The crucial element of screenwriting severely missed the mark on “The Last of Us” Season 2. (Rotten Tomatoes)

Contains major spoilers for The Last of Us Seasons 1 and 2.

To preface this review, let me begin by saying that I am a massive fan of The Last of Us (TLOU).

I entered this fandom through watching the TV series adaptation of the 2013 video game, and I quickly became enthralled by the overarching themes of survival and learning to love again in the first season of the series. It was poignant, inspiring, and just an incredible piece of television in every aspect. From there, my obsession with the series only grew, as I went back to play Parts I and II of the games to fully immerse myself in the TLOU universe. 

Simply put, watching the first season of the series in 2023 changed my life, and with Season 2 set to release in Spring 2025, I was incredibly excited. 

For those unaware, The Last of Us is set in a world where an infectious fungus, Cordyceps, spreads like wildfire across the planet—inspired by an actual fungus, the mushroom parasitizes an organism’s brain. It takes over the bodily functions, connecting itself to the hive mind of other infected beings (named Clickers). In the series, the outbreak first occurs in 2003, marking the beginning of the apocalypse. 20 years later, the story follows a broken survivor, Joel Miller (Pedro Pascal), as he’s given a mission to traverse across the United States to smuggle a girl to a militia group to create a cure for Cordyceps. This girl is 14-year-old Ellie Williams (Bella Ramsey), the only person known to be immune to the fungi. As they travel on their journey, they form a deep, familial bond that is tested in the many trials they face. At the end of the season, they reach the hospital of the Fireflies (the aforementioned militia), and it’s here that Joel learns that the surgery to make a cure would kill Ellie. He’s faced with a choice—to either allow the Fireflies to make the cure and lose his found daughter, or kill everyone and save her. He chooses the latter, and later lies to Ellie about what really happened in the hospital. 

However, TLOU Part II is a different beast to tackle than the first part of the game. 

In Season 2, Joel and Ellie have found refuge in Jackson, Wyoming, a city that is highly populated and protected from the outside world. Set five years after the events of Season 1, Joel and Ellie have a fragmented relationship due to the lie Joel told Ellie at the end of the last season—the lie that completely shattered any trust Ellie had for Joel. She soon comes to regret her decision to distance herself from him, as Joel is brutally murdered at the beginning of Season 2 by a Washington Liberation Force (WLF) soldier named Abby (Kaitlyn Dever). Abby’s father was the doctor set to operate on Ellie to retrieve a cure in Season 1, but Joel shot him in the head to save her. Hence, Joel’s death was Abby’s revenge. Ellie travels to Seattle to avenge Joel, along with Dina (Isabela Merced), Ellie’s girlfriend, and Jesse (Young Mazino), a close confidant of both Ellie and Dina. The season is centered around Ellie’s quest to avenge Joel, and the theme of how far one is willing to go for love.

In a phrase, most viewers would describe TLOU Season 2 as “not good.”

This critique stems from a variety of factors, including the omnipresent debate over Ellie’s casting and Joel’s death, the fury over show writers altering characters from the game, and the oddly clean clothes most characters in the show wear, despite living in the apocalypse. 

Unfortunately, I agree with most of these factors, but I believe the show’s most central problem in its second season was the completely misinterpreted screenwriting. 

Throughout the season, multiple characters were warped from their original storyline and actions in the game. Although this can sometimes be beneficial—based on the source material—these character decisions ultimately denigrated the quality of the season, significantly lowering the overall audience ratings. While the mainstay actors and crew remained from the critically acclaimed first season, the interpretation of several crucial components, including Ellie’s journey of heartbreak and revenge, botched any hope of a successful sophomore season.

The most egregious mistake made in The Last of Us Season 2 was the poor characterization of Ellie. 

In Part II of the game, Ellie became a practical machine of destruction, murdering anyone or anything that stood in her way of avenging Joel. Although she often acted on instinct first, she didn’t lack common sense. When faced with a confrontation, she would set a trap or make a distraction to ensure she could outwit her opponent. 

However, in the show’s second season, Ellie seemed to forget her central purpose on multiple occasions. Not only that, but she was unable to follow common sense in survival situations. For example, in Episode 5, Ellie and Dina were about to infiltrate the WLF’s main base in Seattle, hoping to find and kill Abby. Before they rushed in, Dina stopped to remind Ellie that they don’t know what they’re going to find in the building, and that Ellie can’t just run in shooting bullets at anything that moves. 

It’s strange that our main character, who learned from Joel over multiple years how to stealthily hunt and read maps, was unable to make this simple distinction for her safety. Although I haven’t lived through a zombie apocalypse, it’s clear that one should scope out the situation first before attacking anyone. 

This continues throughout the season, with Jesse and Dina constantly having to patronize Ellie for making reckless decisions that would undoubtedly get them killed. Ellie would rush into a horde of Clickers or trained soldiers, find herself in immediate danger, and would have to be saved by someone, unable to fight it out on her own due to her dialed-up irresponsibility.

Furthermore, Ramsey stated in most of their press interviews for Season 2 that they underwent months of physical training, including learning Brazilian jiu-jitsu, boxing, and weight training to prepare for Ellie’s fight sequences. However, there were barely any fight sequences at all. 

Behind-the-scenes footage of the season’s last episode shows Ellie and Owen (Spencer Lord), one of Abby’s accomplices, fighting hand-to-hand in the infamous Seattle Aquarium from the game. The clip, only a few seconds long, looks interesting and engaging. It displays Ellie as being physically capable of brawling against trained soldiers. 

This scene didn’t make the final cut. Instead, audiences got Ellie interrupting a conversation between Owen and Mel (Ariela Barer), another one of Abby’s friends, yelling at them to tell her where Abby was. In lieu of a struggle, Ellie ended up shooting Owen and accidentally killing Mel in the process (Mel was standing behind Owen). To make matters worse, Mel revealed that she was pregnant as she was dying. Ellie, realizing what she did, was at a loss and broke down. 

Making Mel’s death an accident and altogether scrapping a crucial fight scene undermined Ellie’s strength and determination and made her weak. Ellie is many things, but weak is not one of them.

Ellie, similar to the first season, is still being treated as a blundering 14-year-old, instead of the hardened, quick-thinking 19-year-old she is supposed to be in Part II. 

And none of this is to say Ramsey is unable to play the part of Ellie. Ramsey, acclaimed for their portrayal of Ellie in Season 1 with an Emmy nomination, did the best they could with the script they were given. They fully showcased Ellie’s rage at the end of Episode 5, displaying a kind of twisted fascination in their eyes while torturing another character for information. Regrettably, they weren’t given the opportunity to exhibit Ellie’s anger throughout the season.

On the contrary, the fault falls on the shoulders of the primary writer of the second season, Craig Mazin. 

Having written five out of the seven episodes on his own, Mazin had primary say over character changes and most of the scenes in the entire season. Although co-creator Neil Druckmann was also a primary figure in adapting Part II for television, Mazin made most of the decisions. This predicament is somewhat similar to Season 1, but instead of Mazin writing mostly on his own, nearly all of the episodes were co-written by the two. 

Now, I understand what direction Mazin and Druckmann were attempting to go with Ellie’s quest. It’s understandable not to have Ellie killing people every five minutes—after all, it’s a TV show, not a video game. Changes have to be made for the medium. Even so, in the entire journey to Seattle, Ellie and Dina encountered no foes. Violence, once the backbone of Part II, was extracted from the season as if the showrunners were afraid casual viewers would be deterred.

Additionally, the writers turned the trek into a fun, adventurous road trip rather than an expedition of hatred. Ellie and Dina always conversed in loud voices with an overall chipper tone, evidently trying to avoid the underlying topic of grief. While these choices are necessary—Ellie and Dina made similar decisions in the game—it became overwhelming. Even when in Seattle, a city crawling with unprecedented amounts of soldiers and religious cults, they weren’t careful. They walked and talked normally in broad daylight, a decision that, in the game, would usually get them killed. 

As for Ellie’s rage, it was only revealed briefly in a few select scenes. Mazin aimed to unveil Ellie’s rage slowly, using Ramsey to maintain her weirdly positive attitude for most of the season, then dropping it at certain points when she was reminded of Joel and his fate. Sometimes, this approach worked, such as in Episode 3, when Ellie is finally released from the hospital three months after Joel’s death. She fakes her way through therapy with an exaggerated performance of health, but as she’s walking down the harshly lit hallway, her expression drops ever so slightly, allowing the audience to see that she is very much not okay. 

In most other situations, this method was ineffective. Instead, it felt like an awful tonal shift from Ellie cheerfully chatting with Dina to all-consuming, vengeful fury in a couple of short scenes. Although she can’t be expected to be angry all the time and lash out at absolutely everything that annoys her, twisting her to be depicted as coping with Joel’s death perfectly fine just doesn’t work. Joel was her everything, and in cutting out gore and emotional devastation, the season subverted Joel’s importance as a character and, in turn, Ellie’s relationship with him.

Character inaccuracies were omnipresent in this season. In addition to Ellie’s faults, the supporting characters had to take on the role of supervisor. In choosing to dumb down Ellie, Mazin wrote Dina and Jesse to be smarter and more capable than her. 

In viewing Ellie as lacking serious emotional maturity—that she would pick up from being raised as an orphan in a military school to watching her loved ones die before her eyes—her relationships with characters her age are skewed. Jesse and Dina almost act as Ellie’s parental figures, catching her at every turn and explaining why she can’t do said action. Ellie lost a sense of equality with her two friends and became more petty as a result. Not to say that Dina and Jesse shouldn’t have been smart and capable, because they should be, but choosing to depict them as smarter than the central character to make Ellie feel incapable was a wild decision. 

Many original game fans were also angered by the alteration of Abby’s physicality. In the game, Abby is extremely muscular. However, Abby in the show is of average physical appearance for a woman in her 20s. Abby’s appearance in the game represented her dedication to getting revenge for her father. It also displayed how consumed she was with the idea of getting revenge, as Ellie should have been for Joel. The showrunners intended for Abby’s strength to lie more in her mental complexity and strength, and while this is admirable, I don’t think it was conveyed well enough in the show. 

Abby was present for five of the seven episodes of Season 2, only having a major presence in Episode 2. She became a more supporting character this season, and viewers never fully experienced more than a few scenes through her point of view. These scenes, often lacking nuance and intrigue with bland dialogue, didn’t help audiences empathize with her. Without a defining trait (in the game, her muscles), Abby felt less intricate as a person. This is unfortunate, because Season 3 is outlined to have Abby take over as the main character and Ellie become the supporting character. Now, most viewers aren’t interested in the continuation of the story. 

Moreover, some of the dialogue’s insipidness could have originated from a major problem facing Hollywood today: second screening. In essence, second screening occurs when a viewer scrolls on their phone or other secondary device while watching a film or TV show only half-heartedly. Afraid to discourage a viewer from shutting off their TV because they can’t comprehend the media enough while scrolling, screenwriters write the story to be less intelligent and nuanced. This may have been a technique Mazin and Druckmann fell victim to this season. 

Basically, many of the season’s problems stemmed from a poorly written script. Not only did the script revamp characters in a way that’s borderline offensive, but it also took away the emotional weight and subtlety at the heart of a story that is complex and moving. The writing felt lazy and grounded in idealism instead of reality, detracting from the overall immersion. A story like TLOU requires definitive acting supported by a devastating script, and one piece cannot work without the other. 

An essential factor in all visual media is hair and makeup, especially in a film or TV show set in a specific period. Through this medium of art, viewers can easily become engrossed in the setting—but only if done correctly.

On female characters this season, several makeup products were obviously used, like mascara, lip gloss, and curling irons. In the apocalypse, it seems realistic to think these materials would be inaccessible.

Therefore, I was baffled to see that many female characters this season looked fairly unblemished. Dina, in every episode, had long, perfectly curled hair that looked as if it had been done by a Dyson Airwrap. I’m well aware that some women have naturally curly hair, so at first, I didn’t think much of it. 

Later in the season, I started to get suspicious when Dina’s hair was never oily, never had dandruff, and never had a curl out of place. Realistically, especially when traveling on horseback for weeks with barely any access to clean water, it’s doubtful that hair would look that perfect. Additionally, even when she was running through Seattle or engaging in combat, Dina always left her hair down, which is a feat that is near impossible to accomplish. 

Speaking from experience, doing any physical activity with hair down makes things much more complicated. Strands of hair constantly blow in one’s face, blurring vision and making life arduous with an extra annoyance to worry about. 

While Dina had flawless hair, Abby was clearly wearing mascara on her eyelashes in the first episode of the season, which didn’t set up the rest of the season well. Commodities like ordinary moisturizer might be available in a town like Jackson, but I didn’t expect to see specific makeup products and hair irons being used in TLOU.

I’m not entirely sure if this next detail was done on purpose, but I noticed that as Ellie’s relationship with Joel deteriorated, her hair became straighter until even her trademark wavy wisps were gone. Throughout the show as a whole, Ellie had always had bouncy, curly hair, designed to represent her whimsy and teenage tendencies. 

As she distanced herself from Joel, her hair began to lose its spark, going slack as if the meaning had been leached out of it. When he died, her hair was still. Empty and cold, displaying that her reason for living was gone. Symbolism with objects always intrigues me, and whether it was intentional or not, I thought this was a delightful detail displaying Ellie’s inner turmoil. 

With that being said, there were still plenty of positives I found in the second season. 

The cast was outstanding. With what they were given to work with, I think everyone did an incredible job. Ramsey and Pascal were the standouts for me (as always), but Merced, Mazino, Dever, and Jeffrey Wright as Isaac, a terrifying WLF commander, also matched each other’s technical brilliance. Their performances were chilling, grounding, and sometimes heart-wrenching, often in Pascal’s case. 

One scene in particular stood out to me when thinking about the acting in this season. As the season’s climactic scene, it’s easy to see why it was so brilliant. This scene is, of course, Joel’s death. When Ellie finds Joel, bloody and broken, on the floor of a mountain lodge being tortured by Abby, she immediately begins fighting against Abby’s friends to reach Joel, but is unsuccessful. She screams Joel’s name and demands that he get up, and although he’s an inch away from death, he tries to lift himself. Ellie stops pleading for a split second, and her eyes widen with gut-wrenching hope. But Abby finishes the job with a single blow, and Ramsey’s screams and look of loss on their face is an image I will never forget. 

I remember the first time I watched this scene; tears streamed down my cheeks incessantly, and I was inconsolable for a good four hours after viewing. 

I felt similarly about the entirety of Episode 6. This episode was the only one out of all seven that I had no complaints about. I’ve rewatched it three times over since its premiere on May 18, and I still believe it’s perfect. The saturation of the flashback scenes to Ellie’s birthdays was so fitting for the joy radiating off the screen, and I loved how the color of the lighting changed when Ellie began to mature. 

Most of all, this episode was so full of love and understanding, even when Ellie and Joel began to disagree. The last scene on the porch was stunning. I have no words to describe how perfectly adapted it was. Ramsey and Pascal created TV magic in that scene, and as Ramsey describes in their cover story for TheWrap, “That porch scene was the most emotionally raw and intimate scene that I’ve ever been a part of. In the experience of actually filming it, it did feel like it was just me and Pedro, Ellie and Joel, on the porch together. The studio didn’t exist, the crew didn’t exist, the cameras didn’t exist. Those moments are quite rare. You always have some awareness of, like, the camera or the boom operator or something. But there was some magic that happened during that scene where it was just me and him on that porch, in that space having that conversation.”

In addition to the Emmy-level acting, the production design, action sequences, practical effects, score, and cinematography were also spectacular. Each aspect mentioned above elevated each scene, from Clickers being blown to shreds with real fire to the band playing during the New Year’s Eve party. 

The Last of Us Season 2 is, as almost everyone says, “not good,” mainly because of the terrible writing in most of the episodes. Some elements were introduced but not fully expanded on that I would’ve liked to have explored more, such as the smart Clickers and the Cordyceps tendrils spreading through Jackson in the plumbing. 

Even so, the season did have its saving graces, predominantly from its lead actor: Ramsey. They have a certain talent for acting with their eyes that’s extremely difficult to pull off, but they execute it exceptionally well. The season was carried by the talent of all of its actors, but couldn’t redeem itself with devoted fans. On Rotten Tomatoes, Season 2 has a 92% with critics, but a 37% with audience—evidence of fan dissatisfaction. I in no way think the season was that bad; however, I do hope Mazin and Druckmann reconsider the upcoming structure of Season 3 and listen to respectful critiques from fans that deserve to see a soulful story given its flowers.