Thoughts

And the long wait for season three begins. Sunday, HBO aired the season two finale of The Last of Us, and it was a lot. Lots to digest for people who are watching this show on their own, and probably even more for people who are watching as fans of the game. Before our larger recap on Monday, we wanted to give you a chance to talk about your feelings, and we even got showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann involved. Spoilers follow.

Season two of The Last of Us ended very much like the midway (ish) point of The Last of Us Part II. After finding and killing two more of Abby’s friends—Mel and Owen—Ellie’s Seattle journey feels like it might be coming to an end. Especially because Mel was pregnant. That was not Ellie’s intention. And so she, Tommy, Dina, and Jesse regroup and decide it’s time to head back to Jackson, even though Abby is still out there.

Just then, Abby arrives. She kills Jesse and threatens to kill the rest. It’s a tense moment that we don’t see the end of. That’s because the show cuts to black and flashes back two days. Abby wakes up at a major WLF base and we know that, next season, we’re going to see what she has been doing all this time.

So, how did that make you feel? Did you like the decision? Did you even get it? At a press conference last week, showrunner Craig Mazin chimed in about how he hopes the audience feels as season two comes to a close.

“What I want the audience to feel thematically at the end of the season is that [the characters] aren’t where they were, but they’re not yet where they are going to go,” Mazin said. “That there has always been a story that we’ve been telling about the good and bad of love, but we switch which side is good and bad sometimes. Because sometimes we do need somebody to punish someone for us. Sometimes we do need somebody to protect us. Sometimes violence must be done to save the innocent. These are difficult moments. But of course, then there are times where sacrifice is called for. Where putting other people first is called for. Where creation does more than destruction.”

“And we are, especially with the porch scene prior to the last episode, and the way we now understand that there is this idea that maybe you could do a little bit better than me, we understand that both Ellie and Abby are moving forward in trouble,” Mazin continues. “They are in moral trouble because their certainty is beginning to fail them. And we can see it here with Ellie, for sure, because faced with the consequences of the thing she’s done and people that didn’t deserve to die dying, she’s starting to feel maybe a swing of the pendulum. And we don’t know where these two are going to end. But what I would hope the audience feels is that they are not done. They’re not done growing or they are not done falling. We’ll have to wait and see which it is.”

“The question that we’re asking and the thing we’re interrogating in this story is: when you’ve committed such horrible things, depending on your circumstance, can you ever come back from that?” Neil Druckmann added. “And we see in that porch scene, Joel is trying to come back from what he’s done even though he doesn’t regret it. And now we have these two characters that are on this downward spiral, trying to do justice for the people that they love and we’ll see how far that goes.”

Do you agree with Mazin and Druckmann here? Talk about that, or whatever else you want to talk about, below. Then check back Monday for not just our final breakdown/recap, but more from the showrunners on the ending of the season.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

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