Abby and Ellie came face to face in the closing moments of The Last of Us Season 2 finale, recreating one of the tensest moments from the game – and fans aren’t happy.
It was a grim ending for Ellie. After narrowly escaping a Seraphite execution, she made it to the aquarium, where she shot Owen and accidentally killed Mel, who slipped away as she asked her to save her baby. Ellie couldn’t do anything but panic.
Things got worse when she got back to the theater, with Abby turning up and shooting Jesse, killing him instantly. “I let you live… and you wasted it,” Abby told Ellie, before the episode cut to black and revealed the set-up for Season 3: “Seattle Day One” from Abby’s POV.
It is a shocking ending… unless you played The Last of Us. However, even those who are new to the story aren’t pleased with how the season ended.
The Last of Us fans slam “anticlimactic” Season 2 ending
It’s easy to see why people are frustrated, regardless of whether they played the game or not.
Season 2 was only seven episodes long, everyone’s favorite character was killed off in the second episode, and the finale ends on a cliffhanger that doesn’t really have any dramatic tension; we know Ellie is still alive, and now we know the third season will follow a character we barely spent any time with in Season 2.
In its defense, this is a direct adaptation of the original game’s trajectory, switching to Abby’s POV and making you play through what happened to her in the three days before that fateful face-off in the theater. It’s a brilliant, bold switch in Part 2 – but it’s not been warmly received by viewers.
“I just watched the Season 2 finale of The Last of Us. There are so many cuts. It’s all so fast. Anticlimactic. The changes are almost always for the worse. Do yourself a favor and play the game,” one user tweeted.
“S2 finale of The Last of Us as an episode was… okay, but for a finale, not good. Moments were terribly rushed leading to moments that should be emotional but weren’t. Seven episodes was not enough,” another wrote.
“The ending of Last of Us S2 is an absolute joke. You can’t off PP, end on that cliffhanger and then take another two years to do seven more episodes,” a third added.
Other viewers have more specific criticisms, like how Abby’s “I let you live… and you wasted it” line was adapted – particularly with Ellie’s reaction tacked on at the end and the gunshot.
“The ‘No no noooo’ at the end make this whole sequence cringe and pathetic, such a mistake again,” one viewer wrote. “No but really what the f**k was that? The edit in the game is jaw-dropping stuff. Why do they keep adding shit that doesn’t improve things? F**k this show,” another posted.
Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann haven’t commented on how the show tinkered with Abby and Ellie’s scene, but Mazin admitted that they considered changing the ending of the season.
“Honestly, we were open to a different ending. We talked about it a lot. We considered everything. Of course, you want to play around. Like maybe we should just interlace the stories. Maybe we should just go back and forth,” he explained.
“In the end, I just remember saying, ‘Isn’t this part of the genetics of how this story functions?’ It’s just part of the genetics. Now, what it means is we have to take risks as a television show and HBO has to back us taking risks.”
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