At this point Im disappointed of season 2, specially from the final episode, not only there were only 7 episodes on season 2 but it felt so rush because the entire Dina and Ellie romance thing took so much out of it, only for now Dina wanted to go back to Jackson. First I thought it would take longer for Abby to find Joel and same for Ellie to find Abby, yet here we are on episode 7 we finally get to see Ellie face off with Abby but the journey getting there felt so rushed. As expected after last episode when Jesse safe them we got Dina recovering from that arrow wound while Jesse plays doctor and even that scene felt rush as all we got is like 3 min of talking and then a full dark screen with Dina screaming as Jesse pussh through the arrow. Ellie returns from her encounter with Nora and you can see she is completely shaken up by what she had to do to get information out of her but the sad part is that she doesnt embrace it and double guess her actions. I trully thought Ellie would embrace that savage side but instead its clear that the entire quest is starting to eat her soul, Bella does a great job at bringing out Ellie struggles, its during her talk with Dina that she finally connect the dots with the info dump Nora gave her about Salt Lake City, what throw me off and made me mad is that now after Dina get this information too then she says they got to back!!! what happen to go until the end?? since the moment she told Ellie she was pregnant none of this should have happen and honestly this makes it even more frustrating when other parts also feel so rushed.
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The section of the episode where Ellie and Jesse head out to find Tommy starts strong but quickly becomes a mess of pacing issues that really bothered me. Jesse knowing about Dina being pregnant should have been a bigger moment I think considering he is the father although the only nice part is how he tricked Ellie into telling the truth, when she picks up like "oh fuck you where gessing??" that crack me since she really fucked up. Their drama conversation at the building about community versus personal desires was actually pretty good, showing how Jesse is one of the good guys very similar to Tommy and probably why they came for Dina and Ellie, it was the right thing to do usually putting others first while Ellie is consumed by her own need for revenge. But then we get to the part where Ellie gets captured by the Seraphites and this is where the episode really send everything to hell. In less than ten minutes she gets capture, strung up, about to be executed, then saved by the Wolf attack, it's like watching a highlight reel instead of actual storytelling. The whole sequence feels like they needed to check off certain plot points but didn't want to spend the time actually developing them properly. When that massive wave hits her boat and she somehow survives and washes up on shore perfectly fine it was the biggest EYE ROLLING moment of the episode.
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The last part at the aquarium gets a bit dark and intense even though nothing happens to Ellie but the execution still feels rushed in places that really matter. Finding Owen and Mel arguing about Abby desicions sets up this tense confrontation and for the first time I'm starting to feel that Abby is going to be important for the series, not only because Issac mention it at the begining of the episode. Ellie tryies to pull one of Joel's trick, point at them with her going trying to get information about Abby, her specific location, it shows how much she have learn from him but it backfires when Owen tries to shoot her and then Ellie shots back, killing both with one bullet and to make things more emotional, Mel was pregnant and on her last moments asks Ellie to take her baby out to save him, it was a brutal scene.
While the scene was emotionally powerful it happens so fast that you don't get enough time to really absorb the horror of whats going on and thats frustating. Ellie's reaction to realizing she killed a pregnant woman is a shocking one and it's one of the few moments where the show actually slows down enough to let the consequences sink in but then the series decides to turbo up things when Tommy and Jesse finds her out of fkn no where, Ellie in shock and it shows how this quest for revenge is destroying everyone involved, not just the targets.
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The final scene is an intense confrontation between Ellie and Abby but again it was just too short, a real wtf moment but from my understanding very similar to the one in the game getting Jesse shot in the face, I didnt want to search more about it since I dont want to auto spoil things. This scene is the biggest evidence of how the season has struggle with pace, everything happens so fast from Abby getting to the teather, how? and then shooting the first one of the door but holding Tommy alive? why?. What is really impresive is seen Abby tasting some of her own trusth for revenge, she let Ellie live only to watch her kill three of her friends that were with her the day she killed Joel.
Ellie tries to negotiate for Tommy's life while admitting she killed Owen and Mel shows how much of an innocent girl she still is, cmon; even this climactic moment feels somewhat hollow because we have barely spent any time with Abby this season, so her anger is justified but doesn't carry the emotional weight it should because we don't know sht about what she have been through or doing between killing Joel and now. The episode ends with that gunshot and cuts to full black screen then resets to show Abby's starting from day one in Seattle, I wonder if they would go with a full reset / flashback episode or season, is season three going to be Abby story?, how much of this would be the result of bad pacing and the series trying to make things up for the audience? the shot with the black screen is suppose to be the cliff hanger but the flashback through me off.
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