‘The Last of Us’, explained end of the 1×03 of the HBO series: what does the letter that Ellie reads to Joel mean?

🚨The following article contains spoilers for ‘The Last of Us’ 1×03 🚨

The end of ‘The Last of Us’ 1×03 on HBO has broken us into a thousand pieces. The death of Bill and Frank will be remembered not only for deconstructing the stereotypes of the post-apocalyptic genre and interrupting the main plot of Joel and Ellie to embrace a precious story of redemption and sacrifice through love: the 76 minutes of chapter 3 of the series of HBO have confirmed what our review was already anticipating: ‘The Last of Us’ is the best series of the year. The moving story of Bill and Frank, far removed from the original plot of the video game created by Naughty Dog, has aroused the almost unanimous enthusiasm of viewers and insiders in ‘The Last of Us’ and has revived skepticism among the most rocky and denialist followers. of a free adaptation like the one that Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann have addressed. It is no coincidence that 1×03 shows a rating in IMDB 8/10 compared to 9.2/10 and 9.3/10 of the first two episodes.

After checking why 1×03 of ‘The Last of Us’ is the best episode of the year and how HBO has completely changed the original story of Bill and Frank in ‘The Last of Us’, we focus on the last section of the chapter 3 of the HBO series to analyze the meaning behind the last scenes of the episode. What does the open window that we see in the last shot of 1×03 symbolize? And above all: What does the letter from Bill that Ellie reads to Joel mean? And why will the words it collects from now on become the engine of the story of ‘The Last of Us’ in the HBO series?

What does the letter that Ellie reads to Joel mean?

In the moments before Tess’s sacrifice at the end of 1×02 of the HBO series (her way of dying is one of the main differences between the series and the ‘The Last of Us’ video game), she addresses some last words to Joel which, after the broadcast of chapter 3, become more important and meaningful than ever: “Save Whom You Can Save”. This advice, which aims to free Joel from the closed-mindedness and pessimism that has plagued his life since the death of his daughter Sarah, finds its echo in the letter that Bill writes to Joel (or “whoever reads it”) and that Ellie finds next to a car keys in the same room where Bill and Frank ate dinner for the last time before committing suicide:

I want to tell you something because surely you will be the only person who understands it… Before I hated the world and I was glad that they all died. But he was wrong, because it was worth saving someone. And that I did. I saved him and protected him. That’s what men like you and me are for. We have a mission. And poor son of a bitch who crosses our path. He left you all my weapons and my equipment. Use it to care…

“…to take care of Tess,” the letter states. Beyond the contacts they had for the exchange of provisions and merchandise, Bill and Frank maintained a friendly relationship with Joel and Tess, hence the allusion that the letter makes to the character played by Anna Torv in the series ‘The Last of Us’ and the one we see again in a flashback of 1×03. But, once Tess dies, Joel interprets and translates Bill’s letter in the only possible way left to him: take care of Ellie (“save who you can save”).

It is very interesting how the HBO series has embraced Bill’s passage in the video game, where his homosexuality was the hidden and fleeting facet of the character, revealing himself in the end as a kind of plot twistto turn it into a love story with a moral that will become the main engine of the next episodes of ‘The Last of Us’: save someone to save yourself. Joel will understand that Ellie is the only figure to cling to and that, beyond that arm that she continues without getting infected, she will protect against all odds. And maybe Joel, by saving Ellie, ends up saving himself.

a window to the world

When, at the end of episode 1×03 of ‘The Last of Us’, Joel and Ellie get into the car to head to Wyoming in search of Tommy, the characters played by Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey turn on the radio to play an old cassette that Bill kept inside the vehicle. The song we then hear is ‘Long Long Time’ by Linda Ronstadt, the same song that Bill and Frank play on the piano the day they meet. (To find out more about Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett, the actors who bring the characters to life: Where have you seen Bill and Frank before, the couple from the spectacular 1×03 of ‘The Last of Us’?). And that’s when Ronstadt’s voice fills the screen and puts music (and lyrics) to an unforgettable last shot:

And life is full of failures, who knows the cost. Living in the memory of a love that never was. Because I’ve done everything I know how to try to change your mind. And I think I’m going to miss you for a long, long time… Because I’ve done everything I know how to try to make you mine. And I think I’ll love you for a long, long time…

While the chorus of this song from the 70s that, after the broadcast of chapter 3 of ‘The Last of Us’ increased its number of reproductions on Spotify by 4,900%, the last shot of the episode introduces us to the bedroom where the corpses of Bill and Frank restwho, after ingesting the overdose that ends their lives, decide to spend the last few minutes they have left in that room where we see an open window to which Bill refers in the letter he leaves Joel: “If you find this, please don’t go into the bedroom. We left a window open so the house wouldn’t smell. But it won’t be pretty to look at.” The image frames Joel and Ellie leaving in the car while a soft breeze slightly shakes the curtains in the room, a reference that is beginning to be no coincidence: the opening screen of the Naughty Dog video game is an iconic image showing an open window in an abandoned building eaten up by weeds, and the first image of the prologue of the series, the one that introduced us to the room of Sarah, daughter of Joel, is the same.

Going back to the last image of the 1×03 of the HBO series, in this one we don’t see the lifeless bodies of Bill and Frank… Because we don’t need it. That implicit off-screen that ignores the corpses (an artistic decision as subtle as it is intelligent) that blurs Ellie and Joel leaving the city by car moves more than the image of two embracing skeletons. All that remains is the image of a dinner paired with a Beaujolais rotting on a table, the voice of Linda Ronstadt remembering that “I will love you for a long, long time” and a window open to a world in ruins that, paradoxically, symbolizes life in two senses: the union of Joel and Ellie that begins to germinate in an eternal friendship, and that of two guys who saved each other understanding that it was better to live (and die) together than to live (and die) surviving alone.