[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Last of Us Season 2, Episode 6, “The Price.”]
The Final of Us delivered certainly one of its most heart-wrenching installments but with Season 2’s sixth entry, “The Value,” which revisits a number of birthdays of Ellie’s (Bella Ramsey) through the years in Jackson along with her adoptive father, Joel (Pedro Pascal).
However earlier than the episode unfolded, it opened with a flashback to Joel’s personal childhood in Austin in 1983 on an event the place he was ready to take the warmth for one thing Tommy had executed with their father (performed by visitor star Tony Dalton). The daddy and son have a candid dialog, and Joel realized his personal dad had been on the receiving finish of abuse, and regardless of his personal draw to violence, he tries to do higher with Joel and Tommy and conveys that hopefully Joel would do higher together with his personal youngsters.
In fact, viewers know that Joel had develop into a violent man himself, however that didn’t make his actions wholly malicious. In a flashforward to Joel and Ellie’s early days in Jackson, she burns her arm to cover the chunk marks that may reveal her immunity, and Joel surprises her with a cake and new guitar for her first birthday of their new residence.
Because the episode unravels, Joel continues to have fun Ellie, most memorably bringing her to a museum hidden within the woods round Jackson, the place they take within the sights and he helps arrange a makeshift area simulator by gifting her a tape recording of an area mission and sitting within the museum’s area capsule on show.
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However each candy second is tinged with an uneasiness as Ellie doubts Joel’s earlier promise concerning the Fireflies. Because the present depicts extra birthdays, Joel and Ellie’s relationship is strained by her older teen years as she will get a tattoo to cowl up her scar and engages in relationships. In the end, Joel tries to restore their relationship, and Ellie is on the verge of confronting him about what occurred with the Fireflies once they embark on a patrol collectively.
This occurs to be the day Eugene (Joe Pantoliano) dies. After discovering the person bitten within the woods, he asks Joel and Ellie to escort him again to the settlement the place he can share his last phrases with Gail (Catherine O’Hara) earlier than getting killed. Joel seemingly agrees and sends Ellie forward of him, however Joel lies and shoots the person within the woods.
After they arrive again at Jackson with Eugene’s physique, Joel tells Gail that her husband didn’t wish to put her in peril and ended issues himself, however Ellie can’t swallow the lie and tells Gail the reality. This was the breaking level for her, however as viewers see the episode proceed, Ellie’s last evening with Joel on New 12 months’s Eve didn’t see her abandon him on the porch, as she did communicate candidly to him and at last confront him concerning the Fireflies.
Ellie is offended, however she admits that she desires to repair their relationship; even when she will’t forgive him, she desires to strive. It makes Joel’s demise the subsequent day that rather more devastating. Beneath, episode co-writer and sport co-writer Halley Gross breaks down the emotional episode.
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The opening sequence is a flashback to Joel and Tommy’s childhood. What led you to introduce that second as a framing narrative for this episode?
Halley Gross: I feel for us it was precisely what you’re saying, this lovely framing gadget. A lot of this present is about parenthood and concerning the impression of affection on the folks closest to us. So that you get this chance to see Joel, and also you see the place he got here from, and also you see this lecture. He’s executed some unlawful issues and has an expectation that his dad’s going to come back residence and beat the s**t out of him. And for the primary time, his dad doesn’t. His dad sits him down as a person and says, “Hear, my dad was worse, and I see your worry, and I’m doing the most effective I can, and perhaps you are able to do slightly higher than me.” And that’s the throughline that we’re going to see Joel go on a journey about.
In that scene with Kat (Noah Lamanna), we see the dad he impulsively is, we see the programming, we see the response, after which we get to see Joel be the guardian he desires to be, make a aware option to decelerate and see Ellie extra clearly than his dad noticed him and deal with her with extra respect than he may in any other case be skilled to do. And that’s the message that he’s going to depart Ellie with on the finish of the episode. And it actually… there’s this lovely form as a result of we’re going to look at Ellie make some actually arduous decisions and lose herself to this revenge quest. What Joel is giving us, the viewers, and Ellie is that this hope that there’s a manner that we’re capable of develop and alter if we put our intentionality to it. It’s a extremely lovely manner of displaying how Joel is that this flawed one who is continually making an attempt to be higher out of affection for Ellie.
When Ellie spoke to Gail in Episode 3 of this season, she talked about how she wished she’d spoken to Joel earlier than he died on the porch. In the end, this episode revealed that Ellie did communicate to Joel on New 12 months’s Eve. Why did Ellie lie about that to Gail?
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That is their secret between them. She’s going to defend Joel even when she doesn’t agree with something that Joel has executed. She’s going to defend Joel to the ends of the earth, and that is such a sin, proper? He made a selection to guard her over thousands and thousands of individuals, and that could be a weight that she’s going to hold. However to speak about that may require speaking about her immunity, would require speaking concerning the ugliness of Joel’s decisions. And that’s not one thing that she will safely do even in a group like Jackson. So she’s compelled to bury that as she’s compelled to bury a lot. However as with every little thing, it will definitely vomits out of her.
This episode tracks varied birthdays Ellie celebrates, from the time she and Joel arrive in Jackson to the current day. What impressed that enlargement of an idea launched within the sport?
The birthday factor truly got here in actually late within the script. We knew we wished to do a bottle episode about Joel and Ellie and the most effective moments of their relationship, and the disintegration of their relationship over time in Jackson. Initially, we simply form of put the beats collectively. However Craig [Mazin], I feel very correctly, wished to have a form of narrative gadget that linked everyone collectively, and utilizing the birthdays as this implies of each displaying a passage of time, however displaying methods through which Joel thinks about Ellie first, through which he tries to deliver her pleasure was only a lovely approach to cling the moments that exist already collectively.
Afterward within the episode, when Ellie learns the reality concerning the Fireflies, she tells Joel she was meant to die. Was that one thing that was lingering behind her thoughts on that day annually, as she was unsure about what unfolded in Salt Lake Metropolis?
Certain. I imply, I feel what we’re seeing on this construction is the happiest days of their relationship collectively. And what we’re saying is even on their greatest days collectively — and I feel the museum may be thought of one, if not probably the most fantastic day that they’ve collectively — she can not escape the lie between them. She sees the attractive fireflies floating over the pond, which we had been initially going to do within the sport, after which we shifted to one thing else, after which afterward, she’s getting this tattoo with Kat. She’s hiding this chunk mark that’s proof of the reality of who she is, however she’s overlaying it with a moth that represents on the lookout for the sunshine. There may be this inescapable life festering even of their rightest moments. And so it offers us this lovely passage of time, nevertheless it additionally permits us to empathize with how unavoidable it’s for her. She’s making an attempt to disregard it for years, and she or he can not.
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What motivates Ellie to disclose Joel’s lie about Eugene’s demise to Gail earlier than she ever confronts him concerning the Fireflies?
The incident with Eugene offers Ellie affirmation of one thing she’s been afraid to cope with for therefore lengthy, and firstly of that specific sequence, we’re seeing her apply her questions. These are issues that she must get out, however she’s too afraid to do it. She must apply. She must really feel some sense of safety there. And in that second, Joel is mendacity to Gail, Ellie doesn’t even have to ask these questions at this level as a result of instantly she is aware of he’s lied, after which we’ve extra passage of time the place she’s sitting with the reality of that lie and all of the implications that lie entails.
And so after loads of time of coping with it, she goes to this dance the place, whilst estranged as they’re, Joel’s first intuition is to guard her, and her first intuition is to push him away, however she will’t; even in that dance sequence, she will’t keep away from the dichotomy of what Joel is. He is an efficient man who has executed horrible issues out of affection for her. She will’t paint him as if he had been a nasty man wholly. This could be simpler. She might reduce him out, she could possibly be executed with him. However this is among the loves of her life. That second within the dance is that intrinsic reminder of the nice and the dangerous blended into one, and at last having the chutzpah to get these solutions as a result of she’s additionally feeling the lack of him. They’d been estranged at that time for a yr or so, and she or he’s seeing what life with out Joel is like, and it’s not what she desires.
What was a second you had been most excited to see Pedro and Bella deal with within the script for this episode?
They’re each unbelievable, and so they’re each such gifted technicians that it was at all times about excavating the reality for them. They convey authenticity to each second, so it’s actually only a pleasure to look at them work. The second I used to be most enthusiastic about was that museum, seeing them on their greatest day, and there’s an entire sequence that didn’t make it into this episode that they shot, the place you see the dinosaur museum and also you watch her put hats on dinosaurs, however for pacing, they pulled it out.
Hopefully, they’ll launch it at another time. It’s simply the cutest little factor, nevertheless it was about displaying them at their greatest. It’s about that magnificence, it’s the better of humanity, and it’s the factor that everyone is striving for. It’s why everyone sacrifices what they do to have these quiet, lovely moments with the folks they love. And so giving our characters who’ve been by way of a lot and can undergo a lot, these moments of reprieve to take pleasure in life, offers the entire narrative a stability that’s actually vital.
Are there any easter eggs or moments you loved planting for followers to search out on this episode? If that’s the case, what ought to they appear out for?
We now have the flashback scene the place Joel’s dad is carrying the watch. The museum is fairly spot on to what the sport is. You don’t even see it within the present. They constructed an entire rover, which is precisely what’s within the sport, and also you don’t see it simply because the digital camera angles didn’t require seeing it. However it’s the museum part, the area part is one for one, what was constructed into the sport, which is simply unimaginable.
Initially, that is extra for individuals who had been followers of the sport, however Kat was additionally a personality that we initially had within the sport, who, for timing and pacing, you didn’t find yourself seeing. We had gameplay sections the place you might, as an choice, meet. So it’s actually thrilling that on this season, we’re not so locked into the inflexible playable path of the characters; we get to see extra about who Ellie was over the course of those 4 or 5 years in Jackson and the individuals who sparked her alongside the best way.
The Final of Us, Season 2, Sundays, 9/8c, HBO and HBO Max