The Last of Us S2E03 Review | “The Path”
After Ellie's world is shattered, where does she belong?
[This review contains spoilers for Season 2, Episode 3 of The Last of Us, “The Path.” It does not contain spoilers for the video game The Last of Us: Part II]
One of the reasons The Last of Us currently stands as one of the few successful video game adaptations is that showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann understand the narrative demands of both mediums, and how what a game requires isn’t necessarily what a TV series requires. Understanding this distinction gets us “The Path,” an episode that takes a moment to dwell on our characters’ grief rather than moving them onto the next action-oriented event. By allowing Ellie, Tommy, Dina, and the rest of our characters sit with not only their personal devestation at the loss of Joel, but the impact of the infected’s assault on the community, we get an episode that can stand on its own rather than relying on spectacle or translating a particular moment from the game.
But “The Path” also immediately recognizes the shift in the show now that Pascal is no longer in the cast. After the cold open, it feels like we’re being sold on Ramsey as the true lead, and someone capable of carrying the show without her popular co-star. Wisely, the scenes don’t rely on Ramsey’s dialogue (although she does give a good brush-off to Gail) as much as her facial expressions. Watching the façade drop from Ellie’s face as she exits the hospital or how she quietly breaks down among Joel’s belongings demonstrates how Ramsey can obviously put the show on her back. There’s still an amazing supporting cast around her, but Ramsey does a good job here of displaying the transformation in Ellie’s character without it playing the role like an entirely different person.
Although Ellie is the driving force behind the narrative, “The Path” wisely chooses to expand its canvas beyond a revenge story, even though revenge is at the core of both Ellie and Abby’s motivations. The show uses its broader canvas to ask if revenge is what a community can ordain. The most fascinating scene in the episode comes during a town hall meeting where the council hears a motion to form a posse and execute the WLF members responsible for Joel’s death.
Before Ellie can even make her case, she gets unexpected support from Seth, the bigot who called her a slur at the party and, as a result, got attacked by Joel. In the “Behind the Episode,” Mazin points out that Seth’s actions show that “people are complicated,” but that’s not how I read the scene. Ellie is so consumed with rage that even though she’s made a tidy little case about why going after Joel’s murderers is good for Jackson, she fails to see the troubling implications of having a close ally in Seth, a guy who quickly identifies people as outsiders and then snaps to anger. It’s one of those moments where Ellie should pause and consider what it means to find Seth in her corner, but she’s already made her choice, and there’s no turning back.
Her case that going after Joel’s murderers is not personal justice for her or even Joel, but for the community, is interesting, but it’s a scene that kind of undercuts itself because it has no stakes. It raises interesting questions about the distinction between justice and revenge in a time where there are no firm laws and procedures (even Maria, the former prosecutor, says that the posse is to execute the perpetrators rather than bring them back for a trial), but as narrative, the scene mostly rings hollow because Ellie has already made her choice regardless of how the council decides. The impact isn’t so much about what Ellie will do, but her sense of abandonment by the community.
The notion of community and what we owe to each other under dire circumstances is currently the show’s richest vein of material, and it makes Ellie’s quest far more interesting than mere revenge. What “The Path” shows is that Joel was Ellie’s tether to the world, and while she cares for Dina, Tommy, Jesse, and others in Jackson, she now feels adrift once more, and the council’s decision against forming a posse only confirms her loneliness. These are old tropes of the western genre where our antihero can no longer live in society once they seek frontier justice. Community doesn’t guarantee survival, but it does foster an identity.
We see that clearly with the introduction of the Seraphites, the scarred religious cult walking through the woods outside Seattle. More importantly, our window into the group is through a conversation between a father and daughter. This particular relationship, a motif we’ve seen with Abby and her dad, and the surrogate father-daughter relationship between Joel and Ellie further conveys the validity of different communities who now find themselves at war despite their similarities—a macro conflict personified by the battle between Ellie and Abby. When Ellie comes across the dead bodies of the father and daughter Seraphites near the end of the episode, it symbolizes the death of community because she’s now abandoned Jackson, and also serves as a reminder of losing Joel as well as what she’s lost of herself.
From a plot standpoint, it also informs us that the WLF is ruthless and won’t hesitate to slaughter children. Rather than finding an isolated community akin to raiders, Ellie and Dina have stepped into a preexisting conflict they don’t understand, and Ellie’s bravado is darkly comic in the face of the WLF’s overwhelming physical might. However, I will note that as a closing shot of the episode, the marching WLF troops to show their vast numbers didn’t land because it’s not intimidating in any meaningful way. Ellie and Dina may be wildly outnumbered, but that was already the case with all the Infected roaming around. Furthermore, Ellie has pretty good plot armor by this point (I suppose you could kill her off and make it The Dina and Abby Show, but that feels like a bridge too far), so I don’t see much dramatic weight in these troops.
But it does show yet another kind of community by contrasting the democratic-leaning Jackson to the militaristic/fascist bearing of the WLF. While there is an overarching revenge storyline, “The Path” shows you can hang some interesting ideas on that plot if you pause to look at the wider relationship between the individual and the group. Perhaps Ellie never felt like she fit in Jackson, and losing Joel removed any reason to stay. But as “The Path” shows, once you’re outside the community, you’re in the wild.
Stray observations:
Another great thing about a breather episode like this is you can remove Abby and the Infected and not feel like the show is spinning its wheels. I’m much happier watching character development for Ellie with a strong performance from Ramsey than I am seeing a zombie horde attack.
I’m not sure the writers know what to do with Gail. She was a great counterpoint to Joel in the season premiere, and Catherine O’Hara is a tremendous actor, but now the show doesn’t seem to have any idea what to do with her. She tells Tommy that Ellie is a liar while watching a Little League softball game. Um, thanks?
I like that Ellie’s bloodlust is pushing her away from the peaceful, democratic community of Jackson to the militaristic, authoritarian community of the WLF’s Seattle. It’s a nice way of showing that even though Ellie is now far from home, she’s much closer to a place that reflects her current emotional state.
I feel bad for the corn crop guy whose concerns landed on the same day as “Should We Seek Vengeance for Our Beloved Joel Miller?” That’s just poor agenda timing.
We encourage you to talk about the episode in the comments, but please refrain from video game spoilers. Having played the games should not be a prerequisite for watching the show.
The Last of Us airs Sunday nights at 9pm ET on HBO. Look for recaps of the latest episodes here later the same evening. Matt Goldberg is a film critic who lives and works in Atlanta. If you enjoyed this review, check out his newsletter, Commentary Track.
If nothing else, the closing scene with the WLF platoon just underscores that the council made a wise decision in not sending a posse of sixteen to Washington. Ellie might have plot armor, but the rest of them would've faced a death as certain as the hapless Seraphites.
Why isn’t Ellie better at survival planning? She survived months (a year?) with Joel on their own. She should have some idea what to bring with her. I feel like she should be more emotionally immature but competent rather than mad dumbass.