The 2020 video game The Last of Us Part II, written by Neil Druckmann and Hailey Gross, and directed by Druckmann, Anthony Newman, and Kurt Margenau, enabled PlayStation 4 gamers to catch up with Ellie Williams four years after the events of TLoU, as the unexpected murder of Joel Miller spurns her on a vengeful journey. While my playthrough of Part II felt overall gloomier than that of the precursor, I remained curious if HBO’s adaptation – confirmed to last at least two seasons – would make any worthwhile changes to the controversial storyline. During the show’s second season, such issues as inconsistent tone, and some questionable choices on what to change or retain from the game, unfortunately convinced me that I wouldn’t find as much replay value as for Season One. I actually stopped watching for a few weeks after the fourth episode, then quickly finished the season across three consecutive nights. Ultimately I decided to limit this blog’s Part II coverage to what seems like the last installment to feature Screen Actors’ Guild Award winner Pedro Pascal as Joel. The second-to-last episode of Season Two, one of the most-beloved episodes, adapts flashbacks from Joel’s final years as Ellie’s surrogate father.
The Price
Airdate: May 18, 2025
Director: Neil Druckmann
Writers: Neil Druckmann, Hailey Gross, & Craig Mazin
Because I love you. In a way you, you can’t understand. Maybe you never will. 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.
-Joel Miller
Ellie recalls some of the events that deteriorated her relationship with Joel. Flashbacks to four times he helped celebrate her birthday depict the joy they shared as a family, but also disagreements over her desires for independence. Vignettes from his ultimate complete year also reveal Ellie’s difficulties calming her lingering doubts in Joel’s integrity.
The cold open delves farther into the Miller men’s history than the video games ever did. To set up a theme of generational trauma, the episode begins with an adolescent Joel (part-Puerto Rican-American Andrew Diaz) confronting his abusive father Javier (Mexican-American Tony Dalton). Joel’s attempts to cover up for Tommy (David Miranda)’s purchase of marijuana, and justify his violence toward the dealer, reacquaint viewers with Joel’s tendency to protect loved ones through lies and physical force; well before the episode elaborates upon the consequences of his lies to Ellie. Dalton and Diaz successfully evoke different aspects of Pedro Pascal’s portrayal of an adult Joel: Diaz speaks with confident defensiveness, but his mannerisms display gentleness towards Tommy and signs of his own suppressed fear. Javier never actually whips his sons in this episode, but effectively contrasts an authoritative facade with the pain of a traumatic past; Javier’s traumas resulting from even more violent forms of child abuse.
In addition to elaborating how exactly Joel’s upbringing motivated him to take fatherhood of Sarah, Ellie, and Dina (queer Peruvian-American Isabela Merced, who makes a non-speaking appearance in a flashback to the season premiere) so seriously, the prologue unexpectedly reveals a new backstory for the broken wristwatch bequeathed from Joel to Ellie. Previously, the watch repaired by Sarah’s love for Joel, then permanently damaged by the same circumstances that killed her, mainly visualized Joel’s refusal to forget about Sarah. This episode reveals that in the TV show’s continuity, Joel inherited the timepiece from Javier. It doesn’t appear to tick when young Joel and the viewers see it on Javier’s wrist, again connecting its condition to its wearer’s confidence in his parenting skills.
As one of only two Last of Us TV episodes written by both Neil Druckmann and Hailey Gross – neither of whom, ominously, will work on Season Three – the flashbacks to Ellie’s 15th and 16th birthdays demonstrate remarkable faithfulness to some of the second game’s most heartfelt sequences. The former retains Joel singing Pearl Jam’s “Future Days”, even though the series’ shifted dates created doubts over whether the song still existed, while the latter becomes a shot-for-shot remake when Ellie imagines flying in an abandoned museum’s deactivated spacecraft. To me, the most noteworthy change concerns the show placing both of these sequences in the same episode. Until Naughty Dog recently added an option to play The Last of Us Part II in chronological order, the game scattered Ellie’s flashbacks throughout her story. By saving all of these flashbacks for this episode, the show accentuates to a fault Pascal’s importance to its appeal. However, it also ensures that the signs of Ellie’s developing rebellious side and lingering grievance for the Fireflies remain fresh on the viewers’ minds, by the time her camaraderie with Joel officially fractures.
The show does apply surprisingly drastic changes to the fracture. In the game, Ellie returns to Salt Lake City at age 17, and uncovers evidence in the Fireflies’ hospital of Joel’s lies. Distraught at him carrying her away from her apparent chance to save humanity, she takes two years to consider forgiving him for rescuing her — but Joel dies before she can ever definitively absolve him. The series’ depiction of Ellie’s 17th birthday instead explores her increased efforts to achieve agency when she decides to move from Joel’s assigned house, to the garage, after a disagreement regarding her lesbianism. It also delivers some of the episode’s most convincing examples of Joel “do[ing] a little better” at fatherhood than Javier, as the latter advises in the lecture at the beginning. Although Ellie defies several of Joel’s rules, he never seems to consider beating her, and instead helps her move out. As later shown in footage reused from the second season premiere, he also eventually accepts the thought of her loving Dina.
Without a return to Salt Lake City, Ellie takes until age 19 to confirm her suspicions regarding Joel’s account of the Fireflies’ demise. She still demonstrates inquisitive skills, such as identifying fallacies in the account, and recognizing his tells while he lies to therapist Gail (Catherine O’Hara) about the demise of her Infected husband Eugene (Joe Pantoliano). I shamefully agree with whoever apparently couldn’t believe that Ellie could journey from Jackson to Salt Lake alone, or that Joel wouldn’t catch up until right after she discovered the evidence. However, after Joel later explains that this episode’s title refers to Ellie’s complete severing from him – his “price” for extending her future beyond a self-sacrifice – I can’t decide if it helps or harms the story that it only lasts nine months – from her 19th birthday, to New Year’s Eve – rather than the game’s two years.
Although The Last of Us Part II kept players waiting until the end to see Joel and Ellie’s final conversation, this show depicts it in the second-to-last scene of this episode. It feels longer here than in the game, due to the writers also working in Ellie successfully pressuring Joel into confessing that he killed the Fireflies in Salt Lake, and the above-quoted paraphrasing of Javier. The combining of material from two Part II cutscenes means that despite the expectedly solid acting and chemistry of Pascal and Bella Ramsey, Ellie appears to shift too quickly from knowing that Joel selfishly doomed humanity, to considering that she should appreciate his act of familial love. The scene would still work for viewers who appreciate Joel acknowledging Ellie’s need for agency, which not even the Fireflies would grant her. By finally dismantling his deception, he also seems to signify that he no longer needs to protect her from knowledge of love’s potential to destroy.
Either placement of “the porch scene” retroactively adds tragic irony to the timing of Joel’s killing, with the player/viewer realizing hours later that it occurred only one day after Ellie stated that she “would like to try” to forgive him. I personally don’t believe I can fully appreciate the new context until after HBO finishes adapting Part II. To put it vaguely, the game surrounds this flashback with moments that appear to validate Ellie’s concerns that Joel deprived her of the chance to fulfill her purpose. I’ve wished for years that HBO would revise these moments, but I won’t elaborate my wishes here; partially to hide potential spoilers from readers who haven’t played Part II, and partially to spare myself embarrassment if they don’t come true. As the only Last of Us Season Two episode to earn two complete viewings from me, “The Price” mostly provides a successfully-emotional sendoff to the reason I got into TLoU.
About Author
