‘The Last Of Us' Made One Huge Mistake In Season 2, And It Creates A Major Problem For Season 3

Forbes

4 days ago

The Last Of Us
Much has been made of the casting of Ellie in HBO's adaptation of The Last Of Us. On the one hand, I agree that it's difficult to accept someone who looks as young and small as Bella Ramsey take on the role required of her in Season 2. The video game version of Ellie is, at this point, much older and tougher than she was in the first game. Ramsey looks just as young and tiny as she did in Season 1. Spoilers ahead.
On the other hand, I disagree with complaints that Ramsey isn't up to the task from an acting standpoint. When she was at her best this season, she pulled off exactly the emotional range required of her, whether that was during Joel's brutal murder or in gentler moments, like the Museum flashback or her performance of A-ha's Take On Me. I'd go even further and point to Season 1, in which (for the most part) not only was Ramsey excellent throughout, the character of Ellie was presented in a way that lined up pretty perfectly with the video game character she's based on.
(To those who mock Bella's appearance on social media, I have nothing but scorn and pity – bullying is for children, yet plenty of adults in this day and age have lost all semblance of decency).
Season 2's Ellie fails due to the writing. Some baffling decisions were made that fundamentally alter not only her characterization and arc, but the very nature of the story itself. It appears that the writers were convinced that the game was too dark, that its tone was too bleak for audiences, and so Ellie's character was offered up as the sacrificial lamb in some very puzzling attempt to make her and the story more palatable. In doing so, the show failed at one important mission: To make us start to dislike Ellie but still root for her to succeed.
What the show did instead was neuter Ellie's revenge arc, making her unlikable for all the wrong reasons. Instead of seeing her become the monster she needs to become, while still hoping that she tracks down Abby and takes her revenge, we see her as an incompetent, brash, childish character who isn't even particularly invested in revenge to begin with. It's hard to root for someone who doesn't seem to care that much about their own mission to begin with. Even before Joel's death, Ellie was presented as an obnoxious teenager rather than the more hardened version of the character she'd become over the intervening years.
Perhaps hoping that more comic relief would endear us to Ellie, the show makes her a wisecracking kid most of the time. In the process, all her skills and intellect are cast aside. She's less clever and less capable than she was at 14 in Season 1. Now it is Dina who must show her the way, urge her on her path of revenge, remind her when to be quiet and what supplies to pack. Jessie chastises her for her selfishness, saves her from tight spots, and prevents her from getting them both killed when she wants to save a Scar child from a pack of Wolves. Time and again, she only narrowly escapes a situation she's put herself in or is rescued. Almost never do we see a competent, self-assured Ellie making hard choices that she has to live with.
Even her moments of revenge and violence are dampened. Instead of shooting Owen and then stabbing Mel through the throat with her knife, she shoots the pair of them, killing Mel by mistake. She doesn't even use her knife on the one WLF guard she takes down, choosing to choke hold him instead of the more obvious stabbing kill. And she doesn't kill a dog, I suppose because that might make us dislike her even more. Ellie's violence is always uncertain and, other than Nora, her kills leave her shaken and upset rather than kindling her determination. Sure, we need to see how they impact her, but this version of Ellie seems only regretful and rarely driven except when the writers flip her revenge switch. It's whiplash-inducing from a character standpoint.
When Dina reveals she's pregnant, Ellie makes a dad joke instead of getting angry and treating Dina and her pregnancy as a terrible inconvenience. And you might think that would make her more likeable, but instead it makes her seem wishy-washy and uncommitted. It's no wonder that Dina, when she learns of Joel's past, is upset and and shuts down, distancing herself from Ellie and telling her it's time to go home. In the game, Dina is supportive of Ellie when she learns this hard truth. Because it doesn't matter what Joel did. The only thing that matters is getting justice. But with an Ellie so devoid of her own drive and motivation, why should we expect Dina to act any other way?
The Last Of Us
Season 2 needed to show us the transformation of Ellie from a happy-go-lucky apocalypse survivor to a competent killer hellbent on revenge, who treats those around her as obstacles when they get in the way, and who mercilessly stalks her quarry. It needed to do that while still making us root for her to succeed, using flashbacks like the museum scene to remind us who she once was and what's been lost. Instead, she bumbles along in a half-assed revenge quest where she's neither ruthless nor competent, just another road-trip with the adults who have to protect and shield her along the way.
Fundamentally, this season should have been about Ellie breaking bad. And like that show, it should have given us an Ellie more akin to Walter White than this aimless child. Walter White is exactly what I'm describing: A ruthless, competent monster who, even when he shows his true colors, the audience roots for even against our better judgment. Sure, at a certain point most Breaking Bad fans had turned on Walter, as the horrors of his vanity and ambition left too much ruin in his wake to ignore. That's exactly the path Ellie needed to go down this season (and a few more episodes could have fleshed out this spiral, though only if the writing and direction had allowed the extra space to matter).
Alas, we have come to the end of Season 2 and are now poised to watch Abby's arc unfold in Season 3. It is too late to give us the story we needed for Ellie at this point, which is a terrible shame. The show has already done irrevocable damage to Abby's story as well, spelling out her motivations long before we should have known what they were. The biggest problem, however, is that Abby's arc needs to be the mirror opposite of Ellie's. While we were supposed to follow Ellie down a monstrous path, we need to then follow Abby down one of redemption. We need to see the human being behind the monster, and this needs to reflect Ellie's own arc in reverse.
With Ellie's story so badly jumbled, I see no clear way the show can achieve this in Season 3. And without these two stories mirroring one another, without these two characters hurtling toward one another, effectively becoming one another, I'm not at all certain how Season 4 can achieve the emotional heights it requires. And that's to say nothing of them moving the final scene of the game up into Season 2, Episode 6.
Oh well. Mistakes were made. At least we have the games.
Read my Season 2 review here:
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