Tati Gabrielle in “The Last of Us” Season 2.
Warning: Major spoilers for The Last of Us Season 2, Episode 5.
In The Last of Us Season 2, Episode 5, Ellie (Bella Ramsey)’s path of revenge continues. Now in Seattle with Dina (Isabela Merced), she’s inching closer and closer to finding Abby. In this episode, she tracks down a member of Abby’s squad, Nora (Tati Gabrielle), who plays a key role in the video game during Ellie’s mission to kill Joel’s murderer.
At the start of “Feel Her Love,” W.L.F. leader Hanrahan (Alanna Ubach) arrives at one of the militia’s hospitals and asks Sergeant Elise Park (Hettienne Park) why she sealed off an entire level, B2, killing some of her men in the process. Park reveals that she sent her son, Leon, down to help clear out B2. Not long afterward, he radioed in, gasping for air. “I said, ‘Leon, were you bit?’ He said, ‘It’s in the air. Seal us in.’”
This sets off a terrifying realization for Hanrahan: the Cordyceps virus, responsible for the infection, can now spread through airborne spores. Anyone who comes into contact with the spores will be infected and eventually die. Still, the W.L.F. wants to keep this information from spreading to cause mass panic.
The haunting introduction of the spores sets the stage for the episode’s ending, where Ellie finds Nora’s location and chases her through the hospital and into the plagued B2 level. Does Nora die in The Last of Us Season 2? And how does her death in Episode 5 differ from the video game? Keep reading to find out.
Who Is Nora In The Last Of Us Season 2?
Tati Gabrielle and Bella Ramsey in “The Last of Us” Season 2.
In The Last of Us Season 2, viewers are introduced to Nora as a member of Abby’s crew. In Episode 3, Dina and Ellie learn that she’s part of the Washington Liberation Front (WLF), a militant paramilitary organization that refers to themselves as “wolves” and is engaged in a brutal war with the Seraphites – or “Scars” – a religious cult that emerged in the aftermath of the Cordyceps outbreak.
Nora was one of the people traveling with Abby and played a crucial role in helping her kill Joel by holding Ellie down and forcing her to watch as Abby brutally beat him to death. (Abby killed Joel after he shot her defenseless father, a Firefly surgeon, in the head during the Season 1 finale. Joel did it to save Ellie, as the Fireflies had planned to let her die in order to create a life-saving vaccine.)
How Does Ellie And Dina Track Down Nora?
Bella Ramsey and Isabela Merced in “The Last of Us” Season 2.
Ellie and Dina are able to steal a radio from the W.L.F., and from listening to radio transmissions, they learn that Nora – who can lead Ellie to Abby – is staying at the hospital. They conclude that the only safe path to avoid the W.L.F.’s patrol is through an unmarked building that they assume is filled with infected. Once they enter, they realize they’re in trouble, as there are those creepy “smart” clickers that Ellie killed in the Season 2 premiere. Thankfully, Jesse (Young Mazino) shows up and saves them, and all three manage to get out of the building and escape the infected and the W.L.F. soldiers who heard their gunfire.
While hiding in the woods, the trio comes across the Scars hanging and disemboweling a captured W.L.F. soldier. Dina is shot in the leg with an arrow, and Ellie instructs Jesse to bring her back to the theater while she draws the attention away from them. Ellie sees the W.L.F. hospital in the near distance and decides to head there instead of going back to the theater.
Ellie manages to sneak past patrolling W.L.F. soldiers and finds where Nora is stationed in the hospital. Nora is stunned to see Ellie again. “We could have killed you,” Nora says. “Maybe you should have,” Ellie responds. “Or maybe you should have stayed the f—k out of Jackson.”
Ellie repeatedly asks where Abby is, but Nora ignores her. “I’m sorry you saw it happen. No one should ever have to see something like that. Sometimes, at night, I still hear his screams. It was a terrible thing, the way he died,” she says, appearing to be sympathetic, before she adds, “Yeah, the little b—h got what he deserved.”
Does Nora Die In The Last Of Us Season 2?
Tati Gabrielle in “The Last of Us” Season 2.
Nora runs from Ellie, but Ellie chases after her despite erupting gunfire from the W.L.F. soldiers. Nora jumps onto an elevator shaft, which plummets down to level B2. When Ellie follows her inside, she realizes the entire floor is engulfed in Cordyceps and the air is filled with spores, meaning the infection is now airborne.
Ellie finds Nora at the end of a hallway, coughing and struggling to breathe. She thinks Ellie sabotaged them, and now, they’re both going to die. “We’re breathing spores. We’re infected,” she tells Ellie. “You killed us both.” Ellie blankly responds, “Did I?”
After a few seconds, Nora realizes who Ellie is. “You’re her. The immune girl… you’re real,” she says. “Don’t you know what he [Joel] did?” Ellie quickly clarifies that she does not care what Joel did or didn’t do. Ellie asks Nora again where Abby is, and when she refuses, Ellie picks up a pipe and beats her with it.
The episode then cuts to the distant past, when a younger Ellie wakes up in her bed in Jackson to greet Joel (Pedro Pascal) as he walks in the door to say hello – setting the stage for a flashback episode next week.
Like the video game, we don’t see Ellie kill Nora in the HBO series. However, it’s later revealed that Ellie did kill Nora to get her to reveal Abby’s location, ultimately setting her character down a path of violence and guilt.
How Is Nora’s Death Different From The Video Game?
Bella Ramsey in “The Last of Us” Season 2.
In The Last of Us Part II video game, Ellie is already well aware of what spores are and what they can do. Unlike the show, it’s actually Ellie who throws both herself and Nora into the spore-filled level of the hospital after being pinned down by W.L.F. soldiers, according to The Wrap.
Will We See Nora Again In The Last Of Us?
Danny Ramirez, Tati Gabrielle, Ariela Barer, Kaitlyn Dever and Spencer Lord in “The Last Of Us” … More
In the video game, this moment with Nora isn’t the last time players saw her character. As Entertainment Weekly points out, Nora has a larger role to play as the story shifts back and forth in time – which means there’s a chance we’ll see her in flashbacks in the future. Gabrielle, who plays Nora, decided to not answer the question of when we’ll see her character again.
“I go by the rule of thumb that my mom told me when I was little: If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all,” she told EW. “So in in the same way, if I can’t say anything or if I have the chance of ruining spoilers, then I just won’t say anything. You have to wait and see.”
The Last Of Us Season 2, Episode 5 is streaming on Max. The next episode will be released on Sunday, May 18, at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and Max.
