Tear Jerker / The Last of Us Part II

WARNING: Spoilers Off applies to Moments pages.

Being a Darker and Edgier sequel to the The Last of Us, it's not surprising that Naughty Dog took a game that didn't pull any punches and turned it up to eleven.

---

General

• The writers weren't kidding when they first said that in contrast to the first game being about love, the sequel is about hate and revenge. From Ellie's Roaring Rampage of Revenge to Abby's motivation for killing Joel to the on-going war between the Seraphites/Scars and the WLF/Wolves. It clearly shows how destructive both to oneself, your loved ones, and even just random strangers these feelings can be.
• Ellie and Joel's relationship is revealed at the beginning of the game to have become very strained over the last five years and only recently have begun to repair it. This makes his death at the beginning of the game so much more tragic as various flashbacks show how it became the way it did.
• Anyone who remembers how Ellie used to be will be shocked and saddened to see how Ellie has changed. Whoever those people shot in that house, it was enough to send Ellie on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• While we never get any confirmation either way all indications are that the Wolves and the Seraphites destroyed each other. While true, it may have been a case of Evil Versus Evil, that's still 2 whole pockets of humanity wiped off the map. Whatever the outcome of that last, terrible battle Abby and Lev decided to just pack up and leave rather than look for survivors. Which gives a pretty good indicator of just how dire the situation had become.

The Game

Ellie

• The first 30 minutes of the game brought us the biggest moment just like the predecessor's intro, but even worse: Joel's death at the hands of Abby. To say that his death was undignified would be putting it lightly.
  • While Tommy is knocked out and Ellie is forced to watch, helpless. All she can do is switch between begging for them to spare him and threatening to kill them all. Her scream as Abby delivers the killing blow is heartbreaking. The worst part is that a flashback at the end of the game reveals they had just begun to repair their damaged relationship.
  • Tommy, witnessing Joel being shot in the knee with a shotgun before his death. He screams "No!" and tries to fight off two men who are restraining him only to be knocked out by Nora.
  • Joel's death at the hands of Abby takes on another painful layer as Joel rescues Abby not shortly before this. Perhaps this act of kindness would given Abby pause to consider that perhaps the Joel - the same man who killed her father, by saving her, is also equally capable of goodness. But it was Joel's kind act that ironically dooms him to his death.
  • Ellie begging Joel to please get up is just soulcrushing, especially knowing that she had just started to work on forgiving him. You can tell that even if she isn't there yet, she is utterly terrified of losing him. And then, once Abby delivers the killing blow, Ellie is so broken that she doesn't even hear what the group is saying. She goes from snarling that she's going to kill them all to brokenly sobbing, "No...!"
    Joel, get up! Joel, fucking get up! Please stop! Please don't do this...Joel, please get up...!
  • Just the fact that Joel doesn't get to give any last words to Ellie. By the time she makes it there, he's so disoriented that he can't say a word. Even as Ellie screams at him to get up, he just dazedly stares back at her as blood pours out of the wounds on his head.
• After Joel’s funeral, Ellie heads to Joel’s house to collect a few things (specifically his watch and his revolver) - the path through his garden and his porch are adorned with flowers and notes from the residents of Jackson.
  • An easy-to-miss detail in Joel's house: by his bed there's a book called "Space for Dummies". After the reveal that Ellie had just decided to try and forgive him and let him back into her life the previous day, Joel was reading up on space to have something to talk to her about the next time they met. As if you needed more reasons to cry...
  • On a dresser in Joel's house, he has pictures of both his "daughters" on it: the one with him and Sarah holding a soccer trophy from the first game, and one with him and Ellie petting a horse.
  • Ellie lifting a cup with an owl painting to look fondly at it might not make much sense at first, until you see the ending flashback and realize it's the cup Joel was holding in their very last conversation.
  • Similarly, most players would wonder what the deal is with the dinosaur pamphlet Ellie can read and comment "That was a good day". Seeing this part again on a second playthrough and knowing just what it references however will likely be enough to make you weep alone.
  • If you try to look in a mirror in Joel's house, Ellie will look down, refusing to look at herself. An incredibly minor detail most won't notice, with its reason not being hinted at until the final flashback of the game..., namely, that Ellie apparently hates herself as much as she hates Abby for how she treated Joel for the last two years of his life. Even when living at the farm with Dina more than a year later (apart from when she plays with JJ) Ellie still won't look herself in the mirror.
• The various flashbacks to the five years between the first and second game, showing how the relationship between Ellie and Joel became the way it did.
  • The first is Ellie's 16th birthday where Joel takes her to a museum featuring dinosaurs and space exhibits to her join. Then she starts finding evidence of someone living there before finding the corpse of a Firefly next to a symbol with the words "LIARS" above it. In retrospect, this becomes the first crack...
  • About a year later, their relationship has become frosty with Tommy trying his best to get them to talk. On his suggestion, they go to a nearby music store but it only serves to make things worse. When she tries to confront him about her immunity not being as common as he claims, Joel shoots her down hard clearly trying his best to keep her from asking one too many questions.
    • What started this conversation is when Ellie and Joel find a dead body and an Infected, they also find a note: the two were a teenage couple who had disappeared from Jackson sometime before. They had left to try to help others after getting sick of hearing how bad things were in the outside world. Less than an hour outside of town and they ran into a Horde and became infected becoming trapped in the hotel where they were found.
    • A double whammy was when they find a note explaining this revealing they opt to kill themselves rather than turn. On the opposite side, it is revealed that the boy killed his girlfriend but couldn't pull the trigger on himself. It ends asking for forgiveness while calling himself a coward.
  • After exploring the now abandoned Firefly hospital from the first game, Ellie finds a tape recorder confirming her suspicions. This leads to Ellie confronting Joel once and for all as to what happened with the Fireflies. Joel finally caves in and tells her, Ellie's reaction is further sold thanks to Ashley Johnson's performance.
    Ellie: I'll go back, but we're done.
  • In hindsight, the flashback to Ellie's first kiss with Dina in the saloon (which was previously shown in E3 2018) is this for multiple reasons. For one, this otherwise heartwarming moment gets rudely interrupted by Seth who calls Dina a "loud-mouthed dyke". This gets worse when Joel steps in to break up a fight between Ellie and Seth, only for Ellie to rebuke him for trying to help. Ellie realizes how harsh she was to Joel afterward, which is even worse when you consider the fact that this was the penultimate time Ellie would see Joel alive. Moreover, this flashback is the last time we see Ellie and Dina happy together before the former leaves for Santa Barbara and ultimately destroys what had been a healthy and heartwarming relationship between the two. Coupled with the tender and sad mood of Crooked Still's song "Ecstasy", this cutscene should invoke a lot of feelings.
• Ellie witnessing Abby kill Jesse. All she can do is quietly call out his name as if she's trying to wake him up.
  • Even worse is what happens after: Tommy distracts Abby long enough to have Ellie run away only for Abby to shoot him in the head which lead many to assume that he was killed as well.
    • After that you have to fight Ellie as Abby in which you witness Abby brutally beat Ellie and then a pregnant Dina when she intervenes. And then Abby comes dangerously close to killing Dina and she would've done so if Lev didn't talk her out of it. Ellie not only lost her friend Jesse but if it wasn't for Lev she would've lost her girlfriend and their child.
    • Furthermore none of that would've happened if Ellie didn't drop the map to her location after killing Owen and Mel (which lead to Abby finding it). As if seeing Joel die wasn't enough...
• The ending. It's easy to simply say "all of it" but details include Ellie's crestfallen expression at finding Dina has taken the baby and left and when she tries to play the guitar but can't properly with her lost fingers. Her face is a wonderful summation of how Vengeance Feels Empty.
• Joel and Ellie's final conversation. Joel affirms that even though Ellie disowned him for preventing her death, he is prepared to meet his maker without a shred of regret for saving her.
  Joel: If somehow the Lord gave me a second chance at that moment...I would do it all over again.
  • Ellie admits she's ready to have Joel back in her life.
  Ellie: I don't think I can ever forgive you for that. ...But I'd like to try.
• While it's heartwarming to see Dina and Ellie living on a farm with JJ, the segment carries more than a few Tearjerkers:
  • It's heartbreaking to know that Jesse will never get to see his child grow up.
  • Ellie still has PTSD over seeing Joel die. When she and JJ accidentally get locked into the barn, she has a hallucination of her younger self going down the stairs to the basement again, all the while hearing Joel's voice behind the door, screaming in pain and begging her to help him.
    • Going through her notebook reveals various sketches of Joel, but they're all crossed out. Her diary entries go into detail about just how often she encounters things that make her think of Joel's death and how much she's still struggling to cope. The icing on the cake is this poem, which describes her inability to move on:
  When does it get quiet?
  Time was supposed to
  S̶u̶f̶f̶o̶c̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶u̶r̶g̶e̶.̶.̶.̶
  S̶u̶f̶f̶o̶c̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶d̶e̶s̶i̶r̶e̶.̶.̶.̶
  E̶x̶t̶i̶n̶g̶u̶i̶s̶h̶?̶
  Extinguish the desire...

  Haunted by your s̶t̶a̶r̶e̶ smiles
  The mask keeps getting heavier
  I̶t̶'̶s̶ ̶s̶l̶i̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶m̶y̶ ̶f̶a̶c̶e̶
  One step forward, two steps back.

  There's a noose around my neck
  And the further I get
  T̶h̶e̶ ̶t̶i̶g̶h̶t̶e̶r̶ It's harder and harder to breathe
  Can I find a way to cut the c̶o̶r̶d̶ ̶r̶o̶p̶e̶ cord?

  I've been waiting for dawn
  But the light is all gone.
  I̶'̶v̶e̶ ̶l̶o̶s̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶l̶i̶g̶h̶t̶
  Don't know if I'm already
  Blind...
  Can I leave it all behind?
  • The way Ellie visibly struggles when Tommy shows up to tell her he's found Abby. She actually rebuffs his encouragement to go after her at first, which leads to Tommy getting angry and guilt-tripping her before storming out.
    • Tommy was introduced in 'The Last of Us' as refreshingly cheerful and relatively optimistic compared to his older brother Joel. Tommy was a man who regretted his violent past and sought to move forward, and believed deeply in the ability for humanity to move forward. In contrast, the end of this game leaves him as a shell of himself. His marriage with Maria is in shambles (presumably because he simply couldn't get past his obsession with killing Abby), he is physically disabled after being shot in the head, and his easygoing spirit has been replaced by a deep sense of bitterness.
  • Dina and Ellie's argument when Ellie decides to leave after all. Dina begs her to not put her revenge over their family even bringing up the deaths of both Joel and Jesse, but Ellie isn't swayed. Dina finally tells her that she won't wait for her if she leaves. Ellie coldly states that "that's up to [Dina]" and walks out the door.
• A small one but during Ellie's final confrontation with Abby she loses her signature switchblade which was a gift from her deceased mother.
• To complete hammer down the themes and mood of the game, the end credits has a performance of the song "Wayfaring Stranger" by Ashley Johnson and Troy Baker as Joel and Ellie. Bring the tissues.
• A more minor example, to be sure, but during the Seattle segment, Ellie and Dina wind up in the remnants of what had once been an LGBTQ+ bookstore. Neither girl recognizes the symbolism of the pride flags decorating the store’s interior. Cordyceps managed to wipe away the history and symbolism of an entire community. It’s even more heartbreaking when you remember that both girls know the meaning behind the derogatory slur that Seth used earlier to refer to them, but don’t recognize the meaning behind the rainbow flag.

Abby

• Abby's motive for killing Joel. Her father was the lead surgeon who Joel killed while saving Ellie from the Fireflies. This is after spending half the game hunting her only to switch to the other woman's perspective and the player realizes that the two are more similar than first believed.
• Right after she kills Joel, Abby's face is an indescribable mask of regret and confusion. Before delivering the final blow, she's almost gleeful but then actually seeing him dead by her own hand shakes her up considerably, so much so that she stops the rest of her crew from killing Ellie and Tommy. Weeks afterwards, she's still plagued by nightmares and through helping Lev and Yara (and getting a tongue-lashing from Mel), she realizes that killing Joel did not make her feel better and she has to still live with the awful things she's done up to that point.
• Abby betraying the WLF to protect Lev. She even stands up to Isaac, pleading with him to let Lev live since he's just a child. Isaac insists that she moves away, which leads to Yara using her last strength to shoot Isaac before being riddled with bullets in retort. Lev is not surprisingly utterly broken for having lost both his mother and sister in brutal ways on the same day.
• Abby sees Manny die in front of her, shot in the head by Tommy. She barely escapes with her life and, once barricaded in a safe place, she has a small panic attack over the death of her friend, her face covered in his blood.
• Abby finding Owen and Mel dead in the Aquarium after returning from the island with Lev, the worst part is Owen offered to go with her but Abby insisted on him staying to fix the boat, so if she had let him gone with, chances are he might have survived.
• The story of the Seraphites, or "Scars" as the WLF calls them. An unnamed woman called only "The Prophet" formed a religion community on an island off the coast of Seattle which believed in abandoning the "Old World" and seeking simpler more rustic lifestyle. By the events of the game, she's been dead for some time and propped up as a messiah-like figure while the community has devolved into a fanatical cult with a 1000+ members. Abby repeatedly wonders if the "Prophet" had any idea what she had started.
  • Dialogue between the members revealed that technology and knowledge from before the outbreak are expressly forbidden with one having been punished for being caught with a book. It's mentioned that their MO is to burn and destroy structures to allow nature to reclaim the land meaning they are actively seeking to eliminate history and evidence from before. Its bad enough that cities like Seattle are already overrun after only a couple of decades but to know there's people looking to destroy any evidence of humanity's success is depressing.
• Thanks to Lev's influence, Abby spares Ellie and Dina and in-between then and contacting the Santa Barbara Fireflies, Abby has let go of her need for revenge, thus she and Lev have both moved on from their tragic pasts and grown into happier and healthier people. It seems to being going good for the both of them, as both are elated from successfully contacting the Fireflies. However, this being the Last of Us Part II, this genuinely happy moment is cut short by an attack from the Rattlers, the local slaver gang.
• Abby's state in her final scenes. Months of torture at the hands of the Rattlers has left her a broken, emaciated shell of her former self. When Ellie catches up to her at the Santa Monica Beach, she has pretty much lost all hope and when she is cut loose from the pike, her first instinct is to cut Lev loose and carry him to a boat to escape. She's long given up her revenge on Ellie thanks to Lev during their last encounter. But Ellie is pressing her to fight to the death, and only complies when Ellie threatens to kill Lev. Their fight is just as brutal as the last one, but whereas Abby was driven by murderous rage and hatred over her friends' murders the last time, here she is simply resigned to the Cycle of Revenge, and only to protect her surrogate brother, the sole bright spot she has left in her life, from Ellie's own murderous rage and hatred.
  Abby: No. I'm not going to fight you.
  Ellie (pressing her switchblade to Lev's throat): Yes, you will.
  Abby: He's not a part of this.
  Ellie: You made him a part of this.
  Abby (resigned): Okay. Okay.
• Her relationship with Owen is tragic. The banter between the two in the flashback where they discover the aquarium shows they were once a cute couple. But as shown in that memory, Abby repeatedly rebuffs Owen's romantic advances and attempts to get her to open up, relax, or connect due to being so consumed with revenge. While it's suggested that this is what caused their break up, Owen is still in love with Abby, with her arguably feeling the same.
  • In a testament to Naughty Dog's animation quality, each time Abby rejects Owen, he is visibly hurt.
  • It gets more complicated and sadder when you factor in Mel, Owen's pregnant girlfriend in the present. It's obvious to even Mel that Owen never got over Abby, so when she shows up again Mel rightly gets suspicious of Abby. As even while he's with Mel, Owen's attempts to get closer to Abby never stopped.
    • Mel's chewing out of Abby shows how far apart the two have grown as they were once close friends.
    • Hell, Owen's feelings for Abby run so deep, that he's willing to leave Mel alone at the aquarium when Abby leaves with Yara to go after Lev.
  • Tragically, Abby once again rejects Owen's kindness to accompany her to Seraphite island, unwittingly dooming him and Mel to their deaths.
    • Despite being the WLF's "top Scar killer", Abby's reaction to seeing their bodies is so intense that she immediately vomits and cries. It speaks volumes, that however complex and strained their relationships were, she did truly care for them. This being not long after the death of a girl who she went to great lengths to save, abandoning the WLFs, and needing to console Lev, who not only lost his sister but also his mother on the same day.
  • In the epilogue, you can read Abby's letter to Owen, reminiscing about some of the happier moments in their relationship and talking about how much she misses him.
    • In Santa Barbara, it also appears that Abby kept Owen's backpack as a keepsake.
  • Finally, in a bittersweet end to their journey, Abby and Lev make it to Catalina Island and meet up with the Fireflies at last. In doing so, Abby accomplishes what Owen set out to do and what achieves what she so coldly dismissed him for previously, honoring his memory.

Side Stories

As with many other survival horror games, the characters can uncover small side stories told through found notes or other scenes.

• Outside of Jackson, Ellie can find a note from a young boy asking Santa for a dog to keep him company, because he is all alone with his dad who (it's clear from the note) is falling into a deep depression.
• In Seattle, Ellie finds the corpse of a pregnant woman who committed suicide. Her note says that she was getting too weak due to illness and her husband had never returned from a run to find medicine. Later in the game and across town, Ellie can find the husband's body. He found the medicine, but was bitten in the process. Both of their notes end with them apologizing to each other.
• In the Aquarium, Owen and Abby find the aftermath of a family who docked their sailboat there and tried to ride it out. The older of two sons eventually buys into Seraphite propaganda and leaves with his preteen brother. Based on the state of the place, the father clearly drank himself into oblivion at the news and died clutching his son's goodbye letter.

---