Towards the end of The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 3, Ellie visits Joel’s grave and leaves a few coffee beans – and it’s a secret reference to an unseen scene in the show.
Have you recovered from the trauma of last week’s episode of The Last of Us?
After all, how could anyone be expected to forget Abby blasting Joel’s knee with a shotgun, beating him to a pulp with a golf club, and then using the sharp end of the shattered club to stab him in the neck while Ellie watched, screamed, and begged her to stop?
As you’d expect, Episode 3 deals with the emotional fallout of his death, with Ellie and Dina setting off on a vengeful mission to Seattle. Before the leave, they make a brief stop, and there’s a little Easter egg.
Why the coffee beans are so important in The Last of Us Episode 3
Joel loves coffee, but the fact Ellie puts coffee beans on his grave is a nod to a scene we’ve yet to see adapted from The Last of Us Part 2.
Cast your mind back to Season 1; specifically Episode 4, when Ellie and Joel camp in the woods. The next morning, Ellie wakes up to the sound of Joel’s kettle bubbling away with coffee.
“It smells like burnt sh*t,” she later quips as he slurps away at his flask in the truck.
However, there’s another scene in the game that’ll inevitably happen in the show too (don’t worry, I won’t go into any other spoilers about its context or when it takes place in the timeline).
Basically, Ellie finds Joel drinking coffee on his porch and asks where he got it from. He says he got it from one of the traders who passed through Jackson, though he was a bit embarrassed by what he had to trade to get it.
HBOIt’s a funny moment, but how it links to Ellie placing the beans on his grave is incredibly important. It wasn’t a secret that she was mad at him before he died. We still don’t know why; did she know about him lying about the Fireflies, or did it have something to do with Eugene?
Regardless, Episode 3 makes it clear how much she cared about him underneath her anger. Earlier in the episode, we see her tearfully wandering around Joel’s home, breathing in his old air and touching his jacket. She misses him, and there’s probably regret in there too; if she knew how little time they had left together, she would have patched things up sooner.
The coffee beans are a nice gesture, but they show Ellie’s willingness to forgive Joel for everything he did; even in death, she wanted to do something nice for him. “I’m still me, he’s still Joel, and… nothing’s ever gonna change that, ever.”
Until next week, read more about Abby’s fate in The Last of Us games, what you need to know about the WLF, and why Eugene is so important in Season 2.
Source link
