[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Last of Us Season 2, Episode 6, “The Price.”]
The Last of Uscontinues to devastate with Season 2’s latest episode, “The Price,” which explores the years Ellie (Bella Ramsey) spent with her late adoptive dad, Joel (Pedro Pascal).
When TV Insider caught up with Ramsey prior to Season 2’s arrival, we asked about shooting their final seasons with Pascal. While Ramsey couldn’t say much at the time, they explained, “We get to see a lot of their relationship… There are some very emotional scenes between them, and I think that they are, at some points this season, vulnerable with each other again for the first time.”
Tracking several birthdays of Ellie’s over the years in Jackson, the episode explored her and Joel’s evolving relationship and ultimate fracture leading up to their final days together. Ramsey enjoyed digging deeper into Ellie’s personality as the episode reveals the character’s love for knowledge, simple joys, tattoos, relationship preferences, and much more.
HBO
“It’s really nice to just see her existing and waking up in the morning and going to bed and drinking too much at the New Year’s Eve party and then having to deal with the effects of that,” Ramsey shared. “She is just like an older teenager living in an apocalyptic world that she didn’t ask for and it’s really nice to to see that behind all the heroes of the story, there are just humans, and it’s really nice to have the space to see that a bit more within the context of Jackson.”
While Ellie is presently outside of that community on a mission to avenge Joel’s death, these flashbacks to the years in between Season 1’s ending and now open up a whole new world of context. As viewers saw, Joel and Ellie were ultimately driven apart by his lie about the Fireflies, which she could no longer ignore when he essentially mirrored that action by killing therapist Gail’s (Catherine O’Hara) infected husband Eugene (Joe Pantoliano) against his wishes to return to Jackson for a final goodbye.
But their relationship was on its way to making a turning point after the New Year’s Eve party, when Ellie confronted Joel about the Fireflies and confessed she wanted to try and forgive him. The tragedy is that they’d never get to explore that, as he died the next day at the hands of WLF soldier Abby (Kaitlyn Dever).
What did you think of the emotional farewell to Pascal’s Joel in Season 2’s sixth installment? Let us know in the comments section below, and don’t miss the finale when it arrives on May 25.
The Last of Us, Season 2, Sundays, 9/8c, HBO and HBO Max