This story contains spoilers for The Last of Us HBO. If you’re not caught up yet, check out our spoiler-free Season 1 review.
The Last of Us Episode 7 veers into the past. After focusing on Joel (Pedro Pascal) and his journey as the caretaker of Ellie (Bella Ramsey), the HBO series finally digs into her past and the night that changed her life forever. Focusing on the past — mirroring much of The Last of Us’ Left Behind DLC — the episode teaches us more about Ellie, her time in the FEDRA orphanage, and her relationship with another teenager named Riley (Storm Reid). Though the focus may be on the teens’ tragic romance at its core, it also raises some very interesting questions about Ellie and her connection to Marlene (Merle Dandridge).
Over the season so far we've learned very little about the Fireflies and their leader in the Boston QZ. What we do know is this: They have a lab somewhere out West, they have scientists working on a vaccine, and Marlene believes that Ellie's immunity could be the cure. On a more personal level, early on in the series Ellie discovers that Marlene was the one who put her in the FEDRA orphanage. In this week's episode, Riley tells Ellie that Marlene wants her to stay put in Boston and not leave the QZ to join the Fireflies with her friend. It all begs the question: Why does Marlene know or care about Ellie? Remember that Episode 7 takes place before Ellie is bitten and found to be immune, meaning she's just any random kid to Marlene at this point. In the game Marlene's choices are driven by the fact she was close friend's with Ellie's mother, Anna. But the show hasn't introduced that, even when Ellie asked Marlene about her mom.
In the canon of The Last of Us, Anna and Marlene's relationship is revealed via Marlene's recordings in Part 1 of the game, the Left Behind DLC, and the final issue of the Dark Horse comic book miniseries tie-in The Last of Us: American Dreams. Without that explanation that Marlene has a deep personal connection to Ellie, the Firefly leader's motivations to "protect" her take on a different and possibly more sinister bent, especially when we consider that she chose not to shoot Ellie despite her being bitten. So what could be driving Marlene if not a previous connection to Anna? We know that in the world of the series, the Fireflies' main mission is making a vaccine. Is there a possibility that Marlene's interest in Ellie comes from a place of survival rather than emotion, or are we just yet to learn of potential connections between the Firefly leader and Ellie’s mother?
HBO's The Last of Us has spent its first season establishing the lengths people will go to survive. Whether it's the establishment of FEDRA's brutal forces, the Fireflies' rebellion against them, smugglers like Joel and Tess (Anna Torv) living outside of the law, or violent rebels like Kathleen (Melanie Lynskey), this is a series deeply invested in exploring how people react to the end of the world. We know that part of the Fireflies' response to years of the Cordyceps virus was to begin planning on making a vaccine. That's the same in the game, but despite Anna and Marlene's connection, Ellie getting bitten is simply a coincidence that allows Marlene to suggest delivering her to the Fireflies. What if in the series it's part of a larger plan they put into place years before?
If the group was selecting candidates born after the fall of civilization -- like Ellie -- to watch for signs of immunity, it could explain why Marlene placed Ellie in the FEDRA orphanage. Perhaps there were Firefly scientists who theorized on the possibility that a new generation could be immune. Or that it was worth experimenting on children who might be? That would line up with the fact that Marlene and her group had a series of tests to check whether someone was infected or not. We saw them utilizing the exercises with Ellie during her quarantine all the way back in the pilot. Surely most people turn quickly enough that you wouldn't need to test their cognitive skills over days? But from what we've seen when Marlene took in Ellie, she already had a set protocol for just that scenario, hinting that Ellie might not be the first person bitten to last longer than expected.
Though, as mentioned, there's always the chance that we'll learn about a connection between Marlene and Ellie's mother in the final two episodes of the season. But for now, Marlene's obsession with keeping Ellie safe seems like it could be part of a far wider-reaching scheme by the Fireflies to find viable children to test on to make a vaccine. It would be a bleak twist but one that would fit with the Fireflies' quest to return to the old world by any means necessary.
Rosie Knight is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything from anime to comic books to kaiju to kids movies to horror flicks. She has over half a decade of experience in entertainment journalism with bylines at Nerdist, Den of Geek, Polygon, and more.
