The Last of Us Season 2's Finale Adds a Bizarre Ellie Scene That Makes Absolutely Zero Sense

Dina’s discovery of her surprise pregnancy brought the two closer together, but Ellie had still been keeping something from her. Ellie’s relationship with Joel was extremely specific and predicated on lies. Joel always told Ellie to keep her immunity a secret, and he would go on to lie to her about what happened at the Firefly hospital in Salt Lake City. Ellie seemed to take this to heart and did not tell Dina why Abby had targeted Joel.

The truth came out in the Season 2 finale, but unlike a secret pregnancy, it drove a wedge between the two lovers. After Ellie killed two of Abby’s friends, she returned and told Dina what Joel had done. Fearing for Ellie’s life, Joel killed every Firefly in the hospital because their attempts to make a cure from her would have killed her. One of these people was Jerry, a doctor and Abby’s father. She went on a blood-soaked quest to get justice, which ended with Joel at the end of her golf club.

Ellie told Dina everything, but for some reason, she turned against the one person who had no part in the destruction. She had been unconscious the entire time Joel went through the hospital, and the entire reason for their estrangement was because part of her couldn’t handle the knowledge that his actions took away the potential for a cure for the Infected. Ellie would have gladly died to ensure the world was a better place, and even so, Dina grew cold towards her. For some reason, Dina took this confession as some sort of betrayal on Ellie’s part. Ellie admittedly made some mistakes in the past, but Salt Lake City was not one of them.

Dina seemed to be reacting to some sort of perceived darkness in Ellie when that darkness belonged to Joel. He was the one who made that decision without Ellie’s consent and took her out of the facility as soon as he could. Ellie did not condone these murders, and it took years for her to fully understand what had happened that night. Of course, Dina had no intimate knowledge of Ellie’s struggles, which made the whole scenario even more confusing. She turned so hard against Ellie when there was no indication that she had anything to do with it. Perhaps Joel was not the man that Dina thought he was, but that was a feeling that Ellie could sympathize with. After everything she had been through, the last thing she deserved was Dina’s coldness in one of her most vulnerable moments.

This Scene Was a Confusing Distraction From the Main Events of the Episode

The Last of Us has toyed with a nonlinear structure similar to the game, but by the time the finale rolled around, fans were all caught up with Ellie. The previous episode was the return of Pedro Pascal in a Joel Miller-centric story as fans finally discovered where the division between father and daughter came from.

Ellie had finally confronted Joel about his role in killing the Fireflies, and although heartbreaking, she wanted to work on their relationship. Joel’s murder robbed her of any chance of getting her father back, which is why she had launched headlong into her downward spiral. The final episode juggled many things, including Ellie’s confrontation with Mel and Owen, Jesse’s self-righteousness, and that killer cliffhanger at the end of the episode. In the midst of it, however, she has to contend with Dina’s judgment. The scene itself felt out of place because there was already so much drama going on in the other realms of the episode. Ellie’s dynamic with Jesse was the big narrative drive of the episode and it paid off.

Since Jesse came with Tommy to rescue Ellie and Dina, it was clear he had a problem. The finale explored the tension between them, and it turned out that it wasn’t just anger about putting herself and Dina in danger. Ellie disrespected the community when she left, an institution Jesse put a high premium on. There was no higher calling than serving the community, but Jesse’s logic was flawed. Ellie rightfully pointed out that her community had been Joel, and she had to endure the worst thing that could possibly happen when he died. Her community was the people she loved, and thankfully, she and Jesse had a moment of coming together before another tragedy struck. This moment was incredibly important, but Dina’s tangential issues with Ellie distracted from the main point.

It isn’t hard to guess as to why Dina reacted the way she did. She had her own relationship with Joel and cared about him as a father figure because she had no family of her own. There is no question that learning about one of his darkest moments would shake Dina. But there would be no cause to take that out on Ellie, especially when she recovered only a few scenes later in a moment of reconciliation.

The Last of Us could also be showing another side of what Ellie’s decisions are doing to those around her, but that has already been established. Ellie acted incredibly selfishly when Jesse wanted to go and save Tommy. She was so driven by her need to kill Abby that she abandoned the people who loved her. As it turned out, she didn’t find Abby at the aquarium, and her decision directly impacted Jesse’s fate. If Dina had issues with Ellie before, this would not be likely to smooth that over.

There May Be More Rough Waters for Dina and Ellie

Dina and Ellie’s friction may have been drama just for the sake of it, but that may be the case going forward. The Last of Us is not known for giving its audience room to breathe, and Abby’s dramatic arrival at the end of the episode proved that. Just as Ellie and Jesse made amends, another body dropped when Abby shot him in the face. Abby had discovered Ellie after finding that Mel and Owen had died at her hands. Rightfully furious after letting Ellie go, she came back to finish what she started. Co-creator of The Last of Us, Craig Mazin, addressed how this would impact the romantic dynamic when Season 3 comes around.

“It’s an interesting situation because Jesse dies in part because of Ellie, but Ellie doesn’t pull the trigger -- Abby does,” Mazin told The Hollywood Reporter. “And we understand that Dina had this great relationship with Joel, and she has gone in pursuit of Abby out of a sense of justice for that. So now the question is: Who does she blame [for Jesse’s death]? Jesse’s death is going to change things for her.” As opposed to Dina’s feelings about what happened to the Fireflies five years ago, Jesse’s death actually was Ellie’s fault. She had a chance to abandon the pursuit of Abby and help Tommy while he was in the midst of a firefight. Instead, she couldn’t help herself and entered a deadly situation where there were no winners.

Even though Abby was not at the aquarium, Ellie’s sense of justice got the better of her. Encountering Owen, she demanded he tell her where Abby was, only for him to pull a gun on her. Ellie didn’t mean to kill both of them, but her shot knicked Mel too, and she bled out in mere minutes.