TMC
05-28-2025, 12:30 AM
https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-recaps/the-last-of-us-season-2-finale-1235343181/
"In a way, referring to this as the Season Two finale of The Last of Us feels like a misnomer," says Alan Sepinwall. "Yes, it is the final installment that we will be getting this year — or possibly, according to co-creator Neil Druckmann, for more than another year. But it in no way feels like a conclusion to anything, other than this period where Ellie was the series’ primary point-of-view character. There’s a silly cliffhanger where it seems as if Abby has shot and killed Ellie — a classic case of what TV writers refer to as ‘schmuckbait,’ where only someone who knows nothing about storytelling or television would believe what just seemed to happen — and then the story rewinds to the day Ellie and Dina arrived in Seattle, only now we’re following Abby as a member of WLF. The season doesn’t so much end as it just stops, abruptly and somewhat confusingly. This is the inherent risk of splitting your source material across multiple films or TV seasons. When it works, you get the two recent Dune movies, where it felt like Denis Villeneuve needed that much time to properly cover the important material from the book. When it doesn’t, like with the end of the original Hunger Games movie series, it can feel like a naked cash grab, padded out to the point of pleasing only the most hardcore fans. (And not even them sometimes.) At only seven episodes compared to Season One’s nine, this round of The Last of Us doesn’t so much feel padded as incomplete. Yes, serialized dramas are built for stories to bleed from one season into the next. But usually there’s some sense of a clear character and/or story arc for an individual season — whether it’s fully resolved within that season, or comes to an important turning point at the end. This is not that. This is four episodes (minus the opening chapters and the Joel flashback) of Ellie seeking revenge against Abby, and various people suggesting why it might be a bad idea, all leading to a literal bang and then the perspective shift. It feels like we’re getting only half the story, because we are, with no way of knowing how long it will take for the other half to arrive. It’s a deeply unsatisfying way to begin an extended hiatus, regardless of whatever issues may have existed previously."
ALSO:
Despite some effectively brutal twists, the show struggles to tie this disparate run of episodes together (https://www.avclub.com/the-last-of-us-season-2-finale-recap): "Cliffhangers are a TV staple," says Caroline Siede. "Who killed J.R.? How will Picard escape the Borg? Who will Negan smash with his bat? The difference is TV used to operate on a reliable schedule. When the first season of Lost ended with Jack and Locke staring down a hatch, we knew we only had to wait four months to find out what was inside it. And once we did, we’d get 24 episodes to unpack where the story goes from there. Things are different now, however, in an era where we’re lucky to get a new seven-episode season of a prestige genre show every two years. And that production reality was on my mind as the last scene of The Last Of Us’ second-season finale finally revealed the structural gambit that gamers have long known was coming: The reason the show has made a point of labeling Ellie’s time in Seattle is because it’s now going to flashback and revisit those same three days from Abby’s perspective too—building to the moment where she’s holding Ellie at gunpoint on Day Three. The question is: Are we still going to care about all the emotional minutiae of this season in two years?"
Season 2 abandoned the self-contained episodes that made Season 1 so special (https://slate.com/culture/2025/05/the-last-of-us-season-2-finale-ellie-abby.html): "Gone are the self-contained episodes that helped build out the show’s world as more than just two people," says Nadira Goffe. "And it’s not as though this season doesn’t present some good candidates for the self-standing-episode treatment. Take, for example, Isaac, played by the incomparable Jeffrey Wright (who also voiced the character in the game). We first meet Isaac in Episode 4, 'Day One,' with one of the most ruthless character introductions thus far. The episode starts with a flashback to 2018 Seattle, where Isaac is a sergeant for FEDRA, the federal disaster relief agency turned authoritarian government. Within minutes of meeting Isaac, who is disgusted with how FEDRA has abused and disenfranchised the citizenry it’s supposed to be helping, we watch as he defects to the opposition in dramatic fashion, locking his subordinates inside a transport truck after casually tossing in a pair of grenades. Later in the episode, we see Isaac as the cold-blooded leader of that now-dominant resistance group, torturing a captive member of its enemy, a cult known as the Seraphites, for information on where it will strike next. I could spend hours with Wright’s Isaac—in the episode, he delivers a deliciously twisted monologue about wanting a Mauviel pan 'with lid' but having spent almost his entire life being too poor to afford one, a speech he concludes by using a hot Mauviel pan to sear the hand of the Seraphite—but would gladly take just one."
The Last of Us viewers spot a subtle Game of Thrones reference in the Season 2 finale (https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/tv/news/last-of-us-season-2-finale-game-of-thrones-b2758212.html)
Young Mazino breaks down the Season 2 finale (https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/the-last-of-us-young-mazino-jesse-death-1236407228/)
Kaitlyn Dever on Season 3: "Just get ready for what’s to come because it’s going to be crazier" (https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2025-05-25/kaitlyn-dever-the-last-of-us-season-2-finale-abby-season-3)
Co-creators Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin explain their thinking behind Gail, Tommy and Season 2’s ending (https://www.polygon.com/features/601536/last-of-us-season-2-ending-changes-breakdown)
Craig Mazin says "we haven’t even seen the last of a lot of people who are currently dead in the story" (https://www.avclub.com/the-last-of-us-season-3-dead-characters)
Craig Mazin "This show is going to be a different show every season": On ending Season 2 on a cliffhanger, Mazin says (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/the-last-of-us-finale-interview-season-3-ellie-death-1236228546/): “We considered everything. Maybe we should just interlace the stories (of Ellie and Abby)? I just remember saying, ‘Isn’t (switching perspectives) part of the genetics of how this story functions?’ It’s just part of the genetics. Now what it means is we have to take risks as a television show, and HBO is backing us taking risks. But then again, we just did kill Pedro Pascal. Like (HBO) understands that this show is going to be a different show every season, which is a tricky thing to do when you’re a hit show. You keep asking people like, ‘I know you love this, we’re taking it away and giving you this now.'”
Bella Ramsey expects to have a smaller role in Season 3 (https://www.thewrap.com/the-last-of-us-season-2-finale-viewership/): “I haven’t seen any scripts, but yes, I do expect that, says Ramsey. “I think that I’m going to be there, but not a whole bunch. We’ve had conversations about that. I sort of have a rough idea of what it’s going to be, but I can’t tell you.”
The Last of Us Season 2 finale was down 30% from the Season 2 premiere and down 55% from the Season 1 finale (https://www.thewrap.com/the-last-of-us-season-2-finale-viewership/)
"In a way, referring to this as the Season Two finale of The Last of Us feels like a misnomer," says Alan Sepinwall. "Yes, it is the final installment that we will be getting this year — or possibly, according to co-creator Neil Druckmann, for more than another year. But it in no way feels like a conclusion to anything, other than this period where Ellie was the series’ primary point-of-view character. There’s a silly cliffhanger where it seems as if Abby has shot and killed Ellie — a classic case of what TV writers refer to as ‘schmuckbait,’ where only someone who knows nothing about storytelling or television would believe what just seemed to happen — and then the story rewinds to the day Ellie and Dina arrived in Seattle, only now we’re following Abby as a member of WLF. The season doesn’t so much end as it just stops, abruptly and somewhat confusingly. This is the inherent risk of splitting your source material across multiple films or TV seasons. When it works, you get the two recent Dune movies, where it felt like Denis Villeneuve needed that much time to properly cover the important material from the book. When it doesn’t, like with the end of the original Hunger Games movie series, it can feel like a naked cash grab, padded out to the point of pleasing only the most hardcore fans. (And not even them sometimes.) At only seven episodes compared to Season One’s nine, this round of The Last of Us doesn’t so much feel padded as incomplete. Yes, serialized dramas are built for stories to bleed from one season into the next. But usually there’s some sense of a clear character and/or story arc for an individual season — whether it’s fully resolved within that season, or comes to an important turning point at the end. This is not that. This is four episodes (minus the opening chapters and the Joel flashback) of Ellie seeking revenge against Abby, and various people suggesting why it might be a bad idea, all leading to a literal bang and then the perspective shift. It feels like we’re getting only half the story, because we are, with no way of knowing how long it will take for the other half to arrive. It’s a deeply unsatisfying way to begin an extended hiatus, regardless of whatever issues may have existed previously."
ALSO:
Despite some effectively brutal twists, the show struggles to tie this disparate run of episodes together (https://www.avclub.com/the-last-of-us-season-2-finale-recap): "Cliffhangers are a TV staple," says Caroline Siede. "Who killed J.R.? How will Picard escape the Borg? Who will Negan smash with his bat? The difference is TV used to operate on a reliable schedule. When the first season of Lost ended with Jack and Locke staring down a hatch, we knew we only had to wait four months to find out what was inside it. And once we did, we’d get 24 episodes to unpack where the story goes from there. Things are different now, however, in an era where we’re lucky to get a new seven-episode season of a prestige genre show every two years. And that production reality was on my mind as the last scene of The Last Of Us’ second-season finale finally revealed the structural gambit that gamers have long known was coming: The reason the show has made a point of labeling Ellie’s time in Seattle is because it’s now going to flashback and revisit those same three days from Abby’s perspective too—building to the moment where she’s holding Ellie at gunpoint on Day Three. The question is: Are we still going to care about all the emotional minutiae of this season in two years?"
Season 2 abandoned the self-contained episodes that made Season 1 so special (https://slate.com/culture/2025/05/the-last-of-us-season-2-finale-ellie-abby.html): "Gone are the self-contained episodes that helped build out the show’s world as more than just two people," says Nadira Goffe. "And it’s not as though this season doesn’t present some good candidates for the self-standing-episode treatment. Take, for example, Isaac, played by the incomparable Jeffrey Wright (who also voiced the character in the game). We first meet Isaac in Episode 4, 'Day One,' with one of the most ruthless character introductions thus far. The episode starts with a flashback to 2018 Seattle, where Isaac is a sergeant for FEDRA, the federal disaster relief agency turned authoritarian government. Within minutes of meeting Isaac, who is disgusted with how FEDRA has abused and disenfranchised the citizenry it’s supposed to be helping, we watch as he defects to the opposition in dramatic fashion, locking his subordinates inside a transport truck after casually tossing in a pair of grenades. Later in the episode, we see Isaac as the cold-blooded leader of that now-dominant resistance group, torturing a captive member of its enemy, a cult known as the Seraphites, for information on where it will strike next. I could spend hours with Wright’s Isaac—in the episode, he delivers a deliciously twisted monologue about wanting a Mauviel pan 'with lid' but having spent almost his entire life being too poor to afford one, a speech he concludes by using a hot Mauviel pan to sear the hand of the Seraphite—but would gladly take just one."
The Last of Us viewers spot a subtle Game of Thrones reference in the Season 2 finale (https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/tv/news/last-of-us-season-2-finale-game-of-thrones-b2758212.html)
Young Mazino breaks down the Season 2 finale (https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/the-last-of-us-young-mazino-jesse-death-1236407228/)
Kaitlyn Dever on Season 3: "Just get ready for what’s to come because it’s going to be crazier" (https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2025-05-25/kaitlyn-dever-the-last-of-us-season-2-finale-abby-season-3)
Co-creators Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin explain their thinking behind Gail, Tommy and Season 2’s ending (https://www.polygon.com/features/601536/last-of-us-season-2-ending-changes-breakdown)
Craig Mazin says "we haven’t even seen the last of a lot of people who are currently dead in the story" (https://www.avclub.com/the-last-of-us-season-3-dead-characters)
Craig Mazin "This show is going to be a different show every season": On ending Season 2 on a cliffhanger, Mazin says (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/the-last-of-us-finale-interview-season-3-ellie-death-1236228546/): “We considered everything. Maybe we should just interlace the stories (of Ellie and Abby)? I just remember saying, ‘Isn’t (switching perspectives) part of the genetics of how this story functions?’ It’s just part of the genetics. Now what it means is we have to take risks as a television show, and HBO is backing us taking risks. But then again, we just did kill Pedro Pascal. Like (HBO) understands that this show is going to be a different show every season, which is a tricky thing to do when you’re a hit show. You keep asking people like, ‘I know you love this, we’re taking it away and giving you this now.'”
Bella Ramsey expects to have a smaller role in Season 3 (https://www.thewrap.com/the-last-of-us-season-2-finale-viewership/): “I haven’t seen any scripts, but yes, I do expect that, says Ramsey. “I think that I’m going to be there, but not a whole bunch. We’ve had conversations about that. I sort of have a rough idea of what it’s going to be, but I can’t tell you.”
The Last of Us Season 2 finale was down 30% from the Season 2 premiere and down 55% from the Season 1 finale (https://www.thewrap.com/the-last-of-us-season-2-finale-viewership/)