Note: this story contains spoilers of “The last of us” Season 2, episode 5.
The episode of Sunday evening of “The Last of Us” saw Ellie’s quest for revenge take her darkest turn to date when she and Dina have found Nora (Tati Gabrielle), one of the ex-frills who killed Joel.
Despite being pregnant, Dina has chosen to follow the trip with Ellie rather than going to bed in the theater, revealing that she has not only guilt for Joel’s death, but also for her own mother and her own sister, who was killed by a raid at the age of eight.
“Dina and Ellie walk very similar in the sense that they both lost people they loved, and they continue to lose people they loved,” said Isabela Merced, who plays Dina, in Thewrap. “So they came out of the fear of abandonment.”
Although Dina finally kills the Raider and obtains her revenge, Merced underlines that the traumatic event still consumes it.
“When it comes to losing people you like, no matter how responsible you cannot be responsible, that does not prevent your brain from proceeding again and again the sequence of events, and to replay it and imagine what you could have done differently to potentially change the result,” added Merced. “I think that moment should have been a message that resonated differently with it. But she just learned to think about it as “yeah, I killed this man when I was eight, but for a good reason, I swear”. It is the justification for revenge. »»
Asked about the process of expanding the character of Dina of the game for the HBO adaptation, Merced revealed that the majority of decisions were taken long before it was hired, but they asked the executive producer Craig Mazin to cut certain lines.
“I wanted Dina to be a little more calculated and perhaps hold her cards closer to her chest,” she said. “When I entered, it was a great guitar with all the strings. I just needed to adjust a little with my own ear. ”
At the end of the episode, Ellie’s mission is accomplished as she finds and brutally beats Nora, who was exposed to spores inside a lower level of the hospital which was on the ground zero for the Seattle epidemic. But not without her and Dina were almost killed by a bunch of stalkers and having to be saved by Jesse (Young Mazino), who was separated from Tommy (Gabriel Luna) after following the pair in Seattle to bring them home.
“It is the irrationality and the power of love,” Mazino told Thewrap. “As much as Jesse is, even he cannot exceed this thing. He is ready to face Armageddon to try to recover them.”
Although Jesse focuses on his mission to bring everyone back to Jackson safely, the young Mazino admits that the first is “livid” and “at the tip” to have struck his breakdown with the Ellie when he finds it and Dina in episode 5.
“It is one thing to let revenge go beyond you, but she hangs out Dina, for whom Jesse has a lot of love in Seattle, which we all know is a hellish hole and a terrible place to be,” said Mazino. “Throughout the season, Jesse always tries to restore Ellie, trying to tell her to facilitate breaks and tone him and help her back down because in many situations, not only to fight, if you lose this freshness and this level of level and you exceed a little and refuse.
Merced said that the moment when Jesse la saustrole and Ellie is “so dramatic” and “very contradictory”, but also “very relieving” for Dina.
“I mean, it’s her baby dad or his stepfather with her baby. Jesse is so reliable and Dina admires and loves her for her strength and he is really in the head. I think it’s going to be interesting and really increase the tension of the love triangle,” she said. “Ellie was also going to die, so he not only saved Dina. It would have changed everything if he hadn’t done it. ”
When asked if Dina plans to tell Jesse the truth about her pregnancy, Merced said that she thought that she “would end up being very simple”.
“In her head, she would ideally wait for them to return to Jackson safely. I think she fears that Jesse leaves without Ellie and only take [Dina and the baby] From there, “she explained.” She knows he is such a good leader and would be such a dedicated father, but honestly, that would ruin things between her and Ellie. Right now, the tension is too high and it happens too much. »»
“The last of us” airs Sundays on HBO and Max
