The Last of Us Season 2 Ending Explained (Episode 7): Who Dies and What About Ellie and Abby?
The Last of Us Season 2 adapts the first half of the video game The Last of Us Part II, focusing on Ellie’s journey through Seattle seeking revenge after Joel’s death. Throughout seven episodes, the series explores the growing conflict between the W.L.F. (Washington Liberation Front) and the Seraphites, as well as the increasingly complex decisions Ellie makes to achieve her goal: to kill Abby. The series “The Last of Us” is one of the favorite productions of many HBO Max subscribers, so the expected end of its second season has caught the attention of thousands of fans of the television adaptation of Naughty Dog’s video game. So, if you got to episode 02×07 of fiction, maybe you had any doubts about his outcome. Therefore, in this note, I present your final explanation (ending explained). Pay attention!
It is worth specifying that the chapter with which the second delivery of the HBO series Max is titled “Convergence”, is directed by Nina Lopez-Corrado and has as writers Neil Druckmann, Hallew Gross, and Craig Mazin. This premiered last Sunday, May 25, 2025, and takes up the history of the previous episode, showing what happened to Ellie (Bella Ramsey) after remembering his last moments living next to Joel (Pedro Pascal). Equally probable is that you have seen the finale of this second season and that there is some doubt about what happened and the meaning it will have for the future and the next season. Especially if you haven’t played video games. So, if you don’t fear spoilers, here is the recap-explanation of the season finale of The Last of Us Season 2 and some hypotheses for season 3.
The Last of Us Season 2 Ending Explained: Who Dies and What About Ellie and Abby?
Jesse, Dina, and Ellie meet at the beginning of the episode. Jesse removed the arrow stuck in Dina’s leg and her refusal to drink alcohol as an anesthesia Jesse understood that her ex is pregnant; Ellie, on the other hand, is shocked by what she did to Nora (left to die in the spores and tortured to blows to make her say where Abby is) and at this point she confesses everything to Dina: her immunity, Joel’s trip to Salt Lake City and Joel’s massacre, which killed everyone including Abby’s father. “Let’s go home,” says Dina, and Ellie seems to agree. The next morning, therefore, Jesse and Ellie go in search of Tommy to resume Jackson’s way. Jesse has understood everything, and now that he is about to become a father, he does not want to die for Ellie’s selfishness (Jesse confesses that he has voted against the mission). He tells her that he fell in love with another girl who passed through Jackson and headed for Mexico, but that he did not follow her because he is used to putting his community before himself.
Ellie doesn’t make the same choice shortly after. She and Jesse hear on the radio that some snipers are killing several WLF soldiers. They understand that it is Tommy, and Jesse says to join him, but Ellie senses that Abby should be in the aquarium, and the two split up, shortly after witnessing Wolves who massacred a seraphite boy. Shortchange of perspective to show us Isaac, the leader of the WLF, explains to his lieutenant Elise that Abby and her friends have been missing for days, and patience if the others are not found, but Abby is destined to become leader of the WLF when Isaac and Elise will die, probably that same night in a battle with seraphitic enemies. Let’s go back to Ellie, who steals a boat. She is discovered by a Seraphite child who warns adults. They take Ellie and are about to hang her when the Hyenas hear a sound that warns them that elsewhere, a clash with the Lupias is taking place, so they leave Ellie there, miraculously safe.
But instead of appreciating luck and returning to her friends, she continues in the direction of the aquarium. Here, he finds Mel (the doctor who was horrified when his companions tortured Joel) and her boyfriend, Owen (who prevented Manny from killing Ellie). He tells them he won’t kill them if they tell her where to find Abby – “because I’m not like you,” he says – but Owen tries to surprise her by pulling out a gun, and Ellie instinctively anticipates him by shooting two shots that kill Owen and Mel. Here comes the most painful scene since Joel was killed: Mel turns out to be pregnant, and desperately asks Ellie to save her baby by pulling it out of her belly. But Ellie doesn’t know how to do it, and Mel slowly goes out, delirious and believing that the baby has been saved. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and this moment is excruciating. Ellie is in shock, and Tommy and Jesse arrive at that juncture, telling her that he has returned to save her because she would have done the same for him. The three therefore meet in Dina, Tommy consoles Ellie, who seems resigned to the idea that she will not be able to avenge Joel’s death by killing Abby. But suddenly they hear noises coming from inside the theater: it’s Abby, who took Tommy hostage.
Who Dies and What About Ellie and Abby?
The last episode begins with Ellie heading to the aquarium where Abby is hiding, disobeying Jesse, who was trying to convince her to return to Jackson. Upon arrival, Ellie kills Owen and Mel, unaware that Mel was pregnant. Their massacre culminates when he returns to the theater with Tommy and Jesse, but they are surprised by Abby. In a shocking sequence, Abby shoots Jesse in the head, killing him instantly. The scene is abruptly cut when Abby points to Ellie, and we see Abby waking up at the WLF headquarters right away, indicating that the next episode (already in season 3) will change perspective and follow Abby from “Day One” of his Seattle story.
Who Dies at the End of the Season?
- Jesse: He is shot in the head while trying to save Tommy.
- Marcus Acacius (in parallel with Abby’s traffic) is executed by order of the emperors.
- Caracalla: Killed by his brother Geta.
- Lucilla: Dies in the Colosseum by an arrow shot by Macrinus (this occurs in Gladiator 2).
The Invasion of the W.L.F. Save Ellie
In parallel, Ellie is captured by the Seraphites when she is shipwrecked on her way to the aquarium. It is about to be ritually executed when the invasion of the W.L.F. the island interrupts everything. The attackers arrive just in time for the Seraphites to flee and Ellie to escape, without Isaac, the leader of the W.L.F., knowing that he has saved his worst enemy.
Where’s Abby and What Does “Day One” Mean?
During Isaac’s planned assault, Abby is missing. She has left her post to follow Owen to the aquarium and ends up being rescued by Lev and Yara, two Seraphite children. Like Joel with Ellie, Abby begins a protective relationship with them that redefines their path. This part of the story will be the focus of season 3, which will retell the events from “Day One”, but from Abby’s point of view.
Jesse and the Cost of Revenge
Jesse’s death is one of the most tragic of the season. Ellie loses another loved one due to her obsessive need for revenge. Although Jesse was trying to protect her and take her back home, Ellie chose the path of destruction. Its history, like the war between the W.L.F. and the Seraphites, reflects the endless cycle of violence.
The Price of Revenge
The beating heart of The Last of Us Season 2 – and its devastating ending – it’s Ellie’s inner journey, a path marked by pain, fury, and loss. Joel’s death left a deep void in her, a trauma that she cannot elaborate on except by transforming it into a revenge mission. But the moment he kills Owen and Mel, two people he doesn’t know, something breaks. The viewer feels in Ellie not only remorse, but also a new awareness: that of having become what he hated. Mel’s death scene is central. The discovery that she was pregnant – and that Ellie, although not wanting to, took the lives of two human beings – represents an ethical and personal shock. In that instant, Ellie stops simply being a victim and turns into an executioner. But it is also a moment of sudden empathy: imagine Dina instead of Mel, imagine herself instead of Abby.
The boundary between right and wrong dissolves. From that point on, Ellie begins to wonder about her choices, to feel shame, guilt, and – perhaps – a primitive form of redemption. Still, this awareness is not enough to stop the gear. As much as Ellie wants to go home, as much as she decides to save Tommy and give up the last revenge, the damage is now done. Jesse dies to protect her. Abby, consumed in turn by the thirst for justice, is unwilling to forgive. Thus, the revenge that Ellie chased ends up becoming her sentence: not only takes her away from the people she loves, but drags her into a vicious circle from which it seems impossible to get out. The price to pay is not only suffering, but identity itself.
An Infinite Cycle of Blood
The Last of Us series is based on the inexorable consequences. No action is isolated, no choice remains without effect. The final confrontation between Ellie and Abby is nothing more than the last card of a domino that started much earlier, the moment Joel killed Abby’s father to save Ellie. It is from there that the cycle starts: Abby grows by cultivating hatred, kills Joel for revenge, and Ellie, in turn, turns into an executioner. Each character responds to violence with other violence, in a spiral that wraps around itself without ever finding an outlet. The final scene of the season, with Abby pronouncing “I let you live, and you wasted the opportunity” before pointing the weapon at Ellie, is the perfect synthesis of this eternal return of hatred. It is the phrase of those who have already tried to stop the cycle, but have been disappointed.
Neither character manages to break free. Everyone is trapped in a tribal logic, where forgiveness is seen as weakness, and revenge as duty. The series invites us to reflect on the very concept of justice in a post-apocalyptic world. When the law no longer exists, what distinguishes the hero from the monster? It is a question that has no simple answers. Abby and Ellie are two faces of the same trauma, two torn souls chasing each other, convinced that they have a just cause. But what remains, in the end, is only blood. If The Last of Us really wants to go beyond the tragedy, it will first have to prove that breaking the cycle is possible. And that empathy can be stronger than revenge.
A Double Ending: Abby’s Gaze
The final scene is a flashback that takes us three days before the culminating events, but from Abby’s point of view. We find it in an arena converted by the WLF (Washington Liberation Front), immersed in a daily life made of crops and animals. This step suggests not only a narrative restart, but also a change of perspective that will be central to season 3: we will tell those same days in Seattle, but through Abby’s eyes. Just like in the video game, where the player lives half the story as the girl who killed Joel.
Will Season 3 Be Abby’s Point of View?
Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann have confirmed that season 2 has covered only part of the events of The Last of Us Part II and that at least two seasons will be needed to complete the narrative arc. Which means the third season could focus almost entirely on Abby. We will see what happened from his point of view, the dynamics with the WLF, his relationship with Isaac (Jeffrey Wright), and, above all, the introduction of two key characters still absent in the series: Yara and Lev. If the same game pattern is followed, only towards the end of the season will we see Ellie again. To confirm this direction was also Catherine O’Hara, interpreter of the therapist Gail, who in an interview with Variety said: “Craig [Mazin] has made it clear that Abby’s story will be next season”.
The showrunner has left no room for doubt: the third chapter of the series will focus entirely on the most divisive character of the franchise, faithfully following the narrative structure of the game, which halfway leaves Ellie’s point of view to tell the story through the eyes of those who killed Joel. It is a narrative choice as courageous as it is risky, both because it involves the almost total absence of Ellie for an entire season, and because it asks the public to empathize with a character that many still see as “the antagonist”. However, it is precisely this passage that has made The Last of Us Part II one of the most controversial and discussed video games in recent years. The series seems willing to replicate this polarization, too.
Narrative Risk or Necessary Turning Point?
Such a drastic choice – to pause Ellie for an entire season – is risky. After Joel’s death, the audience has already had to adapt to a new protagonist couple, Ellie and Dina. A further shift of the focus on Abby could create a definitive fracture. Despite Kaitlyn Dever’s skill, keeping tension high and interest will require impeccable writing. And there is a precedent: The Walking Dead has suffered a sharp drop in audience precisely because of a poorly managed cliffhanger. HBO will have to dose well the balance between loyalty to the game and television needs.
A War Still to Be Told!
Among the many threads left open, there is also the war between WLF and Serafiti, a conflict shown only in passing in season 2. The destruction of the Seraphiti village, the internal factions of the WLF, and the mysterious bloody bandages found by Ellie suggest that there is a much wider narrative behind it. Season 3 will therefore also have the task of exploring a bigger world, showing the moral decline of both sides, and how Abby and the new characters try to survive in the rubble.
Joel’s True Legacy
At the root of everything, like a mushroom that has taken root in the heart of the narrative, there is always a choice: that of Joel in the end of the first season (and of the first video game), when he decides to save Ellie, aware that in doing so he condemns the world to give up a possible cure for Cordyceps infection. It is a deeply human and unforgivably selfish decision, which reflects paternal love but also the desire not to lose a daughter again. And it is from that choice that all the moral chaos that dominates the second season branches out. The entire spiral of revenge and pain that is consumed between Abby and Ellie stems from that gesture: Abby wants to avenge her father, the surgeon sacrificed by Joel; Ellie wants to avenge Joel, father figure and savior. Each of the two characters is driven by the belief that they have the right to hate, kill, and punish. But The Last of Us is not a story about who is right: it is a story about how toxic, destructive, and unstoppable the desire for personal justice can become when it turns into obsession.
At the end of the second season, Ellie seems to come, if not to a true redemption, at least to a moment of lucidity. After killing Mel, pregnant, and seeing Jesse die to protect her, Ellie realizes that continuing on that path means losing herself and endangering the people she loves: Tommy, Dina, and the life they could have built together with Jackson. He begins, perhaps for the first time, to understand the enormity of what Joel has done for her, not only in terms of action, but of moral weight. But while Ellie is ready to give up revenge to save what’s left of her humanity, Abby has not yet reached that point. The words he pronounces before shooting – “I let you live, and you wasted the opportunity” – as we said, show that she, too, is trapped in the same mechanism. And here the heart of the future conflict lurks: two women, both victims and executioners, unable (yet) to break the chain of pain. Joel’s true legacy, therefore, is not just Ellie. It is the long shadow of his actions. It is the question that the series continues to ask its viewers: how much is life worth? And what are we willing to do–or to lose–for a person we love? If the third season can answer these questions without giving easy answers, The Last of Us will not be just a great series: it will be a contemporary tragedy worthy of the classics.
