‘The Last Of Us' Season 2 Created A New Ellie Out Of Thin Air

Forbes

5 days ago

The Last of Us
Sunday night's finale of The Last of Us season 2 capped off not only the short string of episodes, but finalized the case for gamers that this show has gotten wildly out of bounds in terms of its source material.
Yes, similar events happen. The same characters are present. But often these…are not the same characters. Specifically, HBO's The Last of Us has invented an entirely new Ellie for season 2 that didn't exist in the (much better) season 1 and certainly did not exist in the games at all.
To start, this isn't meant to be put on Bella Ramsey. The worst thing you can say about Ramsey is that it's too bad they couldn't get six inches taller between seasons and they just look almost the same age despite a time jump. Ramsey has had great performances, but great performances of often very bad scripts and things that fundamentally alter Ellie from the game.
The Last of Us
This is not the same Ellie. This Ellie feels like a kid going on a fun road trip with her girlfriend, only occasionally remembering what she's there to do when a switch is flipped and she temporarily activates revenge mode.
The show is deathly afraid of portraying Ellie as unsympathetic or cruel, a girl trying to avenge her father figure but realizing how hard and sad it makes her when people start actually dying, often by accident.
Game Ellie is not this. Game Ellie has spent five years training to be a killing machine bordering on being an actual sociopath as she carves her way through the WLF to her specific targets.
By this point, it's deeply weird that show Ellie has killed barely anyone. One guard, I think. She left someone to die and accidentally killed two other people this week. Yes, it's true that in a video game, you're murdering dozens and dozens of people in levels, and while that's not necessary here, this Ellie has lost almost all teeth outside of maybe the Nora spore scene that was the one instance she felt like game Ellie for about 90 seconds.
Ellie
Ellie did not kill Owen and Mel by accident in the game. She shot Owen dead and stabbed Mel in the neck. When she found out she was pregnant, she said 'good,' in what is easily one of the most chilling moments of the game as you realize what she's becoming.
Again, it didn't have to be this way. There was footage released before this season showing Ramsey in intense ballistic fight training, and even if that extra height wasn't happening, Ramsey could have been unleashed in a much more game-like fashion instead of being forced to bumble through this storyline like it's the Goonies.
Because Ellie is the way she is, that's also had a ripple effect on the characters around her. Jessie is not a huge jerk to her in the game. When Dina learns what Joel did she still supports Ellie, and doesn't turn away from her. The exact opposite of what happened here.
The Last of Us
The show has been obsessed with keeping Ellie likable as a lead when the game is supposed to be much more complicated than that. They have also made her come across as impossibly dumb, an idiot kid setting out on a stupid revenge quest relying on Dina to make it less stupid as she's incapable of planning anything. And she's not even good at the actual revenge part.
It is not shocking to see that the best episode of the show this season was the flashback episode of younger Ellie with Joel, a time period when she was not being written poorly. But after his death, her characterization went totally off the rails, and it's unclear if it will recover. I dread to see what major changes the show will continue to make to her from here.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.