Hello and welcome to this recap of The Last of Us, Season 1 Episode 7, “Left Behind” aka the one we’ve all been waiting for. Once again here to recap the gay events of this gay episode are gay friends Nic and I (Valerie Anne), who have both played the game (including the DLC this flashback was based on) and yet still continue to be devastated by the events of this show as if they’re brand new. Huzzah! To the episode! Nic, care to start us off?

Nic: Previously on The Last of Us, Joel and Ellie headed west to find Tommy and ended up finding a whole ass thriving community and a sister-in-law. The brothers had a tearful reunion where Joel begged Tommy to take Ellie because he can’t keep failing her, Ellie found out about Joel’s daughter Sarah, aaaaand Joel got impaled. Yikes.

THE FIGHT

We’ve got a tough little cookie on our hands.

Valerie: We open this episode with Joel fighting for his life on the floor of a garage in an abandoned house in an abandoned town. This wee teenager managed, with the help of the horse whose name they haven’t mentioned on the show but I believe is called Callus, to get Joel and all their stuff to this garage and is now swearing and pressing down on Joel’s wound and begging him to tell her what to do. He tells her what to do, but it’s not what she wants to hear: he tells her to leave. He wants her to leave him, to go north, back to Tommy. She puts his jacket over him, scowls, and then turns around, opening the door from the garage that should lead her to the house proper.

This door leads us instead, to a flashback. Before she left Boston, before she met Joel, Ellie was a student at FEDRA school, where she ran lazy laps with a Walkman while her fellow trainees sprint past. A grip rips Ellie’s headphones off as she passes, scolding her for going so slow, saying she doesn’t want to do doubles because of her. Ellie says she doesn’t want to fight, she just wants her headphones back, but then the girl taunts her about Ellie’s friend who isn’t here anymore and Ellie loses her cool, punching her.

We don’t see the rest of the fight but we do learn the results in Captain Kwong’s office. Ellie has a black eye, but Bethany is in the infirmary getting 15 stitches. (:Gavrosh voice: She may look easy pickings but she’s got some bite.)

Nic: 15 stitches is SO MANY! Damn, Ellie.

Valerie: Ellie knows how meetings like these usually go and asks to just skip the middle bit and go right to the part where she’s put in the hole, but Kwong points out that these past three weeks she’s been in the hole and the hole doesn’t work. He knows Ellie is smart, so he lays out two futures for her. One is that she keeps acting up and she ends up being Bethany’s bitch for all eternity, the other is where she gets smart, follows the rules, and becomes Bethany’s boss instead.

He tells Ellie that they, FEDRA, are the ones keeping the peace, holding everything together. She buys into this, and in her defense Kwong seems to earnestly believe this, retrieves her Walkman and heads back to her room, ready to choose a new path.

(This is random but I love an accent peep, and between it being an artifact Bella Ramsey probably has never encountered and also just being a word with two awkward American a sounds in it, I loved the way Ellie said “Walkman.”)

Ellie goes back to her room, which is covered in posters about space and dinosaurs, and gets into her bed that has a pun book on its side table. She tries to read some comics but she keeps getting distracted by the empty bed across the room, the void pulling at her attention like a black hole. Eventually she gives up and tosses and turns until she falls asleep.

RILEY

“And what do we say when we feel like this?” “Next time it’ll be 20 stitches!!” “Ellie. No.”

Nic: Not long after Ellie falls asleep, the window to her room opens and we see someone sneak in and up on her. Ellie immediately shoves the person away and grabs her own knife in a way that is so swift, you just know she’s done this before. But then Ellie realizes it’s her best friend Riley, who’s been gone for three weeks, and immediately relaxes. Well, she at least relaxes enough to yell at Riley for leaving without telling her because she thought she was dead. When Riley sees that Ellie’s been fighting, she threatens to beat up whoever messed with Ellie, but it’s too late; Ellie handled her own shit. Ellie won’t be distracted though, and she demands to know where Riley’s been. Riley pauses before saying she joined the Fireflies, and Ellie’s first reaction is laughter because surely all of their talks of “liberating the QZ” were just talks, right?

Riley shrugs off Ellie’s questions though, and invites her to have the best night of her life, knowing her best friend would say no before eventually relenting.

Valerie: I love the little hints at queerness that are already being dropped. The fact that Ellie always makes Riley turn around when they change. Of course she’s weird about it, both because she’s probably felt weird when other girls have changed in front of her, and because you don’t want to just change in front of someone you have a crush on when you’re 14. Especially not your 16 year old best friend.

Nic:As the two sneak out, Ellie fills in Riley on what she’s missed (mostly the fights) and instead of cheering Ellie on, Riley tells her that she doesn’t actually have to fight everyone; she can pick and choose her battles. And Ellie’s flabbergasted because that doesn’t sound like the friend she knew; it sounds like something a Firefly might say. Even when Ellie’s disagreeing with Riley though, she’s giving her shit in ways that only a best friend can. It’s VERY cute.

Valerie: I liked the off-hand mention of how Ellie got her eyebrow scar.

Nic:They bop through a window into an abandoned building and head up way more stairs than Ellie’s prepared for, before discovering a brand new body, dead by his own hand rather than from infected. (On my second watch, I realized that Ellie thought that this was her surprise which is both hilarious and bleak.) They steal his booze from the Before Times and head up to the roof, where all the best serious talks happen.

Up on the roof, they take shots and act like they don’t hurt like hell, and Ellie asks Riley if that was the first dead body she’s seen, forgetting the fact that her friend saw her parents die. Ellie knows that though; she’s just so nervous being around Riley again! When she asks to hold Riley’s gun, her friend pauses because it’s technically against the rules and yet again, Ellie makes fun of her for being “such a fucking Firefly.” And then Ellie does that thing you do when you’re not sure how your crush feels about you; she “jokingly” asks Riley if she joined the Fireflies because of some guy she met. Riley goes right along with the joke, before revealing that what actually happened was one night while Ellie was on lockdown, Riley snuck out and some “really old” lady saw her, was impressed, and invited her to join; so she did. All it took was a general besmirching of the fascist FEDRA dickwads, and she was in.

Valerie: The number of times Ellie says “friend” and also her asking about a boy are all such familiar gay teen moves to me. I felt them deeply.

Nic:The two then run from roof to roof like some kind of baby gay Aladdin and Jasmine, with their spryness and youthful knees (*wistful sigh*). They argue for a bit about whether FEDRA or the Fireflies have the most bullshit propaganda, but they’ve reached their destination: the mall that is supposed to be sealed off but 100% is not actually sealed off.

Next page: Ready to swoon and sob your eyeballs out? 

THE MALL, PART 1

Stolen glances on a merry-go-round, could they BE any cuter.

Valerie: Riley leads Ellie into the building by way of a hole in the ceiling of a mechanical room. Riley sends Ellie out the door and down the hall and tells her to wait, and Ellie once again says no first, but then yes when Riley asks her the second time. Ellie also reminds me of me because she can’t just relax and let nice things happen to her, instead she has to ask if Riley is going to kill her, recognizing an abandoned mall as the perfect place for murder.

Nic: Hahaha I mean look, it’s not NOT the perfect place for murder.

Valerie: Ellie follows Riley’s instructions, and there’s a cute little nod to the game when Ellie’s flashlight flickers and she has to bang it to get the light to stay on. Ellie calls out that she’s arrived, and Riley turns the lights to the mall on. Ellie stares in wide-eyed awe, but that’s just the beginning. Riley has a whole evening planned, in which she shows Ellie the 4 Wonders of the Mall. Ellie grins widely at Riley and says, “You planned stuff?” and it’s so sweet it almost breaks my heart; how many times in her young life do you think anyone has planned something just for this little FEDRA-raised orphan? Probably not very often.

Nic: This is all I could think about! Ellie’s reluctance to let go and enjoy this night that someone went out of their way to plan FOR HER.

Valerie: A-ha’s Take On Me plays as they run into the mall, and if I had a nickel for every time a piece of media has weaponized this song against me, emotionally, I’d have at least three nickels, which is too many ding dang nickels if you ask me.

Nic: When the camera specifically panned to the A-ha cassette on Ellie’s desk I was like “oh wow, what a nice little nod”, not even CONSIDERING that they would use the song against us like this.

Valerie: Before they can even get to the first floor of the mall, Ellie loses her entire mind over the escalators. It’s so damn cute. She runs up and down it and assumes this is the first Wonder of the Mall, so Riley amends her list to five and says sure, this can be the first.

(Another side note but as they walk they pass abandoned places, including a booth that has a sign that says “back in 5 minutes” covered in 20 years of dust. It reminds me a little of when I went back into my old day job’s office in 2022 and the one-a-day calendar was still on March 13, 2020.)

Ellie wants to explore, but Riley is on a mission, though they do end up getting a little distracted by the lingerie store as they note what was and wasn’t picked clean. Riley doesn’t understand why anyone would want to wear something so uncomfortable, and laughs trying to picture Ellie in it. Riley walks away and Ellie lingers, fixing her hair a bit in her reflection, wondering if maybe she wants Riley to be able to picture it.

Nic: SHE IS SO NERVOUS AND ADORABLE, VALERIE!

Valerie: SO. ADORABLE.

After walking a little farther, Riley asks Ellie to close her eyes, and once again Ellie says no on the first ask but yes on the second. Ellie then tries to fight a smile as Riley takes her hand and leads her. When she’s allowed to open her eyes again, she sees a carousel in all its sparkly, horsey glory.

Riley turns it on and hop on neighboring horses. (The carousel throws another nickel at me by playing a merry-go-round version of Take On Me. Emotional warfare.)

Nic: I didn’t catch this until my third viewing and now I’m even more emotional.

Valerie: They smile at each other and drink more whiskey and enjoy the ride and each other’s company for a while. Riley looks like she wants to say something, but doesn’t, and when the ride stops, Ellie has more questions. Ellie tries to convince Riley to stay, saying they could be the ones to fix things, to be in charge of FEDRA and make it better, to make the future whatever they want it to be. But Riley admits that since she turns 17 next month, she already got her assignment and it’s shit. (Literally: sewage detail.) She panicked and ran and the longer she was away, the easier it was to be away. And the more impossible it seemed to go back. Ellie is the only thing she misses, which is why she came back at all.

Instead of turning the ride back on, Riley decides it’s time for the next Wonder, and gestures to a box that Ellie assumes is a time machine, and while it IS bigger on the inside (I’ve never met a limit of people who can fit in one), most of us would just call it a photo booth.

THE MALL, PART 2

:gay panic:

Nic: And listen, the photo booth is one of the cutest sections of any video game I’ve ever played, yet somehow Bella and Storm made it cuter?! They sit down and immediately the machine asks for $5. Ellie’s pissed for like 2 seconds before Riley pulls out a crisp $5 bill she knew she needed because she had been waiting to experience this with Ellie. And the look on Ellie’s face is one of surprise with a bit of blushing and a side of “is this really happening?!” I’m honestly shocked I didn’t bruise myself with the number of times I grabbed my own face because of how cute those two are. They go through a bunch of poses and when they see the printout, only one comes out good, but Ellie loves it so Riley lets her keep the photo.

It’s time for the 4th wonder of the mall though and it’s *drum roll please* AN ARCADE!! Riley sure does know her girl, because Ellie stage whispers that it’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen. Everything is lit up, there are sounds that I imagine Ellie has only dreamed of; she doesn’t know where to start. But then she spots Mortal Kombat II, Riley’s favorite game, and heads right for it before realizing they don’t actually have any money to play. In another case of masterful planning though, Riley had spent an hour breaking into the coin machine the day before so they could play to their hearts’ content. Riley teaches Ellie the age-old button smash technique before winning the first round with bonus “FINISH HIM!” and “FATALITY!” quips that brought me back to my childhood. It’s at this point, when our gals are the epitome of happiness, that the camera pans out and over to a very creepy doll shop where we see a web of fungus leading to a singular infected, attached to the wall, and waking up.

Valerie: One thing this American Girl doll store reminded me I’ve been meaning to mention, is that one thing that makes the show even more unsettling than the game is how many recognizable brand, store, and restaurant names there are. In the game it was all generic and made-up, something slightly to the left of true. But here, especially in this mall, you have things like a flickering CVS sign and it grounds it in our reality. Spooky!

Nic: But it’s back to the besties and HAVE THEIR FACES BEEN THIS CLOSE TOGETHER THIS ENTIRE TIME?? Ahem. When Riley pulls away, Ellie’s disappointment is palpable. They’ve run out of coins and Ellie needs to be up for chores in a few hours and can’t get in trouble again, so she starts to leave and offers to hang out the next day. Riley is desperate for the night not to end though, so she bribes Ellie with the promise of a gift. As they head toward the food court, Ellie poorly attempts to guess what the gift is (including a water pistol and a dinosaur, a fun little game easter egg). They get to the kitchen of a taco stand where Ellie sees a bedroll and supplies, and correctly guesses that this is where Riley’s been staying. Riley then reveals Ellie’s surprise…it’s Volume TOO of the Will Livingston joke book!! They tell each other jokes back and forth, cracking each other up, until they get to one about screenshots, a thing neither of them has any context for.

Something catches Ellie’s eye then, and she finds a slew of homemade bombs on a shelf and just like that, reality crashes down around her. She shakes herself out of her Riley-induced reverie to see what’s actually happening here. The Fireflies stationed Riley here and tasked her with building bombs to use against FEDRA. Riley knows she’s caught and to her credit, she doesn’t deny Ellie’s accusations. But she pleads with Ellie and promises that she would never let the Fireflies hurt her, but Ellie scoffs, because LOL if you think the Fireflies will actually listen to that. And the look on Riley’s face makes me think that she really did believe she could keep Ellie safe; and that’s even more heartbreaking.

Ellie storms out and throws her guard right back up. She yells that this night wasn’t actually about her, but Riley stops her. It wasn’t NOT about her. She tells Ellie that she’s being transferred to a post in the Atlanta QZ and even she begged Marlene to let Ellie go with her, she said no, so this is Riley’s last night in Boston. This made me pause, because at this point Marlene 1) knows exactly who Ellie is since she’s the one who put her in the FEDRA school to begin with and 2) would have no reason to think Ellie’s special because of her immunity since she hadn’t been bit yet. So was there some promise that Marlene made to Ellie’s mom about keeping her safe? Or was there just room for only one (1) FEDRA orphan in the inn?

Valerie: I think you’re onto something re: promising her mom to keep her safe!!

Nic: Ellie looks like she’s just been punched in the stomach, a pain worse than the physical wounds from her fight the day before. The one person she cares for, who I daresay she loves, is leaving. “People always leave” as the great Peyton Sawyer once said. (Wow, I just realized that that episode of One Tree Hill never happened in the HBO TLOU universe because the pilot premiered on September 23, 2003, and Outbreak Day was September 26, 2003. Wild.)

Valerie: People always leave…but sometimes, they come back.

Nic: I should have known you’d hit me right back in the feels, friend. Ellie begs Riley to tell her why she brought her here. Riley says she wanted to see her friend, but that’s not the answer Ellie wants. She prods with an “and?”, and Riley admits that it was to say goodbye.

You could argue that Riley’s being incredibly selfish here, and I don’t know, maybe there’s a bit of that. She gets to see Ellie one last time on her terms. At my big age of 36, and after lots of therapy, I could sit here and identify every potentially selfish aspect of this, but then I remember…Riley is 16. Yes, she’s experienced more life than I did at 16, but she’s still a kid who gets scared and who has these feelings for her friend that she isn’t sure what to do with, and she’s in the middle of a damn apocalypse; so she did the only thing she could think of to soften to blow of her leaving: she planned the most special night in hopes that just maybe Ellie would be able to forgive her. Impact is not intent, but Riley’s motives feel so pure here.

Valerie: I actually wouldn’t argue that Riley is being “incredibly selflish” here. Sure, she should have told Ellie at the top of the night that it was a goodbye night, not a just-for-fun night. But all that would have done was move this argument earlier in the list of wonders. I don’t think this was meant to trick Ellie into forgiving her, or even necessarily to soften the blow. I think she planned a big night to give Ellie one last memory of her to hold onto before they potentially never saw each other again, and came from a place of love more than selfishness. She had already been gone for three weeks, she could have just left and let Ellie think she died, or left a note and the joke book in her room and snuck back out, convincing herself Ellie would understand. You don’t need the forgiveness of someone who won’t be in your life anymore. This was all for Ellie.

Nic: You make fantastic points, as usual. Ellie says goodbye to Riley and walks away, but not before kicking over a garbage can in anger. She makes it through the doors they came in, lets herself start to cry, and then changes her mind and goes back in to find Riley.

I GOT YOU, BABE

“They say we’re young and we don’t know, we won’t find out until we grow. Well I don’t know if all that’s true, ’cause you got me and, baby, I got you.”

Valerie: Before Ellie can take too many steps back toward Riley, she hears screams, so she starts sprinting. But when she finds the source of the screams, it’s just a Halloween prop, with an apologetic Riley sitting nearby. The 5th Wonder of the Mall was the Halloween store, saved for last because Riley thought Ellie would like it the best.

Riley is feeling down on herself but Ellie asks for the pun book as a sign that she’s cooled down a bit. Ellie sums up her interpretation of what’s going on, and Riley says she has it mostly right, but repeats that Ellie doesn’t know everything. Including what it’s like to have a family, to belong to someone. Riley feels like the Fireflies chose her, that she matters to them. Ellie points out that Riley mattered to her first.

Nic: OUCH.

Valerie: But Ellie breaks the tension caused by the weight of that statement by threatening to punch Riley with a hint of laughter behind her tone. She asks Riley if she’s sure, and she is, so Ellie just tells Riley that she’ll miss her.

Testing how forgiving Ellie is feeling, Riley asks if she can show her one last thing, and looks relieved when Ellie says yes. She pulls two masks out, a wolf for Ellie and a terrifying clown for herself, and plugs Ellie’s Walkman into the speakers. They put on the masks, climb up onto the display cases, and dance to Sonny & Cher’s “I Got You, Babe.” It’s cute and awkward and fun as they let loose a little, dancing and singing and laughing.

Overcome with the emotion of this moment, Ellie pulls her mask off, and seeing Ellie’s expression, Riley follows suit. With tears in her eyes, Ellie begs Riley not to go, and surprising maybe both of them, Riley says okay. With the adrenaline of relief, Ellie leans in and kisses Riley, something it seems she’s wanted to do for a long time. She apologizes, just in case, but Riley says, “For what?” and Ellie smiles so big, and they both laugh. They don’t know what’s next, but they’ll figure it out. Together.

Nic: My word, the look of nervousness and relief on Ellie’s face sent me hurtling over the edge.

Valerie: Unfortunately, what comes next is Chekov’s Infected, and the mushroom man we saw earlier clambors into the Halloween store and launches himself at the girls. They try to run, try to fight, but he’s bigger and stronger than both of them, knocking Riley over and pinning Ellie down. Riley eventually pulls him off Ellie, and Ellie stabs him in the temple, and Ellie laughs the maniacal laugh of relief that only comes when an adrenaline rush ends successfully. But it’s not as successful as she thought; Riley points out the bite on Ellie’s arm, fueled by denial, she desperately tries to wipe it off her arm, but it’s real. She screams “No!” and looks furious, until she looks over to the person she cares more about in this world than anything, and Riley holds up her hand; she’s been bitten, too. And now Ellie just looks devastated.

KEEP GOING

🎶 Take on me (take on me)
Take me on (take on me)
I’ll be gone
In a day or two 🎶

Nic: None of this is funny, but I keep thinking about in the pilot when Marlene was like “take your time, I’ll be over here bleeding out” and now poor Joel knows how she felt. Meanwhile, Ellie’s upstairs doing some loot loot looting, getting frustrated and slamming drawers, and then we’re taken back to the mall where she’s breaking everything in sight because she’s pissed and scared and it’s the only thing she can control. She sits next to Riley who tearfully lays out what she believes are their options: 1) the easy way with the gun or 2) they keep going, they don’t quit, and they poetically lose their minds together. Neither of those options sound good to Ellie so she asks what option 3 is. All Riley can do is repeat “I’m sorry” over and over as they cry and hold each other, preparing for whatever comes next.

Valerie: Riley taking Ellie’s hand and saying, “Whether it’s two minutes or two days, we don’t give that up. I don’t want to give that up.” Not to quote you at you but: SOB EMOJI

Nic: Back in the present day, Ellie finally gets a drawer open and excitedly finds a needle and thread. She rushes back down to Joel, and this brave girl looks her Not!Dad in the eye, and starts to stitch up his wound. Weirdly, watching a bloater tear Perry’s head off didn’t bother me at all, but I can’t stand the sight of a needle entering flesh, so someone’s going to need to tell me how good of a job Ellie does here. Joel stares up at Ellie while she tends to him, and the two share a glance of trust and understanding as Joel grasps the hand of the girl he once referred to as simply cargo; this girl who now has his whole entire heart.

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