As revealed in last week’s teaser trailer, Joel makes his return in episode 6, “The Price”. Leading into the season finale, the episode focuses on the events that took place in the years between the end of season one and the beginning of season two, giving context to how the characters feel and clearing up their motivations. Pedro Pascal’s return as Joel is a somber and triumphant one, as “The Price” dives into Joel and Ellie’s bond, secrets, and the ultimate downfall of their relationship that we’ve seen in most of season two.
“The Price” opens up with a flashback all the way back to Joel’s youth, painting symmetry between Joel as a younger big brother, acting as a protector for his younger brother Tommy against their abusive father, and how he would continue this in the future with Ellie. It’s a telling first bookend that showcases the improvement of being a father that comes back around at the end of the episode.
Once we get past the title sequence, “The Price” presents itself in a series of flashbacks of Ellie’s birthday. Staying true to the game, almost all of these sequences are recreated shot-for-shot. Some of the most beloved scenes from the game occur in the same flashback fashion, giving heartwarming context to Joel and Ellie’s loving relationship at its peak.
We get Joel right out of the gate. And not just the loving return of Joel back into our television lives, but we get to see how he lovingly crafted the guitar as a birthday gift to Ellie. With the guitar meaning so much in the game and the show, it was great to see this included. Although it appears in a different setting than the game, Pedro’s rendition of Troy Baker’s “Future Days” hits just as hard as it did in the game, beautifully recreating a moment that Ellie carries with her throughout her journey.
The episode pivots to another fan-favorite sequence, The Wyoming Museum of Science and History. Complete with “a motherfucking dinosaur!”, this is where the episode really dives into the recreation of the game. After mounting the T-Rex outside of the museum, the two head through the outer space-lit hallway, the solar system mobile, and eventually to the space shuttle. These setpieces are absolutely brilliant in their recreation, paying tribute to the game’s thoughtfulness of Ellie’s curiosity of the old world.
Once inside the space shuttle, the show absolutely nails the recreation of one of the best moments in the entire series. A birthday gift to Ellie in the form of a cassette tape of the takeoff of Apollo 11, the first manned mission to the moon, we get away from the show and reality and go inside Ellie’s head as the mission takeoff plays. It’s a beautiful scene in a beautiful moment between Joel and Ellie, and in another shot-for-shot recreation, Druckmann and Mazin gracefully stick the landing.
Now that we’ve got that warm, fuzzy feeling in our hearts, the next flashback pivots to friction between Joel and Ellie. Joel comes home to find that Ellie is “experimenting” with girls and has a brand new tattoo covering her infected scar. Something that the game left to our imagination–how Ellie got her tattoo, the show dives into. Joel clearly isn’t ready for this part of parenthood coming so fast, and it clearly shows. Getting this kind of substance to the background of key moments in the narrative is a nice take in the adaptation, adding a newfound layer in the evolution of their relationship.
As Ellie continues to struggle with the questions surrounding what happened at the hospital in Salt Lake City with the fireflies, we fast forward to the next flashback: her eighteenth birthday and her first patrol. As the mood of the episode continues to shift in the wrong direction, Joel and Ellie come upon the many times aforementioned Eugene. Although we never see him in the game, the show has given him a far greater role, even to the point of seeing him in the flesh here. Eugene has been bitten, and in a parallel to what happened to Ellie, we see that Joel is willing to lie to Ellie in order to protect what he thinks is right.
The scene as Joel leads Eugene to his timely death is heartbreaking. He wants to see his wife before he turns, and after Joel lies to Ellie that they will meet her after she gets the horses, Joel finishes him off in a panned-out shot of the gorgeous Rocky Mountain landscape. Upon their return to town and confrontation with Gail, Ellie outs Joel for what really happened. Not to ease Gail’s pain or to give her closure, but to punish Joel. Not only for what happened with Eugene, but for what happened to her. “You swore…” she says. Not that he promised, like he did, but in accordance with him swearing to her the truth of what happened in Salt Lake. It’s a powerful and chilling moment that further dives into Ellie’s psyche around the truth and how Joel has been hiding it.
With our hearts ALMOST on the floor, the episode closes with the infamous scene on Joel’s front porch. This was shown in episode one, but cut away to what had happened after. Here, we get the finality of that scene as the show circles back to the exchange between Joel and Ellie, in what would ultimately be their final conversation.
This is Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal at their best. The conversation that we had all been waiting for. Some truth. The dialogue matches most of what Druckmann scripted in the game, delivered with raw emotion and care by the actors. Joel finally admits to everything he had done to save Ellie, even saying that he would do it again because he loves her. This is the first time we hear Joel say either of those things, and Pedro’s delivery can bring you to tears. What makes this scene even harder to take is that Ellie tells him that she’s willing to try to forgive him. This gives us complete resolve in the crux of their failing relationship to begin anew, knowing that this new beginning will be short-lived upon his death the following day. It’s an incredibly tough pill to swallow, and it’s what makes this story so great.
The episode closes by taking us back to the present, with Ellie heading back to the theater after her execution of Nora, leading us back into the momentum that we left in episode five and next week’s season finale.
The Birdict:
In the last episode before the season finale, Episode 6: “The Price” stops to give context to the time that we missed between seasons. Pedro Pascal is brilliant in his return as Joel in a flashback-ridden episode that ranges from care and love to lies and deceit to sadness and forgiveness. Newfound narrative details create more meaning and understanding behind Ellie’s motivations in the story, and this peek into the past leaves us heartbroken, vengeful, and equipped for the season finale.
The Barn 