Take On Me: Ellie & Dina Find Love as Jeffrey Wright’s Isaac Brings New Darkness to “The Last of Us”

Oscar-nominated performer Jeffrey Wright is no stranger to prestigious HBO dramas—he was a central figure in Westworld—yet it was still a fun jolt to see him, at last, enter the picture in the 4th episode of The Last of Us season 2, “Day One.”

In the opening scene, Wright appears as a FEDRA soldier during a flashback to 2018 in Seattle’s quarantine zone, 11 years before the current timeline. We’re in an armored FEDRA van where one of the soldiers (Josh Peck) tells an obnoxious story about how one of his comrades assaulted a bunch of citizens he called “voters.” Another soldier, clearly new to the gig of menacing and attacking people he’s nominally supposed to protect, wants to know why they’re called voters. His storytelling comrade derides this question as being beside the point, but that’s when a sager voice speaks up—Wright’s Isaac.

“Cause we took away their rights,” he says.  “We took away their right to vote, and somebody started calling them ‘voters’ to mock them. So now you know.”

There are few actors alive better at playing world-weary wisdom than Jeffrey Wright, and there are few worlds that could make you more weary than the one The Last Of Us presents, a post-apocalyptic nightmare in which the infected are growing more ambitious, more cunning, and therefore more lethal.  It’s been a brutal, tragic run for Ellie (Bella Ramsey) in the past few episodes—episode two saw the shocking, cruel murder of her friend/caretaker/cool-if-grumpy father figure Joel (Pedro Pascal), at the hands of an outraged Abby Anderson (Kaitlyn Dever), who lost her own father during Joel’s rampage to save Ellie at the end of season one. One imagines that Ellie, who is now on a quest with Dina (Isabel Merced) to hunt down Abby and kill her, will find out that Joel died because of her, in a way. Not that it’s Ellie’s fault, but knowing her, she’ll likely see it that way.

Back to Wright’s character, Isaac—after schooling the curious cadet on why they call citizens “voters,” the armored van of FEDRA soldiers is stopped by a group of those voters, who may or may not be members of the Washington Liberation Front. The van is surrounded, and Isaac grabs that one curious soldier to go and meet with these voters and see what they want. When he steps out of the van, he tosses a few grenades inside, killing everyone (including the obnoxious storyteller), save the young soldier. “Now make your choice,” Isaac tells him.

“Day One” was directed by Kate Herron (Loki), and it takes us far outside the punctured citadel of Jackson, Wyoming, to the outskirts of Seattle, where Ellie and Dina continue on Abby’s trail. The city is embroiled in a fight between two factions, the Isaac-led Washington Liberation Front and the Seraphites, a group led by a mysterious prophet. We also learn that Dina is pregnant, and that the news brings Ellie joy. Seeing her happiness at the idea of being a “father,” as Ellie says, she and Dina finally take the next step in their relationship. It was a rare joyous moment in what’s been a grim season thus far.

Eventually, Ellie and Dina take shelter in an abandoned music store (after moving through a Seattle neighborhood that had been festooned with rainbow flags, denoting happier times in the past). “Day One” speaks to a new day for Ellie and Dina, who have finally begun to take their attraction seriosuly after that playful kiss on New Year’s Eve and Dina’s on-again, off-again relationship with Jesse (Young Mazino) seems to officially be off for good (despite the baby being his). When Ellie reveals her musical chops, she grabs a guitar and starts to sing to Dina, love is definitely in the air. It’s one of The Last of Us’s most beautiful sequences, with Ramsey’s haunting version of A-ha’s 1985 hit “Take On Me” creating an unquestionably moving moment for the two young lovers. Here, using old lyrics and a left-behind guitar, Ellie can tell Dina how she really feels.

“All those lessons from Joel,” Ellie tells Dina after the song ends.

“He taught you well,” Dina says.

It’s a sequence that comes straight from the video game The Last of Us Part II, and in the series, it offers a touching portrait of two women falling in love with each other, while canonizing, in a way, the man who brought them together and whom they loved like a father. It’s also not for nothing that “Take On Me” is making its second appearance on the show—the first time we heard it was during Ellie’s mall date with Riley (Storm Reid), which ended in a life-defining tragedy.

This gorgeous scene was offset by a gruesome one—present-day Isaac’s torture of a Seraphite hostage reminds us how awful a world this is. Isaac wants to know when and where the Seraphites plan to attack next. The shackled, naked, badly beaten Seraphite is unbudgeable, however. The fight between the WLF and the Seraphites is a hideous one, and it seems there’s no amount of pain that Isaac can inflict upon his captive that will get him to reveal a thing.

Their exchange is haunting.

“You’re gonna lose,” the hostage tells Isaac.

“Son, we have automatic weapons and hospitals, and you lunatics have bolt-action rifles, bows and arrows, and superstition. So tell me, how are we going to lose?” Isaac asks.

“Every day, one of your Wolves comes to see the truth and takes Her into their heart,” he replies, referring to the Seraphite’s prophet. “Every day. Every day, a Wolf leaves you to take the holy mortification to become a Seraphite. And none of us ever leave to become a Wolf.”

Wright played Isaac in the video game, too, and he’s a man who has transformed into the very thing he rebelled against FEDRA over. He turned on FEDRA because of the way they dehumanized the people they were meant to protect, and now here he is, doing the same.

Yet the brutality isn’t just the WLF’s game—Ellie and Dina get an eyewitness account of the lengths the Seraphites are willing to go to. They find WLF soldiers in an abandoned news station hanging from the rafters, their guts spilled out. And Ellie and Dina themselves are on a violent mission, thus adding to the ceaseless cycle of revenge. They must scatter, and quickly, when Wolves arrive at the scene of their comrade’s murder.

Ellie and Dina escape to a subway tunnel, pursued by Wolves, and then are met in the dark by an infected horde. Such is life in The Last Of Us—you are either in the fryer or the frying pan (or being burned by a frying pan while shackled). During their mad dash to escape the horde, Ellie reveals her secret to Dina in an attempt to save her—she offers her own arm for an infected to chomp down on, buying Dina the time to clamber over a fence to safety.

Once in a place of relative reprieve, Dina is so shaken by Ellie’s bite that she points her gun at her.

“I would die for you, I would. But that is not what just happened. F**k—I’m immune. I can’t get infected,” Ellie pleads.

Dina eventually comes to believe Ellie when she confesses her pregnancy.

The next morning, as Ellie and Dina discuss all that’s transpired and get deeper into their pasts with each other, explosions in the distance interrupt them. The walkie-talkie they flinched from a Wolf gives the name “Nora,” a member of Abby’s Salt Lake Crew. They now have a proper lead. Considering she’s pregnant, Ellie is concerned about Dina staying on the mission, but Dina isn’t going anywhere.

“Day One” moves the action far north of Jackson and introduces the conflict between the WLF and Seraphites to the story of Ellie and Dina’s vengeance mission. The stakes are much higher. This is definitely Ellie and Dina’s series now, with Dina supplanting the lost Joel as the most important person in Ellie’s life.

Given the type of young woman Ellie has become, that means she’ll do anything, anything at all, to protect Dina and the baby they might share. In more ways than one, Ellie has become very much like Joel.

Featured image: Bella Ramsey and Isabela Merced. Photograph by Liane Hentscher/HBO