After a two-year hiatus, The Last of Us will soon return to HBO. While trailers have teased the nightmares that await in the show’s sophomore outing, after a lengthy wait for new episodes you might not remember all of the old ones. Why exactly do monsters now rule the world? How did Joel and Ellie end up living in a commune? And what world-shattering secret is he keeping from her? Here’s everything you need to remember from The Last of Us season one so you can have a fun(gi) time when season two premieres.
A Fungus Conquered Humanity Creating a Dystopia of Monsters
HBO’s The Last of Us opened in 1968 with a talk show featuring epidemiologists discussing potential calamities. One of them explained why fungus, possibly adapting to a warming planet, worried him more than any virus. Eventually his fears came true, when the parasitic fungal infection cordyceps began infecting mankind in 2003. The mind-controlling cordyceps quickly spread around the world, turning humans into horrifying zombie-like puppet monsters.
Note: Unlike in the video game series, those monsters did not emit floating spores that spread infection. Those spores are coming in season two, though.
For the next 20 years, survivors in America either lived in QZ zones under the brutal control of FEDRA (Federal Disaster Response Agency), established their own communities, or risked being on their own entirely. Some also joined the underground resistance group opposing FEDRA, the Fireflies. During those two decades of disease different types of monsters developed.
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Joel Miller lived in Austin, Texas when the outbreak began. In the initial chaos a soldier shot and killed his daughter Sarah. He eventually made his way with his brother Tommy to Boston’s QZ. There he lived and worked with his romantic partner Tess as smugglers. In the show’s present time the two were trying to get a hard-to-find car battery so Joel could travel cross country to find Tommy who had left Boston years earlier.
That plan ultimately led to them making a deal with Boston’s Firefly leader, Marlene. They would get their car battery in exchange for getting a young girl named Ellie outside of the QZ to Massachusetts’ State House. During their journey, though, Tess got infected. With the Fireflies waiting for Ellie dead, Tess’s dying wish before she sacrificed herself was for Joel to take the young girl to Utah.
Joel reluctantly agreed, and the two spent season one traveling across the country. It was a perilous trek that saw them almost die multiple times. They also killed a lot of awful people and awful monsters to make it.
Joel did it in spite of his self-doubt, grief, panic attacks, and hearing issues because he ultimately knew Tess was right. Someone needed to protect Ellie, whom he grew to love, because she’s so important. She’s immune to cordyceps.
Why Ellie Is Immune to Cordyceps?
Ellie is the only person in the world known to have a natural immunity to cordyceps. Tess and Joel witnessed a monster bite her without anything happening. She’s special because of a unique, almost-impossible-to-replicate sequence of events.
An infected monster bit Ellie’s mom Anna right as she gave birth. Anna also became infected before she could cut her umbilical cord. (Which she did with the same knife she’d just used to stab the monster.) Her friend Marlene then arrived, and while skeptical, she believed Anna when she lied about cutting the cord before the bite. Marlene then took the baby and cared for her. She helped keep Ellie safe in an unlikely place, too. She put her into FEDRA military school. (Ellie remained there until she broke out with her best friend and romantic interest Riley one night, a tragic evening that led to Riley getting infected and Ellie having to kill her.)
Despite knowing Ellie since the hour she was born and promising to care for her, Marlene was going to sacrifice Ellie’s life to save mankind.
The Plan to Kill Ellie and Use Her Brain for a Cordyceps Cure
The Firefly doctor in Salt Lake City believed cordyceps had grown in Ellie’s brain since birth. As Marlene explained to Joel, that’s why they believed Ellie was the key to ending the infection forever.
It produces a kind of chemical messenger. It makes normal cordyceps think that she’s cordyceps. It’s why she’s immune. He’s gonna remove it from her, multiply the cells in a lab, produce those chemical messengers. And then we can give it to everyone. He thinks it could be a cure, Joel. A cure.
Joel knew the plan meant killing Ellie and demanded it stop. Marlene said Ellie had no idea what her surgery was really about and therefore wouldn’t suffer. She then ordered Firefly soldiers to escort Joel from the city.
Joel did not go along willingly with either them or the plan. He wasn’t ready to lose Ellie, the person who’d finally helped him move on with his life, the way he’d lost Sarah.
How Did Joel Save Ellie in The Last of Us Season 1 Finale?
Joel attacked and killed the two armed guards escorting him before they got outside the hospital. He then went on a killing spree, murdering every Firefly he encountered, even those who laid down their weapons.
When he got to the operating room Joel found the surgeon preparing to cut into the anesthetized Ellie. The doctor said he wouldn’t hand her over so Joel shot immediately shot him in the head. He then ordered the nurses to unhook Ellie. Once they did Joel let the three nurses go, the only people who knew what was happening that day that survived. That’s because Joel also killed Marlene in the parking garage as she begged him to stop.
He didn’t tell Ellie about anything he’d done or why.
Joel Lies to Ellie About Her Immunity and What Happened in Utah
Ellie woke up in her hospital gown in the back seat of a truck outside Salt Lake. She knew something wasn’t right, so Joel lied about everything. He told her the Fireflies had found other immune people but that the doctors said none of them can provide a cure. He also explained her lack of clothes by saying raiders attacked the hospital, killing Marlene and all the other Fireflies, and that he barely got them both out of alive.
The only true thing he said was that they were heading back Wyoming. They’d live with his brother Tommy (who knows about Ellie’s immunity) and Tommy’s pregnant wife Maria (who doesn’t trust Joel) on their commune.
During the final moment of season one, just outside the fortified Wyoming community, Ellie stopped and said to Joel, “Swear to me. Swear to me that everything you said about the Fireflies is true.”
He did, and Ellie finally accepted his story with an “okay.”
And now that you know everything you need to remember from season one, it’s okay for you to read about everything we know about The Last of Us season two.