'The Last of Us' season 2, episode 7 recap: Half Measures
Breaking down an emotionally draining season finale, and looking ahead to season 3's big shift
Well, dear readers, our 7-week journey1 through zombies, urban warfare, and drunken therapy has come to an end, at least for now.
Just as I suspected and feared, The Last of Us’ second season has concluded right as it was gaining narrative steam. As its length would suggest, it only feels like half a season of television.
Still, it’s been a lot of fun for me to try my hand at weekly episode reviews; I don’t know that I could sustain it for a 15+ episode season and still enjoy myself. Maybe I’ll try to find that out when The Pitt returns. Maybe.
For now, let’s break down this season finale and talk a little bit about where the show seems to be heading.
‘The Last of Us’ season 2, episode 7: Convergence
I was quite shocked when I opened the Max app on my television, clicked on The Last of Us, and saw that the season finale, called ‘Convergence,’ was only 50 minutes.
Based on all the Big Game Events hinted at in the episode preview, I was almost positive that it would be longer than an hour.
The main reason they were able to streamline Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and company’s third day in Seattle is because the writers make it a lot easier for her to get a boat. In the game, there is a lengthy sequence where Ellie steals a rickety old vessel to go after Owen and Mel, two more people on her Death List, at the Seattle Aquarium. She navigates it through flooded city streets, and even battles a big-ass Bloater in an arcade when it gets stuck.
Here, she simply finds it tied to a dock and has to wait for a horde of WLF soldiers to leave the area. They’re planning to assault a nearby Seraphite base by sea, with Isaac (Jeffrey Wright) leading the charge.
This entire stretch of the finale features the best and the worst of this sometimes bumpy adaptation.
First, the clumsy parts: Much of this stretch was dark as hell, and I don’t mean the story. (Even if that’s true, too). It’s hard to generate a palpable sense of suspense or rage as Ellie sneaks around, steals a boat, and tears across the water toward the aquarium when you can’t see shit! I’d say this was yet another way The Last of Us is carrying the Game of Thrones torch, but torches generate light!
Speaking of torches,2 let’s talk about my second big issue with this part of the episode. In an attempt to make Ellie’s journey at least somewhat arduous, episode writers Craig Mazin, Neil Druckmann, and Halley Gross have a wave capsize the tiny boat and spit her out in the heart of a Seraphite encampment.
They drag her screaming out of the water to a familiar sight: Torch-bearing cultists, a noose, and a sickle-wielding leader. She (and we) have seen this ritual. Before it can be completed, though, a horn alerts the Seraphites to the WLF assault. They unceremoniously dump Ellie in the mud and rush to battle.
Why include this scene? It’s briefly menacing, sure, but ultimately it feels tacked on, unnecessary, and disrupts the flow of the episode. Sometimes, as in episode 5, this show does unexpected, violent detours exceptionally well. This sloppily conceived moment was not one of them.
After this close call, though, is the best, most harrowing scene in the entire episode. Ellie eventually makes it to the aquarium, and the information she tortured out of Nora at the end of episode 5 proves true: Here are Owen (Spencer Lord) and Mel (Ariela Barer) hiding out away from the rest of the WLF for an as-yet unclear reason.
As Ellie approaches them, revolver drawn, they’re bickering about a plan they’ve made with Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) to escape the area. After a tense back and forth, the inevitable happens: Owen reaches for a nearby gun, and Ellie shoots him.
But wait, it gets so much more disturbing! The bullet traveled through Owen and pierced Mel’s throat. She collapses to the ground, her pregnant stomach revealed for the first time. Director Nina Lopez-Corrado gives this entire moment a sense of claustrophobic tragedy. Mel slowly fades away, losing her hold on reality and whispering about her unborn child.
In her dying moments, she tries to walk Ellie through an emergency C-section, to no avail. Barer and Ramsey are heartbreaking here; it’s an emotional deepening of the game’s story that gives us a brief glimpse of the last shards of decency Ellie has left.
The writers bookend this episode’s violent centerpiece with scenes that give us a better understanding of Jesse (Young Mazino), the promising young leader of Jackson who trekked all the way to the Pacific Northwest with Joel’s brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna) to help Ellie and Dina (Isabela Merced) finish this revenge business.
Until now, Jesse has been a head-down, business-focused character. But realizing that his injured ex-girlfriend Dina is pregnant with his child has changed his priorities in Seattle. He wants to find Tommy, who separated from him while they searched for Ellie and Dina, and get the hell out of dodge.
This obviously doesn’t sit well with Ellie. The two have a tense falling out when she tells him she’s heading to the aquarium, though that doesn’t stop him and Tommy from coming to pull her out of delirium after the Owen/Mel incident.
Back at their home base at the Paramount Pinnacle Theater, Jesse and Ellie reach somewhat of an understanding. He admits that despite calling her selfish earlier, he knows she would raise hell to help him if he were in trouble.
Alas, this show just can’t help but kill off people after they make peace with each other.
Heeeere’s Abby!
We’ve been waiting the whole season for her ass to show back up, and she finally pops up in the final minutes of the episode.
Abby has somehow tracked the group back to the theater. Ellie and Jesse are alerted to her presence mid-heart-to-heart and go rushing from the concert hall to the entrance. Jesse is unceremoniously shot in the head right as he barges through a door, Ellie takes cover.
She sees Tommy lying on the ground injured, and Abby yells at her to toss her gun and come out before she kills him.
In just a minute or so of screentime, Dever jolts the show to life with an incredible burst of anger.
“I let you live, and you wasted it,” she growls when she recognizes Ellie.
As Ellie starts to scream, we hear shots and the episode abruptly cuts to black. Were they from Abby? Did Dina limp to the rescue? You won’t know until next season! Unless you play the game!
That’s not the end of the episode, though. Lopez-Corrado cuts to Abby being woken up for a WLF patrol. Exhausted, she gets out of bed and meanders out into the open. Here she looks out over a massive WLF settlement that’s built into a stadium.
Then, the kicker: The words ‘Seattle: Day 1’ flash onto the screen.
This is more or less exactly how I thought season two would end: The switch from Ellie’s point of view to Abby’s. Aside from Joel’s death, this is probably the most surprising thing the second game does. Rather than conclude the business at the theater immediately, it has us go back and play as Abby during the same three-day period in Seattle.
The ending of ‘Convergence’ basically confirms that the show will mirror this structure. That means we can expect the third season to focus largely on Abby. Will Ellie & Co. be entirely absent until the storylines once again… converge? 😎
I doubt that, though Catherine O’Hara has tragically confirmed that she will not be reprising her role as Jackson’s Irritable Therapist Gail in season 3. That said, I’m ready to switch gears and see Dever dig into a much bigger role… whenever the season comes out.
What did you think of the finale? How long do you think we’re waiting for season 3?
How’s that for a transition?
It definitely felt rushed, I’m not sure why they opted for 7 episodes. I know they’ve said that S3 will likely have more episodes but if they really are going to conclude it with a 4th season, will it mostly be original material?