REVIEW: ‘The Last of Us’ Season 2 Episode 6 — “The Price”

I’m going to be honest, y’all: by this point, before The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 6, I’d all but given up on this show. This season of television has been rough at worst and middling at best. But with episode 6, appropriately titled “The Price,” The Last of Us Season 2 has finally started to resemble a television show again—not a television show masquerading as a video game.

But even The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 6, which was much, much better than what we’ve been served in the last few weeks, couldn’t avoid the flaws plaguing every episode of this season. I’m concerned this may be the peak of what we’re going to get from here on in, and y’all, if it is, that doesn’t bode well. Let’s get into it.

Showrunner Craig Mazin loves flashbacks, doesn’t he? There’s an old saying that if you ever become comfortable with a writing technique, you’ve probably outgrown it, but there ain’t nobody on God’s green Earth who’s comfortable with a flashback the way Mazin is. I mean, seriously, how many have we had this season? And they always play out the same way.

We’re going to get a short, small scene between a couple of characters that’s going to set up a big reveal or emotional moment, generally at the end of the episode, but sometimes later on, then jump to the main plot, where we’ll eventually see how it plays out. You can only use the same trick so many times before we can start to see how the magic’s done, Craig, and by now, I’m almost able to set my watch by these flashbacks. That ain’t great, people.

Craig Mazin’s big narrative trick has run stale in The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 6.

This time, we start with a young Joel (Andrew Diaz) and Tommy (David Miranda) in 1983, before anybody knew what the word cordyceps meant, what a Clicker was, or a single bloody thing about Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Tommy’s scared. He knows he’s gonna “get the belt” when their old man gets home, but Joel tells him it’ll be all right. If their dad’s gonna hit anybody, it’s gonna be him.

When their dad, Javier (Tony Dalton), arrives, he doesn’t waste time. He’s a cop (at least the show’s sticking to the whole ACAB thing), and has half an hour before he has to be back on patrol. Joel tells him he got into a fight with a dealer over some weed, but his dad ain’t buying what he’s selling.

Their dad knows Tommy was the one buying drugs, and Joel beat the guy up. Joel tells him he’s not laying a hand on Tommy, regardless, and his dad does something strange. He gets up, gets two beers out of the fridge, and hands one to his son before sitting down at their kitchen table and telling him about the time Joel’s grandfather caught him stealing a candy bar and broke his jaw.

Joel doesn’t get it. Why would anybody who’d endured abuse at the hands of his father pass that onto his sons? But his dad tells him that isn’t the point.

Yes, he’s hit Joel and Tommy, and maybe he’s gone too far. With tears in his eyes, Joel’s father explains that he’s never hit them that hard. He’s doing a little better than his father did, and he hopes that when Joel has kids, he’ll do a little better than he did. The only hand he lays on Joel that night is the one he puts on his shoulder before heading back out the front door—cue title sequence.

I’m going to be honest with you, reader. I hate this scene. I hate it right down to my bones. Yes, it does a couple of interesting things. We get to see that Joel’s been putting himself between the people he loves and harm’s way for a long time, even if that means lying. Plus, we get a better idea of why Tommy (Gabriel Luna) reveres his brother. But everything else about this sucks.

First of all, it’s excessively sentimental. It’s schmaltzy; I don’t want to hear an abuser justify why not breaking his kid’s jaw makes him a better man than his daddy was. I especially don’t need his tears when he does it, and Young Joel calls him on it immediately.

This scene also gives Joel an excuse for the things that he has done. Hurt people hurt people, right? But at least you’re not as bad as your granddaddy was to your daddy, Joel. And since you were better to Ellie than your cop father was to you, she’ll be better to her kids, and eventually everything will be hunky-dory. I’ve heard this line of reasoning from people who hit their kids before. Spare me.

More importantly, though, it signals that we’re going to hear this idea of “when it’s your turn, you’ll do a little better than me” again, and in true Craig Mazin fashion, probably at the end of this episode. This isn’t the fault of the actors. Mazin really, really likes this trick, but it stops working when I can see that every card’s coming from the bottom of the deck. At some point, you gotta show me something new.

Over sentimentality keeps the cold open from meaning anything real.

After the credits, we’re back in Jackson, two months after Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) show up. Joel meets up with ex-cop, and current bigot Seth (Robert John Burke) to trade some LEGOs for something that comes in vanilla (man, this show is really batting a thousand on the ACAB thing). Pascal’s very subtle facial expression when he learns of Seth’s former vocation is an incredible and understated piece of acting, given the context from the opening scene.

Then Joel’s back home, making an absolutely stunning guitar with the other thing he got from Seth: a bone (why does Seth have access to bones?). He also carves a moth into the fretboard based on Ellie’s drawings, and Joel’s nearly done when Tommy brings a bandaged and doped-up-on-painkillers Ellie in. Turns out she really just wanted to wear short-sleeves again, so she burned the arm with the bite so nobody would notice. A lot of The Last of Us is about hiding the things that hurt you so other people don’t know they’re there. Here, Ellie wears her pain on her body, hidden in plain sight.

When Ellie wakes up, Joel has a cake for her downstairs to celebrate her 15th birthday, courtesy of Seth, who is also illiterate and spells Ellie as “Eli.” Ellie’s got half of it in her mouth before Joel can cut it, so he uses the opportunity to surprise her with the guitar. It’s a really sweet sequence, with Joel going full dad mode and explaining how he made it before realizing it’s not that important.

Ellie forces him to play a song and sing, and while Joel doesn’t want to, it’s her birthday, so he sits down and plays Pearl Jam’s “Future Days,” which… was written in 2013, long after this version of The Last of Us saw the world end. Weird choice, guys. It’s not a great performance — Joel really isn’t a singer, which Pascal nails — but he’s trying, and as Ellie says, it’s not bad. He tells her he understands about her arm. Ellie says nothing.

“The Price” uses Ellie’s birthday to cover a lot of narrative ground.

Another fast forward, this time,  a year, and now we’ve come to the narrative conceit of The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 6. It’s always Ellie’s birthday. This year, Joel and Ellie are walking through the woods, with Ellie trying to guess her present and saying she wants to go on patrol.

When she says that Jesse (Young Mazino) started at 16 and has offered to train her with Joel’s permission, Joel asks if there’s something going on between them. When Ellie demurs, Joel claims to have a keen eye for this sort of thing, and Ellie assures him that he doesn’t. It’s one of the episode’s best comedic moments. Then comes the surprise: a dinosaur—a T-rex, to be precise, which Ellie promptly climbs.

Turns out there’s a museum nearby, which is Ellie’s real present. Once inside, Ellie gets to play with a rotating model of the solar system before Joel hits her with something even better: a trip to space. See, the Apollo 15 Command Module is here, and after Ellie grabs a helmet from a nearby exhibit, the two climb inside. Ellie is pretending to prepare for her own mission when Joel hands her a cassette and tells her to close her eyes and play it. It’s a recording of Apollo 11’s launch.

Ellie closes her eyes, and we get to see her imagine what it would be like to go to space. The module shakes, it gets dark, and then brilliantly bright as they hit the atmosphere, and then the sun passes over them. It’s a fantastic scene.

When Ellie opens her eyes, Joel asks if he did good. That’s all he really wants: to make her happy. And Ellie, amazed, asks, “Are you kidding me?” This is the happiest they’ll ever be.

On the way back, Ellie stops, frozen in place by the sight of a group of fireflies. It’s a subtle moment, and one that’s easy to miss if you’re not paying attention. The Last of Us likes to have its characters look straight at the camera and tell us how we’re supposed to feel, but here, it side steps that and reminds us that no matter how happy this moment is, there’s a shadow hanging over this relationship. And we know a reckoning is coming.

As the years go by, Ellie’s relationship with Joel deteriorates.

Skip another year to Ellie’s 17th birthday. This time, Joel walks in on Ellie and Kat (Noah Lamanna) smoking weed and fooling around. Oh, and Ellie has a tattoo now, courtesy of Kat. It’s a teenage triple threat, and Joel isn’t happy about it. After throwing Kat out, he lays into Ellie for what is, frankly, pretty normal teenage behavior, but what really gets me about this scene is Joel’s homophobia. It just feels so out of character, as does his “this is my house” bit about rules when he catches Ellie trying to move into the garage that night. Ellie calls him on it and is unapologetic about her behavior.

Joel doesn’t apologize, but he does soften. He agrees that it might be good for her to have her own space and take an interest in her tattoo, which he admits isn’t bad. Joel also asks her about the moths, which Ellie admits she read about in a book on dreams, but refuses to elaborate when Joel asks her what they mean.

Joel catches Gail (Catherine O’Hara), the town therapist, at breakfast the next day and asks her about moths and dreams. She’s mostly dismissive, but admits that they mean death. When she asks why, Joel refuses to answer and leaves. Meanwhile, Ellie’s taking this whole moving-out thing seriously. As she packs, we see a sketch with the words “You have a greater purpose” threaded between several moths. Again, good. It’s not as subtle as the fireflies, but I’ll take it.

Skip forward again. This time it’s two years later. Ellie’s up early in the morning, practicing questions to ask Joel about what happened to the Fireflies, when he knocks on her door. This year, her surprise is her first patrol. Joel takes her on the safest trail they have. Ellie wants more and is giving him a hard time about it. Joel just wants to spend time with her. Neither of them is happy. That’s when the call comes in. Another patrol has run into infected, and they need help. Joel and Ellie are the closest. Joel wants to send Ellie back, but she’s not having it. She’s not his kid, she reminds him. She’s his partner.

When they get to the other patrol, the worst has already happened. The infected are all dead; the only survivor is Eugene (Joe Pantoliano), Gail’s husband. If you recall Episode 1, you’ll remember that Joel kills Eugene. Now we get to figure out how and why.

The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 6 starts to connect the dots laid out in earlier episodes.

Eugene, it turns out, has been bitten. He begs Joel and Ellie to take him back to town so he can say goodbye to his wife. Joel isn’t having it, but Ellie tells Eugene to hold out his hand and count to 10. He does; his hand is steady and his voice even. He has time. Ellie begs him to let him see his wife, and Joel seems to relent, telling her to get the horses. They’ll meet up with her. Ellie looks at him for reassurance, but Joel promises they’ll be there soon. But we know Joel is a good liar.

He leads Eugene to a beautiful lake, and Eugene realizes, as we do, that Joel has no intention of bringing him back to town. Joel offers to carry Eugene’s last words to Gail, but Eugene tells him that he doesn’t need that. He needs the last thing she’ll say to him. He’s dying, and he’s afraid, and he wants the last thing he sees to be his wife’s face.

Joel tells him that if you love someone, you can always see their face. Eugene stares out toward that majestic lake and the mountains beyond, and the sun shining on the water. Finally, he tells Joel he can see her. We don’t hear the gunshot, but we do see birds fly away.

This sequence is remarkable for Joe Pantoliano’s performance. He’s in the episode for less than five minutes and owns every scene of it. His last moments, which are conveyed largely through his face alone as he realizes what’s going to happen to him, are some of the best acting you’ll see on this show.

On the ride back, a furious Ellie refuses to speak to Joel, who lays out his plan to lie to Gail about what happened. When they arrive, Joel tells Gail all the lies you’d like to hear. That Eugene died bravely. That he didn’t want to put Gail in danger. That he ended it himself.

Ellie, meanwhile, is shaking with rage. When Gail embraces Joel, as much for herself as for the kindness she thinks he’s done her, Ellie breaks and tells them what happened. Gail slaps Joel across the face and tells him to get away from her. Joel is reeling, both physically and mentally. Ellie locks eyes with him and says the line we’ve all seen in the trailers: “You swore.”

And we know, finally, that she’s not just talking about Eugene. She’s been wondering about the Fireflies for a while now, and she’s known something isn’t right. Ellie had those questions ready for Joel, but what happened to Eugene is her answer. If Joel could lie to her about that, and kill Eugene after promising them he would take him to see his wife one last time, everything else becomes easy to believe. If he can lie about that, he can lie about anything. In that moment, Ellie finally sees all of her adopted father, even the parts she doesn’t want to. And then she storms off.

One last jump. Nine months later, to New Year’s Eve. We know Joel and Ellie aren’t speaking. Joel is watching Ellie from a distance, talking to Tommy and his wife, Maria (Rutina Wesley). Maria is apologizing for calling him a refugee, and saying he’s family and that he’s done a lot for the town, when Seth hurls a slur at Ellie and Dina (Isabela Merced) for sharing a kiss.

This time, though, we see it through Joel’s eyes, and so many things in this episode fall into place. Joel’s own homophobia, which he has shared with the man who just insulted his adopted daughter. The fact that Seth reminds him of his father. That he sees both of those things in himself, and hates them.

When Joel gets up from that table and shoves Seth to the ground, it feels like he’s not only attacking Seth, but rejecting the parts of himself that he sees projected at Ellie and Dina in that moment. When Ellie throws the moment back in his face, the recognition on Joel’s face is painful, but he knows he’s earned it.

Eugene’s death forces Ellie to realize the truth she’s been trying not to see.

Joel and Ellie meet on the porch. In episode one, it’s implied that Ellie walks past it and doesn’t speak to him. In that context, her rage at Joel’s death seemed aimed at her regret, her decision not to speak to him. But it was a bait and switch. She does come onto the porch, and they talk.

After discussing the coffee Joel’s drinking (like with Joel’s father, this conversation happens over a drink), Ellie tells him she had Seth under control and that he should never take her off patrol again. Joel asks about Dina, whether she and Ellie are together. When Ellie refuses to answer, he tells her that Dina would be lucky to have her.

“You’re such an asshole,” Ellie says, and it’s hard to disagree.

From her perspective, Joel is likely only doing that so that she’ll talk to him, but “The Price” has done a good job of building up the behaviors that link Joel to men he despises, and in that moment, it feels to me as though he’s trying to overcome the ties that bind him to those men, and in so doing, overcome himself. It’s a rejection of the past for a shot at the future. Subtle stuff, I think, and built on the episode’s middling initial flashback, but I like that The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 6 never says it out loud, and lets us come to that conclusion ourselves.

And then Ellie gets to what’s bothering her. That he lied, and when he did, she’d seen that look before. And then she knew. She demands that Joel tell her what happens to the Fireflies and warns him that if he lies to her again, they’re done. Then she asks the questions she’s prepared. And Joel is honest with her. He never speaks when he answers. Just nods and shakes his head, trying to hold back tears. The effort is breaking him in half. Pascal and Ramsey give excellent performances in this scene.

Even with the series’ strongest performances, “The Price” falters.

But this is where the show starts to fail. In the games, this scene is understated. The characters can barely get out what they need to say to one another, let alone what they want to. Things are left hanging. Here, that doesn’t happen. Ellie emphasizes Joel’s selfishness so we know we’re supposed to be angry with him, and Joel says that he would do it all again because he loves her in a way she’ll never understand. And then we get the line set up by that flashback: “But if that day should come… if you should ever have one of your own… well, then… I hope you do a little better than me.”

As I’ve reviewed these episodes, I’ve tried to keep the game and the series separate. But I can’t overstate how much I hate this change. What would “doing a little better than [Joel]” mean for Ellie? Not murdering an entire hospital? Not damning everyone on Earth? Man, if that’s all it takes, the bar is incredibly low. She’ll clear it no problem.

This isn’t a “you can self-improve out of beating your kids” thing; that analogy doesn’t work. What Joel did was monstrous in a way that’s hard to fathom. That we empathize with him is a credit to the original game’s writing. I don’t have to like Joel, but I do understand him. “The Price” robs me of that.

In the game, this scene is rooted in pain. These characters are struggling. There is so much, both good and bad, left unsaid. And so when Ellie says, “I don’t know if I can ever forgive you for this, but I would like to try.” that offering is powerful.

Here, the writers seem desperate to connect the dots for us. In that desperation, they rob this scene of the grace the original version manages. Often, dialogue is not about what characters say to one another; it’s what they won’t, or can’t bring themselves to.

That line still works. That scene still has power. But it feels like it accomplishes what it does in spite of itself, and while I don’t think this version of this story should be slavishly devoted to the source material, it shouldn’t make it worse, either. Adding the line about “doing a little better” when you have kids undermines this scene. Ellie knows Dina is pregnant. She knows what Joel did to her messed with her in ways she’s still trying to understand. She does have a chance to do better, even if the analogy we’re presented with here is a poor one.

If the last conversation I had with my father was about how I could do better than he did, and I knew my girlfriend was pregnant, the last thing I would do would be to charge headlong down a violent path that I knew would only bring everyone involved more pain. But that’s exactly what Ellie does as The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 6 ends. Hooded and cloaked, standing in pouring rain, Ellie’s off to go killing again with no thought to what this course of action will cost her, or that Joel tried to steer her away from it. As it turns out, Joel was wrong. Ellie can’t be a little better; she’s just like him.

The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 5 is streaming now on MAX (formerly HBO Max) with new episodes every Sunday. 

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