'The Last of Us' S2E06 Review | "The Price"
"I hope you do a little better than me."
[This review contains spoilers for Season 2, Episode 6 of The Last of Us, “The Price.” It does not contain spoilers for the video game The Last of Us: Part II]
“What is the cost of lies?” This is the question that bookends Craig Mazin’s previous HBO series, Chernobyl. In the framework of that show, lies led to the deaths of thousands of people, and arguably the dissolution of the Soviet Union. A nation tried to prop itself up with pleasing fantasies to maintain its power. The cost of lies also factors into The Last of Us, and while there are no more nations to dissolve in this post-apocalyptic wasteland, Mazin knows that a fantasy can’t last forever. There is a cost to lies, and that’s how we get an episode titled, “The Price.”
The penultimate episode of Season 2 is a series of flashbacks, starting the story two months after Joel and Ellie’s arrival in Jackson, and then moving forward one year or two with Ellie’s birthday serving as the demarcation of time. The first two years of their lives are what Joel bought with his lie: domestic bliss. He fed Ellie an elaborate fiction around the events in Utah, and now he gets a second chance to play father. The episode’s cold open involving Joel and Tommy’s father is a particularly inspired touch because it provides further insight into how Joel, despite not being physically abusive to Ellie, carries the same kind of flawed logic—I’m not as bad as my dad, therefore I am better. But even in the moment when Joel’s father recounts being abused by his father, the explanation sounds ridiculous. “I never hit you as hard as he hit me,” is cold comfort to the one receiving the blow.
Joel would never lay a hand on Ellie, and we shouldn’t throw around the term “abuse” lightly. I would not say that Joel abused Ellie by lying to her, but he did lasting harm because he thought his lie was being protective, just as I’m sure Joel’s father thought he could protect his children from the world if he beat that into them. But this approach only focuses the resentment into a single point, and we see the growth of that resentment over the years as Ellie grows up. Joel, in his subconscious desire to build Ellie’s identity around being a surrogate daughter, ends up denying her the chance to forge an identity based on the truth of their relationship. He didn’t want to lose her, and so he came up with a comforting lie instead.
Mazin, a veteran storyteller, isn’t immune to the power of fiction, and as Joel and Ellie’s trip to the science museum shows, stories transport us. When Ellie “blasts off,” she’s engaging a fiction within a fiction. She imagines herself leaving the Earth’s orbit, becoming an astronaut in a world that likely won’t see astronauts again for centuries. That fantasy exists within Joel’s, where he’s just a dad taking his nerdy daughter to a museum. Sure, in this museum you get to break into the displays and wear the helmets, but it’s still a semblance of normalcy that Joel craves. He knows Ellie isn’t a replacement for Sarah, his daughter who died when the outbreak began, but the relationship he forged with Ellie allowed him to become a father again. And when your “real” world consists of zombie patrols and the potential of losing a loved one every day because you can’t lose sight of survival, perhaps there’s something to be said for escapism — for leaving the world behind even if it’s only in your imagination.
But there is a cost of lies, and Ellie isn’t stupid. The fierceness of her character and her no-bullshit mentality won’t allow her to maintain a pleasant fiction even if revelation causes pain, and we see that play out when Joel and Ellie come across Eugene (Joe Pantoliano). An infected recently bit Eugene, but he hasn’t turned yet. Ellie believes there’s time to get him back to Jackson, where he can say farewell to Gail face-to-face. Joel reluctantly agrees and tells Ellie to go on ahead. However, Joel then takes Eugene to a lakeside and stresses that there’s no way he can take the risk of bringing Eugene back to Jackson. He tells Eugene he’ll pass on any message to Gail, but Eugene shouts back that what he needed was to see his wife’s face one last time. It’s a clarifying moment where we see how Joel can only center himself and make himself the conduit of this relationship. He’s here to take action rather than be a passive observer in the final moments between a husband and wife.
Joel kills Eugene and then tries to tell Gail a comforting fiction. An appalled Ellie won’t let that stand, and relates what actually happened. It’s a massive fissure in Ellie and Joel’s relationship, not only because Ellie can see how Joel lies to cover up his transgressions in the name of consoling others, but she’s now certain he lied about Utah. She may not have all the details, but the last few years were built on lies, and what kind of relationship is that? It’s not a mistake that the flashbacks we see take Ellie from a teenager to a young adult. She can no longer be infantilized with pleasing fictions; being treated like an adult means being trusted with hard truths.
But the truth of what happened in Utah is not the only truth revealed at the episode’s climax. That truth is useful for the plot, but what Joel and Ellie take away from his confession is far more revelatory. For Joel, there’s the slow realization that he has become his father. He’s not physically abusive to his child, but now as a parent, he comes to see that you make damning mistakes, not because you’re cruel, but because sometimes you love a person so deeply it causes you to be selfish. Joel came to grips with the truth that “I saved her,” was not an act of herosim (it’s telling that his fiction to Ellie presents him as a rescuer), but a willingness to damn the world out of how much he loved her.
Because, as much as the world has changed since Joel was a kid, he has come to a place that parents typically arrive at no matter the era: I am an imperfect person, and my child knows it. Any parent who remotely tries to raise their child will inevitably screw up, and perhaps on a long enough timeline, there can be time to repair what’s been broken, and for a child to see their parent as a flawed person acting out of love. That doesn’t mean automatic forgiveness or absolution, but it does mean the chance to perhaps have a stronger relationship by addressing the broken parts.
Except that’s the hard truth Ellie learns. “The Price” doesn’t end with Joel’s confession at the house. It ends with Ellie alone in the rain. She never got a chance to repair her relationship with Joel. He wasn’t honest with her, and she was too hurt to try and reach back out until it was (unbeknownst to both) too late in his life. In their last conversation, he repeats the line his father told him: “I hope you do a little better than me.” Joel thought he might be able to buy Ellie a better future with a comforting lie. But lies have a cost, and it’s not only the person who tells them who has to pay.
Stray observations:
Pedro Pascal presents a problem for The Last of Us in that he’s too good. He’s an incredible actor at the top of his game, and it’s not an unfair criticism to say that the show is weaker without him. I would only counter that bringing Joel back for this episode serves to further emphasize Ellie’s loss and grief. In “The Price,” we see a condensed arc of domestic bliss to bitter fracture to unrealized reconciliation. Pascal excels at all of it, but the texture and layers he brings to Joel make us miss not just the actor, but the character.
I was wondering if we would ever get to see an actor play Eugene, and The Last of Us did not disappoint by bringing in Joe Pantoliano to hit it out of the park. Eugene is probably in this episode for less than 15 minutes, but what Pantoliano does in his brief scenes is fantastic. Fill your guest roles with veteran character actors, and you’ll rarely go astray.
“You don’t own anything!” is a perfect sentiment for Ellie to shout at Joel. It not only shows how Ellie refuses to be a part of Joel’s fantasy of domestic bliss, but also how this entire world is built on scavenging. No one owns anything in this world. It’s only what you can take and hold onto.
“Is there a ‘The Doctor Is In’ sign on me like fucking Lucy from Peanuts?”
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.