It was already confirmed that Joel (Pedro Pascal) would return to The Last of Us, based on his appearances in the trailer and, most recently, that flashback scene in Episode 5 where he opened Ellie’s (Bella Ramsey) bedroom door to greet her in the morning. However, the entirety of Season 2, Episode 6 is one long flashback that provides context not only for how Joel and Ellie’s relationship grew but also what caused the fallout in the first place.
Like a wholesome father-daughter story, the events play out every year on Ellie’s birthday as she grows from a teenage girl to a young woman. Joel gets to experience all the things he didn’t with his biological daughter, Sarah (Nico Parker). It was a devastatingly beautiful episode that also reveals what went wrong between them, and the last words Ellie spoke to her father figure.
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The episode takes viewers through every birthday Ellie had while the pair settled in Jackson after the events with the Fireflies. This starts with her 15th birthday and progresses to the events depicted in Episode 1 of Season 2, when Ellie is now 19 years old. She was a sweet, innocent teen before the moodiness and brooding of the pubescent years kicked in, and she started developing a more mature sense of self.
Year after year, Joel goes out of his way to make Ellie feel safe, appreciated, and, most importantly, loved. He has a cake baked for her. He makes thoughtful gifts, like a homemade guitar complete with an etching of one of her drawings, finally giving fans a backstory of where that symbolic guitar came from. She mentioned she wanted to learn how to play, and Joel went out of his way to find parts and restore an old guitar for her. It’s reminiscent of when Sarah took Joel’s old watch to get fixed as a birthday gift in the show’s pilot episode. Beyond cake and gifts, Joel even finds ways to give Ellie birthday experiences.
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The sweetest is when he takes her to a rundown museum he encountered on one of his patrols. There’s a spaceship inside, and he urges her to go inside. In the surrounding displays are uniforms and helmets, and he encourages her to live out every kid’s dream, break the glass, and grab a helmet. Then, he hands her a cassette tape, which he says took him “a mighty effort” to find. It’s audio from a real flight to space. Ellie closes her eyes and fully immerses herself in this once-in-a-lifetime experience. It doesn’t matter that she’s not actually in space. She feels like she is. Joel looks on as Ellie grins from ear to ear with delight. In this moment, she is finally just a kid.
But as the years progress and Ellie starts coming of age, things change, as they often do with teenagers. At 17, Joel ventures into territory with which he’s not familiar. He catches her in her room, partially unclothed, with another young woman. And he’s angry. He doesn’t understand what’s going on, nor Ellie’s sexuality or, as he implies, experimentation. He finds a tattoo on her arm covering up the Cordyceps scar, which she had earlier covered up by a purposeful burn so she could wear T-shirts again. It’s the same one she sports in the present day, and Joel is just as livid as a pre-apocalypse parent would be if they discovered their 17-year-old got a tattoo behind their back. “So, all the teenage s**t all at once, huh?” he asks her, referencing the marijuana cigarette he also finds burning on the table.
Ellie needs her space, and the cracks are already beginning to show in their relationship. They fight all the time. Ellie wants him to go away and just let her be. She tries to move her mattress to the garage in a last-ditch effort to find her own space. Joel relents, but says he’ll fix it up first so it’s an actual, liveable space. She’s now an official brooding teenager demanding to learn to fight, go on patrol, and be on her own to do her own thing. She doesn’t want to be “Joel’s daughter” anymore; she just wants to be Ellie. And it’s breaking his heart.
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Things improve between Joel and Ellie once he sets her up in the garage. She has some independence, and he starts respecting her as a young adult. The relationship is not the same, though. It’s evident that Joel is lonely, missing the little girl she once was.
Two years later, he takes Ellie out on her first patrol as her 19th birthday present, and this is where things go horribly wrong. They find Eugene (Joe Pantoliano), Gail’s (Catherine O’Hara) husband. He has been bitten and begs to be taken back before the infection takes over, so he can say goodbye to his wife. Ellie thinks it’s the right thing to do, but Joel doesn’t. He promises Ellie he’ll oblige, but goes behind her back and kills Eugene. When they take the body back to the community, Joel lies to Gail about what happened, but Ellie jumps in and speaks the truth. This is the moment where she angrily tells Joel, “You swore.”
In this moment, the relationship between Joel and Ellie is fractured, seemingly beyond repair. Their interactions from then on are limited. They don’t spend any social time together or talk about their days. She avoids going on patrol with him, and he tries to talk to her, but she gives one-word responses. It’s heartbreaking, and everyone notices, as Dina (Isabela Merced) points out in the first episode of Season 2.
While what happened with Eugene initially angered Ellie beyond repair, it’s also something else. Just before they went out on that first patrol, Ellie had rehearsed asking Joel about Salt Lake City in her room. She knows something isn’t right about the story he told her five years ago, and she needs to hear the truth.
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It’s revealed in this episode that after the New Year’s Eve party depicted in Episode 1, “Future Days,” Ellie didn’t, in fact, just walk to the garage and ignore Joel on the porch. She went back to talk to him. She reveals that she recognized the look on his face when he swore to her that he would bring Eugene back alive. It was the same look he gave her when he promised what he told her about the Fireflies was true. It was in that moment that she knew her suspicions were right.
With Joel backed into a corner, having to confess to his previous lies or risk losing Ellie forever, he has no choice. Even though Ellie had suspected the truth for some time, only now, after hearing it from Joel, did she feel the weight of guilt. She was the only hope to save humanity, and Joel took that from her.
The final words she speaks to Joel, without knowing they would be the last thing she ever says to him, are heartbreaking. “I don’t think I can forgive you,” she says, “but I’m going to try.” The tears flow as Joel accepts responsibility but admits he would do it all over again if given a second chance. Her reply shows Ellie’s maturity. Ellie is growing up and coming into her own. At least Joel can take solace in the fact that her life will be meaningful in some way, and it was worth saving.
This likely isn’t the last time fans will see Joel. There are plenty more flashback opportunities for the season finale, even potentially in the confirmed Season 3. But the tender moments throughout this brilliantly emotional episode solidify that a deep love between Joel and Ellie grew stronger, even when it didn’t seem like it. Joel lost his daughter in the beginning, but decades later, he gained one, too. Ellie realizes she didn’t just lose a friend; she lost someone who loved her like a daughter. Stream The Last of Us on Max.
