'The Last of Us' season 2, episode 3 recap: Homophobe Redemption Tour

The dust settles in bizarre ways after the game-changing second episode

Hello! The Big Spoiler from last week’s episode will be discussed openly below, as well as less narratively shocking ones from this week’s.

This is your one and only warning!

The Last of Us season 2, episode 3: The Path

The third episode of The Last of Us’ second season was the weakest of the series thus far.

When a titanic narrative shakeup happens in a show like this,¹ it’s only natural to pause and let the dust settle a little. Game of Thrones² famously timed out its best seasons so that the biggest surprises would happen in the penultimate episodes, allowing breathing room in the finales to show how it would ripple across its various storylines.

The Last of Us, for now, is a much smaller show than GoT, though Ellie’s arrival in Seattle at the end of this episode should considerably widen its narrative scope.

What we’re stuck with in the interim is an episode that surveys the fiery wreckage of last week’s zombie-filled Battle of Jackson and the unceremonious slaughter of the show’s main character, Joel (Pedro Pascal), at the hands of the vengeful ex-Firefly Abby (Kaitlyn Dever).

Abby is totally absent from the proceedings this week, save for brief, violent flashes of last week’s carnage. As with this stretch of the game, I’m sure her absence is meant to haunt the proceedings. All Ellie knows of her, for now, is what Dina (Isabela Merced) tells her midway through the episode: Her name, the faction she’s now part of, and her location: Seattle.

Joel’s sheet-covered corpse gets much more play in the episode. The opening scene shows Tommy (Gabriel Luna) visiting his brother’s body in a makeshift morgue. This moment was grim and affecting; he had no idea what was happening to Joel as he helped lead the Jackson settlement to victory, and the guilt washes over his face naturally.

Following this scene, we see Ellie (Bella Ramsey) wake up screaming in a hospital after remembering what she witnessed at the lodge last week. She has to be sedated, and the episode unceremoniously skips ahead 3 months.

This time jump felt oddly early; Jackson transitions from fire, ash, and snow to sun-dappled repair work. Tommy and Jesse (Young Mazino) share a moment of generational competitiveness while chopping wood; Gail (Catherine O’Hara) wears a floral dress, denim blazer, and sunhat while she relaxes and watches a youth baseball game.

As charming as these moments are after such an intense episode, the suddenness of the transition is part of my issue with this episode as a whole. In a story about grief yielding to untameable rage, I think we need to linger in it a little bit. One screaming moment in a hospital does not a compelling revenge narrative make.

When we skip from winter to spring, Ellie is wrapping up several weeks of recovery. What does that look like? How does rehabilitation work in post-apocalyptic Wyoming?

While Ramsey was given plenty to do this episode, Ellie’s story felt shortchanged by this abrupt time change. It’s clear she’s papered over her emotions and learned to weaponize therapy speak so she can leave, but her scenes mourning Joel or starting to plot revenge feel oddly inert without more context.

Now that the Battle of Jackson is over, Gail can finally start dressing

Thankfully, though, the need for therapy gives O’Hara more screen time. Ramsey’s verbal sparring with her before being released from the clinic was another of the episode’s highlights, as was Gail consoling Tommy during the baseball game.

‘That Path’s’ biggest set piece, though, was its weak point: A commune-wide council meeting to discuss what, if any, retribution Abby and her crew should face for killing Joel. It succeeds at one thing: showing us how rapidly Ellie seems to have matured. Rather than leaning into her anger in this scene, she takes Jesse’s advice and writes down her remarks.

Other than that, this sequence was just poorly written. From its flat attempts at comedy- an oblivious farmer yapping about crops while everyone waits impatiently to discuss Joel- to its ham-handed forgiveness/revenge philosophy, it felt almost wholly unnecessary.

This brings me to the most baffling time-waster of this episode:

Seth the Homophobe

Remember Seth (Robert John Burke)? Amid all the chaos and reckoning of the first two episodes, no one could blame you if you don’t.

He is the one who berated Ellie and Dina for kissing at Jackson’s New Year’s Eve party. He called them an anti-gay slur, Joel punched him, and Ellie got furious that he intervened. Seth was forced to apologize to Ellie the following day, and offered her a steak sandwich as recompense. She was nonplussed.

In a way, he is to blame for Ellie and Joel not being on speaking terms before he took a broken golf club to the throat. Co-showrunner Craig Mazin, who wrote this episode, leans into that sense of guilt, I guess.

Seth’s Homophobe Apology Tour continues two-fold in ‘The Path.’ At the council meeting, he is the most vocal supporter of Ellie’s proposal to assemble a squad and hunt down Abby and the other members of the Washington Liberation Front (WLF) who killed Joel.

When the council rejects this proposal and Ellie and Dina (gasp!) decide to go after Abby anyway, Seth sneaks Ellie’s horse out for her and gives them supplies for their journey. I hope to God (or Gail) that the weary 3 a.m. handshake Seth and Ellie share at the Jackson settlement gate is the last we have to hear about this overdone plotline.

Enough!!

Anyway, onto Seattle!

Ellie and Dina’s arrival in Seattle at the end of this episode is not our first glimpse of the area.

Earlier in the episode, Mazin and director Peter Hoar abruptly leave Jackson and drop us onto the titular Path in the woods, a signpost indicating we are approaching the city.

Here, the show introduces another mysterious faction in the area. This group uses whistles to signal safety or danger, and has ritualistic carvings on their cheeks; the men’s heads are shaved, and the women have crown braids. We see a young girl, her cheek scars fresh, talking with an older man about getting away from the area. She asks for a small hammer on his waistband to protect herself; he obliges, before telling her that a hammer won’t protect her as much as distance will.

Then, a warning whistle from a lookout. The group scatters into the woods to hide, ominously warning that “wolves³” are approaching.

Hammer time

There will be much more to say about this group as the series wears on, but this brief introduction hints at the powder keg that Ellie and Dina are blindly wandering into.

Before they make their way northwest, though, they make a stop at the cemetery outside Jackson. In a scene that mirrors Abby crouching over her father’s grave in Salt Lake City a couple of episodes earlier, Ellie solemnly stares at Joel’s tombstone before laying down some of his favorite coffee beans. As a wise scholar once said, “Evil is a relay sport when the one who's burnt turns to pass the torch.”⁴

Ellie and Dina travel to Seattle via scenic montage, their relationship deepening as they navigate shifting American landscapes. I was glad to be rid of Jackson and its poorly conceived political machinations, but this stretch also felt rushed. It took Joel and Ellie an entire season of television to cover this much ground; while nothing of big narrative significance happens during Ellie and Dina’s travels in the game, I think fast traveling through this stretch was a missed opportunity to flesh out their relationship.

Still, Merced and Ramsey are good verbal sparring partners, and they make the most of what limited screen time they have.

The two eventually reach the same spot on The Path that the mysterious faction was on earlier, and make a horrifying discovery: The group, including the young girl with her hammer, has been slaughtered and left in the woods, seemingly by the WLF. This seems to imbue Ellie with a sense of moral justification for whatever she’s about to do; in her mind, Abby is responsible for everything they’re about to see.

Seattle is eerily quiet when she and Dina finally do arrive, which reassures them. Hoar ends the episode showing just how misplaced that sense of security is. After being given the all-clear by a lookout,⁵ we see a battalion of the WLF marching down a Seattle street towards the frontlines of an unseen conflict. Armored vehicles, assault weapons, and lockstep marching, oh my!

Next week’s episode appears to more fully immerse us in the WLF, with the arrival of Jeffrey Wright’s character heavily featured in the preview. He is reprising his video game role as Isaac, a ruthless, enigmatic leader of the group.

I am curious how much of the WLF storyline will be woven into this season, as much of it is back-loaded in the game. After this week’s massacre in the woods, I am also warily interested in how the series will approach the game’s not-so-subtle Pacific North West Bank narrative.

What did you think of this episode? Did it feel like largely inconsequential filler to you as well? Thoughts on Gail’s spring training fit?

1. Here is my recap of season 2, episode 2

2. Sorry to reference GoT again, but it really does feel like the most logical reference point for how this series is shaping up.

3. The WLF has a wolf logo, in case you didn’t connect those dots yet.

4. Here’s my write-up of that wise scholar’s most recent work, Fetch the Bolt Cutters

5. That lookout a member of Abby’s posse, so her group is in fact back in Seattle!