Bella Ramsey teased a violent turn for Ellie in The Last of Us season 2.
The first season of the series covered the entirety of Naughty Dog's hit video game, The Last of Us: Part 1, with Ramsey and Pedro Pascal in the lead as the duo of Ellie and Joel, respectively.
After The Last of Us earned massive success, another season was quickly confirmed. It's unclear how much of The Last of Us: Part II the next batch of episodes will cover, but the showrunners have teased it may take multiple seasons and that the story may diverge from the game in a similar way to Season 1.
However, one thing that will seemingly remain consistent with the source material in The Last of Us season 2 is a larger role for Ellie, with Ramsey confirmed to continue playing the character despite a time jump that occurs in the games.
Bella Ramsey Talks Ellie's Violence in Season 2
During a discussion on Spectrum News' The Envelope Emmys Roundtable — Drama, Bella Ramsey pointed out a significant moment in the first season of The Last of Us that could have big ramifications for future episodes.
Ramsey pointed to a scene in episode 8 of The Last of Us between Ellie and David (Scott Shepherd) as being a moment of "catharsis" for their character:
"I think at the end of Episode 8, when she's just had this experience with David. She's been kept captive by him, and then she kills him with the ax. That moment is a catharsis. It's a release of all the pain and the fear that she's been experiencing. And the loss."
The actor added this moment is "pivotal" for Ellie due to David pointing out that she has "a violent heart" :
"That moment is so pivotal, because there's a line David says to her when she's in the cage: 'you have a violent heart.' She resists that instantly, because she knows, deep down, that she does. And then this moment at the end of the episode, you see that violence. She does have a violent heart. David was right."
The moment in question sees Ellie brutally kill David with an axe, but the tipping point for Ramsey is the fact that Ellie "could've stopped" but instead she "kept going and she enjoyed it":
"What scares her the most in that moment isn't what David did to her. It's what she, in the end, did to him."
"He was dead after the second hit. I think someone counted: there were, like, 28 hits to the face with this axe. She could've stopped, but she didn't. She kept going and she enjoyed it. That's what scared her."
Ramsey hinted that this change in Ellie's character will "inform seasons to come":
"I think that's the moment where there's a shift in her as a character... that I think will inform seasons to come."
Ellie's Dark Descent
Any players of The Last of Us Part II will know that Ellie walks down an increasingly dark and violent path in the second game.
Showrunner Craig Mazin has previously discussed how Ellie's dark side was hinted at in the first episode of The Last of Us where she was "activated" by seeing Joel's violence.
The moment Ramsey mentions between Ellie and David in season 1 of the series is indeed another huge moment for the character. From here, in the game, Ellie struggles to process the trauma of her actions, which results in a shift in her personality from being optimistic and hopeful to pensive and downcast.
While this shift is similarly represented in the show, it seems that, with the benefit of hindsight, this moment in episode 8 has also served as a way to lay the foundations for Ellie's violent character arc that will come in future seasons.
The Last of Us Season 1 is streaming now on Max.
