The Last of Us season 2, episode 5 vs. the game: What changed and what didn’t

Episode 5 of The Last of Us Season 2 just graced our TV screens, and there’s only two more episodes before this season wraps up. The show, especially in its second season, is clearly deviating from the game’s timeline and story, making big changes that have surprised even seasoned players.

The Seraphites are finally real players in the game (pun intended) and a lot of major developments just went down in the fifth episode. Here’s what the show did differently, and what it retained from The Last of Us Part II.

HBO’s The Last of Us finally introduces spores

Love isn't the only thing in the air

A rather polarizing decision that the HBO show took from its very first season was to decide not to have spores in the live-action remake. Now, the showrunners seem to have reconsidered that decision, bringing in the airborne virus and showing how dangerous spores are in the world of The Last of Us.

We also get to see the WLF finally contending with the fact that the virus is airborne, and the horror among their ranks to discover these spores. Players of The Last of Us games saw spores in the narrative within the very first couple of hours in the first game, while it took the show 2 seasons and 15 episodes to finally introduce the concept of the virus spreading through the air where the fungal density is high enough.

Dina and Ellie actually talk about the Seraphites

Episode 5, titled ‘Feel Her Love’, brings the Scars closer than ever

In the show, Dina and Ellie talk about the Seraphites — the second major clan in Seattle that the WLF is constantly at odds with. Dina compares the Scars to Amish people, as they do not use technology and instead choose to live as if it were the 1800's.

This also explains why the WLF are so lax with their security, not keeping anything secret over the radio. The show pretty much outlines for us the Seraphites and their ideologies, and even tells us how to think about them through its reference to Amish culture. The heavy-handed nature of the writing is hard to ignore.

However, in the game, Dina and Ellie barely ever talk about the Seraphites, if at all. In fact, the entire Jackson team, including Jesse and Tommy, never talk about the Scars, owing to Ellie’s tunnel vision and singular focus on finding Abby and her WLF friends.

Dina and Ellie - in fact, Ellie’s whole team - never really talked about the Seraphites or gave them much attention, owing to Ellie’s tunnel vision and singular focus on Abby and her WLF friends.

Future Days is finally confirmed

In a quiet moment before leaving the theater, Ellie finds several guitars, picks one up, and softly strums Pearl Jam’s Future Days, singing just one line before putting it back. While viewers may be hearing it for the first time, players know it from the game’s prologue, where Joel plays and sings it to Ellie.

That moment also featured in The Last of Us: One Night Live in 2014. Though the show omits both the prologue and the music store scene, the song’s inclusion now strongly suggests we’ll see Joel perform it for Ellie in a future flashback.

Dina’s origins and personality are more fleshed out in the show

Dina’s stake in vengeance for Joel is stronger in the HBO show

Ellie once again asks Dina to return to the theater, second-guessing her decision to bring her along — especially now, knowing Dina was carrying a child.

Dina, in turn, shares her first kill — something never revealed in the game. It adds a new layer to her backstory, fleshing out her character with more depth. She killed someone at the age of eight, and in doing so, we see her investment in Joel’s cause more clearly than we ever did in the game. There, Dina mostly followed Ellie out of love; while she may have felt something about Joel’s death, it was never made explicit.

In the show, however, Dina’s convictions are made clear. She believes strongly in Joel’s humanity, and while she acknowledges he may have done things to provoke Abby and her group, she’s adamant that they went too far. His death was too brutal, too personal — and no one, no matter their crimes, deserved to die like that. She even defends Ellie’s pursuit of Abby, saying no one should have been forced to watch what Ellie witnessed. Whatever happens, Dina believes Abby must be held accountable for what she did.

The stalker ambush is completely original

Ellie fought the stalkers alone in The Last of Us Part II

In episode 5, we see Dina and Ellie surrounded by stalkers in an abandoned building, fearful for their lives. Ellie is pinned down by multiple infected stalkers as Dina watches, but in a moment of deus ex machina, Jesse arrives on the scene to save them both, dispatching the stalkers with an assault rifle.

Jesse has now joined the fight, and while his arrival comes in a completely original scene, it does echo the game in spirit. In both versions, Jesse shows up just as Ellie is nearing the hospital, tracking the person responsible for the chaos at WLF checkpoints, which turns out to be either Jesse or Tommy in the show.

As Jesse, Dina, and Ellie escape the building, they are chased by WLF soldiers. This fight and subsequent chase are entirely new additions. Jesse also reveals that Tommy is in Seattle with him, a notable change.

In the game, Tommy left Jackson a full day before Ellie and Dina. Here, Jesse and Tommy sneak out the night after Ellie and Dina depart, with Jesse leaving specifically to follow and support them.

Ellie finally runs into the Seraphites

The Seraphites aren’t kidding around

Day 2 also marks Ellie’s first encounter with the Seraphites, and the show preserves that timeline faithfully. As the trio enters a park in an effort to shake the WLF soldiers chasing them, they realize too late that they’ve stepped into Scar territory. Ellie witnesses the Seraphites hang a WLF soldier — but this time, she isn’t alone. Jesse and Dina are right there with her, watching the brutal act unfold.

The scene is still reminiscent of the game, especially as Ellie breaks off and tries to escape the Seraphites on her own. After Dina takes an arrow to the knee — well, almost — Jesse helps her retreat to the safety of the theater. However, unlike in the game where she confronts the Seraphites head-on, here she hides inside a tree trunk and eventually emerges near Lakehill Hospital.

Ellie’s decision to make a direct run toward the hospital might have made more sense if her obsession with finding Abby and Nora had been more clearly established. But due to the show’s consistently lighter, more bubbly portrayal of Ellie — even in Seattle — it feels oddly abrupt.

Worse still, it casts her in a harsher light when she immediately abandons the plan to regroup at the theater, seemingly unconcerned about Jesse and Dina’s wellbeing. In the game, this moment was grounded by the fact that Ellie knew they were safe — she had left them at the theater before heading to the hospital. The show strips away that justification, making her choice feel colder and more reckless.

Nora’s fate is almost shot-for-shot

The final scene brings the game’s cinematics to real life

Viewers saw Ellie confront Nora in the hospital in a storage room, and their meeting is exactly the way it happened in the games. Ellie holds up a gun at her before Nora manages to escape, running through the hospital to find cover while Ellie gives chase.

As the two enter the basement, Ellie finally sees Ground Zero, where the outbreak happened in the Seattle hospital. The show takes a moment to have Ellie witness spores for the first time, realizing that she remains unaffected and immune to even the airborne form of the virus.

As Nora lies on the ground, immediately infected and fighting for her life, Ellie finally confronts her. Seeing her pursuer unaffected by the spores, Nora realizes that Ellie was the immune girl Joel killed all the Fireflies for.

A major change in the narrative here is Nora telling Ellie why Abby killed Joel. Ellie never explicitly understood why Abby was hunting her in the PlayStation game— the fact that the surgeon Joel killed was Abby’s father was never revealed to her. The show corrects this by having Nora, with some of her final breaths, tell Ellie exactly why Abby came after Joel.

The episode ends with Ellie torturing Nora with a steel pipe, her hatred coming front and center as she chooses to give in to her fury and make Nora’s final moments all the more painful. This sequence is almost shot-for-shot when compared to the game, down to the red lighting that floods the basement corridor.

Joel returns in The Last of Us season 2 through a flashback

It was about time we saw a flashback sequence

Flashback sequences were a major part of The Last of Us Part II, where Ellie rested and looked back upon some of the major memories she made with Joel after the end of the first game.

However, in the second season of The Last of Us, we haven’t gotten a single flashback yet, and this episode ends with a single scene, where Ellie wakes up on her birthday and Joel greets her with a smile on his face.

Thankfully, episode 6 of The Last of Us season 2 will finally indulge players and viewers by giving us more of Pedro Pascal’s Joel through flashback sequences, where Joel and Ellie visit a museum to enjoy the dinosaur exhibit on Ellie’s birthday.

What is The Last of Us season 2, episode 6 going to hold?

With just two episodes left, The Last of Us Season 2 is clearly forging its own path, reshaping major beats from the game while staying true to the heart of the story.

Episode 5 delivers brutal action and long-awaited reveals, along with meaningful character moments for Ellie, Dina, and Nora. As the lines between revenge and justice blur, the show continues to explore new angles while honoring iconic scenes from the game.

With Joel’s return through flashbacks now in motion, all eyes are on Episode 6 to see how it balances nostalgia, heartbreak, and the inevitable descent into darkness.