'The Last Of Us' Season 2 Episode 6 Recap & Ending Explained: Does Joel Tell Ellie The Truth?

There’s something gut wrenching about the penultimate episode of season 2 of The Last of Us. That’s a given when you revisit memories that take you back to the wonderful things you once had. But this week’s episode doesn’t wish to milk this obvious sentimentality. With what is arguably the most emotionally heavy episode of the show, The Last of Us only wants to explore an unavoidable passage of grief. 

Spoiler Alert

I was worried something like this would happen when the last episode ended with a glimpse of happier times. We’re back in the golden days now. Days that are now excruciating memories. But if you asked Ellie and Joel if they would’ve done it all over again, knowing what immeasurable pain awaited, they would’ve said yes in a breath. Because even drenched in pain, these memories are invaluable. Joel’s mean streak was a very real thing. And that’s not something you can really justify based on intentions. But Joel Miller was the exception. Everytime he did do a bad, personality-altering thing, he did it to protect someone he loved. First, it was Tommy. Faced with an abusive policeman father, Joel had to do a lot of questionable things. But even when he didn’t do them, he would fall on the sword to protect his little brother. His father justified the kind of unthinkable pain he put his boys through by subtracting it from the kind of torture he had to endure at the hands of his own father. Joel and Tommy’s old man really believed that he did better than his own dad because none of his boys ever had broken jaws. If anything, that experience had driven Joel to be as good a father he could be to Sarah, and then Ellie. It takes a special guy to go around collecting toys for Seth’s grandchildren so he would bake a cake for Ellie’s 15th birthday in exchange. Vanilla, mind you, not chocolate. He’s also restoring a guitar with the single-minded of an artist. Etching one of the moths from Ellie’s sketches on it and everything. Joel’s sweet when a freaked out Tommy brings a very high Ellie back home. No, she hasn’t broken into someone’s stash, yet. She’s all loopy from the painkillers they gave her after she’d burned her arm, a decision only Joel would understand. All she wants is to wear short sleeves, you see. And that darn bite mark on her arm makes that pretty difficult. So Joel understands, however revolting he may find Ellie’s description of how her burning flesh smelled. The fact that she gets a hug instead of a thrashing only makes Joel a better dad. But I bet a part of Joel heals every time he does better than his own father. The good thing is, Joel doesn’t aim for the bare minimum for Ellie. So even though the wildly misspelled writing on the cake wishes “Eli” a happy birthday, Joel more than makes up for it with a hearty rendition of “Future Days.” The happiness on Ellie’s face when she’s having this experience explains why she choked up when she sang this song to an empty auditorium in Seattle. It was a big moment for them both. It was one of those moments where the two of them were perfectly in tune with each other’s individual needs and headspaces. 

You thought it was a one time thing? Joel’s a better dad than that. If he could go through so much trouble to make Ellie’s 15th birthday special, especially considering it’d only been 2 months since they moved into the Jackson community, he can pull off a lot more for her 16th. Now that he’s had the time to prepare for it, Joel’s really put a lot of thought into the gift. That’s why, on the long hike to the secret spot Joel’s taking her to, Ellie has no idea what’s in store for her. The saddest thing though, is the fact that Ellie guesses that the surprise can be a “lotter” of kittens. Poor kid’s never even seen a cat. That’s a pretty terrible world to live in. But luckily, and freakily, Ellie’s spot on about her other guess. Joel has, in fact, found an enormous T-rex for Ellie to jump around on. And that’s not all. He’s also found a museum full of wonders to make Ellie’s eyes sparkle. That should keep her from jumping into the world of teenage no-noes for some time. He would’ve won the Dad of the Century award by greasing the planets display and making sure it works. But he’s gone ahead and done Ellie one better. For a surprise that requires Ellie to break a glass window and put on an astronaut helmet kept away from people, Joel’s cleaned up the Apollo 15. He may not be able to take his daughter on a trip to the stars on her 16th birthday, but when he gives her an old cassette of the Apollo 11 launch sequence, and Ellie drowns herself in the sound of the voice that lifts her off the ground, he comes pretty darn close.

There’s never this sense that things get very messy between Ellie and Joel out of nowhere. It was always coming. And it had to have been about the one big lie Joel had told Ellie. The slain Fireflies were always on Ellie’s mind. She even remembered them when she saw the fireflies in the woods on her way back from the museum. But since this wasn’t a very easy question to ask Joel, Ellie kind of started to pull away. On her 17th birthday, Joel means it when he tells Ellie that all her annoying teen qualities have popped up together. He’s coming from a place where he’s just another dad who’s not ready for his little girl to grow up. The less pleasant parts of how traditional he is at heart come out in his dismissal of her sexuality. It’s like he wants to believe that Ellie’s only “experimenting” with girls when he finds her fooling around with an older woman. So you can see why that would rub her the wrong way. Yet you feel for him when he freaks out over the tattoo she’s gotten over her scar. That’s a lot of big changes for one day. What a waste of that chocolate cake. But even when every instinct in Joel tells him to be petty, he does the right thing. He actually quite likes the tattoo Ellie’s gotten. I guess, at the end of the day, it’s all a matter of how much you know someone. Joel loves Ellie more than life itself. But does he really understand her? He wildly misinterprets Ellie’s countless drawings of moths. He thinks it’s a motif of change. He’s the kind of father who needs to stay in denial about the bad stuff to get a couple hours of sleep at night. But the true meaning of Ellie’s fascination with moths will come back at the ending of the episode. 

Just 19, Ellie’s made up her mind about asking Joel the questions that have been bothering her. She’s terrified of what she’ll find out. And a part of her knows what she’ll find out. Maybe that’s what keeps her from verbalising the questions that she’s written down on a piece of paper. She’s always known about lists and their importance. Jesse didn’t have to give her that advice when it was her turn to ask her community to support her. But even though she’s taking her time asking Joel about the massacre in Salt Lake City, truth has a way of coming out when a person least expects it. On her first patrol, her birthday gift from Joel, things take a turn for the worse. Joel chose a safe route to get her accustomed to the do’s and don’ts. He even wanted Ellie to turn back and go home when they got that distress call about a group of infected near them. But Ellie would’ve never left Joel. When she does start patrol duty, she won’t be able to run away at the first whiff of danger. Fate brings them to Eugene. Already bitten, mumbling, terrified Eugene. It was always supposed to be a big thing, Eugene’s death. And now that we see how it happened, we understand all the awful feelings everyone around this tragedy feels about it. Eugene doesn’t try to hide it from them. All he wants is to see Gail and talk to her for one last time. Ellie isn’t running entirely on sentimentality when she urges Joel to give Eugene the chance to talk to his wife before he dies. Even though the protocols are in place to protect people, and Joel isn’t wrong to suggest that he has to shoot Eugene, Eugene does seem well enough to go through the journey before Cordyceps takes him. This is where Joel makes his second worst mistake as a father. He has no intention of escorting Eugene back to the gate so he can say his goodbye. But he doesn’t want Ellie to think he’s cruel. So he does what comes easy to him. He lies. What must not have come very easy to him was pulling the trigger. When Eugene sees the beautiful scenery Joel’s brought him in front of, he knows what’s coming to him. Joel may have always been surrounded by death, but he still lacked the empathy to understand the fear of a person facing death. Eugene didn’t want to die alone. He needed Gail to tell him some reassuring words and see him off to the unknown world of death. How could Joel make this promise to Ellie and not even try? That question must’ve tormented Ellie all the way back to Jackson, dragging Eugene’s corpse the same way she’ll drag Joel one day. This is the first time Ellie’s actually caught Joel in a lie. And that’s all the answer that she needed. 

But let’s face it. If it wasn’t for Ellie’s safety, Joel probably would’ve taken the chance and brought Eugene home before he died. So once again, life’s made him the bad guy in the eyes of the person he makes all his decisions for. They aren’t always the best decisions. So however awful it may be, he kind of deserved to have his lies busted wide open in front of Gail. It must’ve been terrifying for Ellie to watch Joel lie to a grieving woman like that. That wasn’t respectful to Eugene’s memory. Joel had no right to alter a dying man’s last words to his wife. What’s always kept the ship from sinking is Joel’s desperation to be a good dad. He’s done selfish things as a father. But he’s also done things like letting Ellie move into the garage to get some space without any fuss. These instincts have kept Joel from being alone. At the New years Eve party, Maria was sweet to comfort Joel and tell him that he’s family. That didn’t mean everything was fixed. Ellie was still mad at him. But she did take a chance on him that night. 

The conversation that takes place on Joel’s porch in episode 6’s ending is the best that all of us could hope for, really. It was closure for both of them. It must’ve been nice for Ellie when her dad encouraged her to pursue Dina. He’d come a long way from the mildly homophobic mumblings. But it must’ve hit her with the force of a train when Joel did what she’d asked him to do. He told her the truth about the Fireflies. He was as vulnerable as he could be in front of the little girl he would give his life for. But that did nothing to soothe the pain in Ellie’s heart. It’s a bigger crisis than a father lying to his daughter. That’s where the moths come in. When Joel asked Gail about the meaning of moths appearing in dreams, the therapist closed the pages of Earth Abides to tell him that the moths signified death. Ellie may not be suicidal, per se. But she’s seen enough death around her to know that her life means no more than anybody else’s. It’s more survivor’s guilt than anything, really. It must’ve been excruciating for Ellie to watch so many of her loved ones slip through her fingers while she survived. Add that to the fact that she’s immune, and you’ve got a born-martyr who’s been kept alive against her will. But the silver lining in all this is that Ellie didn’t lose all hope in Joel. And that only meant that she didn’t lose her faith in life. How important she was to Joel was the only thing making her believe that her purpose isn’t death. And you can’t really say that they ended on bad terms considering Ellie wasn’t ready to give up on Joel. She wasn’t ready to forgive him yet. But she knew and acknowledged that Joel was worth the effort that it would take for her to make peace with him. Joel was a far cry from his dad. But he embodied a fragment of his old man when he told Ellie that she would only understand him when she has a child of her own. Joel’s death has changed everything. And circumstances have pushed Ellie into the kind of life that she wasn’t prepared for. But this loss, and her subsequent urge to seek revenge must’ve gotten her closer to Joel than ever. She finally understands why he did what he did. She finally sees that his love has made her the most important person in the world.