Season 2 of The Last of Us opens not with a bang, but with the echo of choices made in blood. From the outset, it makes clear this isn’t about survival anymore—it’s about consequences. Joel’s decision at the end of Season 1 to rescue Ellie from the Firefly hospital, killing dozens in the process and lying to her about it, becomes the narrative engine for everything that follows.
This season confronts the ripple effect of that moment. It doesn’t just ask whether Joel did the right thing—it asks what “right” even means in a world that’s already ended. The show trades the physical road trip of Season 1 for an emotional spiral, and while that shift is bold, it’s also disorienting. Viewers expecting more of the same will be thrown, because Season 2 doesn’t hold your hand.
It shoves you into the dark and dares you to keep walking.
Pedro Pascal’s Joel is quieter this time, more haunted. He’s living with the weight of a lie that both saved and doomed Ellie. You see it in his eyes—he’s afraid of her, afraid for her, and most of all, terrified that she’ll find out. Pascal’s performance is restrained but loaded with guilt, especially in early scenes set in Jackson, Wyoming, where Joel tries to find some version of peace. Bella Ramsey’s Ellie is still raw, still sharp, but something is broken now.
She's angrier, darker.
Her teenage sarcasm has curdled into something brittle. The show tries to sell the passage of five years between seasons, but Ramsey’s portrayal doesn’t quite bridge that emotional gap. Ellie looks older, fights harder, but too often still talks like the kid she was. This matters because the whole season rests on Ellie’s moral collapse. Ramsey is brilliant in grief and confusion, but when the story calls for rage, for real menace, there’s a sense that the performance is playing catch-up with the character.
Enter Abby, played by Kaitlyn Dever, and with her comes the most controversial turn in both the game and the show. Abby’s arrival is immediate and unrelenting. She has a purpose, and it's vengeance. But in adapting her character for TV, the show loses some of the ambiguity that made her compelling in the game. The mystery is gone. We’re given her backstory, her motivations, and even her inner monologue upfront. In The Last of Us Part II, players are forced to reckon with Abby only after hating her for hours.
That structure built empathy by design. Here, the show seems scared we might not “get it,” so it tells us everything. What’s lost is the moral discomfort. The themes—revenge, justice, cycles of violence—are still present, but the adaptation plays it safer, less willing to alienate viewers. As a result, Abby feels less like a person and more like a concept.
Vengeance given a face, but not a soul.
And that brings us to the core theme of Season 2: the cycle. Violence begets violence. Love mutates into obsession. Redemption slips through bloodied hands. These aren’t new ideas, but the show digs in with a bleak intensity. Seattle, where most of the season unfolds, is painted as a city ruled by tribalism and ideology.
The Washington Liberation Front and the Seraphites (also known as Scars) represent opposing ends of the same ruinous spectrum. Militant order versus religious zealotry. But the show doesn’t dive deep into their philosophies or histories. Instead, they become set dressing for Ellie’s descent. This is a missed opportunity, especially since the game used these factions to explore how people cling to meaning after the fall. Still, the setting provides some unforgettable imagery.
Overgrown cities, rotting skyscrapers, and streets littered with the remnants of forgotten wars. Nature is reclaiming the world, but humans keep trying to burn it down again.
Where Season 1 was about connection—how people find each other in ruin—Season 2 is about isolation. Every character is pulling away. Joel and Ellie drift apart under the weight of unspoken truths. Ellie’s relationship with Dina is sweet, believable, and quietly tragic. It’s built on moments of affection that always feel like they’re about to be swallowed by dread. Isabela Merced is luminous. Funny, grounded, emotionally rich. Jesse, played by Young Mazino, adds heart to the early episodes, but like many characters this season, he’s underused.
Catherine O’Hara brings unexpected pathos as Gail, Jackson’s lone therapist. She’s a dry, incisive counterpoint to the show’s otherwise relentless despair. These moments of human connection are fleeting but vital. They remind us what’s at stake, even as the plot pulls us toward more violence, more revenge, more loss.
The storytelling structure of this season is ambitious but uneven. The timeline jumps around. A choice inherited from the game. But here it often feels jarring. Flashbacks interrupt rather than enhance. One episode is almost entirely set in the past. Beautifully performed but placed so awkwardly that it kills the forward momentum. Important character shifts happen in silence, offscreen, or in montage. It’s not that the narrative is confusing. It’s that it’s diluted. With only seven episodes, the show has less time to breathe. Emotional climaxes come too fast or too blunt. A major death happens amid chaos, overshadowed by an epic battle sequence that, while technically dazzling, feels like a tonal mismatch. This isn’t a story about glory. It’s about grief. And that grief gets lost in the noise.
Still, The Last of Us remains an aesthetic powerhouse. The production design is impeccable. Fungal-infected tunnels. Hauntingly empty churches repurposed as military bases. The lighting is especially noteworthy. Tender moments glow with amber warmth. Horror is rendered in deep crimson or flickering firelight. The infected return in greater numbers this season. One jaw-dropping siege stands out as a true high point. But ironically, the more we see them, the less threatening they become. The real monsters, as always, are human.
And the show is clearest in its worldview when it strips away spectacle and lets its characters sit in the aftermath. One quiet scene of Ellie and Dina playing guitar says more about love, loss, and longing than any battle ever could.
Lore-wise, Season 2 expands the universe in smart, subtle ways. Jackson is given more texture. A functioning society with rules, politics, and its own moral rot. We meet characters like Isaac, who is given more depth here than in the game, though not enough to fully land. Religious factions, old world ideologies, and the echoes of FEDRA’s fall all hover at the edges.
The Fireflies are still a phantom presence, and their absence says as much about the world’s decline as their actions ever did. But while the show builds its setting with care, it often forgets to populate it with compelling, multi-dimensional lives. We get bits and pieces. Some stunning guest star turns. But we’re not allowed to linger long enough for these new faces to become more than background noise.
What truly separates The Last of Us from other post-apocalyptic dramas is its refusal to offer catharsis. There are no heroes here. Only people doing what they think is right and dealing with the wreckage. The game made you complicit in this.
The show, for better or worse, makes you a spectator. That distance can be frustrating, especially when the writing veers into over-explaining. Characters articulate their trauma rather than embody it. There’s a lack of trust in the audience’s ability to sit with ambiguity. Part II the game trusted that discomfort. The show tries to manage it. And in managing it, it loses some of its rawest power.
So where does this leave us? With a season that’s bold, brutal, and not entirely successful. A middle chapter with jagged edges and unresolved threads. That might frustrate some, but it also feels true to the spirit of the source material.
The world of The Last of Us was never about clean arcs or tidy conclusions. It was about surviving one more day. Physically. Emotionally. Morally.
And if Season 1 was about what we’ll do for love, Season 2 asks what happens when love turns to hate. When justice becomes vengeance. When the truth you cling to starts to rot. These aren’t questions the show answers yet.
But it knows how to ask them. Loud. Painful. Unforgettable.
