Note: This story contains spoilers for “The Last of Us” Season 2.
“The Last of Us” Season 2 finale on Sunday saw the return of Mel and Owen as Ellie’s revenge quest brought her to the Seattle aquarium. After nearly dying trying to get there by boat in her obsession to find and kill Abby, Ellie arrives to find the pair arguing.
“They’re clearly in a very fraught place. They’ve escaped the WLF while there is a big war happening between the WLF and Seraphites and Abby has left them,” Barer told TheWrap. “We don’t know why Owen really wants to go back and save Abby.”
Similar to when Joel tortured two of David’s men in Season 1 to find Ellie, she attempts to do the same trick on Mel and Owen, asking them to point to where Abby is on a map. While Mel appears more willing than Owen to comply, that plan quickly goes awry when the latter tries to shoot Ellie. She responds in self defense by shooting Owen, with Mel getting caught in the crossfire. As the latter drops to the ground, she quickly reveals that she was pregnant, and tries to guide Ellie through performing a C-section. A confused Ellie begs her to explain how and Mel and her unborn child slowly pass away.
“It’s a bit different in the show in that we’re not quite sure who the father is. In the game, Owen is the father,” co-creator Craig Mazin said. “We went a different way in the show, but in the game, the nature of the confrontation is different. Mel actually attacks Ellie and Ellie kills her in self defense. And here in the show, it’s this true collateral damage moment.
“It’s important for people to see that it’s not like Ellie is going, ‘I’m cool whatever, it happens, let’s keep going after Abby.’ This breaks her,” he added. “It’s clear to her that Mel didn’t deserve to die. Mel didn’t hurt her. Mel didn’t hold her down. Mel didn’t hurt Joel. And we saw even more than that, before Ellie shows up in the room in [Episode 2], Mel is trying to help Dina, is horrified by what Abby is doing, and tries to stop it and fails, which is her own shame.”
When asked about why Mel seemed more willing than Owen to reveal Abby’s location to Ellie, Barer told TheWrap Mel is “done” with her by the time we get to the finale and suggested there’s been a rift since the events of Episode 2.
“She’s not risking her life or her child’s life to go find Abby,” she explained. “It’s been five years since Joel took out the Fireflies, and while that is a pretty unforgivable crime, a healthy person will be trying to move on and create a new life for themselves that they’re not totally willing to destroy in an act of more cruelty.”
Barer revealed that Mel and Owen’s death scene was shot three separate times, with the first take of the scene being scrapped due to a continuity error.
“I was so scared and I was so overwhelmed. And Nina Lopez-Corrado is great. We worked together before, so I felt very comfortable with her,” Barer recalled. “I researched everything. I was on every Wikipedia fan page trying to put the timeline together, because Craig [Mazin] told me not to watch the show. I asked him a couple questions, but I wasn’t asking the right questions, because I didn’t even realize what I was confused about. So I did my best and we got there. And it was a much more emotional pass of the scene.”
She remembered uncontrollably sobbing after completing the sequence the first time.
“I just quite simply could not control myself. It’s just so devastating. After we did my coverage, Craig came to my room to congratulate me, and I looked like a crazy person,” she said. “I was just sobbing. I could not stop crying. I was trying to eat food to see if that would help. So I have all these videos of me crying eating a salad.”
The second take was shot on a completely different set to make it smaller and more intimate and added the moment of connection between Ellie and Mel.
“When we did it the second time, I was also just at this point going through a lot more in my personal life that was really getting to me and I was really nervous again,” she said. “I had a phone call with my best friend where she was like, ‘I know this is fantastical. This is the high stakes. This is a zombie apocalypse game. But in wartime, these tragedies happen, and this is real, and you cannot get in your head about your performance when these are real tragedies and you have to honor and recognize that’ And after that it was really just about honoring Mel as a mother and doctor in wartime, and that really just sunk in with me.”
Barer said that she and Bella Ramsey did the C-section moment in three takes each.
“We were just holding hands for a lot of it. It was very sweet. It was almost a message of forgiveness in that moment,” she said. “And working with Bella in that way was really special. They’re so talented and so wise. And that time I didn’t leave sobbing so much, because it really just was all laid to rest in that scene, the arc was complete.”
Though all of the medical jargon was in the script, Barer noted that Mazin would give her additional lines on the day of filming, such as when Mel asks Ellie “is it out?”
“Mel’s mind is gone in that moment. She thinks she’s on an operating table and her baby is safe and that’s the tragedy of it,” Barer said. “So a lot of those little lines were added, like telling Ellie she’s doing a great job. It’s so devastating but I remember when I would get emotional, because that’s just inevitable with a scene like this, Craig said to me, ‘Tears can fall, but you are not crying. You are saving this baby.” It was really just about being present with each other, and then slowly pulling out of that consciousness, slipping away and saying these little things that were coming up.”
Though her screen time was limited in Season 2 with just the opening scene of the premiere, episode 2 and the finale, Barer said the experience working on “The Last of Us” was “one of the most fun I’ve ever had.”
“I love those people so much. It’s so deep, it’s so real,” she said. “Spencer [Lord] has lived in my apartment, him and I stayed together for a week in L.A. when we were there for the premiere. Danny [Ramirez] is all around the world, but whenever we see him, it’s such a treat.”
“Kaitlyn’s all around the world, but she’s also been my friend since we were 10. There would just be moments on set where we couldn’t look at each other without laughing because we saw each other as 10 year olds in our little costumes,” she continued. “Especially with some of the Abby-Mel stuff, you’re like, ‘I can’t look at you.’ She’s telling me to shut the f–k up and I’m just covering my face. She’s always been so funny and the coolest, calmest, most collected in every situation. It’s like a family.”
When asked about Season 3, Mazin teased that it isn’t “the last of a lot of people who are currently dead in the story.” The season notably ends with a time jump back to Day 1 in Seattle, setting up a season that will show the events of those days from Abby’s perspective.
“I haven’t heard much. I think I know about as much as you do. I’m always surprised because now my algorithms think that I’m the biggest ‘Last of Us’ fan in the world, because I’m constantly engaging with that content,” Barer said when asked about returning in Season 3. “I’ll see fan accounts that know more than I do about it. And I’m always shocked when I’m like, ‘Damn they’re right.’ But I really don’t know that much. Obviously this has been the dream job, truly one of the best experiences I’ve ever had in my life. And all I want to do is go back for Season 3, so I’m waiting with you to find out more.”
Though she initially watched a little bit of the games in order to prepare for the role, Barer plans to fully play “The Last of Us: Part II” in preparation for a possible return.
“When we reshot the [finale] scene, I was getting a note that was extremely confusing to me and was finally like, ‘I’m sorry, this is what’s happened.’ And Craig went, ‘No, that’s not what’s happened.’ And he explained to me the actual timeline, I got it wrong,” she said. “So in that moment, I was like, I gotta play the game. I really tried my best, but thank God Craig knows it so well and was able to explain to me. So I have to play the game, because I’m not letting that happen.”
“The Last of Us” Seasons 1-2 are streaming now on Max.
