SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for Season 2, Episode 5 of HBO’s “The Last of Us,” now streaming on Max.
Ellie’s (Bella Ramsey) pursuit for revenge after Joel’s (Pedro Pascal) tragic death at the hands of Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) in Episode 2 is taken to a whole new level in the latest episode of “The Last of Us.”
That’s because after Ellie tracks down Nora (Tati Gabrielle), a key member of the Washington Liberation Front who was with Abby when she killed Joel — and tortures Nora for information about Abby’s whereabouts. After cornering Nora with a gun and slamming a piece of pipe into her stomach, Ellie demands: “Where is she?”
It’s a point of no return.
But Joel’s influence is felt in quieter moments throughout the episode. One particularly emotional scene comes early on when Ellie plays a guitar to an empty theater, clearly thinking back to her time with Joel. Director Stephen Williams, who is new to the world of “The Last of Us,” explains that the scene was filmed on location at The Orpheum Theater in Vancouver, and when Ramsey finished singing, everyone on set was simply left “damp eyed.”
“It was such an evocative moment — it’s so sad and filled with longing, yearning and heartbreak as Ellie experiences and relives the brutal murder of Joel in front of her very eyes. It continues to haunt her and finds this incredible expression through her music,” Williams tells Variety. “Bella stepped up, grabbed the instrument and delivered — crushed it. And we just recorded the brilliance that was unfolding in front of us.”
The episode also sees the return of familiar faces, mainly Jesse (Young Mazino), who we learn had trailed behind Ellie and Dina (Isabela Merced) the day after they left for Seattle. Below, Williams explains how Jesse’s well-timed return reminds Ellie of Joel, how he thought about weaving emotional moments between Ellie and Dina with tense action set-pieces and why his approach was to simply “stay out of the way” when directing that tense final confrontation.
The end scene where Ellie confronts Nora about Abby is so intense, with the revelation that Ellie actually knows that Joel killed everyone in the hospital in order to save her. Knowing how important this endnote would be, how did you approach filming it?
So much of how we approach the work on “The Last of Us” comes first and foremost from the richness of Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann’s scripts and, obviously, the characters that are being developed from the game. If Season 1 was dedicated to notions of endurance and survival, Season 2 delves deeper into questions around vengeance and mercy. Executing the climatic scene of Episode 5, where Ellie confronts Nora, really hinges around Ellie’s decision to continue seeking vengeance for everything that Abby and Nora and their crew did to Joel.
Bella Ramsey, in particular, is so stoic at that moment. How did you direct Bella and Tati Gabrielle, who have already developed trust with each other before you creatively became involved with ‘The Last of Us’?
Bella is a force of nature. They are so dialed in and just so brilliantly inhabits the character that there was very little that I had to say to them. I just had to stay out of the way, really. And then Tati, who plays Nora, just did an incredible job throughout the whole episode. They both were so committed to the material and committed to the ways their characters function within everything that had been constructed around the scene. It really was just about creating a safe environment for both of them to execute.
It was a great surprise to see Jesse (Young Mazino) back in action. Since this episode is so focused on Ellie and Dina, having Jesse back really changes the dynamic and energy, so how did you approach his return?
There’s a sort of love triangle that is constantly evolving and fluid between Jesse, Ellie and Dina. When Ellie and Dina set out for Seattle in quest of seeking revenge on Abby and her crew, Jesse belatedly follows and shows up in a very fortuitously timed moment that Ellie and Dina find themselves in with some of the infected. For a moment, as Ellie is saved by Jesse’s timely arrival, it reminds her of the experience that she had on so many different occasions with Joel in Season 1.
The sequence when Jesse returns is a huge set-piece in the basement. Were there any key visual references you had when creating that?
What we start by doing is making sure it’s not just a big action set-piece. We’re anchoring the characters within the context of all the ensuing action. The trick is to never lose sight of the characters that are embroiled in the set. In this case, it’s about Ellie feeling protective of Dina, who is under great duress and Ellie feeling responsible for Dina and desperately trying to make sure they both make it out alive. Obviously, when Jesse arrives, that becomes true of his character as well.
Courtesy of HBO
This episode features the first time that viewers are really seeing the faction of Scars in action after their introduction back in Episode 3. How did you think about the way they move as a pack?
Part of what happens this season is that we start exploring how different factions of humanity react to the extreme circumstances they find themselves in. So the Washington Liberation Front is trying to spin around the axis of a militia, whereas the Seraphites, or the Scars, are reacting to their circumstances by dedicating to a fundamentalist faith. And in our episode, we show some of the extremes that are pursuant to each choice, to a certain interpretation of faith as a way of addressing extreme circumstances. That can sometimes lead to very graphic depictions, which I think many viewers will see in our episode.
And with that opening interrogation scene between two of the WLF leaders, you place a lot of trust in the viewer because it takes a while for us to figure out what’s even happening with the new infection. Was that a difficult choice?
The episode opens on a very mysterious note introducing a new way in which the Cordyceps contagion manages to transmit itself. That takes a while for the audience to catch up to, which they do toward the end of the episode with Nora. But at the beginning, the audience is in the same place as the characters because they have just encountered an airborne form of this mutant infection in a novel way. So I think it’s OK that viewers are temporarily disoriented, until the later revelations about where these airborne spores are being generated and the extent to which they have infested this particular facility in Seattle.
With Ellie and Dina’s dynamic, there was a huge turning point in Episode 4 when Dina tells Ellie that she loves her for the first time. How did you weave in this incredibly intimate relationship while their lives are being threatened so heavily throughout? Their relationship feels like the key to the whole season.
One of the things Craig and Neil do so well in constructing the series is generating these moments of intimacy between characters set against the backdrop of more epic set-pieces. The interplay between those elements gives the narrative an incredibly grounded sense of momentum as we experience, along with our characters, what it would feel like to be in this dire set of circumstances. Life goes on and love goes on and affection goes on and attachment goes on simultaneously with vengeance, revenge, wrath, anger. All these things are part of the complex interconnectivity of the characters.
And finally, that last flash before the credits shows a tender memory of Ellie and Joel. Why was that the right moment for this episode to end on?
Since Episode 2, everything in this season has been about payback, and this incredible stew of emotions that Ellie is experiencing. The loss and the heartbreak and the things left unsaid between her and Joel is the motivating metronome behind all the narrative beats. It felt appropriate for the episode to end in a reverie of Ellie’s recollection of Joel — especially after the intense scene that preceded it. It was the right tonal gear shift.
This interview has been edited and condensed.