Here’s Whether Abby Dies in The Last of Us Game & If Kaitlyn Dever Is Returning For Season 3
Warning. Major spoilers for The Last of Us Season 2 and The Last of Us: Part II game. The Last of Us Season 2 started with a literal bang, by delivering on the game’s biggest twist, the one fans of Pedro Pascal’s Joel were hoping they might just hold off on, at least for a little while longer. Yes, Joel Miller is dead, and the show did not hold back on the scene where it happened. Instead, the HBO show delivered something very similar to the game, albeit presented in a different format that allows fans to understand why things end the way they do for Joel.
At the end of Season 1, Joel decides to save Ellie from the very people he’s been hired to deliver her to. The Fireflies who wanted Ellie to make a cure for the virus don’t care about Ellie—they just care about the cure. That means that they’re willing to sacrifice her to get that cure. When Joel finds out, he decides Ellie’s life isn’t an acceptable price to pay. He kills everyone in the facility, including the doctor who was supposed to operate on Ellie. That doctor just so happens to have a daughter, Abby, who later comes to get revenge on Joel.
Related: Who dies in The Last of Us Season 2?
But Abby isn’t just interested in revenge, she wants to make Joel suffer. And she does, beating him to death with a golf club, and finishing him off in front of Ellie, Joel’s surrogate daughter. As Abby stabs Joel to death with the golf club, Ellie promises she will find Abby and kill her. But does she? Is Ellie’s revenge quest fulfilled? Does Abby die in The Last of Us Season 2?
Does Abby Die in The Last of Us Season 2?
Abby does not die in The Last of Us Season 2. That means we will indeed be seeing Kaitlyn Dever in the already announced Season 3 of The Last of Us. The show’s Season 3 renewal confirms the assumption that Season 2 only adapts part of the narrative from The Last of Us: Part II video game. In the video game, Ellie goes on a revenge quest after Joel’s death, pursuing not just Abby, but her crew. So, we are likely to see Ellie’s arrival in Seattle, and at least her meeting with some of Abby’s crew, whether it be Nora and Mel or Owen, in Season 2.
We might even see Tommy and Manny’s confrontation, and the first of Abby and Ellie’s big confrontations. But we are unlikely to follow the story through to their final confrontation, because the show just doesn’t have time to take us there. And, considering the show already has a confirmed third season, it needs to leave some story for the planned third installment, as well.
But the other reason why Abby won’t die in Season 2 is that, at the end of Ellie’s revenge quest, after everyone in Abby’s crew dies in the quest to avenge Joel’s death, Ellie doesn’t actually kill Abby. Instead, she spares her life, even though she could have killed her. This comes from Ellie understanding, at the end, that killing Abby won’t actually make her feel better. It won’t bring Joel back. It won’t make her feel whole. Instead, killing Abby will just perpetuate the cycle of violence and perhaps create another person who wants to take revenge on her. So, Ellie lets her go and goes back home, hoping to start anew and let the ghosts of her past be in the past.
