The Last Of Us star dishes on hit show's ‘hot' new sex scene
The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 4 finally clarifies just exactly what is going on between 'best friends' Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Dina (Isabela Merced).
Late in this week's episode of the HBO hit, the two young women finally open up to one another, revealing their deepest secrets and true feelings for one another. It's a veritable emotional rollercoaster for the characters that naturally crescendos with a steamy scene that The Last Of Us star Isabela Merced thinks is a 'long time coming.'
WARNING: Spoilers for The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 4 below.
This week's episode of The Last of Us finally sees Ellie and Dina hooking up after a near brush with death. The two girls finally arrive in Seattle, where they initially hole up for the day in an abandoned music shop in what we'd recognise — but they don't — as a queer neighbourhood. It's here that Bella Ramsey gets to play out the iconic 'Take on Me' scene from The Last of Us II video game as Dina watches on, totally enthralled.
Later in the episode, Ellie and Dina begin exploring the city in their quest to track down Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) and her cohorts. After running into a W.L.F. team, they run into the underground tunnels for safety. Unfortunately, that area is overrun by Infected. As Ellie and Dina make their escape, Ellie puts herself in harm's way to help save Dina. In doing so, though, she gets bitten. Dina immediately assumes the worst, that she will now have to kill the friend she secretly loves before that friend turns.
There's a tense showdown wherein Ellie pleads for her life by admitting she's immune, offering to sleep on the other side of the theatre they're sheltering in. After hours pass and it's clear Ellie is fine, Dina accepts the miracle that's been given her. She admits her secret, that she's pregnant, and then kisses Ellie. The two immediately have sex in a sequence that is sweet, scintillating, and brimming with real romantic passion.
'I definitely was super excited for that scene,' Isabela Merced told DECIDER earlier this week. 'I feel like it's so necessary and it's so hot and really feels placed correctly in the sequence.'
'On top of that, it looks really spur of the moment and passionate and random, but every single movement from the jacket to the belt to the 'this' and 'that' was really calculated and it was very choreographed.'
Merced explained that she and Ramsey wanted to ensure 'every movement was authentic to the characters themselves.' They didn't want anything to feel out of place. Moreover, Merced revealed they worked hard to add 'physical consent as opposed to just verbal' in the scene.
'I think at one point I nod. At one time I move Ellie's hand down. Like it's very calculated and thought-through,' she said.
Merced also explained that part of what takes so long for Dina to admit her feelings is the fact that she doesn't know about bisexuality. 'I think she's under the impression — the imposed impression — that she is straight,' Merced said, referring to Dina's later memory of her own mother denying her feelings for both boys and girls.
'I don't think it's a manipulative thing. I think it's just spur of the moment, heated, and inevitable in a way,' she said. 'You know, I think they keep finding themselves drawn to each other in a really beautiful, romantic sense.'
Merced also confirmed that Dina's been aching to kiss Ellie again since New Year's. 'No, yeah, the tension's been there for sure,' she said. 'Yeah, I really think that was a long time coming.'
Ellie and Dina might be officially a couple now, but there's a war brewing in Seattle, and Abby is still out there. Will their romance be a positive for them on the mission? Or will it make any inevitable violence all the more tragic?
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