At no level might you accuse “The Final of Us” of being a cheerful present, nor might you say the identical of the video video games on which the HBO collection relies. There are occasions when it appears to be concerning the perseverance of the human spirit, our capability to heal and rebuild, and moments of pleasure hidden amidst darkish occasions. However as a rule, the larger concepts are dying, grief, and revenge.
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Joel (Pedro Pascal) embodies these two sides of the story properly, exhibiting a loving facet to Ellie (Bella Ramsey) however a brutal one each time violence known as for. Whereas Joel’s dying in “The Final of Us” season 2, episode 2 is gut-wrenching, it is also onerous to see it as misplaced in a present like this.
Within the wake of that heartbreak, Ellie is taking over Joel’s mantle with some new story threads pushing her additional and additional towards darkness, whilst her burgeoning relationship with Dina (Isabela Merced) provides an optimistic various to her quest for vengeance. In “The Final of Us” season 2, episode 5, Ellie tracks down Nora (Tati Gabrielle), a part of the crew led by Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) that murdered Joel. Their confrontation is without doubt one of the darkest scenes of the present to date, and definitely the darkest for Ellie, exhibiting simply how far she’s now prepared to push her personal brutality to get revenge. Whereas the TV collection takes many liberties with the supply materials, those that have not performed the video games could also be stunned to be taught that this specific scene is mainly a shot-for-shot recreation of the identical second from “The Final of Us Half II.”
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Ellie tortures Nora in the very same method in The Final of Us Half II
There are few variations to the setup in Ellie’s encounter with Nora within the “The Final of Us Half II,” but it surely’s principally the identical there as properly. She finds Nora in a makeshift hospital for the Washington Liberation Entrance (WLF). Nora will get the higher of her and flees, prompting a chase. When Ellie is confronted by armed troopers, she drags Nora all the way down to a abandoned flooring of the constructing that is been lined in cordyceps spores. The troopers comply with with respiratory masks, and Ellie defeats them, then hunts a wheezing, contaminated Nora all the way down to a solitary hall.
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Save for the additional motion of the sport (hey, it is a third-person shooter), that is mainly what occurs within the present as properly, although the spore flooring will get a bit of added oomph by advantage of it being the present’s first introduction of the airborne cordyceps. All prior encounters within the HBO adaptation contain bite-based infections.
In each variations, Nora tries to make the case for why Joel needed to die, going right into a bit extra element within the present (as within the sport, sure particulars are nonetheless hidden from the participant at this level). Unphased, Ellie calls for Abby’s location, and when Nora refuses to cooperate, she takes a little bit of pipe and begins to beat her with it till she will get what she needs. Each scenes are staged and lit the identical method, with Abby looming over a crumpled Nora in a darkish hallway lit solely by a dim pink warning gentle. It is an deliberately hellish setting for what’s arguably Ellie’s darkest second, and it performs simply as properly (or horribly, relying in your viewpoint) within the present because it did within the sport.
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How will HBO’s The Final of Us cope with Ellie’s trauma?
Within the sport, Ellie is straight away traumatized by her option to brutally torture Nora. It is the second when her bluff known as — when the circumstances demand her to show her personal capability for extreme violence, which seems to be fairly excessive. Ellie returns to Dina a shell of herself, barely centered because the factor she has simply accomplished torments her. We do not get to see that reunion in “The Final of Us” episode 4. As an alternative, the episode cuts from the torture scene to a short flashback of Ellie sharing a cheerful second with Joel.
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Presumably, this scene will affect her in the identical method on HBO because it does within the video games, although there are nonetheless some query marks regarding Ellie’s overarching arc. There have been some big changes to Tommy (Gabriel Luna) in “The Last of Us” season 2, which might imply that he’ll be much less of a drive goading Ellie towards vengeance later within the story, as occurs within the video games. We’ll seemingly have to attend for season 3 to see simply how otherwise these occasions might affect Ellie on the present.
