Note: This story contains spoilers for “The Last of Us” Season 2, Episode 7.
When it came to adapting “The Last of Us,” co-creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann had many discussions about the structure of the story and what to expand upon, change or scrap.
But there was one moment in the Season 2 finale that the pair didn’t even consider touching: the sudden death of Jesse, who’s shot in the head by Abby as he and Ellie run to the theater’s lobby to rescue Tommy. The death comes shortly after Jesse has seemingly made amends with Ellie after she dragged his pregnant ex and unborn child into a war zone.
“That one, I don’t think we ever entertained an alternative,” Druckmann told TheWrap. “His fate was always sealed.”
Throughout the episode, the tension between the pair builds, starting with the former accidentally revealing the pregnancy news to the latter. Young Mazino told TheWrap he did multiple takes of the pregnancy revelation, offering different levels of reaction to the news.
“I watched the screeners and was like, I wonder why they went with that take and not other takes. But I realize what makes sense in a situation like that, for someone like Jesse, is to compartmentalize. Regardless of whatever he’s feeling, it’s just like, ‘Shove that s–t down, put that all away. That’s for later, survive.’”
“If he was compartmentalizing with his anger for Ellie before, he’s going to compartmentalize the s–t out of this. If it was me, personally, I would’ve lost my s–t,” he continued. “But Jesse pushes it down because he’s like, ‘We’ll deal with that once we get out. Once we get out, we’ll get in the clear.’”
The pair later runs into a Seraphite being cornered and captured by a group of WLF, which Jesse stops Ellie from intervening in due to his much more tactical approach to combat.
“He blankets it all in black and white. It’s very binary. Whether its a stalker or a Seraphite, in Jesse’s mind, he’s just like, ‘Can I put a bullet through its head? OK. If I’m outnumbered, get back,’” Mazino explained. “He understands the law of the jungle — the strong live and the weak die — and he abides by that. And he understands at this point that Ellie may not necessarily feel the same or know the same, which is super dangerous and can be a very compromising position to be in.”
“Because Ellie has this immunity, she sees this world in a bit of a different light. She’s not so worried,” he added. “But for someone like Jesse, who’s a mere mortal, there are rules you have to follow in order to survive. That practicality can only get you so far, though.”
The tension between the pair hits a boiling point when Jesse reveals that he voted ‘No’ in Episode 3 about sending a crew after Abby to avenge Joel’s death, since the community of Jackson had to come first after being left vulnerable from the infected attack.
“In our conversations of how Jesse voted, we were both under the same notion that he would vote to protect Jackson, because Jesse is more about the larger community — at least the community he belongs to, not the community of mankind — than about the individual or this pursuit of justice,” Druckmann said. “There’s some overlap there between Jesse and Joel, because I believe in similar circumstances Joel would have voted the same way.”
“When she finds out how he voted, she makes a point that I think is so solid that I start to think, ‘Oh, yeah, so there goes another hero,’ because she’s right,” Mazin noted. “It’s not that what she’s doing is right, but his belief that he is moral is so challengeable and so arbitrary that I am moral and upstanding and sacrificial to people as long as they’re on the inside of this wooden fence. But if they’re outside the wooden fence, I’ll just let them die, even if they’re a kid. And I love that, because no one in life really is an Eagle Scout, except for the actual Eagle Scouts.”
Ramsey also told TheWrap that the vote moment is Ellie’s breaking point with Jesse because he becomes a perceived threat toward her goal of finding and killing Abby.
“There’s no reasoning with her. She’s so far gone,” they said. “I think she’s always been a bit pissed off with him talking about community and all of that, but that’s the thing that she decides to go in on. It’s not that deep and she doesn’t feel that deeply about it. Her emotions are just so heightened.”
Going forward, Druckmann said that the loss of Jesse will have “drastic” impact on Ellie and Dina’s relationship.
“He’s the father of this baby, but also a very close friend, a former romantic partner,” he noted. “It’s going to mean a whole lot.”
“We know that once Ellie gave [Dina] this information about, ‘OK, I actually knew what Joel did and this is what he did,’ it changes things for her,” Mazin added. “Jesse’s death is going to change things for her. But how we play that out, we have to wait and see.”
But this may not be the last time we see Jesse. When asked about Season 3, Mazin replied: “All I can say is we haven’t seen the last of Kaitlyn Dever and we haven’t seen the last of Bella Ramsey. And we haven’t seen the last of Isabela Merced and we haven’t even seen the last of a lot of people who are currently dead in the story.”
The first two seasons of “The Last of Us” are streaming now on Max.