The Weight of Survival: Relive Ellie’s Journey in “The Last of Us” Before Season 2 Premiere

By The Credits | March 12, 2025

For all intents and purposes, Ellie (Bella Ramsey) is a normal kid. She likes comic books. She’s bright but mischievous. She’s learning how to stand up for herself, but she also craves guidance and mentorship. She’s tougher than she looks, but she’s still just a kid.

That’s about where normalcy ends for Ellie, who has the both the blessing and the curse of being the one person alive in the world of The Last of Us who is immune to the virus that turns human beings into flesh-eating zombies in the wake of a cordycepts-borne plague that turned the planet into a living hell. One of HBO’s most compelling new series, the first to arrive in a post-Game of Thrones world that had the makings of a genre-defying blockbuster, returns for season 2 on April 13. To that end, they’ve supplied a new video reminding us what Ellie’s been through in her long, tortuous journey from normal kid living in a deeply unusual world into a potentially humanity-saving pawn in a dangerous game being played by survivors of the cordycepts outbreak.

We see Ellie enjoying kid things, like her fateful day at the mall with her friend Riley (Storm Reid) from season 1, which ends in tragedy. She loses Riley during an attack by the infected, and gets bitten herself. Ellie assumes she’s a goner, but some kind of self-made serum within her keeps her alive (her mother, who died during childbirth, had been infected, granting Ellie immunity somehow). This revelation turns Ellie from a kid trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world to the subject of great interest to competing factions of survivors. Ellie’s eventually detained by a faction led by Marlene (Merle Dandridge), who informs her she’s got a greater purpose “than any of us could have ever imagined.” This leads Ellie to be entrusted to Joel (Pedro Pascal), who needs to escort her on a highly dangerous cross-country trip for unknown purposes until the end of season one.

We see Ellie and Joel’s journey, which puts them into contact with people they’ll get to know and lose, and a numberless army of infected, all at various stages of mutation, who have been turned into mindless hunters of the uninfected.

Season 1 was never less than a totally riveting zombie thriller, but it was also a moving portrait of the lengths people will go to protect the ones they love. While Joel initially refers to Ellie as nothing more than “cargo,” eventually, she becomes his family, and he becomes hers, and their evolving friendship becomes the defining, most essential element of the series. It’s what turned a great zombie thriller into a truly great show, period. It was also a big reason why Pedro Pascal, already a rising star, became a bonafide one, and Bella Ramsey proved she’s one of the most talented performers of her generation.

The Last of Us returns to Max for its season 2 premiere on April 13. Check out the new featurette here: