The Last of Us Season 2 finale on HBO was, as you’d expect, emotionally devastating. Ellie (Bella Ramsey) finally reaches a point where she might realize revenge is not what she really wants, only when it’s too late.
**Spoilers for The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 7, now streaming on MAX**
In her zeal to hunt Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), Ellie accidentally breaks her own moral code, killing an innocent life. She uses Nora’s (Tati Gabrielle) intel to track the Fireflies to an aquarium. After nearly being killed by Seraphites en route to the location, she arrives and stumbles upon Mel (Ariela Barer) and Owen (Spencer Lord) debating following Abby’s latest set of orders. Ellie holds the two at gunpoint and asks them to show her on a map where Abby is. However, Owen reaches for a gun. Ellie instinctively shoots in self defense, instantly killing Owen, but nicking Mel’s throat.
As Mel lays dying from her fatal injury, she reveals that she’s been pregnant this whole time. She begs Ellie to use a knife to perform a hasty Cesarean section birth before she — and the baby — die. Ellie is overwhelmed and cannot save the child. As she sobs over the corpses of Mel and her baby, Tommy (Gabriel Luna) and Jesse (Young Mazino) arrive.
Tommy, of course, is Joel’s (Pedro Pascal) brother. He acts as a surrogate Joel for Ellie, comforting and protecting her no matter what.
“Tommy just, she’s mine,” The Last of Us star Gabriel Luna said, explaining the paternal affection he now feels for his dead brother’s adopted daughter. “She’s mine now and she’s our family and I got to go get her.”
The only reason why Ellie and Dina (Isabela Merced) are stuck in Seattle alone is because when they put their plan to get justice for Joel, they couldn’t sway the whole local council. Tommy was on board with the plan, but the majority (including Jesse) wasn’t.
Given that Tommy is now a leader in Jackson, as well as a father and husband, his decision to go after the girls with Jesse could not have been made lightly. Jesse explains in the episode that he made his choice to follow them because he knew Ellie would burn the world down to save him if the roles were reversed. When DECIDER asked Luna what pushed Tommy to go, he gave a more complex answer.
“I think it’s a very personal decision. It’s probably one that I fought with Maria about,” Luna said, referring to Tommy’s wife, played by Rutina Wesley.
“I think ultimately she knew that that’s our family. Not just mine, but hers as well. You know, I don’t think she’s adamantly against it. I think she supports it, reluctantly,” he said. “I think the town leader in her and the wife is obviously against it, but I think that at her core she knows how important Ellie is to our family, the Millers. She’s part of us.”
Luna then revealed that he and Wesley had filmed another scene, set during The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 2, that was cut from the show. It took place after Tommy is on the radio “calling for Joel.” Luna said that cutting that scene left “more room for Maria and more acceptance in her heart of the family as a whole, Joel and Ellie included.”
He explained, “In that scene, there was talk about, ‘You have us here. You have your son, you have all these other things. Your brother’s one man, but we have all this people here in this town.'”
Luna pointed out that now Tommy is in a similar scenario. “Ellie’s out there alone with Dina, but I think it’s different.”
“Without that [Episode 2] scene, you leave more room and it’s much more interesting, Maria’s position,” he said. I’m sure she supports him going out and bringing her back, but you know, who knows how the events shake out and then what the ramifications of it will be.”
Well, now we know that Tommy’s decision has resulted in at least one more horrible death. Abby kills Jesse in the final moments of The Last of Us Season 2. It’s left up in the air if she also kills Ellie or even Tommy. We’ll sadly have to wait until Season 3 to learn how those events “shake out.”