The Last Of Us Game Ends On A Heart-Wrenching Note

Viewers turned out in record numbers for the first season of HBO’s The Last of Us, and if you were one of them, you know why the video game adaptation was such a phenomenon. If not, now is the perfect time to catch up for Season 2.

The Last of Us is a zombie tale that, like The Walking Dead, is just as much about human relationships and moral dilemmas as it is about flesh-eating monsters. The story can get really heavy, so if you’re unsure of whether you want to tune in, knowing The Last Of Us ending and plot summary beforehand might help.

Here’s everything to know about the series that’s been described as “the best video game adaptation ever.” Naturally, major spoilers ahead!

The Last of Us Plot Summary

The first Last of Us game begins in 2013 when an outbreak of a mutant fungus called “Cordyceps” spreads across the country and turns humans into aggressive creatures called the Infected. In the game, you play as Joel (Pedro Pascal in the show), who is trying to flee the chaos with his brother, Tommy (Gabriel Luna), and his daughter, Sarah (Nico Parker). But tragedy soon strikes, and Sarah dies in Joel’s arms.

The story jumps 20 years, when civilization has collapsed. The Infected have evolved into various forms of terrifying zombies, while the few remaining human survivors live in quarantine zones run by totalitarian military regimes. Joel is working as a smuggler alongside his partner, Tess (Anna Torv), when they run into the rebel militia group the Fireflies, who oppose the quarantine zone authorities. The leader of the Fireflies, Marlene (Merle Dandridge), tells them she’ll give them a sizeable cache if they help to smuggle Ellie (Bella Ramsey) from Texas to Boston. Joel eventually learns why the Fireflies are so desperate to protect Ellie: She’s immune to the virus, and the Fireflies hope she holds the answer to a cure.

The story was created by co-showrunner Neil Druckmann, who also wrote the recently adapted Uncharted. According to an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Druckmann originally came up with The Last of Us story in 2004 while in college. While the idea initially didn’t go anywhere, Druckmann picked it back up again after working as a writer for the gaming company Naughty Dog.

“We wanted to do the opposite of Resident Evil — which I love, but it’s so over-the-top and you’re fighting giant spiders and it’s all about enemy variety,” Druckmann said. “What if it’s about intimate relationships — an exploration of the unconditional love a parent feels for their child and the beautiful things that could come out of that and the really horrible things that could come out of that?”

The Last Of Us Ending

Season 1 covered the first Last of Us game. (Yes, there’s another — more on that below.) During their journey to find the Fireflies, Ellie and Joel hit several snags in the road and are forced to change destinations to Salt Lake City, Utah. They also struggle to survive during winter, and Ellie has a run-in with a cannibalistic group and is forced to kill a man. But they endure and grow close, and the cynical Joel comes to see Ellie as his daughter. They survive until springtime when Joel successfully delivers Ellie to the Fireflies in Utah.

It’s seemingly a happy ending, but then Joel finds out that to study Ellie’s immunity, the Fireflies will have to remove huge chunks of her brain, thus killing her. Unwilling to lose a daughter once again, Joel flies into a rage and murders all the Fireflies in the hospital, including Marlene. He escapes from the hospital with the sedated Ellie and drives away. When she wakes up, Joel claims that the Fireflies had already found other immune people but could not create a cure and gave up.

In the end, Ellie is wracked with survivor’s guilt, as she’s now robbed of the one thing — saving humanity — that fueled her journey across the country. It’s clear she doesn’t quite believe Joel’s lies, but it also looks like she can’t bring herself to really consider the alternative.

The Story Doesn’t End There

The journey continues in The Last of Us Part II, which takes place five years after the original game. Joel and Abby are living in a community of survivors in Jackson, Wyoming, when a shocking event upends their family: Joel is killed by Abby (Kaitlyn Dever in the series), who’s on a quest for vengeance. She is revealed to be the daughter of the doctor Joel murdered to save Ellie years earlier.

After watching Joel get beaten to death, Ellie wants revenge of her own. So does Tommy, who sets out for Seattle to track down Abby’s group, the Washington Liberation Front. Ellie and her girlfriend Dina (Isabela Merced) — who is pregnant — follow soon after.

It’s not a straightforward journey of right and wrong, however, as the game also dives into Abby’s perspective, humanizing her before setting up a confrontation between the young women. Though Abby comes close to killing Ellie and Dina, her friend Lev encourages her to let them go.

Later, Ellie lives with Dina on a farm and helps raise her baby, JJ. However, Tommy arrives with more intel about Abby’s current whereabouts and encourages her to avenge Joel.

Dina wants to put it all behind them, but Ellie travels to California and nearly drowns Abby. She has a change of heart while remembering Joel and ultimately lets her go. But by the time she returns to the farm, Dina and JJ have moved out.

However, don’t expect all of this to happen in Season 2. The Last of Us has been renewed for a third season on HBO, and as co-showrunner Craig Mazin told Deadline, it might not even stop there. “We feel like it’s almost assuredly going to be the case that — as long as people keep watching and we can keep making more television — Season 3 will be significantly larger. And indeed, the story may require Season 4,” he said.

This may not come as a surprise to fans of the games, though. According to gaming website How Long to Beat, the main story of the first Last of Us game takes 14.5 hours to complete. The second, however, is a much meatier 24 hours.