Is Joel Back in <em>The Last of Us</em>? Episode 5's Ending, Explained.

Ellie finally revealed the truth. Her secret? It's that she's known it all along. In the latest episode of The Last of Us, "Feel Her Love," (season 2, episode 5) Ellie (Bella Ramsey) gets a little taste of revenge after tracking down Nora (Tati Gabrielle), one of Abby's friends who helped her kill Joel. In the final moments, deep in the hellish depths of a Firefly hospital, Ellie exacts her revenge until the show cuts to black to find Ellie waking up in her bedroom—with none other than Joel (Pedro Pascal) standing there, alive as the day is long.

Wait, what?!

Sorry Pedro stans, but it's not what it seems. The Last of Us season 2 takes heavy inspiration from The Last of Us Part II, the 2020 video game sequel to the original game from 2013. The game implements a prominent flashback structure into its main plot, allowing Ellie (and players) to reevaluate her relationship with Joel in the aftermath of his death. But there's also more to it than that, with the show having plenty of opportunity to riff and maybe even reimagine Ellie's memories of Joel.

Here's everything you need to know about the flashbacks in The Last of Us Part II, and how they might influence the direction of the HBO series.

Tati Gabrielle as Nora in The Last of Us season 2. Her death by Ellie in the show kicks off what is bound to be a big flashback episode for next week.

Just like in the TV show, Ellie experiences flashbacks when Ellie and Dina reach Seattle. The flashbacks mirror the story, allowing audiences to better understand Ellie from within.

The first flashback, which opens with Joel greeting Ellie in her bedroom and showing her how to play guitar (a recurring motif for their relationship), centers around a "Sweet 16" birthday trip to the derelict Wyoming Museum of Science and History, a fictional museum likely modeled after the Museum of the Rockies in Montana. (Truly one of the game's best moments: When Joel hands Ellie a cassette tape recording of the Apollo 11 landing, and Ellie "experiences" the landing from inside a shuttle exhibit at the museum.)

The memory is full of warmth, yet there's darkness teeming beneath it all, illustrated in a spooky sequence where Ellie fights off some infected alone. The scene ends with Ellie and Joel standing before a Firefly symbol and "LIARS" written underneath, a clear indicator of Ellie's suspicion that Joel is hiding the truth from her. And he is.

On Day 2 of Ellie and Dina's stay in Seattle, Ellie relives a different memory: an infected hunting trip with Joel and Tommy, which they take as an opportunity to find replacement guitar strings. It's here Ellie keeps pressing Joel for the truth. But she doesn't get it, which leads to the beginning of their rift.

On Day 3, after a major character's death, Ellie remembers when she went back alone to the hospital in Salt Lake City and unearths concrete proof that Joel killed the Firefly doctors. The big revelation here is that Ellie has known all along that Joel lied to her five years ago, and was the source of their falling out.

Finally, at the end of the game, Ellie remembers one last memory with Joel. It's the last time they ever spoke. It's a quiet but powerful scene on Joel's porch back home in Jackson after the New Year's dance party, and just before he meets Abby. Over a tough conversation, Ellie reveals she wished she had a choice in the matter and that the one purpose she had—giving humanity a second chance with a cure—was ultimately taken from her. Meanwhile, Joel insists he would just do it all over again if he could. The two don't quite patch things up. But they arrive at a soft reconciliation, open to the possibility of understanding one another again. Unfortunately, they will never have that chance.

With seven episodes total for The Last of Us season 2, it's more than likely all of Ellie's flashbacks will make up next week's episode 6. (It's cynical but honest to point out that it's probably easier from a logistics and budgeting perspective to sign on Pedro Pascal for just one more episode.) Still, audiences will have a real chance to say farewell to both Pascal and one of his best characters. If the show follows the game at all, it will also help us understand Ellie, and what Joel meant to her in the end. She might have kept Joel at a distance. But with every strum of a guitar, she knows just where to find him.