ScreenCrush: The Podcast! - Last of Us Season 2 Episode 1 Breakdown! - Easter Eggs You Missed and Ending Explained

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

The Last of Us returns with a ton of Easter Eggs to the games Last of Us and Last of Us 2. ScreenCrush breaks down the new stalkers, Abby's plan, and what the ending means. Written by Dodson Seitz https://twitter.com/BaneWruseHosted by Ryan Arey http://twitter.com/ryanareyEdited by Harriet Lengel-EnrightLee MazzioEthan LavinskySee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. What did you do? I saved her. Welcome back to Screen Crush. I'm Ryan Erie, and this is all of the Easter eggs references and little things you might have missed in the first episode

of Season 2 of The Last of Us. And before we get started, don't forget to check out our Last of Us parody merch at our merch store. We have The Outbreak Day and Fireflies Look for the Light. Or you can become a member of the Alpine. Clicker Patrol. Links for all of these are below and now you can become a store member to earn rewards and get free stuff. So what's wild about this episode is that while it technically takes place one day before the events of the Last of Us part two, most of these scenes are in fact

from the game. We just see them in flashbacks much further into the game. We start off right where we left off at the end of season one, with Ellie confronting Joel about the truth behind what happened to the fireflies, and he is standing firm in his lie. And then we move on to a scene that is new to this series. The remaining fireflies are burying the dead that Joel left behind in a mass grave. The first thing we focus on are the giraffes, the same ones that Joel and Ellie saw right before everything went south. Now, in this scene, the symbolism is flipped for Abby as she watches them eating leaves next to her father's fresh grave. So for Ellie and Joel, these giraffes were a symbol of peace and hope despite the endless tragedies of the apocalypse. But for Abby, they will forever

serve as a reminder of her greatest loss. We can see the firefly dog tags hanging on the crosses while the team discusses their next move. At one point, Abby mentioned something about LA's immunity, and Nora responds with... Something not true because it isn't possible. So this implies that there wasn't even a consensus among the fireflies on whether or not her immunity was real. And then Owen suggests heading to Seattle to meet someone named Isaac,

referring to Isaac Dixon, the leader of the Washington Liberation Front. This sounds important. Well, yeah, the WLF, or Wolves, as they call themselves, is a paramilitary group that successfully overthrew Fedra and now uses its military assets to control its territory. They're the ones who take in the Salt Lake crew and supply them for a run at Joel, which is precisely the move that we see Owen convince Abby and their crew to make here. Then she suggests that,

When we kill him, we kill him slowly. And this line is in here to vilify the character who's kind of right, but they don't want her to sound too right because she's the villain. Right, what do you mean? Doesn't she want to kill Joel? Well, look, this is pretty controversial in The Last of his fandom, but I think she's pretty justified here, Doug. I mean, look at the field of bodies that Joel left behind. Not only did he take out humanity's best shot at a cure,

but he's essentially taken out the fireflies entirely. He eradicated some of the best doctors in the world, people who could have saved countless lives. If there were a trolley dilemma situation here, undoubtedly Joel should be the one to go for the sake of everyone else. Abby's revenge may be motivated by the loss of her father, but in doing so, she's more than justified in her actions. If anything, this episode shows how much of a villain Joel really is

and how his whole good guy narrative is just something he's convinced himself that he is. But this scene in particular shows that he is very much not the hero that he thinks that he is. Now, after that, we move into the intro, which is the same as season one, with some minor hue shifts. Many of the warmer colors we saw in the first season intro are replaced with the cooler, less saturated colors, likely due to this season primarily taking place in the cold, frozen winter. Or at least that's what I'm told by Doug since I am collarblind. I person, you know that I'm collarblind.

So you'll notice everyone in Jackson has a job and a role to fulfill in their community. Now, unfortunately, careers don't work like that in the real world. Most of us are more like Ellie. We're unsatisfied in our jobs and we're looking for change. Like, for instance, my job's got me so stressed out. Nothing is ever good enough. And when you succeed, they just give you more to do. And now they're laying people off and I just know AI is coming.

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Start learning a new job starting from $200 per month. Click our link in the description to sign up for your free career consultation. Now, back to the last of us. After the credits, we pick up five years later with Ellie in combat training. Now, at first, we're led to believe that she is being attacked, but in the end, it's her training partner who's actually in danger of Ellie taking things too far, nearly twisting her friend's arm off after he taps out twice. Now, this seems to have the same narrative whiplash that we saw in the first scene, where the insinuated good guy is anything but. Here, we meet Jesse, Ellie's close friend, and Dina's ex-boyfriend. When Jesse tells her that he asked her partner to pull his punches, it infuriates Ellie, especially after he mentions how he...

I don't want to have to explain that to Joel. Oh, right, I don't understand. Why is she so mad? Did she want someone to hit her in the face? Well, it's a legitimate frustration. She's tired of people lying to her and underestimating her. And this small act triggered both of those soft spots. And then we moved to a beautiful panning shot of Jackson, Wyoming where the construction crew is excavating old pipes in hope of repairing them. However, they turn out to be full of roots, which leads Dina to consult with Joel about their next move since he's apparently now the head of construction

in Jackson. As Dina pretends to care about his repair project, he explains why circuits have breakers, saying, otherwise the wires get hotter and hotter, lights the inside of your walls on fire, there goes your house. Which could be some elusive foreshadowing, given the situation going on with the pipes. If the roots and those pipes catch a spark from one of the fireworks we see dropped beside them later in the episode, the whole town could catch fire like a house with an overloaded circuit. When Joel finally does open up, we start to see what kind of person he really is.

Not only does he tell Dina to lie about him going to therapy, but he also says, What did I do? Which is so ballsy, given the fact that he knows exactly. what he did. Then we move to a scene with Ellie and Tommy who are getting in some practice shot sniping on the infected with a sniper rifle. Now, in game, this was used as a tutorial to show players how the bullet drop works on a sniper rifle, forcing you to aim above the targets to hit it, usually due to gravity's pull on the bullet over long distances. This scene is much snowier than it was in the game, but it shares some similarities, such as the gondolas in

the background. Tommy and Ellie discussed Joel's concerns about Ellie's patrols, which triggers her once again, as it seems to be yet another choice that Joel has made for her. She retaliates by screaming, I got bit! Hey, hey, hey, hey. I'm in me here! Wasn't she worried someone's going to hear her? I mean, not really.

From her perspective, Joel's story about why they left the fireflies makes no sense. Now, Tommy, Joel, and Ellie made a pack to keep her immunity a secret, but she doesn't understand why at this point, especially given that her infection has healed and she is not rocking any click or bites. Now, if she were to believe Joel's story, there still wouldn't be a reason for her to hide her immunity. But as we see later, it's especially clear that Joel wants it kept completely under wraps so as not to put a target on her back once again. Because people might want to make another cure? I mean, isn't that selfish? I mean, absolutely. But given that the only doctors who

could make a cure are dead, it doesn't really matter anyways. Joel doesn't want the heat because he doesn't want to lose a daughter again. And while well-intentioned, he ultimately makes some very selfish decisions. After that, we move into a scene with Joel and Maria, Tommy's wife, and their kiddo Benji. Now, while discussing their construction needs, Joel says, See, we got this dial called the constructometer. The more you turn it, the faster we go. Which is actually a reference to an Easter egg in the game Hidden Secret Vault that could only be accessed by this character, that's your mom.

So when Maria stresses the need to expand the settlement faster, Joel also says, maybe your counsel stopped letting so many of them in. Yeah, I mean, why is he saying Jackson first? Wasn't he a refugee? Yeah, exactly. And Maria reminds him of that, but this is another example of who Joel has become after Utah. He is straight up xenophobic at this point. He doesn't want others to have the same piece that he has found, and that makes sense given what he did. If you're going to sacrifice humanity's only hope for a cure just because you don't want to lose another daughter, then you're certainly more focused on your own happiness than the happiness of others.

It's also interesting to hear Tommy lied to Joel about bringing Ellie along to snipe infected. You hunting or infected? What, by yourself? in the game Tommy immediately takes Ellie to see Joel and he is completely open about letting Ellie use his gun so HBO may be taking a slightly different angle with their relationship where Tommy doesn't trust Joel as much yeah but it's his brother why wouldn't you trust him well maybe what Joel did to the fireflies didn't go over well with Tommy or better yet what he had to do to cover it up which is something that we see touched on in the next scene and then Joel has his therapy session with Gail Linden played by the great Catherine O'Hare

Now, when he hands her the payment, she mentions that her husband used to grow. But it's the size of pinecans. Stickey as glue. Now, the game makes a big point about characters cooking with the devil's lettuce on more than one occasion. But this is actually more than just a clever joke they throw in for the gamers to giggle at. While Jackson may struggle with the lack of Calkin town. That's what she said. The community is otherwise thriving.

They have more than what they need to survive. They may not recognize it, but they live in abundance. They have the resources, time, energy, and supplies to grow recreational wheat, which shows that they have become comfortable enough to let their guard down. Honestly, Catherine O'Hare deserves an Emmy just for this scene. She calls out Joel for holding back, and in her rant, she confesses how much she hates Joel for killing her husband Eugene. He killed Eugene Levy?

No, Doug, this isn't from Schitt's Creek, although it would be hilarious casting if Eugene Levy showed up in a flashback. The Eugene she's mentioning here is Eugene Linden, someone we hear mentioned in the games but never actually meet. Now, we know from the games that he is a grower after Dina and Ellie stumble into his dispensary, which is why his gale was so disappointed in Joel's bag of shake. He was also the Joel to Dina's Ellie. He helped mentor her when he worked with the Fireflies,

and Dina really looked up to him. From everything we know of in game, he was a genuinely loving guy with a family, which makes the fact that Joel executed him even darker. Now, in the game, Ellie and Dina actually have a dialogue where they mentioned that he died at the age of 73. One of the few people to actually die of old age in this post. post-apocalyptic hell, but clearly HBO is adding to his story.

Eugene was a member of the Firefly, so it makes sense that Joel would have killed him to tie up any loose ends from Salt Lake City. However, given that he's still hiding information from Gail about what happened in Utah, he's probably lying to both her and everyone else about his real fate. Gail tells Joel that she's drinking because it's her birthday, but later we find out that this is the real reason, yet another moment that gives us this emotional whiplash of expectations. She then gives Joel the chance to say the thing he's afraid to say, and After some lip quivering, he finally manages to push out. I saved her.

Well, if you saved her, then why has you got to feel so darn guilty about it? Well, that's the thing, Doug. Joel understands the gravity of what he's done, but he chooses to create his own story, where he is the hero. Now, when you look objectively at the facts, you can see that's not the case. And deep down, Joel knows that. Since he can't talk about it, it continues to eat at him. So instead of accepting what he did, he has simply created his own narrative.

Next, we move to Ellie's Garage Hideout. In her room, we see several posters also. found in her room in game, including a picture of an astronaut and this band poster for Thoughts 20, which seems to be a play on 21 pilots. And the astronaut poster is a callback to Ellie's dream job being an astronaut. Now, we got a glimpse of that when she sat in a truck for the first time in season one. It's your first time in a car. It's like a spaceship. But also in the flashback scene from the game where she and Joel visit a space capsule in a museum. There's also a poster for Savage Starlight, Ellie's favorite comic book series that serves as collectibles in game. Now, Ellie is in her room listening to

the Nirvana cover of the song Love Buzz. It's a fitting soundtrack for the scene as the lyrics perfectly describe Ellie's feelings for Dina. In her cassette box, Ellie has John Denver's greatest hits, Brian Adams, Into the Fire, and songs by Marie Lynn Hammond. Now, all of these cassettes deeply relate to Ellie's inner turmoil. Adams' title track, Into the Fire, is about someone at a crossroads in life, just like Ellie. And Denver's most known song, Take Me Home Country Roads, is about nostalgia for one's home. Or in Ellie's case, a desire to be led to a metaphorical home to the place where she belongs. In Hammond's song, down on the station, she describes growing up with a military base and feeling trapped, similar to Ellie's situation in Wyoming. She also has

several vinyl scattered around the room, like the White Striped self-titled album, Nirvana's in utero, and Pearl Jam's 10. Now, this isn't the first Pearl Jam reference in the show either, as their song, All or None, was used to open Episode 7 last season. It's a hopeless situation. Ellie also has musical posters as well. Is this It by the Strokes, Nirvana's Zero Tolerance Tour, and Radiohead's OK Computer? Pearl Jam and Nirvana fall into the late 80s, early 90s grunge scene, which originated in Seattle, the prominent location for The Last of Us 2. The movement expressed frustration with leadership, feelings of depression, alienation, and despair, setting the tone for this season.

Ellie and Joel working at work benches is also a call. back to the games, where you often find work benches to upgrade or mod your gear. Now, after a few moments of Dina, obviously flirting with Ellie and her clearly not taking the hint, they head out to meet up with the rest. And Jesse covers the basics for the Alpine Run Patrol. He also jokes about Ellie and Dina showing up looking like Curtis and Viper, a fictional 80s movie series that is Joel's favorite. The war or the merrier. It looked, Joel. It's your favorite. It made a cameo and an Easter egg in the first season. Ellie's horses named Shimmer, just like it is in the games. Now, as they go in

trill, Dina continues to flirt with Ellie, even asking her out to the dance herself until they reach a blood trail that leads them to a bear carcass. Now, Dina makes a bad joke about the bear that we see Ellie write about in her journal later, followed by don't fuck it up written three times. Because this was the exact moment that Ellie, who loves puns, fell in love with Dina. Barbecue. This invites Dina and Ellie to investigate, and the scene plays out like a typical clicker encounter in game. We can see how excited they are about. engaging with the infected. It's fun for them, much like the excitement of those playing the game,

despite the brutal situations the character is in. Before engaging the clicker, Ellie grabs a bottle, which is a common tactic in-game used to stun clickers before attacking them, or they created distraction so you can reposition yourself to sneak in for a stealth kill. Before doing so, she passes by a wall showing that Doug was the employee of the month in July. I didn't just get the manager promotion out of nepotism. I'm glad they finally recognize my talents. This is a reference to one of the vault puzzles in the game, where the code for the safe is the date that the store's owner made their best boy employee of the month. Now, when they're in this office kitchen, I love the note on the fridge that reads, if your name isn't on it, don't eat it. It's

appropriate as they're venturing into a place filled with monsters who want to eat them. On the bulletin board, we see flyers for Halloween. Remember, Outbreak Day occurred in September 2003. Oh, so they never got to see Return of the King. That's so sad. I know, right? My friends, you bow to know one. And we also see a banner for a birthday party, another sad reminder that after the outbreak, the world was robbed of these simple joys. Afterwards, the floor collapses separating Ellie from Dina, and this kind of thing happens all the time in the game, forcing people to find alternate routes so they can reunite. And, by the way, their backpack flashlights are just like the ones that you carry in the game. Now, before, Ellie can show Dina the Easter egg, she falls through the floor where she encounters her first stalker.

Now, by stalker, I don't mean somebody with a problematic parisocial relationship. In the game, stalkers are infected with the very early stages, just before they fully develop their echolour. location and they still have limited vision. Stalkers aren't necessarily new in the last of us part two, but they behaved a lot differently than they did in the first game. In part two, they sit around corners and let out this quiet, chilling, sobbing sound like we see later in this scene. You can't detect them in listening modes, so engaging with them was super tricky, especially in a situation where there's multiple infected. They lose all subtlety as soon as they attack,

which can easily and quickly cause the rest of the infected to swarm you. However, in the TV series, this seems to be hinting that this change comes from the Cordyceps fungus growing and adapting, as if it's evolving, which makes sense given the difference between the two series. As we saw in the first season, the fungus in the HBO series works like a neural network. They're connected. More than you know. After decades of expanding that network, it only makes sense that it continues to grow outward,

and it may explain some of the enemy types that appear later in the game. So I love this shot of the stalker from behind, where we see the silhouette of the fungus. It is a great visual way to show the cordyceps slowly creeping toward humanity. And as we'll talk about later, toward Jackson. The stalker corners Ellie and bites her. So now Ellie has to hide her infection bite, which is yet another change from the game. That said, there is a moment in the game where Ellie has to reveal her immunity to Dina after her gas mask breaks and she breathes in spores. So since the TV series did away with the fungus being airborne, this could be how Ellie proves her immunity to Dina later in

the season. For now, she's agreed to keep it a secret, although she cuts the scar so it doesn't look like a bite. Ellie and Dina give a briefing to Jackson's leadership about the encounter, during which Ellie tries to describe its unique aspects. It is what we do to cover, planned, waited, lured me in stalking. Tommy condemns them for going off on their own, and Ellie responds with, and you're telling me what if it were in Joel, you wouldn't have gone in? Well, that ain't the same. Why? Because it's different. How? Which is not only a valid, point, but also tells us a lot about what's going on inside Ellie's head right now. It's clear to her that Joel can make his choices without the same consequences she would

face if she did the same thing. She watches him get away with things that she never could, all due to people's expectations of him and their underestimation of her. In doing so, people are robbing her of the same choices that Joel is given, and instead these choices are made for her. And this is mainly because he has convinced everyone, including himself, that he is a good guy, just doing things for the greater good. But Ellie sees through that and holds it against him. So when the council condemns her for doing something Tommy and Joel would have done, the anger in her response comes from more than just the hypocrisy. She wants autonomy and moments like this show how little of it she actually has. Joel visits Ellie after her homemade surgery and

suggests that she'd check out the community ball. For doing so, Joel grabs Ellie's guitar and says that he's going to replace the strings. Now in game, they go in a mission to find some new strings, but they abandon it after being ambushed by a massive horde of infected. So what do you say we give up on those strings for today. I should also note that the guitar has a great deal of symbolism within the game. It represents love and beauty and music, you know, the aspects of life that are worth fighting for and protecting. The second game even begins with a really tender moment where Joel plays the guitar for Ellie. Everything I have found here, I'm not found by myself. Ellie decides to go to the community center in yet another scene played out in game flashbacks. Dina mentions that she's not

drunk but high, which at first I thought was a reference to the fact that she's pregnant, something that we know from the game. However, I'm not sure that HBO is going to be sticky with that plot point given that she takes a swig of Jesse's drink before pulling Ellie onto the dance floor. Now, Ellie and Dina have an incredibly cute moment before being interrupted by a homophobe who tells them, it's a family event. As if clear people don't have families until Joel intervenes. I thought he was all Jackson first. Well, look, buddy, Joel may be xenophobic, but when it comes to protecting Ellie, he always steps up for better or worse. Now, in the games, it takes him a while to realize that Ellie is a lesbian.

And when he eventually does come to understand, he is still loving and accepting. However, despite Joel's well intentions, this just stands to piss Ellie off further. But why? He just stood up for her. Yeah, but she could have handled herself. And in doing so, Joel took away her autonomy once again. So at this point in the games,

Ellie was aware of what Joel had done in Utah. And given how fracture their relationship is in the TV series, we can assume that she already knows it here as well. So this scene is once again, and Joel thinking he's being the hero and standing up for her when in fact what he's doing is not allowing her to defend herself. This is yet another choice that Joel has taken away from Ellie. So as she leaves, we see a few others out partying. One person drops some sparklers next to the overgrown pipes and we can see the cordyceps within the overgrown roots of the

pipes, which could pose a huge problem for the Jackson settlement. Now, this problem is unique to the show. So anything can actually happen with this. The biggest risk is obviously an outbreak within city walls. Yeah, but that shouldn't be a problem if they're going to out the pipes, right? Well, Joel's instructions to Dina were... Go fix the main line. Saw out the crack parts, pull the roots, and we'll fill in the gaps with some ABS gone. Which should ideally remove the cordisept roots as well. However, this could mean that any water running through the pipes could become contaminated. But the more terrifying and likely prospect, given the changes to the TV show, is that this root system essentially

gives the collective hive mind of the fungus a way to sense what is inside the walls of Jackson, which would seem like a buffet for the infected. Looks like meat's back on the menu, boys. This could drive hordes of infected towards Jackson from miles away, all just by following these routes underground. Now, given that Abby and Joel meet after he rescues her from being attacked by a massive horde, and the final shot of the episode showing Abby arriving at Jackson, this could be what triggers their initial confrontation.

Well, guys, that's all the Easter eggs that we found, but let us know if you found any down in the comments below. And what did you think of the episode? Let me know down in the comments on our free to join Discord server, and big shout out to Dodd Sites, the writer of this video, you can find his social links below. And if it's your first time here, please subscribe, smash that bell for alerts. For Screen Crush, I'm Ryan Erie.