The Last of Us season 2, episode 5's brutal moment is a twist that changes the whole show so far

The following contains spoilers for The Last of Us season 2 and The Last of Us Part 2 video game.

HBO's The Last of Us has already filled season 2 with jaw-dropping, shocking moments. But none of them – including the death of Joel (Pedro Pascal) in episode 2 – have hit as hard as the twist in the final moments of this week's episode. And it all comes down to two, game-changing words from Ellie (Bella Ramsey): "I know."

To recap briefly, in the episode, Ellie has snuck into a W.L.F. (Washington Liberation Front) hospital, and happens upon Nora (Tati Gabrielle), one of the members of Abby's (Kaitlyn Dever) team. Ellie wants to kill Abby for killing Joel, and Nora knows where Abby is – and Ellie will do anything to get that information. Meanwhile, Nora won't give up her friend… So she proceeds to go on the run through the hospital, ending up on a floor of the hospital infected with Cordyceps spores. While not completely clarified, it seems clear that Nora knows she’s going to die, so she has decided to take Ellie with her.

Only problem? Ellie is immune, something Nora very quickly realizes as Ellie is not coughing herself to death on the hospital floor. And that's not the only thing Nora realizes. If Ellie is immune, that must mean she's the girl who was going to be operated on in the Firefly hospital last season, the one Joel murdered an entire Firefly regiment – including Abby's doctor father – to free.

"Don't you know what he did?" Nora says, to which Ellie answers, "I don't care."

Nora plugs on anyway, describing in horrifying detail how Joel shot Abby's father, the only person capable of making a cure for the Cordyceps infection, in the head. Ellie lowers her gun, and as a viewer, you think she's stunned by the realization. But Ellie is not. And that's when she says, "I know." Undeterred, Ellie proceeds to keep asking about Abby's location and beats the dying Nora with a pipe to get the information out of her.

Ellie changes the game

Why is this such a shocker? It's because it completely recontextualizes everything Ellie has done on the show, all season long. Season 1 ended with Joel lying about what happened with the Fireflies, and Ellie saying "okay" in an enigmatic moment, unclear to the viewers whether she believed him or not. Season 2 opened with Ellie and Joel no longer talking. And while Ellie explained that whatever was going on with them, they would always be connected in episode 2, shortly before he died in front of her, it was still murky what had happened in the past.

Now, we know that for some unknown length of time, Ellie has known what Joel did and has accepted it. Not only that, but even with this knowledge, that Abby's crew was getting revenge on Joel for what he did to them, she's still headed off to Seattle, pregnant Dina (Isabela Merced) in tow, to kill Abby – and probably Nora and the rest of Abby's crew, for that matter.

In the season's third episode, Ellie characterized her hunt for Abby as justice, though those close to her didn't believe her. Viewers, too, likely intuited that she was after revenge. Here, in this scene, with those two words, it clinches that not only is Ellie killing Abby for the wrong reasons, she's doing it knowing that Joel did the wrong thing, too.

Granted, your mileage may vary depending on which side of the Trolley Problem tracks you're sitting on. Joel doomed the world to save Ellie’s life. But that was against Ellie's wishes, and against the world's interest, and he killed an unarmed doctor to make sure there was no danger for Ellie in the future. Ellie being aware of all of this, presumably from Joel himself, changes her hunt for Abby from one of justice to one of arguably outright villainy.

Abby's hunt was about justice against an unprovoked act of violence by Joel. Ellie is killing someone who also did the wrong thing, but perhaps for the right reasons: to take a mass murderer and world-killer off the board.

The scene even frames Ellie that way. Bathed in red light, calculated, unemotional, while Nora – who we have just seen tending to soldiers in a hospital – is dying on the floor. Ellie is not our hero in this scene, she's the bad guy. And Ramsey even plays it like a snake shedding its skin. When Nora "reveals" the information about Joel, it's almost like a weight comes off Ellie. She can stop pretending she's some warrior, compelled by justice. She wants to kill Abby because she wants to do it.

Oh, and did you notice the cute little pun in the first paragraph, "game-changing?" That's because the way this scene rolls out is different from how players find out the information in The Last of Us Part 2. In the game, there’s no "I know" reveal; Ellie knows, and it's a non-factor in the Nora scene (which is far more brutal in the game). And soon after that, players get the confirmation they wanted thanks to a flashback that shows Joel revealing what he did to Ellie.

Given this week's episode ends with another shocking reveal, of Ellie waking up in her bed, Joel walking in and saying, "hey kiddo," it seems likely we'll get some of that on next week's episode. But as of now? HBO viewers are left with Ellie's "I know," and the shaky realization that over the past five episodes, we may have been rooting for the wrong team.

The Last of Us continues weekly. You can keep up to date with our The Last of Us season 2 release schedule, or see our The Last of Us season 2 review for our spoiler-free verdict on the entire season.

For more, check out our guide to all the most exciting upcoming shows still to come in 2025.