I'm So Glad 'The Last of Us' Didn't Delay Showing Us This Essential Joel and Ellie Scene Until the Very End

Editor's note: The below contains spoilers for The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 6 and The Last of Us: Part II video game.

Back when Season 2 of The Last of Us premiered, we almost got the famous porch scene between Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) from The Last of Us: Part II right away. A lot was talked about why that scene was important, but, truth be told, the season premiere was too early for it. In the game, we don't see it until the very end, in a flashback; however, Season 2 teases it early on, in a moment when Ellie just stares angrily at her surrogate father and walks off into the night. The season's latest episode, "The Price," finally gives us the full porch scene, although it's very different from what anyone expected, and much earlier, too. Given the whole context of the episode, it also packs an even bigger punch.

'The Last of Us' Season 2 Blends Two Moments From the Game in Episode 6's Porch Scene

In the game, the flashback of the porch conversation between Ellie and Joel only happens at the very end, after Ellie has done some terrible things to a lot of people, including someone she loves. There, it symbolizes her finally getting closure regarding Joel's death, and understanding that, in a way, she has now made similar mistakes to the ones Joel did in Salt Lake City, and has to do better, too. Instead of pushing the scene to the end of the story, the series moves this flashback to the penultimate episode of Season 2, adding elements from another important flashback to the mix.

In the show's version of the porch scene, Ellie and Joel's conversation is made up of three distinct moments. It begins and ends adapting the game almost verbatim, including their exchange about coffee, Dina (Isabela Merced), Ellie telling Joel that her life would've meant something if she'd died to produce a vaccine for the Cordyceps infection, and, ultimately, Ellie admitting that she doesn't know if she can ever forgive him, but that she would like to try. In the game, Joel confesses the truth about the Fireflies to Ellie much earlier, in a flashback set in Salt Lake City, after she runs off in the middle of the night to the ruins of the Firefly hospital looking for answers. When Joel finally finds her, she already knows everything and gives him an ultimatum: either he tells her the truth, or he'll never see her again. He spills everything, and, when he's done, Ellie tells him that she will return with Jackson as promised, but that they are done.

The scene's original lines of dialogue all refer back to the episode's opening flashback, in which a young Joel (Andrew Diaz) has a conversation with his father, Javier (Tony Dalton). On the porch, Joel tells Ellie that he did what he did because he loves her in a way she can't understand, and wraps it up by saying that, if she ever finds herself in a similar situation, he hopes she will "do a little better" than him. These lines and the opening scene are all original to the series, adding another explicit layer to Joel's actions: he's a father, and this bond means that he could do anything to save Ellie, regardless of the cost. They also acknowledge that Joel and Ellie are both part of the same cycle of violence, but, now, it's Ellie's turn to put in the work to stop it.

'The Last of Us' Season 2 Gives Joel and Ellie's Porch Scene New Meaning

Adapting a story as dense as The Last of Us can't be easy, and transporting it into the television medium requires many adjustments. Introducing the porch flashback is among the biggest changes to the source material so far, and gives a new meaning to it compared to the game. In an interview with Collider, series co-executive producer and co-writer of "The Price," Halley Gross, mentioned that the writers needed something that could inform Ellie's actions in the present, and the porch scene was perfect. Besides, if it hadn't been moved up, this scene would have been delayed until Season 3, and fans may have to wait a long time until then.

In the previous episode, "Feel Her Love," Ellie kills Nora (Tati Gabrielle), which feels like a point of no return for her, as it marks the first kill in her mission to avenge Joel's death at Abby's (Kaitlyn Dever) hands. In this context, the porch scene now has a completely different meaning for Ellie. If, in the game, it was about closure and finally being able to be at peace with her loss, in the series, it's more about motivating Ellie's vengeance. She is still moving through her grief and experiencing Joel's absence, but the audience needs to see why she would go all this way to avenge him, so it had to be clear that they were in a better place in their father-daughter relationship in the hours leading up to his death. Just as they were starting to rebuild what they had, Joel was violently taken away.

The way the scene is introduced doesn't take away any of the emotional weight it carries in the game, it only puts it in a new light. When Joel admits that he would save Ellie again if he had to, she calls him selfish, but now, she is falling into the same pattern, acting selfishly in pursuit of her own revenge. Joel's words about hoping she will "do a little better" than he did still haven't properly sunk into her mind, but, when they do, they will make for an emotional realization. Like Tommy (Gabriel Luna) tells Ellie in Episode 3, "The Path," Joel wouldn't want her to go to such great lengths to avenge him; now, it may be too late to realize it without suffering any consequences.

'The Last of Us' Earlier Porch Scene May Impact Season 3

Given how the porch scene in HBO's The Last of Us draws from young Joel's flashback, those two moments had to happen in the same episode. What this means going forward is that, even with only one episode left in Season 2, there's still time for Ellie to learn from her last conversation with Joel, especially when it comes to "doing a little better." In the final scenes of "The Price," she is seen returning to the theater in Seattle, with the thunder and pouring rain giving everything an ominous atmosphere, hinting that something even worse than what she's just done to Nora is waiting for her. This is when teachings like Joel's are the most important to keep in mind.

The Last of Us Season 2 has been adapting many key moments from the games, and the porch scene is only one of them. Because of this, the whole season does feel a little cramped, as if all these moments had to be there in order to be dealt with quickly. Regardless of whether that's what the writers wanted, this does have a positive impact on the upcoming Season 3: it will have a lot more freedom to tell its own story, instead of having to explicitly refer back to Ellie and Joel's relationship all the time. Everything in that sense that needed to be adapted has been adapted, and, from now on, it's all about Ellie dealing with herself and the world around her. In a way, it's like her grief has finally been dealt with in the series, too, and she will be able to move on — unless something happens to prevent her from doing that. And, by the look of things, it seems something will definitely happen...