The Last Of Us Season 2 Episode 2's Major Character Death Explained

Contains spoilers for "The Last of Us" Season 2, Episode 2 — "Through the Valley"

Anyone who played "The Last of Us Part II," the massively popular and critically adored Naughty Dog game that released in 2020 (and served as a sequel to 2013's "The Last of Us"), knew this was coming, but they might not have expected it to happen so soon. Joel Miller, the protagonist of the first game played by Pedro Pascal — and the first season of HBO's adaptation "The Last of Us," which started its run in 2023 — is dead. 

In the Season 2 premiere "Future Days," we meet his future killer Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), a character who's new to the series (and who kicks off the start of "The Last of Us Part II"). We learn immediately that she's hunting him — marking a difference from how she's introduced in the game, where we learn that she's hunting someone but don't actually know why — and when he saves her from a horde of infected cordyceps zombies during "Through the Valley," it becomes clear before long that no good deed goes unpunished. So why does Abby say she wants to kill Joel "slowly" when we see her in "Future Days?" Why does she torment and toy with Joel before brutally killing him with the broken shaft of a golf club? What's behind all of this rage and ruin? Well, it all goes back to the Season 1 finale "Look for the Light," when Joel shot his way through a hospital filled with rebel Fireflies and killed doctors and nurses ... one of whom happened to be Abby's father.

At the start of "The Last of Us," Joel pretty begrudgingly agrees to bring a young girl named Ellie, played by Bella Ramsey, to the aforementioned Firefly hospital — because after being bitten by an infected zombie, she never turned into one, meaning that she's perhaps the only person in this dystopian, apocalyptic hellscape that's immune to the virus. Throughout their journey, Joel — who lost his daughter Sarah (Nico Parker) right at the start of the outbreak — grows to genuinely care for Ellie, and the feeling is mutual; when he rescues her from a dangerous situation in Season 1 and calls her "babygirl," using the affectionate term he once saved for Sarah, it's clear that the two have formed a familial relationship in a pretty short amount of time.

That's why, when he's faced with Ellie dying in surgery to help find the cure — largely because the doctors believe they'd need to dissect her brain to do so — Joel shoots his way through the makeshift hospital, carrying an unconscious Ellie and leaving with her. In the process, Joel kills a whole lot of unarmed people, including Abby's father, who just so happened to be the doctor preparing to operate on Ellie. Joel isn't honest with Ellie when she wakes up and asks what happened, telling her that the process simply didn't work ... knowing full well that Ellie would have gladly given her life to find a cure for the cordyceps virus. (Whether or not Ellie believes Joel has been a debate amongst gamers for years, and now TV audiences are weighing in as well.)

Abby does, true to her word, take her time with Joel, telling him precisely why she wants him dead before shooting him in the leg, beating him without mercy, and, finally, driving that golf club shaft into his neck to finish the job. Ellie isn't with Joel for this entire ordeal but bursts into the house Abby and her friends have taken over towards the end of Joel's torment, watching in horror (she's pretty quickly pinned and immobilized by one of Abby's allies) as her father figure dies — which helps set up the next part of this whole story.

If we've learned anything about Ellie throughout "The Last of Us" thus far, it's that she is tough — the girl does not go down without a fight, and she promises retribution right to Abby's face as she watches this total stranger murder Joel. Again, if you've played the game, you know where this is going, because "The Last of Us Part II" spends most of its narrative building to a showdown between Ellie and Abby. (That's not a spoiler, but a mere inevitability because, again, Ellie isn't one to back away from a fight or challenge.) 

Violence creates a vicious cycle, and it's going to be fascinating to watch that concept play out throughout Season 2 of "The Last of Us." An incredible thing about this story is that, while it's ostensibly about zombies, it's honestly even more focused on how humans handle the end of the world and society as they know it, the infighting and violence that comes about between them, and the emotional bonds formed in the process of all of this. Joel was a closed-off and taciturn man before meeting Ellie, who helped him heal from his horrible loss (here meaning Sarah), and Joel gave Ellie a parental figure when she'd never really had one in her entire life. Despite the wedge we see between the two of them in "Future Days" — a divide that's grown over five years, though we don't know why just yet — Ellie and Joel really and truly love one another like they're related by blood, and if Joel could tell Ellie anything after his death, he'd probably tell her that avenging him will just create more misery and violence. Ellie hasn't learned that yet, though ... so we'll watch her revenge mission play out now that Abby's has concluded.

"The Last of Us" airs new episodes on Sundays at 9 P.M. EST on Max and Hulu.