The Last of Us is quickly approaching its next devastating turning point. The second season’s finale is likely to recreate one of the most heartbreaking scenes in the franchise — that fateful confrontation at the aquarium. We know how it ends. And we know that Ellie is no longer the girl who just wanted to save the world. But what happens next?
The answer is simple: Season 3 will almost certainly adapt the second half of The Last of Us Part II. Which means we’re not just getting a continuation — we’re getting a complete rethinking of the entire story.
The Same War — From the Other Side
The writers have already chosen their structure: Season 2 presents Ellie’s perspective, her path of revenge, growing obsession, and inner collapse. Season 3 will mirror it — but through the eyes of Abby, the girl audiences hated at the beginning of the game and gradually came to understand.
We’ll see how she loses her father in the hospital, how she sets out on a path of hatred and ultimately kills Joel. But then — she realizes nothing has changed. Revenge didn’t help. There’s no peace, only emptiness. And so begins a new journey: escape, a chance encounter with two children from a rival cult, and the search for meaning she never had.
Abby and Lev: At the Heart of Another Faith
A central arc of Season 3 will be Abby’s relationship with Lev and Yara, children from the Seraphite religious sect. A hardened soldier, Abby unexpectedly saves the very people she was raised to see as enemies.
Their journey becomes the emotional heart of the season: fleeing through flooded Seattle, nighttime attacks from the Scars, Yara’s death, a broken arm — all set against Abby’s personal transformation. A character once loathed by the audience becomes someone they can no longer call a monster.
This part of the story is crucial: here, the game (and now the series) stops being merely a survival drama. It becomes a tale about how to escape the endless cycle of violence — even if you’re already soaked in blood.
Prison, Rattlers, and the Road to the End
The game’s — and thus the show’s — finale takes place in a Californian hellscape, where civilization has given way to slavery, prisons, and scorched beaches. The Rattler gang captures Abby and Lev, turning them into broken prisoners. And it’s there, months later, that Ellie arrives — making one last attempt to finish what she started.
The final beach scene is one of the most powerful and emotional in the entire The Last of Us story. Ellie and Abby, both wrecked physically and morally, face off in a fight neither of them truly wants anymore. It won’t be about victory. It will be about release. From the urge to kill. From endless pain. From the past.
We Started With Joel and Ellie, But End Up Alone
The Last of Us isn’t about zombies. It’s not even about survival. It’s about humanity. About how hard it is to be good when the world is falling apart — and how easy it is to become a monster, even with the best intentions.
Season 3 could be the most powerful yet. Because it will ask us to do the unthinkable — to understand those we once saw as enemies.
