We’re now headed into the home straight of The Last Of Us, and while we were fully furnished with Joel (Pedro Pascal’s) pre-Cordyceps apocalypse story (including the gut-wrenching death of his only daughter, Sarah) from episode one, Ellie’s backstory has never fully been explained.
Episode seven finally let us in to the trauma that Joel’s wise-cracking teenage partner has been repressing, and it’s no wonder she’s turned to a compendium of puns for lols, as if she doesn’t laugh, she’ll collapse onto the ground screaming into the abyss of her life.
Anyway… with Joel – perhaps mortally? – injured, and as Ellie goes off to try and find some medical help for him, the viewer gets treated to a flashback.
Ellie’s backstory
We start at a time shortly before Ellie is taken hostage by the Fireflies’ Marlene, and is paired up with Joel and Tess.
Ellie is at FEDRA military school in the Boston QZ and things are not going well for her. Even though there’s been a mutant fungus pandemic with zombie-esque monsters making short work of poleaxing the population, high school’s still gonna high school and Ellie’s targeted by the onsite Mean Girl, Bethany, who taunts her about her missing friend, so Ellie lamps her one.
She’s sent to the headteacher’s office to discuss her “attitude” and Captain Kwong attempts to lay out the life junction she’s at: play ball, clean up her act and she too can be a high-ranking officer like him, or continue on the path she’s on and end up as a pleb doing “shit jobs” until the end of time. She – grudgingly – agrees, although it’s more than likely it’s just to get him off her back.
When Ellie heads back to her dorm room, there’s an intruder: and it’s her missing friend, Riley (Storm Reid, last seen as Gia, Rue’s sister in Euphoria). She’s not dead, as Ellie presumed, but instead she’s joined the Fireflies. While Ellie and Riley debate whether it’s better to side with FEDRA or the Fireflies – Ellie is clearly conflicted, as all she’s ever known is FEDRA – their politics is put to the side as Riley offers to show Ellie a surprise that will make up the “best night of your life.”
It’s an abandoned shopping mall, and the pair are delighted by all the spectacle of the high-towers of consumerism. As they play in the video game arcade, on the carousel and on the escalator, which Ellie is particularly taken with, it’s plain to see that not only are the two girls best friends, but they’re each other's first loves.
However, things take a turn for the worst when Ellie discovers the Fireflies’ bombs, and when Riley tells her she’s being posted out to Atlanta the next day. Ellie thinks it was a set up to recruit her, and storms off, but when she hears screams, she returns. Not Riley, as it turns out, just an ancient Halloween decoration. The pair make up, have a little dance about wearing masks to an excellent Etta James cover of I Got You Babe, and finally – as we sense this has been a long time in the coming – they kiss. Even better, Riley says she’ll stay, and not leave with the Fireflies. And they lived happily ever after!
Except, obviously not. After all, this is The Last Of Us, where all happiness comes to die, and wouldn’t you know it but a fungus-head beast is just around the corner and bites both Ellie and Riley. Ellie, as we know, is immune, but Riley isn’t. They know how this plays out, and after agreeing not to shoot themselves, they decide to wait it out together in the mall until it takes hold, whether that’s “two minutes or two days.” It ends with the girls sobbing in each other's arms, and the inevitable takes hold of Riley.
In episode four, Ellie tells Joel that the Kansas bandit wasn’t the first person she’d killed. Now it looks like we have the real story behind that statement.
The Last Of Us continues weekly on Sky Atlantic and NOW TV.
