when speaking over the radio because they know nobody is listening.
That level of hubris gives Ellie and Dina a tactical advantage but ultimately it’s still just the two of them against the world.
“Let’s go be reckless”
~ Ellie
As they walk through Seattle to get to the building that should allow them to cut through the WLF patrols, they come upon a group of slaughtered Seraphites sitting under graffiti on a wall that reads “Feel Her Love” and then just below it a separate message that reads “Feel This Bitch.”
It’s clearly the work of the WLF after they’ve wiped out members of the Seraphites — or Scars as they call them.
Dina is nearly sick from seeing the slaughtered bodies of the dead and it makes Ellie realize how much danger she’s putting them in right now. Ellie offers to turn around and send Dina home — it would be much safer for her and the baby she’s carrying.
But Dina isn’t interested, especially after telling Ellie the story about the first person she had to kill during the Cordyceps apocalypse.
She tells Ellie about growing up in a cabin in the woods with her sister and mother and how she always asked about going outside to play. Despite being trained in how to use a gun from a young age, Dina’s mother would never allow her to venture outside the house but one day, the young girl decided to take it upon herself to go on an adventure.
But on her way back home, Dina heard a disturbance and when she rushed inside the house, she found a raider inside — and he already killed her mother and her sister. Dina reveals that she shot the man dead and that was the first person she ever killed.
As horrific as that was for an 8-year-old girl to witness, Dina knows had she gotten there too late and the raider was already gone or maybe she was forced to watch her mother and sister get beaten to death, she would have set out on a path that mirrors Ellie needing to avenge Joel.
“This is what matters. Whatever reason Joel gave those people to do what they did, he didn’t deserve that. And I think, what if I hadn’t snuck out? What if my mom and sister were beaten to death in front of me? What if that motherfucker made me watch as he did it? Would it make a difference if my family had hurt his people first? No. And if I hadn’t killed him, if he had gotten away, I promise you, I would have hunted him down forever. Forever.”
~ Dina
With that, Dina and Ellie move forward through Seattle with only Abby on their minds.
There’s No Going Back
After dark, Ellie and Dina make it into the mysterious building that’s not patrolled by the WLF soldiers and after getting inside, they don’t hear any infected rushing to attack them so they begin to assume that the numbers aren’t so great that they’d get overwhelmed. Ellie serves as the lookout to move forward through the building since she’s immune and can’t get infected so she’s better bait if they’re going to get attacked.
They eventually arrive at the other side of the building and they’re nearing the exit when they hear an ominous sound. Using their flashlights, Dina and Ellie spot an infected zombie but this one isn’t just blindly running at them trying to attack.
Ellie assumes that this is one of the “smart” infected like she previously encountered outside Jackson when they went scavenging for supplies. Since it’s only one of “smart” zombies, Ellie strategizes that she’ll lure it out of hiding and Dina can flank behind to take it out.
Sadly that plan falls apart just seconds later when the room is suddenly flooded with those same “smart” infected zombies — it seems they laid a trap to lure Dina and Ellie into the room where there’s no escape. Ellie tells Dina to run for a fenced in cage with a locking door and she’ll draw the infected to her because she can be bitten without getting turned.
Dina makes it to the cage but the infected are tearing away at the fence trying to get at her while Ellie manages to take out a couple of the “smart” zombies but she’s soon swarmed by several more. Just when it looks like they’re doomed, a rifle fires and the infected are gunned down one by one and a helping hand reaches out to get Ellie back to her feet.
It’s Jesse — he came with Tommy to track them down after realizing that Dina and Ellie were going on this mission of revenge with or without permission.
They gather up Dina and get outside the building with the WLF soldiers starting to flood the area due to all the gunfire. The three of them rush outside and into a nearby park — and suddenly the WLF soldiers decide not to follow them any longer.
Of course, that can’t be good.
As they attempt to get through the park while avoiding the same entrance they came through where the WLF soldiers are waiting for them, Jesse explains that he and Tommy made it to the theater where they found the map that Ellie and Dina left behind. They split up to cover more ground with hopes of retrieving the two of them and then everybody returning back home to Jackson.
That doesn’t sit too well with Ellie because she’s not going anywhere until Abby is dead.
Before they can argue any further, they figure out why the WLF don’t come into this park — that’s becaue the park belongs to the Seraphites.
They see members of the religious cult stringing up a WLF hostage, who is begging for his life by offering to join them or even give them secrets about Isaac’s next move against them. The Seraphite leader isn’t interested and he ends up using a sickle to gut him in a horrific manner by sticking the blade into his gut and then a rope gets pulled to hang the soldier while his intestines are spilling out on the floor.
Seeing all this makes Jesse, Ellie and Dina realize they’re in just as much trouble here as they were out there against the WLF. The noise they make alerts the Seraphites, who come after them in full force.
During the chase, an arrow gets fired and ends up shooting Dina in the leg — and Ellie tells Jesse to grab her and get back to the theater and she’ll go in another direction to lure the Seraphites away. Ellie will then meet back up with them at the theater.
Jesse carries Dina to safety while Ellie manages to hide inside a tree as the Seraphites give up the chase because they believe it was the WLF coming after them.
As Ellie gets to the other side of the park, she spots the hospital just a few hundred yards away and she can’t possibly turn around now knowing that Abby’s friend Nora is in that building.
So Ellie makes her way inside and it doesn’t take her long to find Nora working to patch up some of the injured WLF soldiers in the infirmary, which is exactly the position where she was stationed according to all the radio chatter. Ellie follows Nora into another room where she’s cleaning up and that’s when she finally pulls her gun.
It’s safe to say Nora is shocked to see Ellie standing in front of her.
Nora reminds Ellie that they could have killed her, too, but they were only there for Joel. She then tells Ellie that nobody should have to see someone die like that — in fact sometimes at night, she can still hear his screams. And then Nora tells Ellie that Joel got exactly what he deserved.
The rage washes over Ellie in an instant and that’s all the distraction Nora needs to toss some alcohol on her as a distraction as she runs away screaming for help. Ellie gives chase as the WLF soldiers flood the hospital and begin shooting at her but she manages to make it through in her pursuit to find Nora.
One turn too man leaves Nora in a corridor with no escape and only an elevator shaft leading down to the basement. Nora decides that’s her only way out so she jumps down into the elevator shaft and makes her way to the basement.
Ellie gives chase but after she jumps down, she hears the WLF soldiers upstairs panicking that the doors are open — and they scramble to get out of the building.
Once in the basement, Ellie finds the walls are covered from top to bottom in fungus from the Cordyceps infection and she discovers the horrible truth about what happened to Elise’s son and the other soldiers left to die. They are still alive — sort of — but they are effectively latched onto the fungus growing on the walls as spores flow from their mouths with every breath.
Think of that scene in “Aliens” when the Colonial Marines find the survivors of the LV-426 and they’ve all been harvested to serve as carriers for the Xenomorphs except in this case the humans have been completely consumed by the Cordyceps infection.
Before Ellie can investigate much further, she hears coughing in the distance and that gives away Nora’s location. When she finds her, Nora is already on the floor, almost choking on her own breath because she’s already been infected by the aerial spores just floating through the air.
Nora tells Ellie that she’s doomed them both by going down into this basement but then she notices that the girl hellbent on revenge isn’t coughing or struggling to breathe at all.
That’s when Nora realizes that she’s talking to the girl who’s immune to the Cordyceps infection — the same girl that was supposed to be used as a way to cure the world at that Firefly hospital in Salt Lake City. The girl who was on the operating table when Joel came in guns blazing to save her — and he killed everybody inside including the only doctor capable of using Ellie’s immunity as a way to stop the spread of this infection.
Nora then tells Ellie that the doctor was Abby’s father.
Obviously, Nora is telling Ellie all of this to explain why Abby needed to kill Joel — but none of this matters to her. Ellie explains that she already knew what Joel did and she doesn’t care. The only thing she cares about right now is finding Abby by any means necessary.
“Where’s Abby? Where is she? Where is she?!?”
~ Ellie
Nora refuses to confess Abby’s location so Ellie picks up a lead pipe and begins beating her viciously trying to force it out of her. It’s eerily reminiscent of the scene where Abby beat Joel with a golf club before eventually killing him and now it’s Ellie’s turn to exact that same kind of vengeance.
Ellie has crossed a line that she may never come back from — and clearly she doesn’t care so long as the end result is Abby suffering the same kind of death as Joel.
As the beating continues, Ellie is drawn back to a past memory waking up in her bed with Joel there greeting her in the morning.
It appears the next episode is going to serve as a flashback to Joel and Ellie living in Jackson, which we have to assume will eventually explain how she found out about what he did to save her from that hospital in Salt Lake City. That would explain why Ellie was so distant from Joel when the season began but the next episode might reveal when that happened during the five years they spent together as father and daughter in Jackson.
“The Last of Us” returns for a brand new episode next Sunday night at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.
