For most of the video game of The Last of Us, players play as Joel. But there’s a chunk of gameplay in which the action switches to Ellie’s point of view, and that’s where we land at the start of this week’s episode.
While Joel is down for the count, courtesy of the wound he sustained at the end of Episode 6, the series employs a flashback that’ll be familiar to those who’ve played Left Behind, the downloadable content (aka enhancement game) that serves as a corollary to the video game on which the show is based. We get a peek at Ellie’s time at the FEDRA school. We meet her best friend, Riley, who was referenced at the start of the series. We watch a tender story about love and loss play out against the backdrop of a post-apocalyptic teenage dream. And if you’re among the viewers who had a hard time with Episode 3 because Bill and Frank were gay: Ellie is queer. Get over it.
Read on for the highlights of “Left Behind,” then check out what director Liza Johnson had to say about crafting the sweet, sad hour.
‘GO TO TOMMY’ | Ellie drags Joel to an abandoned house and gets him set up on a mattress on the basement floor. He’s awake but doing very badly, burning up with fever and writhing in pain as she presses on his wound to stop the bleeding. He begs her to go north — “Go to Tommy” — and grabs her roughly by the coat to drive home his point. She uses colorful language to tell him she doesn’t agree with his plan. But then pushes at her with what’s left of his might, which sends her toppling backward, and she doesn’t say anything more as she covers him with his coat and then walks upstairs. Joel cries a little as she goes, which at first I interpreted as, “Damn, this hurts and everything is awful and maybe I’m dying?” but I’ve come to see as, “She listened to me and is leaving and I love her and now I’m truly alone (and still probably dying).”
MEET RILEY | The action then swiftly switches to a flashback to Ellie’s time at the FEDRA school. After El beats up a girl who steals her Walkman and teases her about “your friend” who isn’t there anymore, she winds up in Capt. Kwong’s office. He notes that she has been put in solitary confinement three times, but it doesn’t seem to have changed her outlook on following rules. So he calmly outlines two futures for her after school: life as a FEDRA officer, and life as a non-officer. The former is brighter. “There’s a leader in you, and one day, it could be your turn,” he says. She seems surprised by the vote of confidence.
Just before 2 the next morning, someone sneaks into Ellie’s room via the window and puts a hand over her mouth: It’s Riley, Ellie’s best friend (played by Euphoria’s Storm Reid). Riley ran away three weeks before without a word. “I joined the Fireflies,” she announces, proving it by showing Ellie her gun. She invites El to come with her for a few hours “and have the best night of your life.” Ellie protests… but then gets dressed and follows Riley out the window.
LET’S GO TO THE MALL | Their evening brings them to the seventh floor of a building where Riley is surprised to find the corpse of a man who overdosed on pills and alcohol; “This guy wasn’t here yesterday,” she says rather nonchalantly, given the situation. The floor beneath him gives way, dropping him several floors and scaring the stuffing outta me. When the girls recover from the surprise, they grab the bottle and head to the roof to drink the dead man’s booze.
As they swig and chat, we learn that: Riley’s parents are dead, the Fireflies recruited her one night when she’d snuck out of the dorm, and it happened while Ellie was in “the hole” (aka solitary). With Kwong’s comments in her mind, Ellie sticks up for FEDRA, saying that the agency “kind of holds everything together.” But Riley doesn’t want to argue, so she leaps to the next building and announces that they’re on a mission. Riley follows.
They arrive at a shopping center, but Ellie balks, saying that it’s sealed off because it’s full of infected. But Riley explains that it’s not — and it now has electricity again, because FEDRA connected a nearby block and the mall benefitted. “Tonight, I’m going to show you the four wonders of the mall!” Riley proudly announces as Ellie is dazzled by the lit-up storefronts and the suddenly-moving escalators. (Aw, did you see the poster for Dawn of the Wolf: Part II on the movie theater’s marquee?)
Some stores are looted, others not. The Victoria’s Secret, for instance, is still well-stocked. Riley talks about how uncomfortable the bras and such look, and she laughs as she imagines Ellie wearing them. But after Riley walks on, Ellie looks at her reflection in the lingerie shop’s window and fixes her hair a little. Aw, sweet kiddo, your life has been so hard — and it’s about to get harder — and it’s so easy to forget that you’re still a girl. Scenes like this little interlude are good reminders.
THE FUNGUS IN THE FANTASY | Riley has Ellie close her eyes so she can lead her, hand in hand, to the next surprise: the mall’s carousel, which still runs. Ellie is beside herself, and her eyes go even wider when Riley turns the thing on. They climb on side-by-side horses and ride, passing the bottle back and forth, until the carousel grinds to a halt. Riley is about to dismount and fix it when Ellie stops her with a plea: Come back to the FEDRA school and help Ellie make things better from the inside.
Riley won’t do it. She turns 17 in the coming month, which is when you get your post-school assignment; she already knows was put on the sewage detail. “Standing guard while people shovel s–t. That’s what they think of me,” she says ruefully, explaining that she panicked and ran. Ellie is sympathetic, but she makes a point of adding, “I would’ve gotten it back then, too, you know.” Riley earnestly says Ellie is the one thing she misses, then asks if Ellie is ready for the next three wonders. “I’m on a magic horse with a million lights,” she replies. “I don’t know how it’s supposed to get better.”
They take photos in a photo booth, and Riley gives Ellie the strip afterward. Riley blows Ellie’s mind anew with the arcade, which is fully operational, and they play Mortal Kombat II… unaware that a few stores away, a very fungus’d-up person wakes after feeling the vibrations of their movements via tendril. And finally, in a kitchen behind the food court, Riley gives Ellie a gift: No Pun Intended: Volume Too. They giggle at some of the entries, and I write “THIS IS SO PURE” in my notes, but it all comes to an abrupt halt when Ellie sees a pile of pipe bombs in the corner and quickly ascertains that Riley made them “to kill soldiers” — but Riley swears she’d never let the Fireflies use the explosives on Ellie. “And you think they’re going to listen to you?” Ellie spits back incredulously.
The heartache continues. When Ellie makes to leave, Riley runs after her, blurting out that she’s being sent to a post in the Atlanta Quarantine Zone the next day. “I asked if you could join so we could go together,” she adds, but Marlene said no. Riley planned the whole evening “because I wanted to see you… and I wanted to say goodbye,” she says, teary. By this point, Ellie is teary, too. Eventually, they wind up in a Halloween store, which Riley softly points out is the last wonder on her list.
Riley tries to explain why she wants to be a Firefly: “They chose me. I matter to them. Ellie looks hurt. “You matter to me first,” she says, but she adds that she forgives Riley and she’ll miss her. With things eased a bit, they both don giant masks and dance to a cover of “I Got You Babe,” but it’s all too much for Ellie. “Don’t go,” she whispers as she takes off her mask. “OK,” Riley responds. Then Ellie kisses her (my heart!) and immediately apologizes. “For what?” Riley wonders, and they both giggle nervously. Ellie wonders what they’ll do next. “We’re gonna figure it out,” Riley whispers back. And um, you might wanna get on that, ladies, because there’s a clicker coming straight for you, and he’s quite clear on his plan.
‘WE DON’T QUIT’ | Riley shoots the infected, which buys them about a second to run. Goodness, that thing is FAST, and it jumps Riley from behind. Then it get Ellie, who stabs it repeatedly, but the cuts don’t seem to slow it down at all. It’s on top of her when Riley, who’s come back to herself after that first attack, hits it with a baseball bat, stunning it for the nanosecond it takes for Ellie to gouge it in the head with her knife. “Holy s—t!” she cries in triumph, but Riley is just looking at her friend’s arm, ashen: Ellie has been bitten. As Ellie screams in horror, Riley quietly cries and holds up her hand: She’s been bitten, too.
Ellie breaks a lot of stuff in anger while Riley sits on the Halloween store’s floor with her back against the sales counter. They decide there are two possible ways to go: kill themselves with the gun, or just wait it out until the Cordyceps takes over. “We don’t quit,” Riley decides. “Whether it’s two minutes or two days, we don’t give that up. I don’t want to give that up.” She takes Ellie’s hand, and they’re both crying as Ellie puts her head on her friend’s shoulder and Riley pulls her in for a tight embrace.
SEW WHAT?! | We don’t witness how the girls’ time together actually ends. We know, of course, that Ellie survives; the bite on her arm is the one we’ve seen, healed-over, several times since the show began. But the next thing we see is Ellie in the present, ransacking the house’s kitchen for anything to help Joel… and she miraculously finds something.
She returns downstairs, kneels near him and holds his hand; he looks at her intently and then squeezes hers back. (GUYS. This episode has been a LOT, and Angry Dad and Wonder Kid’s bloody hand hug is apparently my tipping point: I’m a mess.) Turns out, Ellie found a needle and thread in a drawer. So while Joel groans in pain, she pulls up his shirt and gets to work sewing up his wound.
Now it’s your turn. What did you think of the episode? Sound off in the comments!
The Last of Us Reveals Ellie's Tender First Love — and Loss — in Left Behind Flashback Episode: Read Recap - TVLine
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