The Last of Us Season 2 Finale Changes the Game In A Brutal Way
Ellie’s Seattle trip has terrifying symmetry.
The Last of Us HBO series often takes advantage of its premium cable privilege to show the truly gruesome parts of the post-apocalyptic world. From Season 1’s portrayal of David, a cannibalistic cult leader, to Season 2 showing Isaac torturing a naked Seraphite with a hot pan and Abby getting brutal revenge on Joel, human cruelty and gore are never shied away from.
But the Season 2 finale reached a new level of bleak storytelling — not with a gorefest or a zombie takedown. Instead, a desperate final act of pleading for mercy instantly becomes the most devastating change from the games.
Warning! Major spoilers for the Season 2 finale of The Last of Us ahead!
In the game, Ellie doesn’t realize Mel is pregnant due to her jacket.
In The Last of Us Part II, when Ellie encounters Owen and a pregnant Mel in the aquarium, she tries to threaten them to get Abby’s location, but Owen catches her off guard and attacks her. Ellie shoots him, only for Mel to attack her with a knife. In self-defense, Ellie turns the knife back against Mel, stabbing her. It’s only as Ellie watches her dying on the floor that she realizes her jacket was hiding a pregnant stomach, something that shocks her as she has just learned about Dina’s pregnancy.
In the series, this is far different. While Owen is still shot by Ellie, the shot also hits Mel, and she slumps to the floor, shocked. In her last moments, she calls over to Ellie, asking if she has a knife. She asks Ellie to cut the baby out of her before she passes away. She tries to coach Ellie through it, asking her to make a “low transverse” cut that is “deeper than you think.”
But Ellie is too flustered to actually make a cut, and Mel spins into delirium, eventually asking if her baby is out yet before she succumbs to her injuries. In one of the saddest moments of the show so far, Ellie moves Mel’s shirt over her pregnant stomach, grieving her unborn child while thinking about Dina’s own pregnancy.
In the game, Mel attacks Ellie and Ellie just defends herself.
The reason behind this change from the game isn’t immediately clear, but it seems like this was done as a way to make Ellie more aware of the lives lost in the wake of her revenge mission. Earlier in that same scene, Owen tells Mel that Ellie will shoot them no matter what they do, but Ellie insists she won’t, because she’s not like them. In the game, Mel’s demise is partially her own fault for attacking Ellie in the first place, but in the show, it’s purely an unfortunate accident.
Mel’s last moments are spent begging Ellie to save at least one innocent life, even if she’s fatally injured, but Ellie’s hesitation keeps her from helping. Much like the plot of Season 2 as a whole, there are so many nuances in motivation and culpability in situations like these, and this brutal scene just proves how even the unborn, like Dina’s child as well as Mel’s, can be affected by her actions.
