Episode seven takes us back to a time before Ellie met Joel, the flashback structure of this episode was highly affective and truly showed us the power of Ellie’s character. After watching this episode we know Ellie is a broken young girl who simply wants the people around her to stop leaving her, we take a look back into Ellie’s past and we are given answers for some of the biggest questions: what happened to her arm? How did she end up the way she is?
We meet Ellie in the Boston Quarantine zone, she is having a hard time with the other kids but soon her best friend Riley shows up to whisk her away for a night of fun. Riley escaped the quarantine zone orphanage and explains to Ellie she’s joined the Fireflies and tonight is her last night in Boston. Enraged but also warmed by her friends kind gesture, the two find themselves in an abandoned mall with all the fun they could want at their finger tips. The four wonders of the mall is such a sweet, heartwarming and truly entertaining piece of writing, watching this beautiful set unfold between Ellie and Riley was beautiful and allowed audiences to escape for a moment.
Episode seven gives us a glimpse into Ellie as a ‘normal’ young girl, we see her feisty and aggressive side with Joel but here we see her truly relaxed and open to experience everything with Riley. A keyhole peak into a version of how her life could have been… if not for the tragic circumstances which unfold during this episode.
The episode keeps the idea alive that this might not end badly, we know what happens with Ellie but the way this episode is executed truly makes us think they may both get out of this unharmed. Of course, that is not the case, with every noise they make creates for more and more anxiety through this episode as we know a clicker is moving in slowly. The ending is heart wrenching, after the embrace Riley and Ellie share it embodies the start and end to their love, this episode breaks my heart and truly shows how strong willed Ellie is and only strengthened by admiration for the character.
I thoroughly enjoyed this episode, I personally adore the structure of each episode and the attention to ‘telling stories’. Characters are nothing without their backstory, Ellie and Joel have grown as characters through each episode and revealed more about themselves with time. As a passionate viewer I am highly impressed by episode seven and truly think it is one of the best so far, a beautifully tragic tale of young love and how that can feel like the only thing that matters in the world… even when the world is run by the dead.
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