- Huge spoilers for The last of us Season 2, section 2 here
- No, there won’t be anyone keeping blocked on the huge events in that episode
- But we won’t spoil anything about the future from the game — it’s only TV here
This is where. The last of us‘TV viewers at Max have caught up to the crushing Linchpin in the second act of history that those who played the game have feared.
At the end of the second episode, Abby (Kaitlyn Derver) claims for his father’s death and brutally kills Joel (Pedro Pascal) in front of Ellie (Bella Ramsey), who can do nothing but cry and ask for qualms and in vain.
With confirmation that a third season is on the way, there has been a great implication that the story of the second game would be shared in seasons, and I assumed that they may have fine -tuned the story’s order to push Joel’s death to the end of the second season.
But no, here we are who look today across a landscape of social media posts and reviews from people who – among other emotions – crushed, furious, confused and impressed.
I have to start with the post on X from @scarjsn, which I referred to in the headline and said “Ellie Hugging Joel’s body just ruined all my week, month and year” because it seems to have hit the goal of many people, just as this post does.
I don’t know if there’s anything I will ever be able to do to emotionally recover after this moment. #Thelastophus season2 pic.twitter.com/bisjisennjApril 21, 2025
The moment has hit people in a few different ways. There is, it has to be said, Pedro Pascal of it all. There is a fairly large part of the world whose attachment is to have this extremely charming and beautiful star in the center of the show-ice-weed considering his adorable real relationship with Bella Ramsey. A large number of people are destroyed by losing him as much as the character.
But certainly there is a huge amount of love for the character expressed in people’s sadness and anger. It has a few forms, including people who take what you might call a bittersweet approach, and look at how we got to see the best parts of his character in the last stretch of his life …
Joel couldn’t save his daughter, so he protected any damn teenage girl until it killed him #thelastofus pic.twitter.com/swoqvsbfhaApril 21, 2025
… and on the other hand we have people burning with white warm and inaccessible rage at Abby’s actions.
Adding her to my list of top 10 most hated TV characters. And it’s only two episodes. Idgaf what her reason was. I hate this MF’s with a passion and hope she eats pavement (actress Great Tho, just like Kudos to her). #Thelastofus #tlou pic.twitter.com/vqvgrkystvApril 21, 2025
In the current world, where people seem more and more unwilling to keep the real world and fiction separate, it seems that the TLou team and Max have prepared a lot of social content of everyone on the show that Palling around, having fun and generally loves each other a lot.
It is a somewhat sad fact that the position below from Pascal was clearly necessary and that the reason behind it became immediately noticeable, with a reddit noticing “The fact that Pedro published this photo after section 2 so his fans would not hate her” while The Daily Beast described it as Pascal ‘Shield’ from fans. (When the game came out, the actress portraiting Abby received a long -standing flood of violent messages and death threats.)
Bella Ramsey’s portrayal of Ellie throughout the episode has drawn a lot of praise, not only for the great climax (which we come to), but more broadly for how subtly and honestly they make the mixed emotions that come in the wake of the dance.
It is helped by the show that fills itself with subtle nods to their ties that go beyond external actions or words (pay attention to the guitar …), but also in Ramsey’s delivery of the line below (full or dramatic irony as it may be).
“I’m still me he’s still joel and we … nothing will change. Ever.” 😭😭😭#thelastophus pic.twitter.com/d5zblgzlgoApril 21, 2025
There are other shifts in Ramsey’s physical nature that denote changes deep in Ellie’s core. “She somehow looks older in an episode and as a real demon waiting to be detached,” says this Reddit wire from a user who says any concern for Ramsey playing the older Ellie in Season 2 had been removed.
Of course, subtlety in the delivery out of the window when Ellie is injured, caught helplessly on the floor and forced to see the person she loves most, terrible.
Ramsey reviews so many conditions in these scenes and looks as physically destroyed from her anguish as she sounds. The nuclear rage, the painful cognition, the cruel half -hop and the end.
Bella ramsey, the emmy is your pic.twitter.com/7ufqgeqhqhApril 21, 2025
The interesting question is how well the viewing in Store is responding to The last of us‘Great change. Of course, it will partly depend on what is actually coming next, and I do not go into anything from the game here.
But it’s a big risk – this moment is so cruel for so many characters and it’s possible for a dark show to go also dark in the eyes of its viewers. That’s the question that Guardian Travels asking “Will this show survive the horrible death?”. Author Graeme Virtue adds: “You can also call the end brave or even foolish … By killing Joel in such a wild way and further traumatizing Ellie, you are definitely risking pushing the story too far into gloom.”
Collider has an interesting intake of the unreasonable brutality of it all: “Like it or not, we had to see [Joel die] In ‘The Last of Us’ Season 2′.
“Some viewers may have thought it was too much, but unfortunately the portrayal of Joel’s death is a necessary plot point for this adjustment of The last of usAnd it’s not about satisfactory violence and Gore, “writes Julio Bardini.” Instead, it’s about being true to one of the most important unspoken rules of storytelling: If someone dies, show an organ. “
Bardini notes that permanent death has become hard to believe in the era with heritage sequences-recovery or long-lasting franchises who just need to get people in their seats and the return of a fan favorite is an easy way to do it. If you want people to feel the destruction that Tlou Viewers are feeling right now, you have to make it clear that there is no ambiguity about it.
It’s fair to say that the show achieved it, and now we’re in what Esquire has called “past the point without return.” As Brady Langmann says, “This show belongs to Bella Ramsey now.”
