Bella Ramsey nailed Ellie’s innocence and naivety in The Last of Us season 1, but the character takes a lot of dark turns in The Last of Us Part II – and Ramsey needs to get that transformation right in season 2. Whereas Ellie is a symbol of hope in the first Last of Us game, she’s a cautionary tale about the futility of vengeance in the second one. As she heads to Seattle to pursue revenge, Ellie gradually loses her humanity and becomes a cold-blooded killing machine singularly focused on exacting eye-for-an-eye punishment.

While there’s been some skepticism as to whether Ramsey can pull off the darker characterization of Ellie in The Last of Us season 2, they’ve already proven they can handle darker material. Their big break was in Game of Thrones, one of the darkest shows on television, and they gave a tough, gritty performance as a convict in the second season of the BBC prison drama Time. There are a lot of dimensions to the darker, more violent Ellie seen in The Last of Us Part II that Ramsey needs to capture in the next season of the TV show.

10 Ellie’s Cold-Bloodedness

The Delicate Dance Between Ruthlessness and Remorse

The most startling thing about Ellie’s dark transformation in The Last of Us Part II is just how cold-blooded she becomes. As she gets deeper into war-torn Seattle, she becomes increasingly desensitized to killing. By the time she comes across the Seraphites, she’s willing to kill anyone who stands in her way and shows little to no remorse for her bloodshed.

The real challenge for Ramsey will be finding a way to show what’s left of Ellie’s humanity peeking through the inhumanity. As far as Ellie goes in herc cold-bloodedness, she never completely loses her humanity. Ellie torturing Nora is a horrific act, but she’s visibly shaken when she returns to the theater. She kills Owen and Mel with very little provocation, but she’s disgusted with herself when she sees that Mel is pregnant.

9 The Survivor’s Guilt Ellie Feels

The Heavy Burden of Outliving Loved Ones

One of Ellie’s defining psychological traits is her survivor’s guilt. She feels guilty over having survived run-ins with the infected where Riley, Tess, Sam, and Henry didn’t make it out alive. This survivor’s guilt is compounded at the beginning of The Last of Us Part II when she arrives just a couple of minutes too late to save Joel from Abby’s wrath. This is the reason Ellie pursues vengeance in the first place; she thinks that if she kills Joel’s killer, it’ll erase the guilt.

By the end of the game, Ellie is so consumed by her survivor’s guilt that she can’t eat or sleep. Ramsey needs to show the destructive impact of this guilt in their season 2 performance. Ellie’s guilt doesn’t just take a mental toll; it takes a physical toll, which will be tough to pull off as an actor.

8 Ellie’s Narrow-Mindedness

Obsession Blinds: The Tunnel Vision of Revenge

Ellie is so narrow-minded in her quest to kill Abby that she loses sight of everything else. When Ellie and Dina are being shot at in the school, all Ellie can focus on is the clue she just found. When Ellie worries that the Seraphites or some infected may have killed Abby before she can get to her, Dina reminds her that, in that scenario, Abby would “still be dead.” But in Ellie’s mind, she has to be the one to do it for it to count as real justice.

Ramsey needs to convey Ellie’s narrow-mindedness throughout season 2. As she gets closer to Abby’s hideout, she becomes more and more singularly focused on revenge. She doesn’t care who she has to kill – or which bridges she has to burn in her personal life – to get to Abby.

7 The Resentment Ellie Feels Towards Joel

The Erosion of Idolatry: Ellie’s Shifting View of Joel

After the four-year time jump at the beginning of The Last of Us Part II, it’s revealed that Ellie’s relationship with Joel has been soured. Throughout the game, flashbacks gradually reveal that Ellie resents Joel, because she found out what he did to save her at the Fireflies’ hospital. In the first game, the most important thing for Ellie was that her immunity mean something, so that all the loss they suffered along the way wouldn’t be for nothing.

When Joel finds Ellie at the hospital in Salt Lake City, listening to the Fireflies’ harrowing account of Joel’s massacre, she angrily tells Joel that they’re “done.” In The Last of Us season 1, Ramsey perfectly captured Ellie’s reverence for Joel, looking up to him as a father figure. In season 2, they need to show the opposite, as Ellie grows to resent Joel.

6 Ellie’s Selfishness

The Cost of Revenge on Personal Relationships

In her mission to find and kill Abby, Ellie becomes increasingly selfish. When she learns that Dina is pregnant, Ellie just focuses on the impact that Dina’s pregnancy will have on the revenge quest. Instead of showing concern for Dina and her unborn child, Ellie callously calls Dina “a burden” and worries that a pregnant Dina will just slow her down. Her selfishness gets even worse when Jesse joins her and she chooses pursuing Abby alone over following Jesse to save Tommy.

Even after the ordeal in Seattle, when Ellie has become part of a family, she remains selfishly focused on making Abby pay. Dina and J.J. rely on Ellie, but she abandons them to chase Abby to Santa Barbara. It’s not easy for an actor to commit to such an unlikable quality, but Ramsey needs to lean into this selfishness in their season 2 performance.

5 Ellie’s Impulsivity

A New Behavior That Leads Her to Her Biggest Mistake In Part II

One of Ellie’s main flaws is that she’s incredibly impulsive. She often doesn’t think before she acts, and that results in a lot of lives lost during her roaring rampage of revenge across Seattle. Her impulsivity finally comes back to bite her when her attempt to interrogate Owen and Mel goes horribly awry and she ends up killing them both in quick succession, only to learn after the fact that Mel is pregnant.

This is one of the darkest things that Ellie does in The Last of Us Part II, albeit unwittingly, and the TV show won’t fully capture her monstrous transformation if it doesn’t adapt this scene. Ramsey needs to show how impulsive Ellie is on the battlefields of Seattle long before she makes her worst mistake. By the time she gets to the aquarium, impulsivity should be intrinsically tied to her character.

4 Ellie’s Rage

Rash Actions and Their Unintended Consequences

Rather than processing the sadness that she feels over Joel’s death, Ellie channels all her emotions into pure, unadulterated rage at the thought of his killers getting away with it. Her anger gets worse and worse as she starts picking off the Salt Lake crew and realizes it doesn’t make her feel any better about losing Joel. Instead of rethinking her grief management strategy, she just doubles down and gets even madder.

Ramsey showed glimmers of Ellie’s rage in season 1 in the confrontations with David. They need to show that rage gradually consuming Ellie as she charges relentlessly through Seattle in The Last of Us season 2. From stabbing Jordan in the neck to torturing Nora at the hospital, Ellie’s irrepressible rage leads her to do all kinds of horrible things in The Last of Us Part II.

3 Ellie’s Fearlessness

From Grief to Uncontrolled Fury: Ellie’s Escalating Anger

Whereas Ellie is scared through most of the first game – and even confesses to as much during one of her most emotional conversations with Joel – she develops hard edges and a complete lack of fear throughout the second game. She wanders right into the heat of battle and kills everyone who gets in her way. She has no hesitation about stepping into a deadly situation if it’ll bring her closer to Abby.

Ramsey did a great job of showing Ellie’s fear in The Last of Us season 1 when she was forced to kill a hunter to save Joel and when she was held at gunpoint by Kathleen. In season 2, they need to flip that fear and show Ellie slowly becoming fearless as she becomes more and more focused on revenge. It’s the clearest change in Ellie’s personality between the first and second games.

2 The PTSD Ellie Suffers

A Traumatized Girl: New Angles That Season 2 Needs To Present

The Last of Us Part II is a powerful study of PTSD. PTSD is the connective thread that the game uses to show that Ellie and Abby are really a lot alike. Ellie is haunted by the memory of running down to a basement to find Joel being beaten to death, while Abby is haunted by the memory of racing to the pediatric operating theater in the Salt Lake hospital to find her dead father riddled with bullets. In both cases, the trauma drives them to commit a lot of regrettable acts of violence.Ramsey needs to show the devastating effect that Ellie’s PTSD has on her. The most glaring example is when a strong wind slams the barn door, triggering an intense panic attack. Capturing the inescapable terror of Ellie’s PTSD is crucial to recapturing the power of the game.

1 Ellie’s Vengeful Drive

The Character’s Big Dilemma: Revenge To Heal Grief And Joel’s Absence

The defining characteristic of Ellie’s journey in The Last of Us Part II is her unquenchable desire for vengeance. From the moment she’s forced to watch Joel’s murder to the moment she finally has Abby at her mercy, Ellie is focused solely on exacting revenge. She fools herself into believing that killing Abby will make the grief over losing Joel – and the PTSD from both his gruesome death and the rampage that followed in Seattle – easier to deal with.

As The Last of Us season 2 tackles the game’s grisly revenge story, Ramsey needs to effectively show just how important this quest for vengeance is to Ellie. They also need to convey the delusion that successfully exacting revenge will make Ellie feel better. Communicating these feelings is the key to making the game’s powerful ending land.