After the visceral brutality of last week’s 'Hey Kiddo', the arrival of episode six, "The Price," might have signaled a moment to catch breath, a narrative pause.
But to mistake this extended flashback for mere respite would be to profoundly misunderstand its devastating purpose. Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann don’t deal in gentle detours.
This episode is a meticulous, soul-baring excavation of the five years that bridged a desperate act of salvation and a savage, irreversible end.
It’s the critical, agonizing history that fuels Ellie’s present torment and a profound, posthumous reckoning for Joel Miller, whose absence has been a raw, gaping wound since his murder in the season’s second episode.
The episode doesn't begin in the uneasy quiet of Jackson but throws us back to Austin, Texas, 1983.
A teenage Joel, already marked by a fierce protective instinct, shields his younger brother Tommy from the consequences of a misstep. Their father, a police officer portrayed with a compelling, weary authority by Tony Dalton (Better Call Saul, Daredevil), confronts Joel not with the overt violence he himself experienced from his own father - a broken jaw for a childhood mistake - but with a shared beer and a stark, resonant truth. "I’m doing a little better than my father did," he tells Joel, his words steeped in the bitter taste of inherited pain.
"And you know, when it’s your turn, I hope you do a little better than me."
This line, a potent addition by the show's creators, isn't just dialogue; it's the thematic marrow of the episode, the generational burden that Joel will carry and ultimately, tragically, pass on.
From this crucial origin point, "The Price" unfolds through a series of Ellie’s birthdays, each a chapter chronicling the complex, evolving, and ultimately fraying bond between her and Joel.
Two months after their arrival in Jackson, for Ellie’s 15th birthday, Joel, in a clumsy but deeply felt attempt to provide normalcy, barters for a cake and painstakingly restores a guitar.
Pedro Pascal imbues Joel with a profound weariness, a man trying to mend himself by mending things for Ellie.
He plays Pearl Jam’s "Future Days," and the lyrics - "If I were ever to lose you, I’d surely lose myself" - land with the weight of an unavoidable, tragic prophecy.
Bella Ramsey’s Ellie, still bearing the fresh pain of deliberately burning her arm to hide her bite mark ("I just really wanted to wear short sleeves again," she admits, a stark revelation of her immunity's isolating burden), offers a guarded, "Well… that didn’t suck."
It’s a fragile moment of connection, quickly overshadowed by unspoken truths.
A year later, for Ellie’s 16th, Joel masterminds a breathtaking surprise: a journey to an abandoned Wyoming museum.
This sequence, a beloved touchstone from The Last of Us Part II game, is rendered with a profound sense of cinematic tenderness. Joel, the quiet architect of this stolen moment of wonder, allows Ellie to experience the awe of an Apollo space capsule, a brief escape from their brutal reality. It's a peak of their shared experience, yet the undercurrents of tension are present:
Ellie’s growing desire for agency (wanting to join patrols), Joel's ingrained protectiveness bordering on control, the sight of fireflies (the insect, not the revolutionary group) stirring a visible, if unarticulated, disquiet in her.
The relationship shows significant strain by Ellie’s 17th birthday. Joel, returning with a cake, discovers Ellie with her friend Cat (Noah Lamanna), in a moment of teenage intimacy and rebellion - getting a tattoo.
Joel’s reaction is one of fumbling, overprotective panic ("This is my house..."), a stark contrast to Ellie’s assertion of her burgeoning independence. Her subsequent move into the garage is not mere teenage defiance but a clear physical demarcation of their growing emotional distance.
Pascal’s portrayal of Joel’s quiet torment is palpable as he helps her, choosing a strained proximity over a complete severing. He understands, on some level, that the lie about Salt Lake City is a festering wound between them.
The full impact of Joel's choices detonates on Ellie’s 19th birthday.
Her first patrol turns into a grim ordeal. They encounter Eugene (a brief, searingly effective performance by Joe Pantoliano (Goonies, The Matrix), bitten and facing certain death.
He pleads to see his wife, Gail (Catherine O'Hara, lending her considerable presence to Jackson's de facto counselor), one last time. Joel, seemingly moved by Ellie’s desperate appeals, agrees, only to send her away and then coldly execute Eugene by a lakeside. Back in Jackson, his calculated, self-serving lie to a grieving Gail about Eugene’s supposed heroism is the final, brutal confirmation of Ellie’s deepest fears.
"You swore," she seethes, and the accusation transcends Eugene. It’s the ghost of Salt Lake City made manifest, the "same fucking look" in Joel's eyes that she remembers from that day. Her trust, already deeply eroded, shatters completely.
This chain of memories, each layered with affection, misunderstanding, and ultimately betrayal, culminates in the episode's devastating final act: the unvarnished, painful confrontation on Joel's porch on New Year's Eve, a scene given even greater depth than in its game counterpart. Ellie, raw and relentless, demands the truth about the Fireflies.
"My life would have fucking mattered!" she cries, the weight of his "salvation" a crushing, unbearable burden.
"You took that from me!"
Joel, stripped of all defenses, confesses everything.
He admits he would do it all again.
"Because I love you," he says, his voice thick with emotion, echoing his own father's words from decades before, "in a way you can’t understand... But if that day should come, if you should ever have one of your own, well then… I hope you do a little better than me."
Which is a fantastic little call back to the opening scene of the episode.
Ellie’s response, a line that lands with the force of an earthquake, given all that has transpired and all that is about to: "I don’t think I can forgive you for this. But I would like to try."
Knowing that Joel will be dead by the next day transforms these words into the most tragic of epitaphs.
This isn't just a scene; it's Joel's true, unsparing eulogy, delivered not at a graveside but in a moment of almost unbearable, fragile hope.
Abby’s actions didn't just end a life; they obliterated that "try," that nascent, precious flicker of reconciliation. This episode doesn't just fill in the narrative gaps; it twists the knife by illuminating the precise nature of the future that was stolen.
"The Price," with Druckmann himself directing, is a stark and unflinching piece of storytelling. It masterfully uses the flashback structure - a signature of the game - to reframe Joel’s actions and motivations through the lens of his pained, often misguided, love.
This makes his absence in the present timeline an even more profound void. The new material, particularly the introduction of Joel's father, isn't mere embellishment; it lays a deeper thematic foundation, exploring the insidious cycles of trauma and the complexities of flawed love.
Pascal and Ramsey deliver performances of shattering honesty, their connection the raw, exposed nerve of this narrative.
This episode is the bleeding, beating heart of Season 2.
It is the key to understanding the ferocious depth of Ellie's rage.
Her quest for vengeance is not fueled by simple grief, but by the agonizing knowledge of that stolen chance for forgiveness, for a healing that was just beginning to seem possible. Joel Miller is gone, but his legacy - a terrible, intricate weave of fierce love, profound selfishness, and the haunting, generational plea to "do better" - now rests entirely on Ellie.
The question that hangs in the desolate air is whether she can, or even wants to, break that devastating cycle.
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