The Last of Us Season 2: Episode 6 Recap

Flashbacks of past birthdays reveal more about Joel and Ellie’s relationship. From space travel to betrayal, episode 6 bears it all.

The episode begins back in the good old 80s, with a young Joel and Tommy being afraid of their father. Joel takes the blame for Tommy’s drug habits and has a confrontation with his father. But instead of the expected beat down Joel is expecting, his father opens up about how his father broke his jaw and beat him to a pulp.

This intense opening dives into the impact of generational trauma and how one treats their own kids slightly better than how their parents treated them. The scene ends with Joel’s father hoping that Joel will continue with this trend, hinting at regret for how he has treated Joel and Tommy in their upbringing.

Two New Arrivals

The second flashback, in an episode full of flashbacks, jumps two months after Joel and Ellie’s arrival into the town of Jackson. Joel barters a trade with the barkeep, bags of Lego for, what looks like, a bone. A montage shows Joel grinding down this bone to add the finishing touches to a guitar.

The guitar is presented to be a gift to Ellie for her birthday, alongside a cake that was comically not quite finished with Happy Birthday Eli.

Then, in a change to serenading proceedings, it becomes Joel’s turn to play a tuneful number on the newly crafted guitar.

Dinosaurs and Space Travel

1 year later, we are now celebrating Ellie’s 16th birthday, following her and Joel through the forest on their way to a ‘surprise’. Ellie inquisitively tries to guess the surprise, with a dinosaur cropping up as one of her guesses.

Don’t be silly Ellie, how could Joel possibly gift you a dinosaur! Then, lo and behold, they turn the corner to find mossy, overgrown dinosaur statue outside a museum.

During the day trip into the museum, Joel and Ellie climb aboard an Apollo mission spacecraft, with Ellie’s imagination placing her inside the launch shuttle. A nice momentary break from the ongoing apocalypse.

Things Are Becoming Tense

On Ellie’s 17th birthday, Joel has once again baked her a cake – this time with the correct spelling. However, he hears a kerfuffle inside Ellie’s room. Upon his breaking and entering, he finds Ellie undergoing the teenage trifecta – Drugs, Sex and Tattoos.

Joel’s parental disappointment bubbles over, suggesting that she lives under his roof and his rules. Yet Ellie quickly counteracts saying this house was gifted to them, Joel doesn’t own it.

During the night, Joel is awoken to Ellie trying to move into the garage. He begrudgingly accepts that they need their separate space.

The Start of the End

A two year jump this time to Ellie’s 19th birthday. She is sat in her converted garage, practicing her questions to Joel regarding Salt Lake City and what really happened. After an interruption from Joel himself, the two head out for Ellie’s first ever patrol.

During this, they receive a radio alert of infected in the area. After arriving at the devastating scene, they find Eugene, husband to town psychiatrist Gail. He reveals he has been bitten, his final request being to take him back to the town to say goodbye to Gail.

At first, Joel refuses, however after Ellie’s intervention, he reluctantly agrees and promises Ellie that they’ll take Eugene back to say goodbye. However, whilst Ellie fetches the horses, Joel takes Eugene to a scenic lakeside view. Knowing it’s his last view moments, Eugene pleads to Joel, begging to speak to and see his wife one last time. Joel says if you love someone enough, you can always see their face.

The camera cuts to a silent aerial shot of the lake, followed by a flock of birds fleeing their nests.

Betrayed and Dismayed

Ellie returns to see Joel and, the newly deceased, Eugene. Ellie’s look of disgust towards Joel mirrors the tense relationship we saw prior to Joel’s death. They wrap Eugene’s body in tarp and return to Jackson.

With an emotional Gail onsite, Joel tells her a fictitious version of events, suggesting Eugene nobly took his own life. Gail understands and accepts this, thanking Joel for his efforts. However, stricken with guilt and anger, Ellie blurts out the truth of what happened. Gail is distraught and slaps Joel, with Ellie storming off back home.

A New Light on NYE

Nine months on from this, we return to the previously intense New Year’s Eve, this time from Joel’s perspective. The events unfold, and we find ourselves back on the porch with Joel playing the earlier seen guitar.

At our first viewing, we saw Ellie make eye contact with Joel before storming past towards the garage. However, this time we stay a little longer, revealing that Ellie in fact comes back to speak to Joel.

She expresses that the look on Joel’s face when lying to Gail was the exact same look he had after Salt Lake City. Ellie begins to question Joel on the events that unfolded that night. In a tremendous piece of acting by Pedro Pascal, Joel simply nods and shakes his head to the questions.

Ellie discovers the truth and suggests that if she needed to die to find a cure, that was her purpose. An emotional Joel says that he loves her too much and she wouldn’t understand the love until she had a child of her own.

What seems like a broken relationship shows some signs of reconciliation as Ellie says she does not forgive him but would like to try. With this being one of their final interactions before Joel’s untimely death, it makes that scene just more upsetting to watch.

We then catch back up to present day Ellie after killing Nora. She is outside in the rain, ready to meet Dina and Jesse in the theatre to begin the final act.