‘The Last of Us’ Soaked the Average Coming-of-Age Story in Blood

Something irrevocably changes in Ellie (Bella Ramsey) in the final minutes of The Last of Us’ eighth episode. It’s a loss of innocence moment that, unfortunately, comes in every coming-of-age tale—which is exactly what the HBO adaptation of the hit video game has turned out to be.

(Warning: Spoilers ahead!)

As she stabs David (Scott Shepherd) repeatedly with his own butcher knife, the Ellie we’ve all come to know since the beginning of this long journey slips from existence. Whatever shred of innocence she had left is gone.

It might seem strange to look at a story like The Last of Us—one so full of pain, death and destruction—as a coming-of-age tale, but it is one for Ellie. This is no John Hughes movie, that’s for sure, but the teen years in the post-apocalyptic world are just as formative as they are for teens in our own real-life dystopia. Sadly, here, they’re marked by much more gruesome darkness than the coming-of-age stories we usually see in media. Ellie’s short-but-harrowing 14 years of life have been littered with death and despair, culminating in this childhood-shattering murder.

Even before she hit her teens, life was rough for Ellie. She never knew her parents, instead raised as an orphan in a FEDRA school that eventually trained her to be a cog in its fascist machine. Then, at the notoriously awful age of 14, she experienced her first love—and first loss. Falling for and then mourning her best friend Riley (Storm Reid) was compounded with learning of her newfound immunity to the pandemic-causing cordyceps fungus. However, this revelation gave her a purpose: She couldn’t save Riley, but Ellie could save the world.

The carnage has unfortunately not subsided since Marlene (Merle Dandridge) tasked Joel and Tess (Anna Torv) with smuggling Ellie out of Boston and delivering her to the Fireflies, who will study her immunity to try to make a vaccine. Ellie and Joel lost Tess early on in the journey, after she sacrificed herself following a bite from an Infected. Later, she lost her new friend Sam (Keivonn Woodard) after he was bitten by an Infected too, and his brother Henry (Lamar Johnson) could not live without Sam; he took his own life right in front of Ellie.

Sam and Henry’s deaths came as a big blow to Ellie—not only because she tried to save Sam with some of her blood, but because Sam and Henry’s relationship echoed so much of her and Joel’s bond. Could one really survive without the other? In Henry and Sam’s case, Henry did not think so. In this moment, Ellie had to look at how dependent both she and Joel had become upon each other, and face the hard truth that someday, she could be the Sam to Joel’s Henry—or vice versa.

A traumatic event like the death of Sam and Henry seems likely to rob a young person of their childlike optimism, but despite how painful their deaths were Ellie still maintained her youthful spirit. While it continues to weigh heavily on Ellie’s mind, it’s not until episode 8 that she truly sees the evil of the world she lives in. That’s where David comes in.

When Ellie meets David, she is immediately skeptical of him. They both stumble upon the downed deer she was hunting. David, wanting to feed his community, barters a deal to give Ellie medicine for Joel, in exchange for some of the meat. She agrees but keeps her rifle trained on him, refusing to follow him or his lackey James (Troy Baker) to town to get the medicine.

However, Ellie eventually agrees to go with David to a nearby abandoned home (with the deer) to take shelter from the snow, as they wait for James to return. It’s here that Ellie lets her guard down for a second. She learns more about David: He is a teacher-turned-preacher (he found God after the apocalypse), and he now leads the group that occupies the town nearby. He is more than happy to welcome Ellie into their ranks.

Thanks to David’s unassuming presence and willingness to open up, Ellie starts to trust him a bit. That is, of course, until she learns that the man Joel killed at the university (back in episode 6) was one of his group members, who was scavenging for supplies and food on David’s command. Considering we all know that this group member viciously attacked and stabbed Joel first, it’s safe to assume this group is not a peaceful one.

Ellie is taken aback by how easily someone would try to manipulate her, while holding back their true intentions. Even after the big reveal that Joel and Ellie are the group’s public enemy #1 and David rules over them with an iron fist, David continues to try to get in Ellie’s good graces. He doesn’t allow James to kill her, letting her escape with the medicine and her life. Ellie, however, is never going to let her guard down around him ever again. You can only fool her once.

Throughout her entire journey across the country thus far, Ellie has avoided encountering true evil. The Infected are not evil; they are human beings unfortunately controlled by a fungus, with a mission to spread their malignant contagion to every last person. The human vessels cannot help the actions of their puppet masters. Even someone as full of rage as Kathleen (Melanie Lynksey) was not evil. Instead, she was grieving the loss of her brother and blinded by revenge, leading her to murder a whole lot of people and torture a bunch more.

In spending time with David, however, Ellie learns that he lacks any empathy for the rest of humanity. He rules his cultish group of followers under a constant threat of violence. His temper can worsen on a dime. This is demonstrated when he smacks one of the young women in his group viciously after she speaks out against him, telling David that Joel and Ellie should both die. He also forces his followers to partake in cannibalism—whether they are aware of it or not. And, worst of all, he seems to be a pedophile—or at very least heavily hinted at being one.

The entire time he is with Ellie, David is trying to manipulate her into staying with him in the town. From telling her that he is the only one advocating for keeping her alive to promising her a wonderful life within his cult, David is doing his best to isolate her and make her dependent on him—not Joel. David even tells Ellie, whom he has locked in a cage, that her life with Joel is over and unless she finds a way to trust him she will be truly alone. He wants the two of them to rule the group together, because he sees a lot of himself in her. It takes a sharper turn toward the creepy, when David holds and caresses her hand while he has her locked in a cage.

Ellie has never come face to face with this kind of cruelty yet. Most people Ellie has met so far have done terrible things out of necessity to survive, not because they just wanted to hurt someone. She is not naive about the true nature of the world; she doesn’t think it’s great and that everyone in it is helpful. But Ellie has never met someone like David before, who is consciously trying to hurt those around him for his own gain or, as he says, appease his “violent heart.”

Facing this kind of person—and being held prisoner by him—unleashes something within Ellie. With no Joel around to show her otherwise, Ellie is forced to accept that there are people out there like David, who will try to hurt her just to say they can. And those people are the ones that she will have to hurt back. By the time Ellie picks up the knife David was going to kill her with and brutally slashes him to death, the pun book-obsessed teen is gone. In her stead is a jaded, untrusting adult.

Ellie, with blood and tears streaming down her face, is grabbed by Joel (Pedro Pascal) after leaving David’s mutilated body behind. She screams and tries to get out of his grip, but when she realizes who it is that’s holding her, she gives him a look that says everything. The impact of the emotional pain David inflicted upon her is written all over her face. Joel is the only person she can trust now—the one person who has never tried to manipulate her for his selfish reasons, and the only one who has not abandoned her.

No one gets through childhood in the world of The Last of Us unscathed, but Ellie held onto her childlike innocence for as long as she could. From her never-ending curiosity about the world before the outbreak, to her obsession with comic books, to her sassy, teenage comebacks, Ellie has maintained a youthful spunk throughout all the horrors. Until now. Losing that innocence so young will determine the type of adult Ellie becomes. But it is the betrayal she’s finally experienced that will haunt her the most. David betrayed her trust in people with his cruel manipulation tactics. Now, she only has trust in Joel. If he betrays that trust, Ellie will truly be lost.

As we head to the final episode of the season, this pain will remain fresh on Ellie’s mind, her heart hardening in response. It's a reminder of how unforgiving this world is, and it’s telling of what kind of person this world has turned Ellie into. For better or for worse.