‘The Last of Us’ Season 2, Episode 7 Deep Dive
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Hello, welcome back to House of R. I'm Joanna Robinson. She's Mallory Rubin and Mallory Rubin. On the occasion of the last list finale, would you care to hit me with a pithy, relevant quote from the very episode itself? Okay, got it. So you're St. Joanna of Wyoming and everyone else is a fucking asshole.

It's me, Joanna, with my savior complex and only a few more minutes left to live. Here we are covering the Last of Us finale on House of R. Devastating and exciting at the same time for us.

You might be looking at your feed and you're like, wow, this is here early. What the heck happened? What the hey? We recorded early because it's Memorial Day weekend. And we just thought we would maybe take the Monday off and record this early. And then you're sitting there, you're saying, but what the hey? Don't you usually have feedback from us, emails from us, insights from the showrunners on the official pod? I've got great news for you. We'll be doing a spring mailbag pod later this week.

You've already submitted some of your emails, thoughts and questions and comments and concerns for that. And we so appreciate it. But we'll be doing like a Last of Us chunky section of that mailbag. So we will get to, you know, some post finale reactions that we might not be able to cover in this somewhat close to an instant reaction finale. Last of Us finale podcast. HobbitsandDragons at gmail.com is how you can contribute to the spring mailbag podcast.

Before we do that, though, you might also be looking at your feed and you're like, what the hey? I thought we were getting a Rogue One rewatch. You are. Yes. We moved it slightly. And here's why. We've got a special friend joining us. That's right. We moved it slightly. We were supposed to do it last week. We pushed it to the top of this week because...

we got greedy and wanted to have one of our pals join us. So I'm really excited for that one. Aren't you, Mallory Rippin? I can't wait. I can't wait. Elsewhere in the feeds? Yes. Semi-night boys, pew pew! Have their...

Super fresh instant reaction that went up right before ours for the last of us finale. So you can listen to that. They also have a mission impossible final reckoning reaction pod coming out later this week. So that's exciting. Button mash. We'll have there the last of us finale, you know, gamer guide recap with Ben and Daniel. And then guess what? Mallory it's time for ringer verse recommends again. Just thought I would put that up, put that in your ear. Delightful. Get excited.

How can folks keep track of all of that good, good, fresh, delicious mushroomy content, Mallory Rubin? Going to keep it simple. Follow the pods. Why not? Follow House of R. Follow the Ringerverse. Follow the Prestige TV podcast on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can watch.

full video episodes of House of R and Midnight Boys Pew Pew on Spotify and on the Ringerverse YouTube channel. So make sure you're following us on YouTube as well. And then follow the Ringerverse on the social media platform of your choosing. We're not here to tell you what that is, but the Ringerverse is on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter. And then as Joe noted, send us your emails for the spring mailbag and the last of us mailbag, but send us your emails for everything.

We love to hear from the bad babies always. We've gotten some great Rogue One emails from a bunch of people who had never seen it. Who watched Andor with us and were like, okay, I'll watch Rogue One. And they were like, oh, Cassie Andor isn't the lead of this movie? Surprising. Right, no, K2SO is. Correct. Ben Daniels is, but that's okay. We'll get to that when we talk about Rogue One later this week. Okay, spoiler warning. Yes. Even though season two of The Last of Us is done...

The Lasso's part two, the game is not done being adapted. There's a whole another half plus plus to the story. We know what happens because Mallory Rubin, dedicated content provider that she is, played the game. I

medium dedicated content provider that I am watched a playthrough and so all of our thoughts and feelings that we have about what comes after the cliffhanger as one might call it of this finale we will keep for a spoiler section at the end of the podcast you will hear such a loud warning such a spoiler warning

So that will, we will save that for later. But we will be using our game knowledge, of course, to infuse our analysis of this, of the adaptive choices they made, key differences, some major differences, I think, in terms of what some characters know. But no matter how you slice it, Jesse doesn't make it out of that theater. And that is true in both game and show. And we will miss him. Young Mizuno was really, really great in this role. So we will miss him. We will eulogize him when we get there. Season two, episode seven,

I am 98% sure this episode is called convergence. Okay. But since we're pre-recording it, I am not a hundred percent sure. Right. We're going off the screener. No title on the screener. Yeah. No title on the screener. That's a good guess though. I I've seen it listed elsewhere. It's just sometimes those things are fake. So I'm just saying. What do you think is the second most likely title? She's still there doing all right. Not that you asked. Hashtag shimmer lives. Um,

This episode, like last week's episode, was written by the trifecta of Craig Mazin, Neil Druckmann, Halle Gross, and directed by Nina Lopez Corrado, who has a pretty chunky TV, CV, but not a director that I'm very familiar with. So that was interesting. Convergence as a title, it comes up in the episode when we're talking about meteorological events. It comes up as we're talking about pasts.

as converging of characters inside of this episode. It is also the name of a track from the first game. So this is just like a word that is, has long standing associations with the last of us. Love it. Yes. Joanna really talked about our feelings about this finale with each other. Not at all. How do you feel? How are you feeling?

I'm in mourning. You know, I'm sad that it's over. And, you know, we've been potting together for, whoo, sheesh, three and a half years. Is that right? Wow. Goodness. Three and a half years. Amazing. Crikey. We've gotten multiple what the haze and a crikey already from Joe. We're cooking today. You can definitely tell it's late on a Friday before a holiday weekend.

I'm feeling zesty today, honestly. I love it. It's the fresh mint. Yeah, and my teeth. The ginger in your teeth. I, as you know, am often inclined to dread the end of something before it has even begun. Yeah. It's something that I should spend some time parsing with Gail. Like, why am I this way? But not while she's having breakfast. But not during a meal or personal reading time. When it's a thing I love...

That feeling when we reach the end is so intense for me because on the one hand, I am just genuinely despondent that the shared experience, our community, our us of watching this together, talking about the game, talking about the show, talking about the world is coming to an end. But then I have that immediate, the wave crash. And then I'm like, okay, I'm okay. I came out because...

One of the things that I love most about doing this and doing this with you is that, you know, we just talked about this with Andor, nothing's ending. It's like we always get to go back into the worlds that we love. And so I'm so excited to think about the future of the show. I already can't wait to rewatch both of these seasons, to replay the games. I just love being in the world and I've really loved sharing it with you. It's like my favorite thing in the world to get to talk about a story that we love in a world we love together. In terms of the actual finale, this was such a...

This was such an emotional wallop in so many ways. A real payoff of the every path has a price logline and premise and framing of this season. And, you know, last week in episode six, the penultimate episode of the season, we spent a lot of time talking about that because it was, you know, invoked directly through the

the lens of Joel and the choices that Joel had made. But what this episode, I thought, really effectively reinforced is that that is true for everybody. It's true for Ellie. It's true for Abby. It's true for any person in the story or the world who makes a decision. Like, the things that we do to other people have consequences. And to see our characters confront that and

with what it means for their relationships with each other, for their ability to look in the mirror at themselves, is such an interesting thing to see rendered on screen and to talk about together. All of, basically, like, every lyric from a song that has been featured this season was also on my mind watching this. Like,

obviously I'd surely lose myself as you know, it's, it's the, it's the mission statement brought to the fore in this episode. Like this is where we find Ellie and the, I'd surely lose myself state of it. And then the attempt to pull out of that. And the question for us now of Kent of, can that happen? Um,

But, you know, I was thinking, too, of like through the valley and I know I'll kill my enemies when they come. And I know when I die, my soul is damned. And even like a happy, lovely, beautiful moment of possibility, like take on me, we still get I'll be gone in a day or two. And just that question of what is taken from you and what you give up, what you sacrifice and what you use. Yeah.

It's such a rich text. I was really hoping that your take on me lyric would be, I'll be coming for your love, okay? Which is my favorite take on me lyric. But obviously not relevant to what we're talking about.

to what we're talking about. Okay. Sorry, anything else? I didn't mean to step on you. Anything else you want to say? No. Okay. Just, you know, can't wait to go through beat by beat with you. And, you know, also not an episode where the infected were featured, which is always interesting at the end. I have that in my notes, too. Yeah. Real true, you know, to the monsters. The monsters were the monsters. The monsters were other people episode, which is always a fastball down the middle for us. The monster at the end of this book. The monster at the end of this season. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so...

I love everything you said there. I agree with all of it. And there's obviously incredibly consequential things that happen inside of this episode. I still do think that the arc of the season...

was a bit thronesier in its construction in that the peak is the penultimate episode. And then this is like, it's weird to say a wind down when like multiple named characters die, et cetera. And there's a battle prep and all this other stuff, but it does feel like a sort of wind down comparatively to the penultimate episode. And I think, you know, in terms of,

Craig directing what he directed, Neil directing what he directed, and then, like, you know, Nita, who is sort of newer to this family, directing the finale, you know, means that they have, like, where are their interests in the story lie sort of different place in the arc. But still tremendously good, really good, really good Bella episode. I thought really, really tremendous stuff as Ellie...

spirals deeper into this brutal cycle that she's found herself in. I was thinking a lot of, and I dropped it in our notes here, but this quote from Tess in season one, we've talked a lot about the end of the quote, which is you're not immune from being ripped apart. But the beginning of the quote, when she's talking about the network of the mycelium that-

is a show change to the way in which the cordyceps interact with each other. She says, the fungus also grows underground, long fibers like wires, some of them stretching over a mile. You step on a patch of cordyceps in one place and you can wake a dozen infected from somewhere else. Now they know where you are. Now they come. You're not immune from being ripped apart.

part. And this is something that, you know, we've invoked a couple times when talking about the little tendrils coming out of the pipes in Jackson or little tendrils in the subway station. You step on one of those, you call the horde, like sort of thing. And so thinking about

This idea of the steps that Jesse and Ellie and Tommy take through Seattle, like the ways in which these various actors or when the WLF, the SLC crew came to Jackson. Yeah. What network of mycelium are you stepping on and what are you calling to your doorstep when you step on it? And so this idea of just like.

Ellie is, is called to the aquarium because of what Abby did at the beginning of the season. And Abby is called to the theater because of what Ellie does in the aquarium. And so this, this cycle of violence, but it's also this, like, you don't know what the strength of those bonds or what those networks or what that mycelium network is for these people. Right. She kills Joel. Right.

She lets Ellie live as she and Owen are both like sort of fond of saying, but like they didn't know how how closely connected necessarily those two people are. Probably if they knew they wouldn't have let her live. And Ellie kills Owen and Mel.

You know, your mileage may vary if that feels like an accident to you, but not knowing what really what that's going to do to Abby or knowing and not caring and not thinking through what the consequences might be that the repercussions might show up at your very doorstep, especially if you turned all the lights in the theater on. So...

I don't know. That was just like, sort of on my mind, just like thinking of all these, all these webs of people as their own mycelium network and the fungus loves to, but of course, so do these people. Thinking about Isaac talking about the way that Isaac talks about Abby in this episode is so interesting. A lot of what, you know, we've seen only a bit of Isaac this season, but it's,

already so expanded from the game that it makes me really excited for season three and how we can use a Jeffrey Wright inside of a story like this one. So yeah, a lot to chew over. I'm really excited that I get to talk to you about it. Molly Rubin. Same, my beloved. On the Shimmer count, it's been seven days since we last saw Shimmer, not that you asked, Ellie. Yeah.

Not a fucking ass double shimmer invocation inside of this episode. Before we get into the episode, a little mailbag moment. Please. The guitar is pronounced Epiphone. Okay. I will say, friend of the pod, Jenny Owen Youngs, who is a musician, she was like, you know, I first pronounced it Epiphany when I first saw it. I was like, that makes me feel better. Okay. Okay.

Susan wrote this great episode about Joel's watch that I thought maybe we could talk about for a second, especially as Tommy reenters the narrative inside of this episode.

She wrote,

This all just made me think that maybe Joel came to an understanding about his father or maybe even a possible forgiveness that Tommy never did. Or maybe he just wanted to try to forgive him. The cycle continues. What did you think about that, about this idea that Tommy just leaves that watch in the box on Joel's bed? Yeah, I mean, I think I agree with the...

The reading in the email, I think as we talked about at length last week, we certainly have the ability to read into what it means that Joel is carrying that, given what we glimpsed between Joel and his father and this idea that we talked about a lot in our penultimate pod and that the showrunners have spoken about beautifully and what Joel says to Ellie at the end on the porch, like, do a little better than me, that you're passing down information.

More than just trauma and more than just the cycle of violence, but also the belief that things can be a little bit better if you try. And the fact that Tommy is not like, okay, I'm slapping that puppy on my wrist now is really interesting. Now, maybe he left Tommy

that in the box in case Ellie wanted it and it was an act of generosity and grace for him to present it to her. But maybe there is a deeper insight there in terms of how Tommy would feel about carrying something that reminds him of his father on his arm and that that is not something that he wants and that that was not a place that they reached. So, you know, it seems...

that we will have the opportunity to learn more about Tommy's relationship to that past as well in the future. And if so, I would, you know, as we noted last week, that backstory scene with Javier Miller was completely new to the show. So we can say genuinely we have no clue if we will learn what Tommy thinks about that. I'm sorry, are you saying Tony Dalton for season three of The Last of Us? That's exactly what I'm saying. Correct. Book it. Okay. Also, we've gotten a couple emails from listeners saying,

asking about the Cordyceps levels inside of Seattle and sort of like, how is this place fortified from show watchers? I will say, when you're a game player, it's quite evident that there's just like

Big fuck-up walls around Seattle. There are these gates you have to traverse. It's heavily fortified. You have to spend a really long time figuring out how to get over the wall, etc. I saw from some sort of making-of-behind-the-scenes photos that they actually built some wall gate sets that they didn't wind up using, or maybe, I don't know, will use later. I don't know. But they have built...

That wall. But anyway, in terms of like, sorry, in terms of like what makes Seattle secure, why is it not overrun? There are some, there is some infrastructure in place there that we just didn't see as shit watchers. But even then, like we, you know.

Just as in these other QZs, prior QZs, you know, before Fedra fell where it seems like contained and then all of a sudden it isn't. You know, we had the moment in the tunnel where it's like, I thought this was clear. It was. So, you know. And not to mention the stalker factory. So, you know. Exactly. That long ass building. Like we've got our pockets of peril everywhere still. On the what kind of bone was that front? Let's just be really clear. This is.

Of course, it was not a human bone. I don't know what I was thinking, but I do want to let you know that we got emails from, that I shared with you, from an ER nurse. You did. From forensic anthropology, from a number of people who were like, hey, I also considered it might be a human bone. That's great. This is so reminiscent to me of when you solicited emails about ACL tears during our...

Yellowjacket coverage. And then we're like so excited to present them. And I was like,

This is a lot of information about bones and ligaments that I am not constitutionally prepared to process. We don't have to talk about it anymore. Let's just be clear. I love your commitment, despite saying multiple times on this podcast that you are not a doctor or a scientist, to learning about the human body. I admire this about you. I do. Before this very podcast, I said to you, I think I broke my foot. And you said, here are the things I would recommend trying. Yeah.

Rest, ice, compression, elevation. None of which had occurred to me. Okay. No, what did I say first? First I said, consider a doctor. Right. We moved past that quickly. And then you were like, maybe I'll get an ace bandage. And then I said, rest, ice, compression, elevation. Okay.

Bottom line, I was wrong about the bone, but we had many fun and entertaining emails from people trying to identify what kind of bone it was. Mallory doesn't want me to read them. I'm not going to read them. You can. You can. Be king of parts of the body, Mallory Rubin. Read your all-night email, goddamn it.

the old side, we're going to focus on a different body part. Molly Rubin, I know that you listened to the Prestige Pod last week where Rob and I talked about a creative way that one might create a vanilla substitute in the mushroom apocalypse. Would you like to weigh in on this conversation?

You know, listening to you and Rob podcast, it's similar to how I feel like watching The Last of Us, right? It's just, it's an enriching experience when you are intellectually and emotionally stimulated and when you get the opportunity to learn new things. And I was not prepared over my period of listening to learn that the anal glands of a beaver are a potential avenue for securing health.

vanilla flavor, nor was I prepared later in that very same episode for Rob to return to it by mentioning licking those anal glands. And, you know, this is just, this is the joy of getting to work at The Ringer, honestly. Yeah.

I was also caught off guard by Rob's return to Anal Gland Corner. Okay, so that has been bones and glands and walls. It has been. And watches. As always, the mailbag is a joy. Okay, we've got a couple more emails that we'll get to in the body of our breakdown of the episode. But should we go now to our deep dive? Let's do it. ♪

All right, no cold open in the episode this week. We go right into the opening credits where, once again, we are back down to just one little Ellie mushroom at the end of the opening credits. Very sad. It is sad. I know. It hits me every time. I know. Ellie all alone. It's not a good thing, despite, you know, the Dina scene that we get. Despite Jessie being here, it's still, in many ways, Ellie all alone. Um...

We go now to the theater. Yes. This episode is brought to you by Degree Original Cool Rush Deodorant. Remember last year, people got really mad when Degree changed their Cool Rush formula? One dude even started a petition. What was up with that guy? Well, guess what? Degree listened. They admitted they messed up. They're bringing back the original Cool Rush scent. And thank God.

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But Dina is not drinking any dark and stormies because she knows by the rule of television that once you're pregnant, you don't take a sip of alcohol. She's we hear her before we see her. Right. Mm hmm. He's hollering. She's she's been shot, perhaps near her femur. I don't know bones very well with an arrow. And.

We hear on the radio that the WLF are going radio silent. Um, and so they've caught on that someone could hear them on across the radio. So they're going to go silent. We'll check in later. Ellie will be checking all the channels later and hear nothing. And then some dumb fuck later. We'll be like, Hey, yeah, there's a Tommy shaped sniper pinning us down. They're like, get off the radio. Anyway. Um,

Here we find St. Jesse of Wyoming crouched at Dina's feet trying to perform surgery. Jesse, much like us, is not a doctor. Not a doctor, yeah. But he claims to know where all the arteries are. Were you thinking about Mel and the arrow from Yellow Jackets when watching this scene? Um, no. I wasn't. Woo!

Beach for the backwards baseball cap wearing population. I was going to say, perhaps if somebody had been wearing a backwards hat, then I would have, you know? Here's something I know from watching television. First of all, if you refuse alcohol, you're pregnant. Secondly, if the arrow goes in, you probably should just push it through. Yeah, of course. I've learned that. So, you know. Yeah. Handy to have the flask on hand to disinfect the shaft, you know? Oh,

Do you feel like Jesse brought that from Jackson? I mean, if they've been a month on the road, has he been refilling it? Has he been using it, saving it for a special occasion? What do you think the relationship between Jesse and that flask is? Yeah, you know, I mean, we saw our guy hitting the booze at the New Year's party. So I think Jesse, who is...

Captain Wyoming, St. Jesse of Wyoming, all of it. But also, like, knows how to have a good time. You know, likes a glass of whiskey. Has impregnated Dina. And in this episode, canonically establishes that he bought four bad paintings to fucking chiculate. From a hottie?

I believe that Jesse is carrying the flask. Sorry, babe, I can't go with you to Mexico. I am St. Jesse of Wyoming. I'm the chosen one. Yeah, exactly. A sip at night to unwind. But also, I do think that Jesse would be practical about it, too. You know, the utility of being able to use it as a disinfectant should the need arise. To disinfect what? One more reason. To disinfect what? The shaft. Okay, great. You need the shaft to be clean. You don't want a dirty shaft. Yeah.

So as he pushes just the tip through the other side of Dina's leg, she says, I can't.

Die. Laden with meaning. And he loses his temper right before he really calmly tells her like he has her. And it's so enormously, like he has this human losing his temper moment and then he just like recalibrates. Yeah. Says, I have you. It's incredibly comforting. Again, thinking about Jesse as a potential leader, this is just sort of like, he's not a robot, but he is someone who will

put others before himself. He has his own emotion here and it's, it's frustration. And then he tamps it down. I'm sure quite healthily. And it just focuses on, on Dina. Yeah. And in that moment, I was like, Ellie should really fucking be here. You know? Yes. Yeah. I, Ellie and Joel were on my mind here for a few different reasons. I thought in actually just like the, the,

most basic way, seeing Dina suffer this injury, hearing this conversation about we can nick an artery, that could be it. It's a wrap. Later in this episode, we see a bullet nick the side of Mel's jugular and that's it, right? So we talk so often because we are so rooted in Ellie's experience about immunity to the cordyceps virus, the great threat. And I just thought,

reminding us that our characters can die in all these other ways and that an injury that you suffer when you're sneaking through the woods could be the end if you didn't have what you needed, a person to help you, something to disinfect the wound, was like an important bit of mooring. When Jesse found that tenderness again and put his hand on Dina's cheek and said, I got you, like, obviously, to be clear,

The relationship between Joel and Ellie and the relationship between Dina and Jesse is a different type of relationship. But I do think that language choice, I got you, invokes Joel finding Ellie at the end of episode eight in season one after David and saying, like, it's okay, baby girl, I got you. I got you. It just makes us think about, like, who are you there for? Who can you count on? And then, yeah, to your point, Ellie's absence here,

And then especially the nature of Ellie's return, you know, the pounding on the door, the shimmer test to be able to, it's great stuff. Jesse, always thinking of shimmer. We love it. We respect it. We need it. Jesse, come on House of Art. You can't, you're dead. But if you weren't, come on House of Art. That was a painful journey to go on with you.

with you in real time right there boy I was like yeah Jessie come on out tomorrow no but just for I welcome ghosts on House of Art we can absolutely interview a ghost ghosts are welcome on House of Art I agree ghosts a werewolf certainly a vampire you would love that thrill of my lifetime to interview a vampire yeah there you go

But especially because Jesse, you know, immediately and then on their walk again later is like, where were you? Where have you been? It is so top of mind for us that Ellie went to the hospital. Before Ellie makes the choice to not go with Jesse to help save Tommy, to go to Wheel and Whale to hunt down Abby,

Ellie made the choice at the end of episode five to go after Nora after Dina had been shot. Like, we will just keep hammering that we hit episode five. And they're like, here's the plan. Yeah. Meet at the theater. We will be back. So it's not just that, like, they could... They're wondering where Ellie has been. Is Ellie okay? What could have happened to Ellie? But, like, Dina, the person Ellie loves, is gravely wounded to not be the one by Dina's side to make sure she's okay is, like...

Really, that distinction and who's there is really notable here. I think especially given that when Dina says she's pregnant and there's this sort of like... I've seen the memes mocked line of like, I'm going to be a dad, right? A line that I liked, but that's fine. But Ellie's immediate assumption of like, your family is going to be my family. So I am going to be part of this family.

essentially like thruple arrangement around a baby. Like, you know, Jesse's going to be involved. I'm going to be involved. Dina's going to be involved. This is going to be our baby. And I'm like, where? Where are you showing up? This new us that Ellie claims in Five is not something that she has any kind of ability to hold on to. And I've been thinking about that a lot in the context of this episode, this idea of like,

can you find a new, like, like what does it mean to find a new us? Um, when you've lost someone, uh, and that idea of that evolution through grief, um, where can you reinvest? And, and is it sticky for Joel? Yeah. Losing Sarah. And then having this like very loose test connection. Um, Tommy, obviously also there sort of like in his network. Um,

And then it's not until Ellie that he's able to, like, reform. It wasn't time that did it, right? Like, was able to reform this connection. Now, it wasn't time that did it, but Ellie has had way less time than Joel to sort of, like, form new attachments. But I think as we think about these characters and these cycles of violence, and some of this I will save for the spoiler section, I think this idea of, like, you know...

Can you reattach yourself? Yeah. Or are you just out there alone floating in your grief and sorrow? I think it's really interesting. And I think Jesse's tenderness, he doesn't call her baby girl, but I think that's like a very good comp to Joel. It would be kind of weird if he did. And...

And then there's this like wide shot of Dina, like head from back screaming and the, and the thunder and the lightning. And it's like fricking Gothic horror. And where is Ellie? Right. You know? And so, yeah, I like you calling out this idea that like Ellie made this choice at the end of five, which we talked about. Yep. She comes back here and we're going to talk about that in a second. Traumatized, upset by what she did.

And then just doubles down on that same behavior in not going after Tommy. Which I think is what's so interesting about what we're watching and about this particular character journey and arc. I really, like, admire how messy this is. And the, you know, I was thinking about Joel, like, I saved your life. And Abby's response is, what life, right? And, like...

Abby had people around her. Ellie has people around her. And I think that the, I'm going to be a dad moment and all of that, which I also, as you know, like really liked. I think what's important about where we find Ellie is not that she is like, I am uninterested in Dina's love. She badly wants that. And she knows what it feels like and the capacity to transform inside of that.

And then she does the things she does anyway. Yeah. And she, but she can't fully access it, you know, like she wants it, understands what it is, but can't connect latch onto it, you know, in a, in an anchoring kind of way, at least inside of this section here. So I, all right. As you mentioned, shimmer name, check number one, very, very important. Do you have any, anything you want to share right now about, about shimmer? Yeah.

I'll hit it later. I'll hit it later. Yeah. All right. When we get to the aquarium. Great. Love to talk about a horse in an aquarium. Okay. So... It will be through the lens of discussing a dog. I know. I know. I was just thinking about that John Mulaney bit, the horse in the hospital. And I was like, a horse in an aquarium? There are seahorses. Okay. Anyway. Mm-hmm.

Ellie arrives, you know, does the sort of shimmer password gambit. Jesse's like, Dina's okay. Where were you? Ellie's not really listening to Jesse. Just like focused on getting to Dina. Belatedly getting to Dina. And Ellie in this mode here is quite different, I would say, at least in this moment from Ellie in the game who shows up

Covered in so much blood that Jesse's like, is that your blood? We get focused on the hands shaking inside of game Ellie. I was thinking a lot about Bella's performance versus Ashley Johnson's performance in the game. And I think there's just like a number of adaptive differences that set Ellie up to have a different trauma reaction to this. I think it's important for us to see how physically

shaken Ellie is after she kills Nora in the game because we've watched Ellie kill so many people. Right. Doesn't really kill Nora, but like, you know, brutalize Nora in the game. Yeah. Because we've watched her kill so many people in the game at that point that it's like, what's another death? And so we really, really need to know that this was different for Ellie in the game. For Ellie in the show, you know, we've talked a bit about the people that she's killed and we've

seeing her gleefully pick off the infected, but like, you know, a complaint that I've heard from the game players is that Ellie in the show is not as competent or not as violent as Ellie in the game. And I think, I don't know for certain if Craig and Neil feel exactly this way, but I think that like, if we were to just watch Ellie

go on a killing spree through Seattle. Then when we get to Nora, then when we get to Owen, then when we get to Mel, will it really feel all that different? And so removing that, then Nora's death hits again, not a real death, but a death. Owen and Mel's worse than death. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and, and Mel's death hits. And so the way that Bella plays this as like, there's like inner storm, right?

Yeah. Is tremendously effective to me. They're both effective performances to me. I don't know. What do you think about this? Yeah, I mean, I think there are...

overt distinctions between game and show in terms of what is actually part of this conversation as well that we'll discuss momentarily. But yeah, in terms of this state of being, I think obviously in both cases there is like a just harrowing aspect to Ellie making her way into the dressing room, back into just the realm of being with Dina and then, you know,

confronting what she has done and what she is capable of and what was, as we will hear her say, actually easy, easy to do. I thought that the fact, to connect to what we were talking about a few minutes ago, the fact that Dina, you know, Ellie checks on Dina, of course, looks at the wound, asks if the baby's okay. How do you know? I just do everything.

Obviously, in light of everything that happens with Mel and thinking about this connection between a mother who's carrying a child. It's just very intense. But the fact that Dina then sees the blood seeping through the shirt and...

immediately goes into like caring mode, nurturing mode, tending to Ellie who was not there to do the same for her. Just all like, all very striking. And then, yeah, in terms of like kind of what the toll is in those initial days in Seattle, my assumption is that there are like

I think the conversation about what is the path to each of our like notable set points and set pieces in each of these days has been, you know, has been interesting. And I think obviously when you're playing the game, the sheer volume of tonnage that you have to get through, obviously like leads to a different sense of, of, of pace and like what those days are full of and what maybe even Seattle feels like to, to get back to the question from the top of the pod. Yeah.

I did think that in this moment here, though, we have a very clear portrait of the toll of this time and the decision to go here and do this, right? We have the physical toll. Dina's very injured. Dina is not in good shape and will be not in good shape at the end of the episode. And Tommy's like, we can't really move her in a storm. Yeah.

Ellie's seriously injured from fending off all of those stalkers. We are only three days removed from looking down over the overpass and like our sweet summer children. Piece of cake. This is going to be a cinch. Easy peasy. Yeah. And now everyone's barely hanging on both physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, all of it. So, yeah.

I think the kind of core truth of where we find Ellie is this is the same. Like what have I done? She will do it again, but yeah, you're right there. There are distinct calibrations. Yeah. I love the arms up arms up, which is from the game as well. There's a lot different in the scene, but there's some striking similarities arms up again, to your point is like a mothering thing to say. And yeah,

I love that the wounds, I don't love, but the fact that the wounds on Ellie's back are from the stalker attack. So they're wounds sustained trying to

Joel-like put her body between the person she loves and the violence, the harm. So Dina intending to those wounds is tending to wounds that were inflicted on her behalf, which is a difference from the game. And I really like that change a lot. We're of course thinking about the you're not immune for being ripped apart language, but

To your point, Dina in the game has mornings, is like ill from her pregnancy. To look at Dina here with her bandaged leg and also they like put like base on Isabella Merced's mouth, like lips to give her that pallor that they do for like vampire makeup. You know, so like she's physically drained of blood and

She's the one taking care of Ellie here. And I think that like, so she, Ellie says, you know, she got some like crossword puzzle clues from Nora, whale and wheel, you know, which is really interesting. And then Ellie's face is very blank when she says she was infected. It was already setting in. She does not talk about the spores, which I think is interesting.

an interesting choice from a writing perspective. I can understand why it's like, let's not pause and talk about the, how spores work inside of this world. But like, um,

Do you think it's that or do you think she skips it because it reveals how even more horrific she's like, Nora was already infected. So, you know, whatever she was dying, not she will live in a half-light state, like, you know, rotting into the wall.

This is the horrible thing I did. I think a little bit of both because obviously we are about to watch Ellie reveal a number of things, a truth about herself, a truth about Joel, but the fact that there is still some withholding, the particular manifestation and depravity of that decision and the state that she left another person in. I like that, that read that like,

We've been talking about this over the last few episodes. What does it mean to show somebody who you are and how scary is it that they might not want you anymore? They might not accept you and love you anymore. To be taking such a massive step on the truth and lies front in this conversation, but still wonder where that third rail is. What will be the thing that is too much? I like it. I also think you're right that there's a practical element of

Okay, let's save the more download for a conversation they have elsewhere and not slow down the scene and focus on this emotional truth of what is unfolding here. Okay, so we get this exchange. Dina says, did you kill her? Ellie says, no, I left her. Dina says, well, yeah, well, maybe she got what she deserved. Then Ellie whispers, maybe she didn't, which I loved that delivery.

Ellie's saying, yeah, well, maybe she got what she deserved. I just wanted to take a second to dwell on this idea of deserved inside of the apocalypse. We've talked about this. It has come up a couple times. This idea, of course, it's what Nora invokes, all of that sort of stuff. But I just think that this idea of...

justice versus vengeance is very interesting and how distinct those two ideas are that the idea of vengeance is like, um, is an emotional one. And justice is a, is a logic fact-based sort of like, here are the laws we all accept to be true. And here are all the facts and evidence for how you broke these communally accepted laws and,

And here is the punishment we already decided on before we even started these proceedings. That's justice. And justice is meant because of the way it's laid out and when it works, it doesn't always obviously, but when it works is meant to provide closure. That's the end. We all agree. And this is what, when Abby is, you know,

like hovering over Joel and saying like, you know, there's just some things we all agree are fucking wrong. Right. Like there's this idea of like,

What is deserved? What is vengeance? What is justice inside of a society that is broken down to this degree? And especially when you create these little micro societies, like the WLF have rules, rules inside that they adhere to. The Seraphites certainly have rules inside of their community that they adhere to. And some harrowing hand signals. Yes.

Jackson has their council, their voting body. They have their rules, right?

But when you cross into another person's territory, when you go, when you leave your community and it's just you out there in the world or you and your plus one out there in the world, you know, what does that wilderness justice look like? And so how messy the idea of justice is inside of a place where you don't have these accepted, these agreed upon rules and how vengeance is just an open space

And justice is this closed loop, theoretically. I love that. And it takes me back to Ellie's the strategy behind Ellie's pitch.

Right. About justice.

she's a liar. And there, as we talked about at the time in our episode three pod, there were certainly parts of what Ellie said that, that were true. Right. But this is, this is the lies, like the, that core kernel, that driving force of what does Ellie want? What is she after? And most crucially, I think like, what does she think is hers to impart? And that is like, I mean, it's just, who gets to decide? It's just, can't, can't,

It's like, I love this always, you know, like, do not be too eager to deal out death and judgment for even the very wise cannot see all ends, which I think connects beautifully to your mushroom tendril network opening note. You don't see the end when you take a step. And if the step you take is about, is in pursuit of vengeance. Yeah.

Well, what are the consequences of that going to be? I mean, that's the story for yourself internally, for the people you love, for other people. I mean, that's the story we're watching. Here's a major departure from the game inside of this scene, which is Ellie telling Dina the story of, it was a long time ago before I came to Jackson, there was a firefight base in Salt Lake City. There was a hospital there. They were going to use me to make a cure, but it meant that I would have died. And Joel found out and he killed Dina.

Everyone in the hospital. He didn't kill the nurses, but that's okay. He killed everyone in the hospital. Everyone. He killed Abby's father. He was a doctor and Joel shot him in the head to save me. Okay. This is more information than Ellie has at this point in the game because of the Abby's dad information. And this is way more information than Dina ever gets in the game. So Mallory, I...

I know you had a chance to moderate this press conference with Craig and Neil, so though we don't have the official podcast to look to, do you have any insight from them on why they made this decision? The thing that was most on my mind watching this scene and thinking about this change and why Ellie doing this, why Ellie telling Dina this...

feels like it is the thing Ellie would do in the universe of the show because it is such a departure. And so what else do we have, like, buttressing a moment like this that is also very core to what the show is doing and focusing on, right? So I was thinking a lot about the...

And again, the porch scene and everything we talked about in the penultimate episode, like if you get the chance, I hope you'll do a little bit better than me. And so just one of the questions that I asked Craig and Neil, just more broadly, like with this scene as the impetus for it, but more broadly, and I've been thinking about this a lot the last couple of weeks with the penultimate and the finale. What does it mean when a liar is confronted with what it feels like to be lied to? Yeah.

Right. When Ellie, a character who the showrunners routinely refer to as a liar, who Gail is like, she's a liar. And Tommy's like, well, she lies. Like, no, she's a liar. Yeah. And this is obviously something that they're very interested in exploring creatively. Like, why do people lie? People lie. Why? Well, where does that lead them? And Ellie had to look into Joel's eyes and confront her own nature. Right. And like what that felt like to be on the other side of it. Interesting. That's interesting. Interesting.

Sorry, I want to hear your whole answer and then I will give you my reaction to that. So I was thinking about...

I want to make sure before we leave the scene that we talk about the Dina part of it, because I have some questions for you and how you're interpreting the Dina reaction to what she learns here, given some of her prior comments, but in terms of Ellie's perspective. So even just the way the scene is framed, right? We have, again, Ellie coming to us from this almost spectral plane, this kind of haunted, ghostly quality. The way that we're on Dina's face a lot, but in that mirror framing, right?

I was struck not only by Ellie looking at Dina in the mirror, but Ellie having to, again, look at herself and confront this thing that she's done and confront saying out loud, it was easy. I was thinking of Joel and the easiest thing you ever had to do. We all debate it and talk about it, but easiest choice you ever had to make and what does that tell you about yourself? I don't, unfortunately, have a transcript for the entire presser because there was no time between that and the pod. But I do have...

This answer, and another crucial one later, written out in full, because I knew this would come up. I knew we would want to talk about this. So here is what Craig had to say. Quote, look where Ellie tells the truth. She tells the truth at the middle of the most private and close relationship she has, after. Not before, leading up, during, or immediately after confirming that she and this other person are in love. It's after, after, when she finally vomits it out.

And that is a question of who deserves the truth, because telling the truth is vulnerable. And in this world, if you tell the truth, you're weak. You're giving something away. And look at how hard it is there for her. And then on her face, consider how close it is to the way Joel looked when he was talking to her. It will always be hard.

What we ask of the audience is to understand why they're lying. They're not lying to manipulate. They're not lying to be evil. They're lying to protect themselves. And when they stop lying, it means there is an extraordinary trust there. And in both cases, when they fess up Joel or Ellie, they believe they may be losing the person that they love because of it. This distinction between...

The us's and the them's again, like what it means inside of a relationship defined by love when you love a person like that in that porch conversation, it's not just Joel and burdening himself and confessing at last and answering this challenge from Ellie with the truth. It's a conversation that also.

him saying, like, I love you in a way you can't understand. And that when you're lying to the people you love and withholding from the people you love, it has a cost. It has a cost on them and it has a cost on you. And so that felt so, that just felt really, like, palpable to me here. But I also think then Ellie is, like, just, is not in a state of active truth-telling.

either. And so that is really interesting. Like even Jesse is like repeatedly asking where she went. She doesn't tell him, you know? So it's not like Ellie is just ready to sling the truth freely. And that's what made, and this is what Craig was, was, was addressing. Like, that's what makes the fact that Ellie wants to do that with Dina for Dina here feel significant. I love that. I love you raising this idea of like, what does it mean to be lied to when you're a liar?

There is that. I love what you're saying about confronting your own nature. That's really good. There's also this degree of like ego that's involved. This idea of like, don't bullshit a bullshitter, right? Like, how dare you try to pull one over on me? I'm the one who pulls things over on people. And I was thinking about that in terms of

Ellie and this question of like, who gets to decide who deserves what or who meets out the vengeance or what the sentence should be. And, you know, to your Gandalf and Frodo question, like that's, that's a God complex, right? You know? And so inside of Ellie, among all these other roiling emotions, there is this ego that's involved in it. And there's also the ego. I forget who said this.

And I think it was in reference to this game. But this idea of the ego investment in being right, this idea of like, I have decided that what we have to do is kill Abby and we've come here to kill Abby. That's the decision we've all agreed on is the thing to do.

And to have to admit to yourself, you know, Tommy will ask Ellie later in the theater, like, are you okay? You know, she gets to live. Are you going to be okay with that? Right. That's this crucial question that's in the game as well. Right. There's all these ideas of vengeance and justice and peace and all these other things. But there's also this idea of admitting you were wrong. Your big mission was wrong. Mm hmm.

That's not what you should have done. There's ego wrapped up inside of that. That is interesting to think about when we think about Ellie. Yeah, absolutely. And I think whether it's telling Dina this huge thing about Joel or having to...

reckon with whether this was the right pursuit in the first place. All of it also feels just very connected to me to the, the, I feel like the Gail Joel scene at the beginning of the season was really there for a reason. And a lot of key things with Joel and everything, but like, and I thought also the mirroring of, um, Joel with Gail, Joel with Ellie on the porch, the shaking and the nodding and the crying. And that's like so present here with Ellie as well. And, uh, in this conversation, um,

you know, in the did you know part, are you brave enough to say it out loud? And like, maybe that means you hurt the other person. Maybe it means they don't accept you. Maybe it means you have to admit that you were wrong. Like, it all feels like it fits under that larger idea. So watching our characters grapple with that inside of the relationships that really, like, are their whole world now, yeah, very high stakes.

The mirror framing, as you mentioned, I also really, really loved this idea that like my interpretation was like, I like what you said. And also like a little different of like, let's let's as we look at ourselves in the mirror. Here we are, two 19 year old girls. We are the same.

And then Ellie turns around and is like, here's the way in which I'm not like you. Here's the way in which we're different. Here's the way in which we don't mirror each other, actually. And I thought, again, Bella's delivery here was so, so good. A lot of eyes brimming with tears. A lot of whispered confessions. It just all really, really worked for me. It's an incredibly... Sensational. ...intimate scene. Very. Yeah.

And like warmly lit and just sort of like really, really magical inside of all of this pain and, and physical bloody brutality that is, that is injured both of them physically. And then there's this potential injury to the relationship. So your question to me is Dina has a reaction to this, right? Did you know who they were? No, but no, but I knew what he did. Right. And then Dina,

gets up in a way to me reads as like, I don't,

like this information, this information has changed the way that I'm thinking about you. But then when we very quickly get the bracelet exchange, that to me is like, okay, I've processed this and I'm still choosing you as my person. Is that, what do you think? Yeah. So, you know, I thought it was interesting too that before what Ellie reveals here, before, it's important to say before, Dina says like, yeah, well, maybe she got what she deserved, as you noted. Later, we get Tommy saying, um,

You know, they made their choices. Right. So, like, we do hear other characters expressing incapacity for ruthlessness, too. Yeah. Right? It's not just Ellie. But then, yeah, Dina moving into we need to go home. Yeah. I was particularly fascinated by that scene

Through the lens of what Dina said in episode five, you know, when she was recounting what had happened with her mother and sister and said, what if my mom and sister were beaten to death in front of me? What if that motherfucker made me watch as he did it? Would it make a difference if my family had heard his people first? No. No.

No. And if I hadn't killed him, if he had gotten away, I promise you I would have hunted him down forever. Forever. Forever. Forever. Second forever, exactly. I thought this was really interesting because, like, obviously we're thinking about Joel and Ellie there, but now also, especially for Dina in light of having heard this thing and learned this history and this truth,

I feel like Dina must be considering the Abby comp too, right? That Abby could be a person who said that and had her version of that, which is interesting. And just like kind of connects to this larger thing that we're focusing on of like,

Who is everybody else's us? And where does that lead them? Right. And so I was wondering like what you thought the kind of the blue, the mix was of, of factors and variables that lead to this. I agree with you. The bracelet moment. So close on the heels of this. It's still clear that Dina's like Ellie, I'm with you. Yeah. I have, I have not, this is, I, I, but we have to go home. Right. Go home to a place where we can rediscover like who we are. Yeah. How much of this is about,

I have confronted in a real way, an urgent way, my mortality while carrying a child, right? That's there. How much is learning the truth about what Joel did? This extra variable, not just the comp to her family, but like could have been a cure, right? That's a big thing to dig in and to process.

How much is learning that Ellie kept this from her? Because, you know, the three-month gap between episodes two and three, and then thanks to our emailer for the math a few weeks ago, we're guessing 45-ish days to get to Seattle. So let's say it's been like four and a half months or something like that.

That's not the same amount of time to withhold something as how long Joel kept what he did for Mellie. It's just not. But it does overlap with, in the recent days here, this real evolution of their relationship. Yeah. What feels like the most dominant shift from forever forever here? Yeah.

I love what you're saying about her thinking about Abby and her sort of understanding like, oh God, we're all just doing the same thing back and forth to each other. So that I think is, and this idea that Ellie is not giving her all the information. We're not on the same page. I thought we were doing this together. I forced you to let me into...

On this trip, you were going to go with just some guns and, I don't know, die of starvation a few days out. Three cans of food. One roll and three cans of food. So I made you make this an us trip, but I thought we had decided we're an us. Right. And here you're still holding things back from me. So I think that's in the mix all there. Also, just from like a...

A number of these little changes, Dina getting the arrow to the thigh, et cetera, et cetera, I think also achieve this difference that we're not, oh, a woman is pregnant. She's immediately sort of like infantilized to a certain degree, right? Because like in the game, she's got morning sickness and they're like, we have to take her back.

We have to take Dina back. We have to go back. She's sick. She needs medical care. She needs all these things because she's pregnant. And this, Dina's pregnant. She's like, I'm going to go ahead and do this anyway. Gets shot in the leg. And then she's the one actively making the choice of we need to go back. Partially because of, I'm sure, the equation has changed for her knowing she's pregnant. Like, that is...

in the equation there. But I think making it her active choice that has more to do with sort of her moral consideration of the quagmire that they found them in rather than just this woman is pregnant and now she is incapable of going on, I think is a smart adaptive choice. All right. So before they can go back though, they have to go find Tommy. They have to go meet up with Tommy. And

I will say, I love this moment in the game when Jesse's like, she needs to go back. And Ellie's like, yeah, but I got to find, maybe you should take her back. And I'll just go find Tommy. I'll just go find, I got to, I mean, morally, I have to go find Tommy. So why don't you go take her back? And then I will do this. And we're both doing the moral right thing to do. When in fact, of course, she, as we quickly find out, she's just still got her,

Eyes on Abby. In terms of the bracelet exchange, this is like a huge moment. Inside of the game, it happens like a slightly different time, but just the, what this totem means inside of this game, we are constantly thinking about these artifacts and totems of, of regard. Going back to our, our discussion of season one, this idea of like,

The things they carried. When you are walking around with just a pack, what do you keep in the pack? What do you make sure you have with you? Joel and the broken watch. Ellie and Dina's bracelet. Ellie and Joel's gun, which will come up later inside of this episode. You know, just like these...

artifacts. You know, what does the guitar mean? What do these little items mean in terms of connection with someone? The design on Dita's bracelet is called the Hamsa, and it is...

Often associated with Jewish culture and inside the game, Dina's Jewish identity is like a big part of her character. We talked about the like synagogue sequence that was in the game that's not here. Hamza is a more broadly used symbol than just inside of the Jewish practices, but it is...

this idea of imparting luck and protection prevent harm to the wearer and bring good fortune right and so like we have this quippy little it's for good luck not sure it's been working for you i'm a live thing yeah um but also like and we'll talk a little bit later about uh in the spoiler section sort of some other sort of importance of of the bracelet inside of the game but like

I think it's interesting that like Ellie gets this bracelet inside of a show that has these questions of like faith and spirituality and a prophet and stuff like that. Ellie gets this bracelet and inside of the show section here survives drowning, hanging, being shot at like all, you know, all of these, I wrote in the notes, like the full Rasputin, like all these things and came out the other side alive.

And so you can chalk that up to whatever you want to chalk it up to. But this idea of Dina's bracelet, something that Anne Foley, the costume designer, talked about on her Instagram, how important it was for them to get this just like exactly right. This totemic exchange. And especially like I was thinking about our discussion of Andor.

This idea of, like, spoilers for Andor season two. If you have not watched Andor season two, here are some spoilers. This question of, like, are Bix and Cassian married? And the question of, like, well, well...

What does it mean to be married inside of Phyrexian culture? Who knows? But just because they didn't say vows and exchange rings, does that mean they're not married? They do this beautiful hand gesture from home thing. What are the rituals? What are the exchanges? What are the promises? And so Dina giving Ellie this piece of jewelry, this is like a...

This is a vow of a certain degree, this offer of protection. I am your us. I protect you as you go out and do this dangerous thing without me. Anything you want to say about this bracelet moment? No, I love all of that. I mean, I think it's particularly keenly felt, obviously, again, on the heels of this. I have said these things like...

Here it is. It takes on even more magnitude and meaning as a way of Dina saying to Ellie, like, I love you anyway. And I accept this and, like, I want to be –

in an us with you. I want you to be mine and I want to be yours. And I think it felt particularly keen, not only on the heels of what had happened in the dressing room, but because Jesse is just right there. Like he was watching them with... There's...

There's this moment in Deathly Hallows when Harry wakes up and sees that Ron and Hermione had fallen asleep holding hands. And the line is like, it made him feel strangely lonely. Just when you see that these people have chosen each other. And I love what you're citing about the list of things that Ellie actually does survive. Yeah.

the state of her soul in open question, but... That's not great. Mortality. She's living. She's breathing. She's alive.

I choose to attribute her washing up on shore and her boat just being right there and fine. That's bracelet magic. If that's not bracelet magic, I don't know what is. What I think is really interesting about that is if we kind of connect that to the other us's in the story, and especially through the idea of protection and love, your desire when you love somebody to protect them, but then also when the impulse to protect leads you astray or leads you maybe to go too far.

It's interesting to think about that for every character and what we understand about their limits or about the moral calculus that they do. Obviously, we get a lot of this made explicit text and conversations between Jesse and Ellie throughout the episode. But yeah, I think you're right that Dina is saying to...

to Ellie, like you're mine and I will cloak you in anything I have that can keep you safe. And that reminds you that I'm by your side, even when I'm not. And like, that's a, that's a beautiful thing. And maybe think of sinners. Should I go see sinners again? Maybe. Okay. Shimmer name check number two. Okay.

So as you point out, I mean, that bracelet scene is as much about Dina as Ellie as it is about Jesse and Jesse being on the outside of an us. And not just on the outside of an us, but on the outside of an us where like he used to be, you know, to your golden trio comp,

very much on the inside. It was Jesse and Dina as boyfriend and girlfriend. Or it was Jesse and Ellie as like, you know, since they were 16, close enough friends that Joel's like, eh? A little something going on there, maybe? And now that Ellie and Dina have chosen each other, he's just Jesse all alone. Jesse on the outs. And not just on the outs alone,

Inside of this very complicated dynamic where Dina is pregnant with his child, something that he should be intimately on the inside of, but has not even been told directly yet. Dina gave him the old, I can't drink, you know what that means, but like still. Can't believe you didn't tack on a vintage Joe phrasing after saying intimately on the inside of. Jesse's saying...

Everything changing doesn't have to change. Ellie's like, doesn't have to change anything. Right. And in him saying everything changing doesn't have to change things. The thing that is so fascinating about this scene actually with Jesse and, and we should say Jesse is so much more fleshed out in the show than he is in the game. And this is such as, you know, it's something that they're interested in, in, in Isaac and a number of other characters. They're interested in sort of like building out these characters. So like when Jesse dies at the end of this episode, like,

It's upsetting and startling in the game, unless you've been spoiled by your podcast partner. But inside the show, there's so much Jesse in this lead-up here, and even back in Jackson, that it really makes it hit that much harder. But when Jesse says...

not just I'm going to be a father, which means I can't die. And Chris Ryan texted me. He's like, never say that in a show. What are we doing? But because of you were stuck in a war zone. So how about we skip the apologies? Let's find Tommy so I can get us and my kid the fuck out of Seattle. So Jesse is like, you're keeping me out of the us, but the us is still ussing. I'm still the community and you are part of the community and

And my kid, just FYI, I am not going to not claim this kid is mine. This kid is mine. Let's get my kid out of Seattle. I thought this was just really faceting, this idea of everything changing doesn't have to change things and everything else that Joel had an issue with, with Ellie changing. And also this idea of like,

complacency and neglect inside of community what do we cling to that's the old world order what do we open ourselves up to that is new that is different that is changing um and and jesse being in the in the like crucible of that with just a few more hours left to live in his life um

Listen, who are we to say who's right and who's wrong? But at the end of the day, Jesse's us included, knowing that Shimmer was okay and Ellie's didn't. And so I think we have our answer. Yeah. I've probably broken my personal record during this season two Last of Us run for the number of times I've said some version of like, well, we can't relate to the exact circumstances, but what we can relate to is, and this was like really that for me, because this just feels...

Like, when you have a friend group or whatever, colleagues, family, people you went to camp with, like, any number of things.

And then two people inside of that have clearly chosen each other and love each other more than they love you. It's like fucking painful, right? And you can want to be happy for them. And I think Jesse does a pretty admirable job of, and I think he is, I think he's sincere and genuine when he says like, I love her, but not like you do. And I think that's part of why Jesse's great, right? Is that he wants them to be happy as individuals and he wants them to be happy together. It doesn't mean it doesn't hurt though. Yeah.

And I think that this episode and exploring and parsing the dynamic in this trio, in a world where it's probably more likely, given how few people are around behind whatever walls you've chosen to live behind, that three people who are friends end up sleeping with each other and someone's on the outside of that unless everybody is watching this season of Hacks and giving a throw-up bowl a go.

We love a throuple. Love a throuple. There's a whole House of R episode about throuples. I remember when we did that. Just check it out. Yeah. That was... We didn't really have to work hard to find the excuse to do that. And boy, was it a blast. But so I just love that. And I love how true life it felt that this is what this captured. And... Do you think that idea of like two people love each other more than anyone else and other people feel on the outside of that, do you think that's how everyone at The Ringer feels like about us? Yeah.

I don't know which we've chosen each other. I mean, frankly, I hope so. Yeah. I hope they look at us and they're like, they're endgame. They know it. Expect your bracelet in the mail any day now. We literally have matching tattoos. You're the best. The other thing I loved about this was tough to think of a guilt trip landing more effectively on Ellie than...

a dad-centric one, given what Ellie in particular is mourning here. Here's a moment of confusion for me, and I'm hoping you can clear it up. So we see a prophet mural, a feel-her-love mural. We've already seen one in the show. And Ellie says there's more than one of her.

And I guess the two murals are supposed to be two different women. And I did not clock this the first time I watched it through until I was like parsing every line. I was like, wait, what does Ellie mean by that? And then I was like going and I was like scrutinizing both murals. And I really can't tell because this is brick based art in some cases, whether or not like, I mean, the one that they see in this episode is clearly supposed to be a black woman. And yeah,

The depictions of the prophet, a character we never meet in the game, is a white woman. And the mural that we saw earlier in the season is a more one-to-one translation to a version that's in the game. But it's on brick, so I was unclear. Anyway, is your interpretation...

That the previous one was a depiction of a white woman and this is a depiction of a black woman. And Ellie's like, there's more than one of her, whatever the her is, that Ellie doesn't know the full story of that yet. And if that's the case, is the intention behind that, because the idea of the prophet and the idea of the Seraphites is this idea of what happens when a real life figure, a person dies.

who espouses some idea of philosophy gets sort of like warped and extremized over time. I don't know if extremized is a word. And so made more extreme. And like in, in the way of all like, like the fact that you see some portraits of Jesus and it's a white man and some portraits of Jesus and it's a black man. So like this idea of like, we've so we've lost the plot so much that

on the origins of this religion that we can't even agree on what this person looked like to begin with. What do you want to say? I definitely think there's more than one of her question mark is here to draw our attention and make us wonder. Okay.

I don't know if I feel confident assigning a race to the first. I know. Or even the game version. But I agree that clearly the second mural is a different person. And then also we have this line. Is it clearly? That's what I'm saying. It's like artistic depictions may vary. But if it's two different races, that's when it feels like it's definitely a different person. I think the fact that Ellie says it is meant to make us wonder about it. So yeah, I think it's...

It feels to me like, I guess it's not impossible that there could, the prophet could be revealed to be a mantle, you know, that there could be more than one. I think that's- The Dread Pirate Robert. Is that just so? Okay. I think that's not impossible. Mm-hmm.

And that could be because it is a mantle that is meant to be inherited or because other people in the wake of the original prophet tried to claim the mantle and become that person and hold on to that power and that leadership and inherit the flock. Yeah.

claim the flock. But I, I, my, my primary interpretation was what you said. I interpreted it as this seeking to like capture, and maybe we will explore further in future seasons, this idea of like worshiping someone in your own image. And particularly like with the Seraphites through this lens of, of the passage of time, you know, and when we had that conversation, the, our first glimpse of the, the, the,

another you know the duo the father and the daughter the seraphites walking through down the path in episode three and like this was like a long time ago right and just we have this sense of how much time has passed and so um what are you what are you following are you following a person who you knew or are you following an idea and then how does the idea shift yeah and at what point um

does an abstraction or a core belief for any version of that and anything along the spectrum there start to represent something to each person that it wasn't at the start? And I think that the show clearly seems interested in exploring that in the future. It's maybe the thing I'm most excited for in season three, because Neil talked to us about this idea of like,

or in interviews about this idea of the prophet being something they want to explore more in season three. And I'm eagerly anticipating an entire prophet origin story episode, if not throughout the whole season. I don't need to write this show. They're way better at writing than I am. But I was thinking about this last night. I got kind of feverish about it. I was like, would it be interesting to...

have stories of the prophet told, and every time it's told, you are looking at it, but it looks different. You know, it's like a different woman or something like that. Or we meet the woman and she bears no resemblance to any of these mural depictions or something like that. All of that, that is really exciting to me. And also thinking about that as it's intended to be, as this mirror of the WLF. The WLF, as we saw its origins, is Isaac saying,

hey, these militarized assholes are treating people like garbage. Let's, you know, let's build something better and bring baby face burden along with him. And what has that become? Right. You know, how has that been warped?

on its side. So that brings us into this next sequence, the like, it's not our war part with Jesse and Ellie taking shelter. Jesse and Dina both always on the lookout for storm clouds. Ellie, oblivious as ever. Anyway, they see this horrific encounter. We got the return of Brynn. Yeah. And this absolutely just like

vile treatment of this young seraphite uh that they find and um we got a couple emails actually last week uh about uh children inside of the context of the mushroom apocalypse because of the conversations around joel and ellie and and when is when is ellie an adult and what are the rites of passage so i thought i thought i would read them because i think yeah please

There's a number of takeaways from the scene, but I think knowing what we know about the larger context of the story, this idea of he's a fucking kid is a really important part of like, when is an adult an adult and when is a kid a kid and what does that mean inside of this story? Yeah.

So Lily wrote in to say, I've long felt that one of the reasons some people bounce off this story, meaning The Last of Us, so aggressively is that it begs the question we rarely want to be asked inside within genre fiction. In telling Joel's story, the first season slash game indirectly portrays a world in which the only way children born into it can survive is by turning themselves into soldiers.

where many post-apocalyptic narratives either gloss over this fact of their setting or ignore it entirely. The Last of Us 2 does the opposite and reckons with it head on. By placing us within Ellie and Abby's stories, this phase of the narrative asks us to take on the uncomfortable and distressing task of confronting what happens to these child soldiers when they invariably become adults. Which I thought was really interesting. And then I'll just say that our listener, Sophie, was talking about this idea of like...

We have these benchmarks in American society of like, you turn 18, you can vote. You know, you turn 21, you can drink. You get, you're turning 16, you get a car. These rites of passage, these, this is growing up sort of idea. And tied to like our laws, which I think is, that's not Sophie's point necessarily, but it's all tied to our like laws and systems. And so in a society where all like those laws go away, right?

um you can get a gun when you're 16 you know you what is voting inside of here etc uh what becomes the rite of passage and rite of passages uh exist you know in all cultures always and and sophie talks about like various like uh rituals and stuff like that but um

She wrote, in earlier times, childhood and adulthood looked different. The idea of childhood as a peaceful and innocent time developed in the late 19th to 20th century when children stopped being sent to work and got the time to go to school full time. It would make sense that after the outbreak, kids grow up faster and become official adults sooner, perhaps at 16. However, based on Jill and Ellie's conversation, Jesse going on patrol at 16 was more of an exception than a rule. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. So just sort of like this idea of

What is childhood? Yeah. What is innocence? Right. Inside of this world that the story is set in. What do you think about this, Mallory? Oh, interesting emails. This is fascinating. I... So I'm thinking of, like, hearing Dina tell Ellie, you know, I was fucking eight. Right? Yeah. And, like, the things...

in the cordyceps apocalypse in this world that you have to face and do and confront and accept as a part of your reality, basically from the second you're born. But of course, that doesn't mean... We're not meant to hear that story and think. And so at eight, Dina's not a child, we're supposed to think, oh my God, what a horrific thing that you did not get to experience. Right.

childhood in its intended form, and plenty of people don't, right? Mm-hmm.

I was, as we talked about last week, I was like, I felt, even though we did get 16, I did kind of feel like skipping 18 was intentional in this respect. Like, it's such a mile marker in our lives, but it's not here, so we're almost going to remind you of that. It's funny. I probably read this incorrectly, but I didn't, because now hearing it in the email, that does seem right to me, but I didn't at the time clock Ellie saying to Joel, like, well, Jesse got to do this at 16 as, like,

Jesse being more of the exception. I read it more as like overprotective Joel isn't ready to let Ellie do the things that other 16-year-olds are doing. But yeah, like when Ellie was, you know, 14, like Ellie had to kill her best friend and crush when she was a child. Yeah.

And so, like, how can you say that you're a child after you've had to do something like that? And, like, what does that even mean? Like, these concepts of phases of your life almost cease to function and have utility, even though they are, like, fundamental and essential to seek to preserve. It's this very painful dissonance to have to, like—

acknowledge. Yeah. You want to protect the idea of childhood and make sure that Benji can have it, but also he's five and Joel's bouncing him on his knees saying like you shoot monsters, you know? Out there monsters, my guy. Yeah. Yeah. How, how, you know, how early would Tommy, you know, teach his kiddo how to shoot, you know, like, you know, I don't know the answer to that. But the realities are different. You know, I have, I have a horror of that.

But like, you know, when I used to read Little House on the Prairie books or whatever, like, you know, your reality is different. Okay. What I think is great about The Last of Us, and we talked about this a bit last week, in addition to many things, is there are no easy answers for a lot of questions. And I think one of the best examples of that is this argument that Ellie and Jesse have here.

when Jesse's like, this is not our war. Right. And Ellie, and we've talked about Ellie's empathy before. We talked about it with Eugene. Yes. You know, we talked about it with Sam. We've talked about it with her, like, wanting to help save the world. Like, Ellie and her empathy is a thing. And it exists alongside all of these other tendencies and all of these other attributes that she has. Jesse...

is right.

when he says to intervene, would have gotten them captured at best and killed at worst. You know what I mean? Ellie's like, he's just a kid about this Seraphite that's being dragged away. And then later, we see Ellie dragged away and narked on by an even smaller Seraphite kid. Much younger child, yeah. And those Seraphites do not offer Ellie any empathy or a second to, you know, explain herself or defend herself. There's no offer of empathy from them. And...

Ellie is right, right? Like, you can't just turn away from an atrocity like that. And Jesse is right at the same time. And when Jesse says, I can get us out of Seattle and then says mere minutes of screen time later, I'm not dying out here, not for any of them. This is not our war. Right, it's not our war. He has circled the wagons around what the us is and what the them is in this world. And for Ellie, it's a much more

Ellie who thought she could save the whole world. It's a much more complicated proposition. And I think, um, I, this is something we've been talking about. I'm, I feel so fortunate that we've had and, or in the last of us back to back, uh, as, as you're navigating the world, embarrassment of riches, they're both such rich shows, but they're also in many ways about the same thing, which is like, don't look away from atrocities that are happening right in front of you. Um,

And then Jesse's question, which is a question a lot of people ask in general and a question that we talked about a lot when we covered Andor, is like, well, what can I do to stop it? This thing is so big.

They're at war in Seattle. And Jesse's like, it is way too big for us to dip a toe into. What can we do at all? Save just one person? Save what? Like, what do we do? And I think this this episode is asking questions about that rather than providing you any easy answers about that. What do you think? Yeah, I agree. Yeah.

I thought, as you noted, Burton was a appropriate choice to bring us into this scene. You know, the formerly not only like innocent face, but wait, why do we call them voters? Has no tether to the source of the mockery and the lack of truth.

grace for the people that they seek to control and dehumanize and then is here, not just slamming the butt of his rifle into the Seraphite's head and saying to strip him and torment him and kill him and God knows what else. Yeah.

But it basically has become the thing that we heard him a few episodes ago say about the quote-unquote enemy, right? Animals. Like, he is in a feral, inhuman state. And of course, he is treating the person across from him as something less than human. And that is the problem. I thought that... Like, I'm really interested in what you're describing from the Ellie empathy perspective. Because I think it's fascinating that, like, when we think about all of the different spheres, Ellie is like...

the most macro and the most micro, right? Ellie is like, well, it's me and Joel. And like, that's never going to change. And that is driving everything that Ellie is doing. And then also Ellie had a calibrated sense of her own worth and her capacity to contribute something of meaning to the world through this idea of purpose that would impart a gift to all of humanity. Right. And yet... That's so interesting. Yeah. And yet...

I would say Ellie is very lacking in the in-between, right? Because Ellie, as we talked about a lot, and as Jesse will invoke shortly, not much of a community kid when it came to life in Jackson, right? Correct. And so everybody is thinking about this, who's the us and who's the them, but in a distinct way. And that is simultaneously, as you're noting, I think quite interesting and quite challenging, right?

And I think that like what Jesse, when Jesse, the fact that Ellie wants to help here makes me love Ellie. And I want Ellie to want to help. And I want Jesse to want to help. It feels morally right to want to help. Right. Even at the risk of like your own safety, it feels necessary. It feels imperative. Yeah.

I think that Jesse, who is like the character in this duo, in this longtime friendship, who is much more inclined to say, as you noted, like, well, what about the community? What about the other people who need us? Being the one to then draw that line is fascinating and like,

It made me think a little bit of the conversation between Joel and Maria at the beginning of the season about the lifeboats, right? Like, if our lifeboat is swamped, yeah, we leave them out there. And then Joel's like, I do wish that we could bring them all in, but what if it hurts us, you know? And this is the situation that all of these characters are in. And so then you have, like, you have a...

you have Seattle. Like, look at what has happened to this place, to everybody who's here. We got a really, not funny, haha. I'm sorry. I don't have it in the docs because whatever.

email about the housing crisis in Jackson. Our listener pointed out that like Joel and Ellie are living in this massive house. Just that actually it's just Joel sleeping in there and Ellie's in the garage. That Gail's rattling around this massive house with like Eugene's gone. It's just Gail there now. So it's like, where will we put all these people? Time for some roommates. Gail would be a great roommate. Oh my God. Let's recap. Gail has a copy of Earth Abides handy at all times. Gail,

Rich in bourbon. And weed. Gail, ready to comment on the quality of the weed. Yeah. Loved it. Going to baseball games with Gail. Gail, watching baseball. Yeah, remembering the 03 Tigers. Am I gay? That's like very similar. Now I spend a Saturday. I love your point about the macro and the micro because so much of what The Last of Us does do in its larger storytelling is it's hard. You can't understand the them.

Until you meet one of them, right? Yes. Yes. And then you can understand it. Yeah. But the them is... Because then it's real. Yeah. The them as a nebulous group is so easy to keep out of the lifeboat. And then you meet one of them and then the math changes. Exactly. Yeah.

What are the young man who is being abused by Burton at all inside of the scene is sort of repeating this litany, right? He says, the world is not balanced, but I must do my best to write it. She has led me this far. May she guide me. Sort of repeated this, this seraphitic process.

prophet-based feel-her-love litany. I was reminded the language, the world's not in balance, but I must do my best to write it. She has led me this far. May she guide me. Maybe think of Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5. Time is out of joint. O cursed spite that ever I was born to set it right. Hamlet is, of course, the ultimate dead daddy revenge story. Um...

And then of course, Oh man. Uh, because you invoked, uh, get off and Frodo. Why not invoke get off and Frodo again and say, I wish it knew not have happened in my time. So do I said again off. And so do all who live to see such times that that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what we do with the time that is given us. Um, and I was just thinking about, um, that concept and also the concept of like the repeated litany inside of the last of us, because, um,

Something we hear from Ellie again and again is, where is she? Where's Abby? Or, you know, just like a repeated Abby, Abby, Abby sort of thing. This idea of, what have you made your religion? What is the rosary that you say to get you through this? And have you pledged your mortal soul to the god of violence? Or what is it? What have you...

chosen to make your church and your guiding star inside of something like this. And it's...

scary what do we say to the god of death you know not today man not today um i'm not sure if you've heard this before but the bard is always welcome and so is the professor so great work by you that's our litany that's a it's a double it's a double uh jr or willie shakes moment shakespeare and and tolkien uh back to back is just peak house of our core okay

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subject to availability. Quick question for you. Is my Costco membership still good in the mushroom apocalypse? This was wonderful to see. I'm going to guess no, unfortunately. I think that has probably been more picked over than the...

pretty well stocked bookstore depressing to confront how few people in the apocalypse are like I'd like to reading the bookstore I'd like to read yeah yeah not happy though happy's reading all right what do you want to say about this Isaac and Elise Park scene that we get at WLF HQ okay so I love Elise Park it's just are you in love with her what's wrong with you I might be no no no when she was yes I know

I know. Unlike Isaac, I am prepared to say I might be. This is not the most important thing in the scene, but I do feel compelled to observe that Isaac seems to, on the brink of building this armada and preparing for this attack, to have a bottle of Johnny Walker on his desk. Did you clock this? Is that what you would drink on the version of Warped?

So what Johnny Walker, what label? I thought it was blue. I was like, is that black label or blue label? But I paused and I was looking, I will check again in a fully high res, you know, it's hit the apps on Sunday night, but the glass seemed to have the blue sheen to me of a blue label. So I just think it's very impressive to find that this deep into the

What do you think is in Jesse's flask? Is it like wild turkey? Is it just like, you know, gut rot? Maybe. What would your, what would your, it's the night before I'm telling the person sitting across from me at the table, we're both probably going to be dead tomorrow. Like I've saved this bottle of booze. What are you breaking out? It's you. So I'm going to guess it's either a mead that you made and stored or a tequila. It's definitely a tequila. Okay. No free ads, but what kind? Okay.

say I don't want to I don't want to I think it's a bottle of Don Julio tequila oh fancy well shouldn't it be fancy if you're cracking it open on the verge of I may not see the sunrise tomorrow here's the deal about Don Julio ever since you and I had the experience of watching the masterpiece that was We Crashed

And the way that they were drinking Don Julio like it was water, I've had a real complex about it. I'm like, those fuckers did not deserve the Don Julio. You know, I've never had a sip. Should we share some? Never had it. Yeah, let's do it. I would love to. What's your, I'm about to go to war bottle. I mean, I would definitely do a rye for sure. I mean, whiskey for sure. I don't think I'm, maybe scotch, but possibly bourbon, but almost certainly rye. Okay.

You know, I like acts from Billions and really a mictures. That's important to know about you. Also really like a will it. Is that you're actually a 45-year-old man who only watches Showtime shows. That is like... I feel like I'm at least like 56 or something. 45 is pretty generous of you. I'm a 55-year-old man who only watches Showtime, aka I'm Bill.

Okay. Oh, God. I guess the other thing I wanted to note at the top before we break down that conversation is just apparently only one neurosurgeon in the apocalypse. Right. But the meteorologists have lived on. I love this. I'm curious. I mean, I guess Gail is a good example. I'm like, are the doctors just treated like kings? And what does medical school look like in the apocalypse? We might cover this a bit more later. Okay, so...

The storm is a convergence zone. Yes. And hey, that's the name of the episode. We think. But I don't know if you know about metaphors, Mallory, but it's not just a collision of two storms. No. But the twin hurricanes of Abby and Ellie are barreling towards each other and will converge in this episode. I love it. Honestly. I do. I do.

I love it. You mentioned Isaac's Armada. They're going to a place called Seraphite Island. Just to let people know who haven't played the game, Seraphite Island is actually the Queen Anne suburb of Seattle. And if you're a Seattleite listening to this and you're like, hey, wait, that's connected by land. There's massive flooding in the mushroom apocalypse. What are you going to do? And the Queen Anne suburb has become an island and it is known inside of the game as Seraphite Island. And that is where...

Ellie, unfortunately, washes up with her boat conveniently next to her. And it is where Isaac and his armada are headed. Yes, indeed. I love this part where Elise says, again, there's just like, it's a very efficient scene. There's a lot to pick through here. Elise saying all the officers are on board with this large scale attack that Isaac is planning. Yeah.

but I think the rank and file are a little scared. And it made me think about like, steady is the WLF. You know, power doesn't panic. But Abby and her crew are missing. We'll talk about

how Isaac doesn't give a shit about Manny in a second. Brutal. And when Isaac was torturing Malcolm, the Seraphite in the previous scene, Malcolm said, every day one of your wolves comes to see the truth and takes her into their heart every day. Every day a wolf leaves you to take the holy mortification to become a Seraphite and none of us ever leave to become a wolf. So how nervous is Isaac about losing his pack, his numbers, his us? Um,

And, like, is that something that you were, like, considering when you're thinking about him as a character? And we only get a little bit of him in this season, but, like, more than the game. But, like, his actions that we've seen so far. Yeah, I felt like three things were happening here with Isaac, like, that Malcolm got in his head. That, you know, he's like, you're going to lose. How are we going to lose? It's like, well...

It's a numbers game. The first thing is for someone to worm their way into your innermost sanctum.

I thought that just structurally, obviously we will get to the promises and glimpses of the future approach of the show and the story when we get to the end of this episode. But I thought this was just like a tantalizing little morsel of, where'd Abby go? You know, to throw out to the audience. Oh, what did Mel? What are they going to do? Yeah, really, really great. Like, way to whet the appetite there. And then I thought, we still have Manny. We have Manny.

have a lot of manis don't we brutal and enough owens and mel's but only one abby was the most i mean i thought the ensuing which you already know listen to like okay what the fuck she's a good soldier great even but we have an entire fucking army out there and you're acting like she's the most important you in love with her or something he wouldn't be i don't know he wouldn't be the first old man to uh great stuff but i was really struck here by a couple things like

I was thinking back to what we heard Abby say to Joel, you know, about the code, the code. And I've been in this militia and just thinking after Abby lost her father of like, who did Isaac become for Abby? Right. Yeah. And the espousing of these mantras and creeds that somebody has imparted in you. It's like, wait, okay. What?

What did they become to each other? Did they become an us inside of this larger us? And I think that was like then particularly keen when Isaac said, but only one Abby, because it felt to me like another very like intentional and charged Abby Ellie comp and parallel, right? It's not immunity.

for Abby, but just the idea of being to, even if it's just one other person, maybe especially if it's just to one other person, this prized, like this singular, you know, what makes you the chosen one to the other person who says, but only one Abby about you. It's just fascinating to think about. It's interesting to me to think about that inside of the context of, I think this is okay to say, there's like just a few Isaac scenes inside of the game. And

A line that he says that actually makes me think of like Jesse or whatever is he's like, no secrets among the SLC crew, right? Like, yeah, you guys are your own little us faction inside of my thing. And if he's got this thing with Abby, like,

Then Elise is like, that's weird. You know, how threatening is that? That there is another us that Abby maybe feels more allied to than the us of the two of them. Also, I was thinking about how we were talking about the psychology of an Isaac when we learned about his taste in cookware. And he says, if you have Movial, you use Movial. Like, is Abby the shiniest little copper-bottom pot to ever join the WLF? And he's like, I deserve Movial.

the best yeah that's very guest on of him and don't i deserve the best and if the blue label yeah and that makes me sure it's blue the best is moviel so that's what i'll have and if the best is abby then that is what i will have and what is interesting inside of the way they've cast caitlin deaver in this role is if you're thinking about this inside the context of the game

And the way that Abby is designed in the game is extremely muscle-bound and physically intimidating. You're sort of like, yeah, that's his bruiser. That's his whatever. Cailin Deaver is a different kind of power or a different kind of special. So I'm excited to find out what is it about this version of Abby that has made her...

the jesse the the future of the wf the chosen one to lead the wlf after him uh in his image i'm so fat like i'm it makes me so excited for season three really really excited so yeah love it um okay you want to go to the bookstore with me let's do it did you like both in the in the game and then in the show pause to see like does that say elliott bay no i guess i haven't seen it

Of course. I quite literally did. Great bookstore. What a great bookstore. Love that bookstore. This is the fictional Kingston bookstore in the game and in the show. Very confusingly named because Kingston is at a completely different place on the map, but let's just not worry about it. Okay.

spent a lot of time on the Seattle map last night when I was putting these notes together. Did you triangulate? I did, actually. Did you have a protractor? Well, I was like, okay, here's the south docks where Tommy is, and here's the aquarium, and here's the Seraphite Island, and I'm like, we're all in the same neighborhood, and then Kingston is like, right, like, all the, like, you have to take a ferry to get to Kingston. Could it be a satellite location? Yeah. We think it's a local chain, maybe? Yeah.

I'm not going to Kitsap County. Through Kitsap County, you get to Kingston to go to this bookstore. Let me tell you that right now. Okay. Tolkien's always welcome. Shakespeare's always welcome. And actually, Lewis Carroll is always welcome. And so we should note that on the wall in this bookstore is a quote from Alice in Wonderland. Everything's got a moral, if only you could find it. Not everything's got a morale. That's a mushroom joke. But everything's got a moral, if only you could find it. Wow. Wow.

You've called me your marvelous Morell in text messages many times over the last few weeks, and I'll miss that. I'll miss that. I think there is like a little fairy tale mushroom in the mural, in the Alice, the faded Alice in Wonderland mural underneath this quote on the wall. There's some like clear, you know, why we picked this quote from Alice in Wonderland, you know, things that we can say, we can talk about sort of.

Ellie down the rabbit hole, Ellie through the looking glass. There's all sorts of things to say about that. This quote comes from an exchange between inside Alice in Wonderland, even if you've never read the book, perhaps you've seen the Disney cartoon and you remember that they play Flamingo Croquet. And when they're playing Flamingo Croquet inside of the book, the character of the Duchess, not to be confused, Queen of Hearts, is talking to Alice.

And she says, you're thinking about something, my dear, and that makes you forget to talk. I can't tell you just now what the moral of that is, but I shall remember it in a bit. And Alice says, perhaps it hasn't won. And the Duchess says, child, everything's got a moral. If only you can find it. So, um...

I will just say this. I think about Alice in Wonderland a lot. This is like, I think it's such like a foundational text and this idea of like finding yourself in a rule, in a world where the rules don't apply, the rules that you've meticulously learned as a prim and proper British school child do not apply to all of these situations that Alice finds herself in Wonderland. Um, it's an upside down world. Um,

everything she thought she knew she doesn't know, etc., etc. Through the looking glass, this idea of like, you know...

and all that comes with that, the Red Queen, the White Queen, all this sort of stuff that happens inside of that. This is, of course, like a convergent story, a twin tale kind of thing that we're dealing with here. I'm happy to overthink Alice in Wonderland any day of the goddamn... You're all just a pack of cards. You're all just a bunch of scars. Who can say? Mallory Urban, what do you want to say here in Lewis Carroll Corner?

I mean, I love a bookstore. I loved these opening few moments before we get to the conversation between Jesse and Ellie and then everything that follows. Yeah, I mean, showing us this Alice quote, what a perfect snapshot of literary seminal text to present to us and to the characters in the room at that moment. I thought also like,

A couple of the things that we hear from Jesse here are equally effective in rooting us, I thought. Like, what if he's in trouble? What if he is in trouble? We're all in trouble. Like, there's just such a kind of cold, clear reality to what Jesse is saying there. And I thought, here we are again, you and me in bad fucking weather, was also a great way to remind us, obviously that takes us back to episode two and the snowstorm, but just to remind us of how long they've been in each other's lives. You know, the depth of that friendship on the brink of...

what is about to happen on that sloped floor up above, and then obviously later in the theater. So just everything right in these first few seconds as we're panning. And then obviously you also just have, you know, much like when Ellie in the ski lodge in episode two walks past like a child's crib, you just have this...

Museum of Civilization time capsule. Like, what was... We were just talking, like, what does it mean to be a child in this world? And it's like... And innocence they never got to have. Exactly. Yeah. All of that here in, like, 30 seconds as the camera pans. And then as...

You know, Ellie picks up a book thinking of Dina, thinking of the baby. And Jesse's like, I should have thought of that. This like this tension between them of like, what role will we play in this kid's life and Dina's life going forward? And then, you know, the conversation that we already alluded to this idea that Jesse was like, I thought about leaving. Yep. About four ugly ass paintings from this hot babe. I mean, who among us? I get it. But I was taught to put other people first.

When he said that, I was like, oh, brother. And then immediately Ellie's like, okay. And I was like, thank you, Ellie. So yeah, Jesse's being quite sanctimonious here. But thinking about this, thinking about everything Jesse says in this episode, in the context of Ellie watching him die at the end of this episode. And we were talking in the spoiler section because we know Jesse's fate. How guilty...

Ellie will feel the math's a little different on why Jesse is there and how he followed them, etc. Inside of this similar scene in the game, Jesse says to Ellie, I would have come if you told me you were leaving. I looked up to Joel. What happened to him was messed up. So that Jesse, game Jesse, is like, I'm in.

you know, doesn't have all the information, but I'm in right. Yeah. This Jesse, the whole way is like from the beginning, bad idea. I didn't vote for you. This is terrible. You're selfish. I'm here though. And we'll, you know, we'll talk about sort of a more hopeful exchange between them right at the end of his life. But like, he's this voice of like, what the fuck Ellie, um, the whole way. And so how does that weigh on Ellie differently than Jesse being like, I would have come if you

If you asked me, I would have come easily. You know, it's a very different equation. Yeah. Like, do I look like I want to talk to you right now? You know, you mentioned earlier the things that we carry, and we've talked about that a lot since season one. And I think you can carry physical things and you can carry emotional weight. And like Ellie carrying Jesse's death moving forward is a heavy, heavy thing. But also making room in the pack for that book. Yeah.

What did you think of this election? And then I'll circle back to the... Oh, I'm a big Grover fan, personally. You love Grover? I love knowing that about you. Yeah, I thought this was all really rich. Shout out the pan of the read-to-baby shelves and clocked that copy of Love You Forever. That made me think of...

Actually, I'll share this quickly. That made me think of, I won't say names, but it made me think of one of my dear friends who, when we were in college, would talk about that book and how... I'm probably going to get emotional talking about this. She would talk about that book and how her mom always read it to her. And I was like, you know, an 18 and an asshole. And I was kind of like making fun of it because if you haven't read the book...

Basically, as the child grows up, the mother is still sneaking into his room at night and holding him and rocking him. And then he does that at the very end for her. And I was like, this is pretty weird. And I could tell that it really upset her. And then a couple years ago, her mom passed away. And I went to the funeral and...

my friend's brother, who I've also known, you know, for 20 years now, and who is, like, a great guy, but I would say, like, keeps it tight, right? Close to the chest. Close to the vest. And his eulogy was reading that. And, like, I don't know, I just, like, remember thinking, I mean, it was so beautiful and so touching, but also just, again, like something we've talked about a couple times, like...

it really made an impact on me. It's like, you just, I don't, I don't want to like assume that I know what matters to other people, you know? So yeah. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. It was just on my mind seeing it. I am on a much shallower level. I will say also in that display was a Wee Sing book that I spy. Yeah. Well, the Wee Sing we had growing up and that was like,

hugely, hugely, hugely, hugely, hugely important in my family, not in this same sort of extremely beautiful emotional way, but just sort of like, I just saw that and I was like, oh, that's childhood to me. And so...

Let's give the flowers to the set decorator who filled the shelf with meaningful cultural touchstones for a lot of us. Really good. I was looking for my favorite Sam and the Firefly. That's the one I was looking for. I love that one. Thank you for sharing that, Melanie. Thanks. Sorry. I thought this was, we got another interesting Jesse Cannon change here, which is that he was speaking about his family and the

absence, right? Like talking about Jackson, like the community raised me. And so I'm taking that to mean that his family is dead. That's what it sounds like. Which is different than in the game where his mother is alive. So that was really interesting. I thought too, like, just the vibe in direct points of contrast to like

You know, thinking about in episode two when Jesse knocks on Ellie's door in the garage before taking her out to patrol and is like, it's kind of fucked up you did that, though, you know, joking around about the dance. And then the, yes, I love her, but not the way you do, just the heaviness. You know, there was just so much...

heaviness here and this kind of like somber quality of like thinking about what the path that he didn't take, this person that he didn't follow, seeing his friends choose each other now. And like,

I love that we still inside of that got the little, you know, that fucking feeling like falling when you're falling for someone and they're falling right back. Because as we've talked about many times, I just really enjoy those moments in the show when I really loved hearing that shared smile between Ellie and Jesse. And I just love the moments when the show, especially in a scene like this, in a stretch like this, where these characters are just so awesome.

weighed down, right? It's just like the responsibilities, trying to get out if you're alive, now trying to get home with everybody safe, I'm going to be a father. And just remembering like

Yeah. And that pull to another person and just for Jesse to like articulate that here. Well, how that's like so core to the human experience. It doesn't matter what changes in the world. Falling in love is falling in love. Yeah, exactly. And like we really responded so powerfully to seeing that.

the Ellie and Riley episode and to seeing what has bloomed with Ellie and Dina and like to hear Jesse talk about his experience with something like that. I really loved that. Like we got to glimpse that. And then of course it's very sad to me. It's very, I think it's like this, I agree. This is sanctimonious quality. I think Jesse putting the community ahead of his own personal happiness is like admirable. And also to me really sad because I think like,

And what does it get him? Exactly. And the way he frames it is like, I go with that girl to Mexico. Who saves your ass in Seattle? It's like, but maybe you would have saved yourself. Yeah. 100%. God.

And that's why there's no easy answer, right? Like, so we go up to the roof where, not the roof, an upper floor where we hear about Tommy. We're looking for Tommy. And they have this confrontation again about community. There's a similar sort of splitting of the ways in the game and a similar like, you know, hope you make it, you know, and a similar like, oh,

that might not be Tommy and we don't know like shit from Ellie, but, but much more text here and much deeper and richer based on these other Jesse scenes leading up to it. This idea of community. What is the right answer? Was the right answer to go with that girl to Mexico? Or is the right answer to be there for your community? Ellie calls out Jesse's hypocrisy inside of this conversation, right? Like you just, you,

ignored a kid what do you mean you're talking about community you just like you just did this thing you're not better than me and my community was just Joel and my community got beaten to death in front of me what would you do um in my shoes and what I love about this uh exchange again a question with no easy answers is

a little speech from Ellie that reinforces what we were talking about in terms of Ellie never really integrating herself into Jackson. Like she has her person and that's her person. And even when they were estranged and even when she was spending time with Dina and Kat and Jesse and et cetera, Jackson, she does not think of Jackson as her community. She thinks of Joel as her community. Yeah. Yeah.

But she says, like, don't act like you're better than me or you do anything else in my fucking shoes because you're not and you wouldn't. And when Jesse comes back around to talk to her at the theater at the end of the episode, he's like, I've been thinking about what would happen if it were me and what you would do. Like, he's she's like.

pushing him into a space where he has to get outside his rigid understanding of what's right and what's wrong. Right. And try to put himself in other people's shoes or try to put himself in a different situation. He's just sort of like, if it were me, you would burn down the world to find me. Right? Yeah. So again, Jesse is so admirable, but there's also all these characters are constantly pushing on each other of just like,

And encouraging broader empathy or narrow empathy or whatever it is, specific micro or macro. I really love that delineation that you shouted out earlier. I think this is a really, really good conversation. I agree. I really love that this was expanded. I think because the ground is... First of all, the fact that just they go up high to look, I'm thinking back to Joel and Ellie and, you know...

Right. All the conversations about it. We're going to go up. We're going to look and we're going to scout. So Joel is very top of mind, of course. But I was thinking of Anakin and Obi-Wan on a Mustafar because the sloped ground. I'm just like, you know. I went to the sky. I went to the sky cells in the Erie with the sloped floor. Because can I just tell you this right now, Mallory? What?

If something happens to you, I would look for you forever. Forever. Yes, but you would not follow me to a sky cell. I would burn down the world to find you, but I would not go set one foot out on that floor that is sloped at like a 45 degree angle down into nothingness. I let you off the hook because it's a no for me as well. I'd find other ways to save you, but it wouldn't be that. Thanks.

There wouldn't be anything to say. I would have rolled off for sure. Tyrion, like, jerking awake. I'm like, for me, I'm just, I'm splattered. I'm goo. Absolutely not. I have the high ground, Anne. I'm not. But just seeing, you know, two people who have been very close, like, really challenging each other in a notable way. Ellie can say all she wants. It might not be Tommy. Yeah.

But she knows it is. Oh, yeah. And so she is choosing to potentially let Tommy die in order to go hunt down Abby. Like, that's not a hypothetical. It's the thing that is happening right now and the choice that she is making. And...

I was thinking back to the conversation between Ellie and Tommy in episode three. They're like, you know, don't talk to me like I didn't know him. He was my brother scene. And specifically that distinction Tommy drew and what Joel would have done when he said, if it had been you, what Ellie said, if it had been you, Joel would have been halfway to Seattle before the sun came up. And Tommy said, he'd be halfway to Seattle to save my life. Wow.

That's the go-pick Tommy path. Go save someone. And that's not the choice that Ellie's making. She's making the, I can only see the path to my vengeance. And that is not the way to save the people you love. It is the way ultimately to lose them and to sacrifice them. And it is...

When we get back to the conversations we had earlier in the season about what are the comps for Ellie and Joel, but also what are the comps for Ellie and Abby, seeking your vengeance above all is, of course, there's your convergence, right? The Ellie-Abby comp. So I thought that this was really strong, and I loved that the, you know, fuck the community thing

Again, just the tonal distinction. We've heard these ideas before, but not in this way, right? Like the loving kind of mocking, are you going to go to the dance tonight? Oh, you're part of the community now? Like we're going on patrol. I want you to fulfill your duty to the community of Jackson Hole. Like, dude, you're going to be in charge of Jackson one day. That's how it's come up with Ellie and Jesse before. And so the things that they are saying to each other, the stakes are so apparent. It is not just...

the person they might save or the person they might kill. It is like the, the, the core substance and nucleus of the, the thing itself, right? Their relationship with each other and with, with their own desire. This is Jesse's church, Jesse's church is community. Right. And so like, that is what he has made community, him saying community, community, community is his litany. And this is like what he has dedicated himself to. And, um,

And Ellie's like, your religion sucks. I don't believe in your god of community at all. And fuck the social contract while we're here. Okay. I was waiting. Like, Joel is kind of – Jesse, excuse me, is kind of in the Ellie porch position here. Like, he's saying to Ellie what Ellie said to Joel, like, because you're selfish. Yeah. You know? And I just made it very – because I loved him in a way you can't understand. But I heard it in my head, even though they didn't say it. So.

All right. So Ellie's off on her own, which is never a good thing. Okay. So she's off on her own to grab a boat and go to the aquarium. And is it your read that when she gets the dock and she thinks there's just like two people there, she's just like ready to shoot them in the head? No question. Okay, cool. Definitely. That gun is out and pointed. Yeah.

We've invoked Shakespeare. We've invoked Tolkien. We've invoked Lewis Carroll. Now it's time to invoke musicals. I was just thinking about West Side Story, the opening of West Side Story, the film specifically, one of the best pieces of cinema you've ever seen.

it's a turf war between the Sharks and the Jets, the Capitals and the Monarchies. When you're a Jet, you're a Jet, all the way from your first cigarette. I haven't seen that since I was really young because that's how it goes though, right? My mom used to sing it a lot. That comes later. The beginning, we're just seeing a montage of the various gang members walking around the park and you'll see like, walking around the city and you'll see like,

a jet all alone and a bunch of sharks see him and they start chasing him and they round the corner and then there's a bunch of jets there waiting. It's a numbers game. It's constantly like when it's two sharks and there's a bunch of jets and then all of a sudden the other sharks show up. So it's just this constant back and forth of who has the numbers, who's the aggressor, who's running away, who's running towards inside of this...

less relatively ballet at the start of West side story cinema. Okay. So that's what happens here, right? Ellie's like, there's two, there's two fucking sharks, wolves at this dock. I can take them. And then all of a sudden it's not just one light on it's, you know, the word you used earlier was armada. It's a whole bunch of sharks, wolves in the water here. And you're outnumbered and you're, you know, like in terms of the us versus them calculus, um,

This is constantly it. Yeah. Sarah fights all alone in that parking garage and a bunch of wolves grab him. Right. But then like what happens when the numbers are reversed and Ellie gets on a boat. I don't want to talk about why she knows how to use a boat or steer a boat. Let's I learned by pressing triangle. Yeah.

In the game. That was how I did it. The playthrough I watched, she capsized. You have no choice but to capsize? Correct. You capsize and then you swim. We're still waiting for Gullet, but we got some boat stuff here on Sunday night on HBO. Borg of it? No. Okay, man. So this was a... I had a...

I learned something about this from Neil doing the finale press release. He mentioned that... I'm sure this was out there, but I did not know this, that this...

Because I was like, whoa, Ellie washing up on Seraphite Island and everything that happens there is not in the game. But apparently it was. And then it got cut out of the game. It was intended to be there initially and then did not. Yeah, it's not in the final game. Thank you for that information, Mallory Rubin. Font of wisdom and insight always. So here's the sequence that is not in the game as it exists now, but was in an earlier draft of the game, which is that Ellie gets nabbed hoisting

hoisted up and then they're like and then Gimli sounds the horn of Helmhammer hands and they're like the village and then they the Seraphites just leave her there yeah yep you don't just do like a quick disemboweling for the road no okay they leave her there she picks up Joel's gun which has fallen out on the rocky shore and gets on the boat and goes to the aquarium this kid is gonna haunt my nightmares by the way

Yeah, I'm signaling for the disavowal. The evisceration sign language, yeah. You know, it's like this is, we're getting the horror in every corner. We had the parking lot wolf atrocities, and here we see what the... What the Saravites are capable of. They don't know Ellie, right? And they don't care. And they don't care. Exactly. This is instantaneous. A main justice. They're just like, string her up. Yeah.

I will say that knowing that this was an inversion of the game is interesting to me. Without knowing that, I was a little like, this is weird. She washes up, she has this interlude, and then she's just off to the aquarium. I have some spoiler section thoughts. Well, I think we are allowed to say, and you can disagree with me, I think we are allowed to say that when Abby shows up to the theater, she has very clear...

on her neck. Rope bruising on her neck. I think that's just a fact that I can say. Okay. We're at the aquarium. Ellie is drying her ammunition. Yeah. Is that in the game that you have to like dry your ammunition ever? Hmm. I don't know. This seems very much like the runners are going to complain that her ammunition is wet and she can't fire the gun. So let's show her drying the ammunition moment to me.

But this is a pause to focus on the revolver, Joel's revolver, which is the gun that Ellie told Dina she was going to use to kill Abby. There's stuff for the spoiler section here. We see some evidence of a surgery, some camping. Is this where you want to talk about some animal stuff, Mallory Rubin? Yes, I do. Very quickly before that, I just...

So obviously this is a, you know, a key game setting brought to the show here. Watching Ellie walk through, passing under the shark and then like passing under the dangling jellyfish. It just like right on the heels of the science museum birthday memory. Yeah.

It's not a dinosaur, it's not an orrery, but the contrast in mood with a setting that could otherwise be the same could not have been more stark. And I thought really effectively, like using this setting in that way as we track one of Ellie's many long walks, we love a long walk, like it just really amplified how severely and devastatingly things have changed and how lost Ellie is now pursuing her

her vengeance in the same place that like in another a few years ago in another version of life like joel might have just taken her to spend a birthday right her youthful like enthusiasm and curiosity like intellectual curiosity and she's just like not even giving any of these exhibits a second glance right yeah yeah no transporting light playing over the visor no tear leaking out of the crinkly eye here we are just in a it's a different state of play um so on the um

So I was like, are we allowed to talk about the fact that Alice is not here? And then I asked, I guess I used some of our precious time to ask Neil and Craig about this because I just could not help myself. Who is Alice for people who don't know? So in this stretch of the game, and I'm not going to talk about anything from the future of the game, but just in this stretch of the game, as Ellie is saying,

Making her way through the aquarium, there is a harrowing sequence with a duck. And that is not here. And I was quite... So I was surprised but quite relieved. And that coupled with our update that Shimmer is thriving and doing well, I did ask about this. And Neil said...

And I actually do have the quote for this. I think Craig is traumatized from his Chernobyl days about what he did to dogs. Craig said, I've heard you get one dog murdering episode a lifetime. Oh my God. That's so funny. That's really good stuff. So the hashtag shimmer lives, hashtag Alice lives. Beautiful, beautiful thing. So Craig said,

So there you go. Okay.

I was so fucked. I was so relieved. I was like really dreading this. Mallory, I think all of the bad babies at home, thank you for being exactly yourself and using just the few questions you had to ask about Shimmer and Alice. I love you. I have already shared this with you, but I will now share with the audience that our colleague Riley McAtee, he was one of the people who was most emphatic in the wake of season one. He was like, you just have to play the game. Like,

in full up front soon. Don't get spoiled. Do it all at once. And so I was keeping him, you know, updated occasionally on my progress. And I, obviously these things all happen in sequence here. So I texted him like, I am forever changed by what has just happened with Alice. And he replied, that's what you're texting about Mel? I mean, 30 seconds later. That's, it's just so exactly you. So I don't know what else Riley, who has known you for a very long time expected. Okay.

We overhear Owen and Mel are arguing about Owen wanting to do something and Mel not wanting him to do it. And they're talking about Abby, right? Like, don't make it sound like I'm being a heartless bitch, says Mel. I'm not. And let's be honest, this isn't about them anyway, Owen. A lot of mystery for show on show only people, for sure. Yes. But whatever it is that Owen thinks he's about to do.

We know, you guys don't know. It's alone behind enemy lines and Mel says it's suicide. And I think what's interesting is Owen is like, fine, I'll do it myself. Thanos style. Just like always. A fascinating character moment for Owen here. But I think it was interesting, especially on the heels of like, you know, something I just said about Isaac saying like, no secrets among the SLC crew, right? Like we've always thought of them as,

We think of them as a pack, little wolf pack inside of the larger wolf pack, right? They are an us, the SLC crew. But as we saw inside of the lodge when Joel died, there were some fractions and fissures inside of like... Not everyone was having a great time in there. Mel seemed to be the most upset about what she saw. Yeah, for sure. And so here inside of the SLC unit, we've got Owen...

Mel making a bid for Owen, and we should say in the game we already know that Mel is pregnant, so this is something we talked about in the spoiler section. Yeah.

We've always thought of the SLC crew as a unit, right? But here, inside of this, Owen's like, I need to go get Abby. He's like, if you're here when we get back, great. If not, Sia wouldn't want to be ya. Sort of vibe from Owen. And so this idea of who's the us seems to be shifting under their feet inside of this scene. Who you thought was the core us, the one-two us. Right.

Who are the them that he is pretending this is about? You know, what is the us versus them calculus inside of this scene? All of this will become a lot clearer for people in season three, but it is an interesting tease and it is just like an interesting thematic

idea hit here. I really liked how explicit the contrast was of I don't have a choice, do I? It's Abby from Owen. And then Mel saying, and I'm choosing no also because it's Abby. Yeah. That's just, we have so much to learn about the particulars, but that really tells us everything right there. Ellie hits us with her catchphrase, where's Abby? And

I think it's interesting to track all of the SLC crew's reaction, right? Nora hits us with a, you're her, uh, for Ellie. Owen says, you gotta be kidding me. Right. And Abby just says you, uh, at the end of the episode. Here's my note for Owen. Ellie said quite clearly, I'm going to kill all of you. Yeah. Every fucking one of you. Uh,

Abby recited all of your names. Yeah. And you guys were trotting around with your custom merch. So I don't know why you'd say you got to be kidding me. You got to be kidding me. How did you ever find us? We just sewed it onto our jackets and backpacks. All right.

Right before everything goes to absolute shit and is one of the hardest things I've watched on television, Ellie is still clinging to this idea that she's, quote, better than the SLC crew. Not as good as Jessie, sure. Not St. Jessie from Wyoming, but better than them. There's still an us and a them, and they are the them. This is a softening to your point about sort of Craig and Neil talking about, like, Alice and Shimmer and all this sort of stuff and what we've been saying all along about this version of Ellie. What happens here...

Owen lunging for his gun, him shooting first, and Ellie shooting in response, shot right through his throat, and then raising Mel's neck, as you mentioned. All of that is either...

self-defense or an accident, you know, as best you can typify it. That is not how this happens in the game at all. Ellie, I mean, they're fighting a battle to the death necessarily, but like Ellie stabs Mel in the neck. Yeah. She does not know she's pregnant.

Right. Mel loves an oversized parka, but stabs her in the neck. And then Owen, as he's dying, is like, faintly, she's pregnant. Yeah. And then Ellie goes and unzips the parka and is like, fuck. But Mel is already dead. And so what happens here, where Mel the medic...

uh, giving me like painful flashbacks to saving private Ryan, the Giovanni Rabisi scene where like a medic tries to talk you through their own mortal wound or whatever. It's a slightly different case. This is so upsetting. Yeah. And it is horrible enough that Ellie kills a pregnant woman without knowing she's pregnant or whatever. That is horrible. Mel trying to like, as the life is fading out of her instruct Ellie on how to save her baby. Uh,

You're doing good. You're doing really good when Ellie has not done a single thing because she's afraid of getting it wrong. And so she does nothing. And then Mel dies anyway. And then the baby dies. And the shot of Ellie pulling Mel's shirt back over her belly like you would pull a sheet over a dead body is...

going to haunt me. Did you get any answers from Craig and Neil about why they went this much further with the agony of this sequence? This...

This was so upsetting. We have been talking in the spoiler sections, we should say, like all season because we, as you noted, in both game and show, Ellie doesn't know that Mel is pregnant. But as you noted, we the gamer know. We find out very early. And I was like in the spoiler section, I'm like,

What does it mean that we don't know? And it's like, you know, then once I, in the first couple episodes, because I hadn't gotten to the scene in the game, and then it's very clear, like, okay, this obviously has to, this has to happen. This has to remain intact. Of course, Ellie is thinking of Dina. How could she not be? There are so many people who are not present in the scene who are present here, right? Yeah.

Dina, very present for us and for Ellie. Joel is present because Ellie does the Joel torture trick with the map, right? This is what we saw Joel do in season one, episode eight, when he was, when David's, when David's followers had taken Ellie. And in the game, because Tommy has gone to Seattle first, Tommy does that. And Ellie and Dina, like, come upon the carnage that Tommy has- Tortured remains. Yes. Tortured remains, exactly, that he has left.

in his wake. And so this question, this kind of ongoing question of does... Who has the stomach to do the thing that they have seen someone else do? And seeing that Ellie tortured Nora but then was sickened by it tells us something important. This might come more easily to Ellie than she expected, but she doesn't like the way it feels. And I thought the no, I won't on the like...

whether they can trust that she won't hurt them. She'll kill us anyway. No, I won't. No, I won't. I'm not like you. What's really fascinating because it's basically the same promise that Abby made, right? And yes, everything that happens here is there's the self-defense and there's the accident part of it. But Ellie does. And I do think that is crucial to be clear. Ellie's walking into that room with her gun out. Oh, yeah. You know? And so...

Anything can happen when you put yourself in that place. And that's something that we need to be thinking about and that Ellie needs to be thinking about. We also, of course, get the mirror of slowly. You know, Owen repeating slowly makes us think of the way Abby made this vows or this vow slowly. But the real presence in the room for me

Was Ellie's mother. Ellie's mom, of course. The knife. Yeah. Elle saying, knife, do you have a knife? I only have 30 seconds. Get the fuck over here, please, please. Not only does Ellie have a knife, she has her mother's knife gifted to her as her mother turned and then died. This is Ellie's sole inheritance other than her immunity, right? The blade that was gifted on the

bed that was also a deathbed. And Mel calling for that here to try to save her baby was such a dark circle. I was floored by it and just devastated by it. She killed them with Joel's gun and she can't save the baby with her mom's knife. Yeah. And she's protected through all of this by Dina's bracelet. Oh my

If you choose to believe that. Her despair and remorse and horror and shock over what has happened here is obviously a crucial thing. Crucial thing for us to see. I think it's the choice to make it more of an accident. Yeah. I'm going to think about how I feel about that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Because Nora is a choice that Ellie makes. Yeah.

And I feel like it's kind of important, even though she didn't have all the information about Mel, that Owen and Mel is a choice she makes. And to your point, she goes into the room with her gun drawn. That's a choice. Guns out. Yep. I think I would have preferred, I think, I'll think about it, but I think I would have preferred this if this had been a more active choice rather than an oops sort of thing. We've talked about this in other contexts, like Joel with Abby's father, but also you as the gamer. Yeah.

You are complicit. You have to do this. Because you must press square. Yeah. And so that is also a ratcheting up of the horror and a tether to the horror that is, yeah, it is a distinct, memorable, and a painful way of experience. And, like, again, here it is. This is just every path has a price, right? Like, you can say, I'm not like you. I'll let you go.

But look at where we are. And they're dead within seconds, honestly. Okay. Tommy shows up just as he does in the game to sort of do a

slight impression of Joel of it's okay. He doesn't say baby girl, but like, it's okay. You're okay. Let's go. Jesse's also there. And just in the game, there's like a key shot with the blood pooling that's not serving the same purpose here in the show. I will just say as vaguely as I can, but we still get that her Mel's blood dripping into the grate in a very evocative way. Back to the theater. I'm calling this the curtain call.

So Dina, this is like a really interesting end for Dina for the season, right? Because like Tommy and Jesse come in, Dina embraces them. And then while Ellie walks in traumatized yet again, back again for the traumatized. Dina looks distressed. And then later we see her sweaty and feverish. And that's sort of like a wrap on Dina for the season. And I think that's like sort of an interesting ending, non-ending for that character this season. Yeah.

But, you know, we've touched on this, like sort of what Tommy and Ellie are talking about here in the theater. They made their choices. That's all there is to it. That idea of choice again. What responsibility do you have inside of something like this? Abby gets to live. You're able to make your peace with that. Guess I'll have to. That's language. Guess I'll have to is not yes. Guess I'll have to is not yes. Sure isn't. Tommy leaves them alone.

I really like this adaptive choice that he just goes to pack the duffels because inside of the game, he's like really excited to show them this gold necklace that he picked up for Maria. And the tone is off. The tone is off. So they cut that. Yeah. And then we get Jesse and Ellie.

sharing a bit of grace right before Jesse is taken from her forever. Yeah. There's some matching, you know, they, they turn to face each other, but there is like a matching moment where they're both facing out. You know, she's sitting on the edge of the stage. She's sort of looking out. They're both looking out very porch scene evocative. Um,

I really love this message we got, this email we got from our listener, Sophia. I think that's how you pronounce the name. About the moth imagery. This is in reaction to death being the interpretation for the moth imagery. But Sophia had this other interpretation where they wrote, the flame and the moth

is a very common metaphor for love in Indo-Persian poetry and songs, specifically a deep, obsessive, almost self-destructive kind of love. The moth knows that it will be killed by its love for the flame, but it can't help flying straight into the flame anyway. It's a perfect metaphor for both for Joel's burn-the-world-down love for Ellie, for which he's willing to pay any price. It's also a perfect metaphor for Ellie's obsessive revenge quest, as she is pursuing out of her love for Joel, even at the expense of her safety and her soul.

Neither of them had any choice being the people they are other than flying straight into the flame. I kind of love the idea that Ellie's moth can represent both love and death, considering how these concepts are intertwined throughout the show, most notably with Bill and Frank, but also with Henry and Sam, Riley and Ellie, et cetera. This idea of Ellie as a moth. Um, yeah.

I was watching a couple Last of Us lore videos last night as I was putting the notes together. And this one creator kept using the phrase Ellie in the thrall of her vengeance, in the thrall of her violence. So yeah, Craig and Neil have talked about Ellie in violence as this addictive addiction metaphor. Yeah.

you know, getting, taking a hit off of the interaction with Nora and like the, the, the low that comes with it, but the high that comes with it, or like what's, what's the comp and the Owen, the Owen and Mel scene, um,

questionable um but i this idea of it is like a spell or like a flame that she's she is the moth is drawn to and is incapable of turning away from i think is really uh impactful as well um i loved this email thank you so much for sending it what do you want to say about bad babies they're so good what do you want to say about uh jesse and ellie here

You know, I feel grateful that they had this moment, certainly. I mean, Jesse's death is really upsetting. I loved that Ellie had to, like, thank him for the second time in this episode. You know, we have multiple shimmer mentions, multiple I can't die mentions from Jesse. And then, you know, a couple times where Ellie has to say, like, thank you for coming back for me. And...

I thought that, like, on the, if I were out there lost and in trouble, you would set the world on fire to save me front. It was... It's interesting because, like, Jesse did what Ellie chose not to do. He went to save another friend, you know? But the fact that even in doing that and drawing that contrast yet again, he's saying, he's like, it's his version of putting the bracelet on, right? He's like, I give you the gift of saying that I believe in you still. And...

I'm particularly fascinated by the fact that he does that using very Ellie and Joel-esque language, like the language of violence, you know? Set the world on fire to save me. That's what Joel did, right? So this question of, again, you mentioned this earlier when Ellie actively challenges Jesse and would you have done something different? This question of in a story where these parallels and distinctions in behavior and impulse are...

Often kind of nattily entwined in a way that makes it really interesting. This was, I thought, another effective version of that. And the fact that then Jesse has...

We've seen Jesse and Ellie so many times in the snowstorm in episode two, when they hear the walkie talkie activate and they run up to the higher ground here, when they hear the sounds out from the lobby, they don't hesitate. Charge. They charge instantly into action to defend the people that they love. And, you know, it's so sad, obviously for Jesse, it's sad for Jackson. It's of course sad for Dina, like their baby, but,

And for Ellie to have to carry this too when she's already carrying so much and the way that this trail of blood or those mushroom tendrils have spread, the number of people who are hurt or gone. And I think this question of like who feels like they have each person on their ledger is really interesting because like Abby killed Jesse. That's another one for Abby. No question.

Jesse opens that door, runs out, and Abby shoots him in the face without hesitation. But Ellie is going to be the one who carries that. And like, it's another thing that they're sharing then. I just think this is like so upsetting and fascinating. Well, and then for Abby, you know, she's carrying Nora and Owen and Mel, right? Yeah.

The way it's situated both in the game and the show, this idea, like, because Ellie's on the ground and Jesse's on the ground and it's just, we're back with Joel in the lodge again. Yes.

And then here comes Caitlin Deaver, who we have not seen in a while. And we missed her. And a question we were asking ourselves all season in the spoiler section was like, when are we, how, where are we going to end with this? Are we going to end with this show down in the theater? We get a little bit of CODA, which we'll talk about in a second. But like,

How did this return for Caitlin Dever for Abby work for you, Molly Rubin? I mean, it's incredible. She's just the best. So fucking good. I thought that the way that Abby said you when she saw Ellie was so chilling, not only because of the recognition and the then stitching together of all these threads, but because Abby charged in there to do this thing, not knowing who she'd find. Again, it didn't matter. Yeah.

Now it matters more, but it didn't matter. And Ellie's saying, because Tommy is under Abby's gun here. Yeah. And Tommy's like, go, Ellie. Don't worry about me, but she wants to save Tommy, right? So here it is, a chance to save someone. Actually being faced with what it would mean to lose this person. Yeah. And Ellie, incredible performances all around in this scene, right?

Abby says he killed my friends and Ellie says, no, I did. I was looking for you. I didn't mean to hurt them. I didn't mean to hurt them. That's just not true. And it's also what it sounds like when like a child pulls the wings off an insect. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. There is this like regression to a child.

A younger, more like base form where you have to stare in the face what you've done and what it means for you and what it means for the people that you thought you were opposed to and what it means for the people that you loved. All of it. I let you live. I let you live. And you wasted it. Incredible. Like you said, there's a coda coming, which I'm excited to talk about, but incredible. We hear a firing of a gun and we cut to black. Quite a setup.

For season three. Seattle day one again is our coda here. And I just want to explain what we're seeing because I got a confused text from CR. And so... Because he was like, it's called City of Thieves, not Thieves of the City. What's happening here? I know.

That's another photo. That and Tony Dalton are like two of the things that I sent to you. Anyway, Thieves of the City by Ben Davidoff is really good. I'll explain that before I explain what we're doing here. City of Thieves, a book by David Benioff, one of the co-shower runners of Game of Thrones, of course, has been, Neil has said, was an inspiration for The Last of Us Part One. Great book. We've talked about it before. We love that book.

And so they just made a sort of like mock-up reverse of the cover. Thieves of the City by Ben Davidoff. And then they sort of like reversed some of the colors on the cover and stuff like that. Where are we? Okay.

So we're in Soundview Stadium in Seattle. This is a settlement that the WLF have created where we've got crops and wind power and all this other stuff like that. Lumen Field slash Century Link Field to the people in our world, home of the Seattle Seahawks. The iconic signature pointy football-shaped end zone seats, not here in this shot, but they are in the game. Right. Yeah.

When are we? We're three days ago. And that's the key thing. This is not like a flash forward or not even like a way flashback. This is Seattle day one, Seattle day two, Seattle day three are chyrons that we've seen. So when they say Seattle day one here, we're rewinding the tape three days and now we're in Abby's POV. So what happened there?

Like all these little hints that we got of, you know, the surgery at the aquarium or like whatever it is, like what are all the things that happened from Abby's POV is what happens in the game here and what's going to happen in season three. So Caitlin Deaver, if I had to guess, is the main number one on the call sheet star of season three of The Last of Us. I would think so. Yeah. Manny?

Who gives a shit about Manny, but here he is to wake Abby up. Isaac wants you, but not like that, Elise. God. And then he says, it's your funeral if you make him wait. Isaac is a very scary individual. That's just plain and true. Even though he...

Seems to care a lot about Abby. He is a very scary individual. Yeah. And here we go. Here we go again. What a little glimpse of what awaits in season three. Fun. Very, very fun. All right. We're going to do, like we said, we're going to get, we're going to say more things, podcast more, talk, converse in our spring mailbag later this week.

So you've got the Rogue One episode, then we've got the Spring Mailbag later this week, where we will sort of address some of your questions, comments, or concerns about the finale that we may not have gotten to hobbitsanddragons.gmail.com. Now we're going to go into the spoiler section.

You're going to hear the spoiler sound. And that is your cue to leave. This is the most serious spoiler warning since the episode one spoiler warning ahead of Joel's death. Because like anything, I mean, we're not going to spend four hours talking about season three, but like we're going to get into stuff that is coming next season. So leave if you do not want to hear it. Are you gone? Did you go? Okay. No map left behind in the aquarium by Ellie. Yeah.

So is Abby going to say, well, first I start at the music store where your horse is, not that you give a shit. And then I look for the lights that were on. And then I look for lights that were on. So there was the moment where Tommy looks up because there's a loud sound. And then it's like the clap of thunder that kind of masks it. But I'm like, okay, so that's, it's Abby and Lev entering the music store.

Yeah. The same way. But yeah, it's, I felt like a little bit the conversation between Ellie and Jesse about how he found them was to like lay the track for, you can find where Ellie is. Yeah, you can find her where she is. Okay.

Um, Jesse saying skip the apologies to Ellie made me think of Owen telling Abby not to be sorry in one of the flashbacks. I don't know. I was just watching all the aquarium stuff again, and that just struck me. So what did you think of them not explicitly saying at least to this point that Owen is the father? I guess maybe because they didn't show Abby.

Abby learning that information at the beginning, which they do in the game. Yeah. Maybe they want us, the audience, the show watchers to experience it with Abby the way that we do in the game. Interesting. So watch Abby learn that and learn it as Abby learns it. Maybe. Yeah. I don't think they're going to change. There's no way they can change the parentage. It has to be. It has to be Owen's baby. Yeah.

Gotta have Abby and Owen fucking up a storm while Mel is pregnant with his baby. You definitely do. Okay. Bracelet lore. We should say really quickly, there's just a gajillion Reddit threads dedicated to bracelet lore because a lot of people take it. Mallory and I were talking about the end of the game in the spoiler section last week and Mallory's interpretation of whether or not this is a reunion for Ellie and Dina or not.

And, you know, to Neil's point about taking things out of the game, there was a version that was like a bit more explicit and they decided to leave it a bit more open-ended. But one thing that Allie and Dina, true believers, cleave to is this idea that like, so Allie's wearing her bracelet here in Seattle. She does not wear it when she and Dina are like playing house with JJ at the farm. She does not wear it when she goes to Santa Barbara, but she has it back on when she returns to the farm at the end of the game. So the fact that she's got Dina's bracelet back on

to some people says they're definitely going to reunite or they have already reunited or something like that. So, you know, I don't think that's concrete one way or another, but it is information that people have decided to ascribe meaning to. Interesting. One of the things I'm interested in, I mean, we don't know much about this, but with the seeming change of Jesse's family being alive, it's like his mom, you know,

You know, we have the letter from his mom. We have the photo of his mom with Dina and the baby. So we assume that Dina and JJ are with Jesse's family? I think? She's definitely back in Jackson. Yeah. Yeah. So that's really sad that that's not available. Maybe she moves in with Gail. Maybe that's... Lots of room! Maybe.

Maybe that's the spinoff we all deserve. Dina, JJ, and Gail. Can you imagine? What do you want to say about the profit that we haven't already said? You know, I think in general, just with on the Seraphite WLF front, you know, obviously like

Lev and Yara are on our minds throughout this entire episode in a million different ways. He's a fucking kid. Yep, that for sure. The bloody bandages that Ellie comes across in the aquarium from Yara's surgery. When Ellie and Jesse are walking through town, right?

You can just see the Seraphite sky bridges. Like that crane is, that iconic crane is stretched across multiple skyscrapers. So that was really fun, especially in such proximity to the brief conversation about the mural to give us the glimpse of the Seraphite lore and then a glimpse of the way that they are moving about. By the way, that was all really interesting. Abby and I are the same.

it's a no for me for heights. So, um, I would be, I would be dead in an instant. Um, yeah, I think the evidence of your surgery was, was, uh, really, really, uh, a fun, not fun, but you know, uh, super fun to have to suffer off an arm with, uh, yeah, that's,

rotting compounds of truth. And then the conversation that Owen and Mel are having, right, obviously, about, yeah, the trip to Serified Island. It was cool to glimpse just the quick, I mean, cool is horrible, horrifying things happening, but the firebombing and this assault on Haven, and that is such a memorable stretch of the game. Um...

On the Seraphite hanging front, you already mentioned in the non-spoiler section this idea that this was a cut, you know, cut, not a cut scene, but a scene that was cut from the game. But did you think that the woman, the woman, I mean, not to say that all Seraphite women look alike, but they have a look. Got the same. Yeah.

They have a look. But the woman that they cast to play the woman sort of leading the lynching of Ellie here, I think looks very similar to Emily, who's the seraphite that, you know, lynches Abby. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think so. Okay. Anything else? Isaac's fixation on Abby. I mean, I think we were able to talk about this in the non-spoiler section in a way that...

But yeah, I think it's going to be really fascinating to see what flash... Because hopefully we're going to get her dad flashback in season three. But I'm excited and look forward to what was it like for Abby. A bit more of her Isaac interaction as she...

embeds herself in the WLF. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. And obviously also just interesting from the Isaac perspective that he's like in the conversation with Park, you know, we're probably both going to be dead by tomorrow. It's like, correct. I mean, we don't know about Park, but Isaac will be dead. To your point outside of the spoiler section about Dina, just kind of like, you know, not being there. Yeah.

So she can show up and, yeah. Yeah. For sure. And obviously, yeah. Of course, Lev is also bringing an astonishing change to the story. Just outside of frame. Just outside of frame. Just outside of frame. I can't wait. I cannot wait for Lev. I think we did it. We did it. We managed to talk about a lot of this stuff in a sort of talking around it way in the spoiler-free section. I am more excited than ever before about season three. I just got so excited thinking about...

Abby, Caitlin Deaver, getting the whole Owen story, getting all of her dreams for flashbacks, getting prophet lore, getting Seraphite lore. It's so rich and juicy, and I am...

When do we get it? Next two years? I don't know. I don't want to wait. I mean, I want everybody to take the time that's necessary to make a great show, and I have no doubt that they will. But yeah, I need it. And I'm so... You and... We've talked about this. You and Rob have talked about this. I'm so interested to see what they add and include that just never would have even occurred to us. Either...

Characters who were introduced in the story who are not known to us already or continuing to expand a character like Isaac. One of the questions that came up in the presser that another outlet asked was, I'm paraphrasing, but basically like, could we get more...

Joel's backstory. Like we got this one moment with Joel and Javier, like what about all the stuff that he and Tommy did between Sarah and Ellie? They were kind of like, you know, never say never. And like people who are dead are not necessarily gone. Pedro, bring him back. Our little Pascal hit. Sounds great. I support it. I mean, I think it's, it will be, I think it'll be very important to

With love and respect, I think a place that the show could stand to flesh out a bit more is Tommy. Because he's so key to the last chapter of Ellie's big decision later. And I really am going to need a bit more on either...

Tommy and Maria and Benji stuff or, you know, Tommy backstory stuff or something like that to help complete the picture of that interaction. So, but that might be a season four thing. I am unsurprisingly, I'm sure all in on Santa Barbara season four. I think that would be. Do you think how many episodes can they do for Santa Barbara? Six. Four. Four.

Gotta be like a miniseries. Oh, man. Thanks, episodes of Santa Barbara. But like, again, there's so much that, first of all, there's so little we glimpsed about that stretch of the story. You want Rattler lore? Rattler lore, yeah. Okay. Give Mallory her two-part Rattler episode in the final season of The Last of Us. That sounds great. I, you know, I just, I think I just really trust their ability to like expand in ways that are interesting. Yeah.

I trust them, too. I support them in all their endeavors. I just never want something to wear as welcome. No, of course. But I think that's top of mind for them, too. So, yeah. Absolutely. And everything they've, like, all the embellishments that they've made have been very interesting to me. And I think season, I'm just, like, extremely confident in season three. And then season four, I have some questions. But season three, I am like, this is going to crush. Eight episodes for season three. Six for season four.

Five. Let's split the diff. Great. Five. Okay. Thank you to Stephen Allman, Carla Shiroboga, Arjuna Rangkapal, Jomi Adinaron, John Richter for all their work on this podcast. Thank you to Mallory Rubin. Thank you to you, my darling. Thank you to Craig and Neil and their entire team for making this delightful show for us. As we said, we're not done. We'll be back. We can't help ourselves.

So we'll see you for Rogue One with a special guest star. I'm not naming who it is just in case that person falls through and I don't want to embarrass them. And then... People are going to think it's like Diego Luna. It's not Diego Luna or Tony Gilroy. It's someone we work with. It's someone at The Ringer, okay? Thank you for saving me from myself. A pal and colleague from The Ringer. George Lucas will be...

We're introducing our new ghost series and Carrie Fisher will be joining us on the podcast. Okay. So we'll be back for Rogue One watch and also our spring mailbag. And we hope you enjoyed this episode of television, this episode of the podcast and had a wonderful holiday weekend. And we will see you soon. Bye.