The Last of Us Season 2 Finale Ending Explained
The Last of Us season two ended on a cliffhanger as Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) faced off at gunpoint, with a time-jump that will likely alter the HBO show's third season.
The Last of Us' second season ended with a literal bang.
After all, a single gunshot rang out when the standoff between Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Abby (
To make things even more puzzling, the scene then switches to Abby waking up at her W.L.F. camp, noting in a title card: "Seattle: Day One."
So, did Abby kill Ellie? Was it all a dream? Not quite.
At this point in the video games on which the HBO series is based, player controls shift over from Ellie to Abby's perspective and the story jumps back in time. The narrative then follows Abby during the two days leading up to her skirmish with Ellie, before converging back to the present timeline.
Life Finds a Way
For a show mainly set in a world that was bombed to hell to try to contain the spread of an incurable cordyceps plague that turns the infected into clickers—monsters with heads that look like blooming onions—the color palette of
The Boston quarantine zone is awash in red brick and splashes of blue and yellow, while outside the QZ, Mother Nature has been busy reclaiming what's hers, leaving the buildings overgrown with vines (all hand-sculpted) and other bright-green foliage.
"I never wanted it to feel like a Dutch painting, where everything was brown," Paino quipped.
And for Ellie, who's never been out of the QZ until she sets off with Joel (
Model Management
Painstakingly detailed white card models were also "super-helpful," the production designer noted. (That's right, this whole world exists in miniature, too.)
"We had an incredible model maker," Paino shared. "My favorite was the giant model for the cul-de-sac [in episode five, "Endure and Survive"] where the clickers come out of the ground. That whole sequence, so much stunt coordination."
Movement choreographer Terry Notary held a bootcamp to get the extras ready to realistically portray a hoard of infected.
Animal Farm
The town of Canmore stood in for Jackson, Wyo., where Joel finds his brother Tommy (
"We put in the wall and rebuilt a lot of the facades," Paino noted—though his pride and joy from that episode was the paddock they built in the middle of a parking lot.
"That was just so much fun to have a paddock!" he said. "We had a few cows and some sheep, we had horses. The set decorating department was fabulous."
Nostalgia on Steroids
Paino's favorite set was the mall where Ellie and her best friend Riley (Storm Reid) have what starts off as a stellar night in episode seven, "Left Behind," before the reminder that nowhere is safe rears its literal ugly head.
The Northland Village Mall in Calgary "was destined to be," the designer said. "It was stripped of everything, it was going to be torn down, so we lucked out in finding it. All the facades in it were rebuilt. All the signage, the dreck, the vines, the merry-go-round was brought in."
The set decorators tracked down lingerie that would have been in a Victoria's Secret window in 2003, costumes for the Halloween store, the decidedly smaller selection of American Girl dolls available at the name-brand boutique in those days, etc.
Paino noted that all the brand names—from the mall storefronts to an abandoned Arby's in Kansas City (where Matchstick Men and Underworld are forever on the theater marquee) to a "we take Mastercard" sign on the door of a restaurant where the wine glasses on the still-set tables are full of moss—were specific to the show, as the video game didn't include any trademarked products.
Going for a Spin
The production leased the rodeo-themed carousel that Ellie and Riley take a turn on from the Spruce Meadows entertainment complex in Calgary, shipping it in pieces and reassembling it at Northland Village.
They added reflective panels to the center of the ride to add to the surreality of the experience.
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Games Within the Game
As for Raja's Arcade (which comes from the game), Paino said, "being a child of the '70s, I spent a lot of time in a mall arcade, so that was easy."
"It was so much fun to put up all the neon," he continued, and "we were able to get a carpet that was right from the '70s, that great Zippy satellite pattern." They also brought in all the games, including classic titles like Tetris, Frogger and Mortal Combat.
"You can rent some of those, but we built a lot of them," he said, and they actually worked. But the cathode-ray tube (CRT) monitors that games from 20 years ago had came out blurry on camera, so they replaced them with flat LED screens in order to capture the action clearly.
"That was a lot of fun," he reflected. "I loved that set."
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A World Built for Two
A close second-favorite set for Paino was the town where Bill (
They had "such a short window" to set the scene, from bringing in the greenery to sculpting the Civil War monument, Paino said. "I think we were working up until late at night the day before it shot."
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Art Reflects Life
"Bill's house was more his mom's, someone who was rich and keeping it almost like a museum," Paino explained the vision behind the old-lady decor when the gruff survivalist is first introduced.
Frank got there and basically said to himself, "'Okay, well, what do I do?'" Paino mused. "'I go to Target and get paints.'"
While the picturesque hamlet may have been cleared of people pretty quickly, there's still a Home Depot. "Go to Michael's, paint, hang the pictures, add some life and flowers,'" Paino continued. "That was a nice bit of world-building."
By the end, after 16 years together, Frank's art is all over the walls of what has become their house, and we are a weeping mess.
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Inner Worlds
A few of Sam's drawings in episode 5 were courtesy of actor
Though the tragic ending remains the same, the touching scene where big brother Henry (
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Frozen in Time
Mazin may have referred to episode 8 ("When We Are in Need") as "our cold episode," but there were more than a few cold episodes for the crew shooting at Waterton Lakes National Park. With few residents at the resort area during the winter, "there's nothing there," said Paino, "and there's, like, nine feet of snow."
When they were scouting in Waterton, where Ellie's run-in with David's (Scott Shepherd) cannibal cult is set, "we went up to a hill and we all got blown off," recalled Paino, who was on location for 16 months. "No effects required to send us on our butts, flying. But it's an unbelievable place."
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Enjoying the View
Just like the sheep and horses in the paddock, the giraffes that appear to be grazing in an old playing field in the season finale, "Look for the Light," were real—but in their case, the production had to go to them.
"That set piece was beautifully executed," Paino said. Joel and Ellie are "walking through a construction site, which was a location in downtown Calgary that we did some work to. They're going up the staircase—that was a set built on a stage. The giraffes' enclosure [at the zoo] had a balcony where the keepers would feed them. Over a period of a month and a half, maybe a bit longer, we slowly introduced pieces of scenery and green screen in there, so it would match that very iconic scene of them making their way up to the top of the desiccated building and seeing [Colorado] laid out."
"That was, I don't know, four minutes of the episode," Paino said wryly. "But it was really beautiful."
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Just the Right Touch
Grand scale aside, the show was "also fairly intimately shot," Paino noted. "It is a story about the people. We don't do a lot of big 'there's the world!'"
Ultimately, he explained, "we didn't want to do disaster porn." And yet they wanted it to resonate, such as when Ellie is rifling through a drawer in an abandoned home and finds needle and thread, that "this was someone's house, this was someone's bar."
"Sometimes it was scripted, and sometimes it wasn't," Paino said of the little details that make the world of The Last of Us so haunting. "We always tried to play with that sad irony."
And they did manage to sneak in a mold-splotched "Back in 5 minutes" sign that someone innocently hung up 20 years ago.
"If I ever have a screensaver," Paino said, "I think it'll be that."
Walking Dead actor Andrew Lincoln's new thriller series is coming to Showtime soon
We all fell in love with Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes on The Walking Dead and have been eagerly waiting for his return to the role after his short stint in The Ones Who Live. While that may very well happen one day, fans will have to settle for something just as exciting for now. Lincoln's new series, Coldwater, will be finally make its U.S. debut!
If you’re in the U.K., you might be saying, "Been there, done that!" That’s because it first aired on ITV in September 2025. But for those in the United States, we've been waiting patiently to see it. All we had to watch were short clips and fan edits of the show posted on social media. Imagine how difficult it was to get tiny glimpses of the series and not the whole thing. It definitely wasn't an enjoyable experience.
But soon, U.S. viewers won’t have to settle for teasers or tiny snippets anymore! Showtime just made a big announcement. It has acquired the U.S. rights to Lincoln’s highly anticipated thriller, Coldwater, ensuring that fans across the country can finally watch the full series. According to a press release, the show will come out in early 2026. While that's not an exact date just yet, it does give us an idea of when it could premiere.
Early 2026 consists of the months of January, February, March, and sometimes April. That said, Coldwater is expected to arrive sometime during those months. Obviously, we'd like to see the show sooner rather than later, so a premiere in January or February would be perfect. But we'll just have to wait and see what release date is officially announced.
The press release didn't specify if the show will air on Paramount+ with Showtime or only stream on Paramount+ for Premium plan subscribers. However, our guess is that it will do both. In other words, it will be available for streaming on Paramount+ first, and then have its on-air debut on Paramount+ with Showtime. That's what it will be doing for another British show it just acquired, which is The Guest.
Coldwater is described as a twisted thriller series. Created and written by David Ireland (Derry Girls), it stars Lincoln as John, a middle-aged, stay-at-home dad whose seemingly normal life unravels when he befriends his charming new neighbor, Tommy, who harbors dark and dangerous secrets.
Ewen Bremner, who is best known for roles in Trainspotting and Our Flag Means Death, plays Tommy, the charismatic yet sinister neighbor whose influence pulls John into a dangerous and unpredictable world. Also in the cast are Eve Myles, Indira Varma, and Lorn Macdonald.
