‘The Last of Us’ Finale Kills Off Another Fan-Favorite Character—And Reveals a Major Change For Season Three

This story contains major spoilers for the season two finale of HBO’s The Last of Us.

Ellie (Bella Ramsey) is learning about the cost of vengeance. For each violent action in the world of The Last of Us, there is an equal and opposite savage action. Over the last few weeks, in the course of her pursuit of Abby, Ellie’s crossed a few names off her Arya Stark-esque kill list, including the particularly gruesome double deaths of Owen (Spencer Lord) and pregnant Mel (Ariela Barer), along with Nora (Tati Gabrielle) in last week’s episode.

As if Ellie killing a pregnant Mel and not being able to save her unborn child wasn’t enough of a gutting moment—an action that “breaks her,” as co-creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann put it in a press conference ahead of the finale—the last episode of season two saw the cost of vengeance come due in another way. In the final moments of the episode, Ellie, Jesse (Young Mazino), Tommy (Gabriel Luna), and Dina (Isabela Merced) are all preparing to leave when a raging Abby ambushes them. While it’s not yet clear how exactly she’s managed to track down the quartet, she shows up to hold Tommy at gunpoint and deliver a (shocking) killshot to Jesse. The episode ends with a declaration from Abby to Ellie that she’s “wasted” the fact that she was spared. As a gunshot rings out, the episode fades to black . . . before flashing back to the day Ellie and Dina arrived. Only this time, we see Abby, now firmly in perspective.

For those who played The Last of Us Part Two, this won’t come as a surprise. The PlayStation game unfolded in a similar way. Its opening prologue switches between Ellie and Abby before settling into Ellie’s perspective for quite a while. The moment in the theater plays out in a similar fashion in the game, fading to black on a cliffhanger before putting the player squarely in Abby’s shoes as a playable character.

As Catherine O’Hara revealed in an interview with Variety, season three will, in fact, show us Abby’s side of the story. Mazin and Druckmann confirmed that sentiment in the presser; Druckmann stated that Abby’s story “is going to be really important” moving forward. While we’ll be sure to see the regular cast—Ellie, Tommy, Dina, etc.—again at some point, the bulk of next season will (likely) focus on Abby’s experience in the wake of killing Joel, what she’s up to with the Washington Liberation Front, and why she’s missing when Isaac and the rest of the WLF decide to head off to assault the Seraphites. As part of this, we’ll also learn a lot more about the long-simmering war between the two groups. And Mazin was sure to tease that we’ll learn more about Abby’s father, whom audiences “haven’t met” yet.

Fans of the show who didn’t know this was coming might find this conclusion a little random or frustrating, but the change in perspective is one of the things that made the game so compelling when it was released five years ago. While the show has provided more context for Abby’s motivations, this change in perspective is inherently purposeful, opening the door for an exploration of the cyclical nature of vengeance. It’s also part of a shifting idea of what the series can be, season-to-season, which is something Mazin hit upon during that same press conference. The decision for the shift is just as bold a storytelling choice in the show as it was in the game, and we’ll find out what it all leads to whenever the series returns for its (already confirmed) third season.