All throughout HBO’s The Last of Us‘ Season 2 run, I’ve been banging on my drum, yelling to the heavens that Ellie’s been written all wrong. With the finale episode out of the way, showrunner Craig Mazin has taken to the official podcast alongside Neil Druckmann, Troy Baker, and Halley Gross to talk about it.
The casters recap the entirety of the episode, but what really caught my attention is the bit where Abby finally shows up to the movie theater. Here, Mazin states, “Abby seemingly is not like Ellie, in that Abby is incredibly competent.”
For context, the podcast discussed the scene with Mel and Owen right before this. Mazin mentions that while Ellie tries to use Joel’s technique of forcing them to talk by having them point to the map individually, she fails as Owen tries to turn the tables on her. Where Ellie tries to be cold and ruthless, she fails because she’s not that person. Contrast this with Abby, who tracks them down to the movie theater, immediately pins Tommy down and shoots Jesse without hesitation.
This take is problematic for a couple of reasons. First, as I’ve shouted from the rooftops many a time, Ellie is supposed to be a ruthless killer in The Last of Us Part II. I mean, she mutters “stupid dog” when she murders a dog. That’s kinda messed up. When she eventually reaches the aquarium, you just know she has every intention of killing Mel and Owen, as evidenced by her lack of hesitation in killing Jordan and Nora before this.
When Owen tries to resist, she immediately kills him, then Mel. Would she really have let them go if they revealed Abby’s location? Maybe. But from what we’ve seen up to that point, I highly doubt it. Regardless, it’s only when Ellie finds out that Mel was pregnant that she’s finally stopped dead in her tracks. Even so, we should note that Ellie was very much in control of that entire situation. She’s the one who tracked down these Wolves with Dina’s help, and she’s the one who’s murdered them all up to this point. She is extremely competent.
So for Mazin to state so plainly that Abby, unlike Ellie, is “incredibly comptent”, this kinda demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of Ellie as a character in The Last of Us Part II. Both women are meant to be parallels, or mirror images of each other. They’re both driven by revenge and hatred, and yes, they are both extremely competent in different ways.
This fundamental misunderstanding of Ellie makes me wonder how the inevitable showdown between Ellie and Abby is going to go down. After all, that fight is only tense because you don’t know who’s going to emerge victorious. On one hand, you have Abby, who’s an absolute beast who can crush anything. On the other hand, you have Ellie, who’s much faster and cunning in how she gets the drop on her enemies. Abby excels at hand-to-hand combat, but Ellie knows how to quickly craft traps and bombs that kill you instantly.
With how Season 2 has gone down, it’s very difficult to imagine Show Ellie demonstrating that same kind of resourcefulness that Game Ellie has. The scales feel like they’re tipped so far in Abby’s favor that I’m not sure the show is going to be able to course correct. I guess we’ll see when Season 3 comes around, though it’s looking like that’s not gonna be for another couple years.
The Last of Us is now available for streaming on HBO Max.
