HBO’s The Last of Us closes Season 2 with a finale designed to do two things at once: pay off Ellie’s Seattle arc and reframe everything you’ve just watched by reminding viewers that “there is another side to this story.” That line comes straight from co-showrunner Craig Mazin, and it’s the guiding idea behind the ending’s last-minute pivot.
What happens at the end of Season 2
The finale, titled “Convergence” (aired May 25, 2025), builds toward a high-stakes moment at the theater just as Ellie seems ready to stop chasing answers and head back to Jackson. That pause doesn’t last: Abby re-enters the story in the closing minutes, leading to an overdue conversation that turns chaotic fast—leaving Ellie’s group rattled and the situation dramatically unresolved.
Instead of continuing the scene to a neat endpoint, the episode moves away at the most destabilizing moment—and then delivers the real twist: a time shift.
The twist: the story rewinds to Abby’s perspective
The final beat jumps to Abby waking up at the W.L.F. base in Seattle “two days earlier,” signalling that Season 3 is likely to rewind and replay key events from Abby’s point of view—mirroring the structural swing in The Last of Us Part II game, where the narrative intentionally expands beyond Ellie’s experience.
Mazin and Neil Druckmann have framed this as the point: the audience has been locked into Ellie’s tunnel vision, and the finale is the show’s way of saying the moral math isn’t single-sided. As Mazin put it, the series still has to “really delve into” Abby as the central figure of her own story.
Behind the scenes, the creators have also acknowledged they discussed alternate ways to end the season, but ultimately chose the pause point because it makes the perspective shift unavoidable—and because, in Mazin’s words, they felt they “have to take risks” in an adaptation this closely watched.
