Here’s If [SPOILER] Really Dies at the Hands of Ellie in The Last of Us & How That ‘Insane’ Death Differed in the Game
Warning. Major spoilers for The Last of Us Season 2 and The Last of Us: Part II game. The Last of Us Season 2 did exactly what fans were dreading, and yet what the show could not avoid: it killed off Pedro Pascal’s Joel and turned the show from a tale of survival into a tale of revenge. Because that’s what Ellie is after ever since Abby killed the one person that matter to her, revenge. And that revenge is not just on Abby, but on everyone who was with her that day Joel was killed.
Because while Abby, the daughter of the doctor Joel killed to save Ellie at the end of Season 1, took her revenge on Ellie, there were others present. Abby’s crew of Owen, Nora, Me,l and Manny were all there to restrain Ellie and help Abby on her quest. And though not all of them were fully on board with the way Abby chose to take her revenge, no one stopped her.
Related: Who dies in The Last of Us Season 2?
This sets Ellie on a revenge quest against Abby, one where the rest of her crew are collateral damage that Ellie has no problem eliminating. But what does that mean for Nora, the first of Abby’s crew Ellie comes across during Season 2 of The Last of Us? Does Ellie kill Nora in The Last of Us Season 2?
Does Ellie kill Nora in The Last of Us Season 2?
Yes, Ellie kills Nora in The Last of Us Season 2. In a scene that follows the game almost beat for beat, Ellie corners her in Lakehill hospital in Seattle, and after Nora runs away, chases her through the entire hospital until the two end up trapped in the basement of the hospital that has been sealed off because it’s filled with spores. That means that Nora is going to die anyway; she’s been infected. Ellie, who is immune, won’t.
But Ellie doesn’t just leave Nora to die, she makes sure Nora tells her Abby’s location first. And she does so by beating Nora with a metal pipe until she gets the information out of her.
Nora quickly puts together that Ellie is the immune girl Joel killed all the Fireflies to save, and tries to make Ellie see reason by telling her all that Joel did. But Ellie makes it clear she knows and doesn’t care what Joel did. Instead, she keeps asking Nora where Abby is, and when Nora doesn’t answer, she proceeds to brutally beat her. Just like in the game, the scene cuts off before Ellie actually kills her, with the show instead jumping to a flashback of Joel and Ellie at a happy time.
In the game, we also never see Ellie kill Nora, but it is later confirmed that Ellie tortured her until she gave up Abby’s location. But Nora’s death, instead of leaving Ellie satisfied, leaves her deeply traumatized. This is the apocalypse, so this is far from the first time Ellie has killed someone. But all the people she’s killed before have been out of necessity. This is the first time Ellie has killed someone defenseless and done so out of rage, and it fundamentally changes something in her. Her decision to get revenge on Abby doesn’t change, but it’s fair to say Ellie is never the same after killing Nora, and the decisions she makes from here on out have a lot to do with how she feels in the moment after she kills her.
For Tati Gabrielle, who plays Nora, filming the scene was hard. “You’re going insane against your own will, and rather rapidly,” she told Variety. “Any means of survival is clinging on to humanity, clinging on to oneself. It was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do as an actor.”
And doing it against Ramsey, especially, was a challenge. “I felt scared of them! Bella is such sweetheart. In between every take, looking at me like, “Are you OK?” Seeing the look in Bella’s eyes of that conviction really did help me as Nora to be affected by the resolve that Ellie had. And letting Nora sort of feel like, ‘Oh, we’re just all fucked. You don’t care that you’re the answer, let alone care that he doomed us all. We have no future because of what your ‘dad’ did.'”
