How a Departure From the Video Game Reframes Joel and Ellie's Relationship in
W arning: This post contains spoilers for Episode 6 of The Last of Us Season 2.
For those who were wondering what exactly went down between Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) in the time between Seasons 1 and 2 of The Last of Us to create such a rift between them, Sunday night's episode finally provided some answers.
Episode 6, the penultimate installment of Season 2, was made up almost entirely of flashbacks to those five intervening years, with the show revisiting Joel and Ellie nearly every year on Ellie's birthday. While some of these flashbacks—like their poignant visit to the museum—were pulled from The Last of Us Part II video game, the show also took some liberties with the source material that resulted in a bit of a different spin on how their relationship ultimately fractured.
One pivotal scene, which took place on Ellie's 19th birthday (her final one before Joel's murder), revolved around the death of a character you hear of in the game but never actually meet: Eugene (Joe Pantoliano). We learned earlier this season from therapist Gail (Catherine O'Hara) that she and Eugene were married for 41 years prior to his passing and that she was still pretty upset with Joel for the way he died, even if it was unavoidable.
"You shot and killed my husband. You killed Eugene. And I resent you for it," she told Joel in the Season 2 premiere. "No, maybe a little more than that. I hate you for it. I hate you for it. And yes, I know you had no choice. I know that. I know I should forgive you. Well, I've tried, and I can't. Because of how you did it."
This sets up a pretty big departure from the game, in which a conversation between Ellie and Dina (played in the show by Isabela Merced) reveals that Eugene simply died from a stroke. The gist of what players learn about him beyond that is that he was once a member of the Fireflies who left the militia group because he grew "tired of killing people" and that he had become Jackson's resident marijuana farmer. Some of these details were kept the same in the show, but his end was much less peaceful.
"I get excited when I see these opportunities,' series co-creator Neil Druckmann told Variety of the changes. "I'm like, 'Oh, I don't know Eugene that well!' The story we told [in the game] was somewhat superficial. The way this character comes in really gets to the heart of Joel and Ellie and their relationship."
As we see play out in Episode 6, by the time Ellie was turning 19, she had already been pulling away from Joel for some time, as she had begun to suspect he had lied about everything that went down at the Fireflies' Salt Lake City compound. On the morning of her birthday, we saw her practicing asking him to finally tell her the truth about what had happened. However, she was interrupted by Joel showing up to take her on her first patrol around Jackson.
Although Joel clearly thought the patrol would be uneventful, they ended up being called on to provide backup for an infected attack. But when they arrived on the scene, all they found was Eugene, who had been bitten in the fray. Eugene knew he was done for but wanted to be brought back to Jackson's gate so he and Gail could say their goodbyes. Joel initially refused, but Ellie eventually convinced him—or so she thought—that Eugene had enough time left before turning to fulfill his last wish.
After telling Ellie to go on ahead and promising her he would follow with Eugene, Joel instead led Eugene to the lakefront and shot him in the head. When they returned to Jackson with Eugene's body, Joel tried to lie to Gail about what happened, telling her Eugene had bravely ended his own life after being bitten so as not to put anyone in danger. However, an angry Ellie then chimed to tell Gail that was all a lie and revealed what Joel had really done.
Nine months later, on the night before Joel's death, this led to a confrontation between Joel and Ellie during which she finally learned the truth about what he did to save her from the Fireflies. Although Ellie initially lashed out at him for taking away her life's purpose, the conversation ended with Ellie tearfully saying that she wanted to try to forgive him. It was a moment that recontextualized Ellie's anguish over seeing Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) kill Joel the following day and helped explain why she's now on such a revenge warpath.
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