Bella Ramsey Shines As Ellie Starts Acting Her Age

Season 2 of The Last Of Us has been a bit of a mixed bag so far, with some really gripping moments and some odd choices that got the season off to a wobbly start. I’m pleased to say that it’s finally found its footing in the fourth episode. Spoilers ahead.

I’ve had many complaints about the casting in this show and like many others have worried about Bella Ramsey’s ability to play an older, tougher Ellie. The Season 2 premiere really had me worried, though I still blame odd writing choices more than Ramsey. She came off as a weirdly hostile, reckless and obnoxious teenager rather than the older version of the character she ought to be by now.

Well, it appears the writers were doing exactly what I suspected: Making Ellie act that way so that her change following Joel’s death would be more obvious. I still think we could have done without that degree of contrast, but at least we’ve gotten to a point where the show’s version of Ellie is more in line with the game the show is based on.

The scene that really won me over this episode is taken straight from the game. Ellie finds a guitar in a music shop that her and Dina come to, tunes it up and begins playing Take On Me by a-ha. She’s really good, too! It’s a powerful, emotional moment. Dina’s reaction – at first happily listening in before wiping away tears – really nailed the tone down. I’ve often described the video game as overly bleak, but I sometimes forget that it also had these really terrific character moments. Little pockets of beauty to give us a breather from all the horror.

There’s plenty of horror, of course, and one thing I’ve really enjoyed about this season compared to the first is the doubling-down on the sheer number of infected our heroes encounter. The Battle Of Jackson certainly had plenty, and in this episode we get another great, intense scene in the Seattle subway as Ellie and Dina run first from the Wolves and then from a horde of zombies. Ellie ends up saving Dina as they try to push through a jammed turnstyle by thrusting her arm into an infected’s mouth. She’s bitten and, having never revealed her immunity to Dina, this leads to some tense moments where it looks as though Dina might shoot her on the spot.

Ellie is forced to tell her the truth at this point, and when Dina has no choice but to accept it, she makes her own confession: She’s pregnant with Jesse’s baby. We suspected this, of course. She was throwing up a lot and it was pretty obvious that she found a pregnancy test at the beginning of the episode. Now that it’s confirmed, Ellie is understandably worried about her and tells her she doesn’t have to come with her to find Abby. Naturally, Dina declines. They go together or not at all.

The two end up making out after these revelations, and things get pretty hot and bothered. I found this a bit awkward only because Ramsey still looks like she’s fourteen, whereas Isabela Merced looks her age (23). Still, it’s nice to see these two find some happiness and release in such dire straits.

Dire may be putting it mildly. Seattle is at war. The Wolves and the Scars are killing each other left and right. At one point, as the two ride through Seattle they notice some rainbow flags. “Why are there so many rainbows?” Dina asks, since neither of them know the LGBTQ symbolism they represent. “I dunno,” Ellie replies. “Maybe they were all optimists.” Later, when they find a bunch of dead FEDRA soldiers, Ellie quips: “So much for happy proud town.” I got a good chuckle out of that. This is a show that very much needs all the comic relief it can scrape together.

Unfortunately, the factions are also what bother me the most right now. The Wolves are fine. They were a rebel force fighting against FEDRA earlier in the apocalypse and in many ways they’ve become the very thing they once hated. We meet their leader, Isaac – played by Westworld alum Jeffrey Wright – who, we discover, was once a FEDRA commander until he turned on his own men. Later, we see him torturing and interrogating a Scar fanatic, burning his flesh away with hot copper pans. The Scar tells him that they’ll never win, because Wolves are joining the Seraphite cult every day, but no Seraphites ever join the Wolves.

The problem here, for me at least, is that the Scars are just so cartoonish. This was a problem in the game also. They remind me of a Walking Dead group, and that’s not a flattering comparison. They fight with knives and bows and arrows, wear medieval robes and shave their heads. They don’t use electricity or modern technology. I don’t care how fanatical your group is, if you go up against a force with machine guns you’re going to lose. History is littered with such confrontations. In a show that prides itself on realism, the Scars feel wildly out of place. Still, the war provides some extra layers of conflict for our heroes to navigate as they search for Abby.

Speaking of Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) we still haven’t seen her or her pals since Episode 2, and we only have three episodes left. The big question I have is whether we’ll see her at all until the finale, and whether that means Season 3 will follow the same route as the video game. That seems more and more likely given the time we have left in the season.

All told, this was a very strong episode which definitely helped deepen the chemistry and dynamic between the two main characters and gave us some really great zombie action (I know they’re not actually zombies but they may as well be). Dina is no Joel, but at least she’s very likable. The musical moment was by far my favorite and gives me hope that other big musical bits from the game will appear later on in flashbacks.

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