![Anna is seen in a forest holding onto a tree as she looks at something in the distance with a shocked expression.](https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/c_fit,f_auto,g_center,q_60,w_645/81d69183e5ce0e280744e0b04c89207c.jpg)
As an adaptation, HBO’s The Final of Us has been a reasonably devoted recreation of Naughty Canine’s authentic recreation. Nonetheless, throughout yesterday’s season one finale, “Look For The Gentle,” HBO’s sequence explored a personality the sport had solely talked about in passing mentions. In doing so, the present reveals a protracted unanswered query from the supply materials: why is Ellie proof against the cordyceps fungus that has destroyed the remainder of the world.
Why is Ellie immune?
The episode opens with a flashback of Ellie’s mom Anna, portrayed by Ashley Johnson, who performs Ellie within the video games. She’s on the run from an contaminated whereas additionally going into labor. She holds up in an previous farmhouse with solely a switchblade to guard herself. Ultimately, the contaminated finds her and the 2 have a scrap on the ground wherein Anna is bitten, however she additionally provides beginning to Ellie within the course of. Anna cuts the umbilical twine, however this happens after she was bitten and begins to succumb to the an infection herself. When Marlene, a lifelong buddy and chief of the Fireflies, arrives, Anna lies and says that she minimize the twine earlier than she was bitten, and asks Marlene to discover a house for Ellie, and provides her the switchblade to recollect her by.
Quick ahead to 14 years later, and Ellie is within the care of the Fireflies’ medical doctors, and Marlene explains to Pedro Pascal’s Joel why they imagine she is immune.
“Our physician, he thinks that the cordyceps in Ellie has grown along with her since beginning. It produces a sort of chemical messenger. It makes regular cordyceps assume that she’s cordyceps. It’s why she’s immune. He’s gonna take away it from her, multiply the cells in a lab, produce these chemical messengers, after which we can provide it to everybody.”
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Marlene goes on to say this might be a remedy for the an infection, however this course of would require Ellie’s dying, as cordyceps grows everywhere in the mind. Due to Joel’s violent intervention, this by no means involves be, however it’s the most context we’ve gotten for Ellie’s immunity within the decade for the reason that authentic recreation. This scene within the recreation merely chalks Ellie’s resistance to the an infection that has ended the lives of so many others as a sort of mutation, but it surely by no means acquired too into the science.
![Marlene and Joel are seen talking in a hospital room with Joel sitting on a bed.](https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/c_fit,f_auto,g_center,q_60,w_645/dfe2972122091d5d1e19aaed99378e7f.jpg)
Is that this conclusive, or is it simply Marlene speculating?
Regardless of this, sequence director Neil Druckmann instructed The Verge this isn’t essentially meant to be a conclusive line drawn between the circumstances of her beginning and why she’s immune, although we (and Marlene) can speculate. As an alternative, he says revisiting Anna’s story was meant to construct upon her relationship with Marlene, which was, once more, solely ever explored in passing mentions throughout the video games and American Goals comics.
“Figuring out how shut she was with Anna, and that Anna’s dying want was like, ‘maintain my child,’ I feel provides extra weight and possibly extra tragedy to Marlene and the sacrifice she’s making an attempt to make for the betterment of mankind,” Druckmann instructed The Verge.
Notably, the circumstances surrounding Ellie’s beginning appear just a little bit totally different from the video games. Within the first recreation, Anna was capable of write a letter to Ellie, which is seen in her stock throughout the segments the place you play as her. It’s clear she died not lengthy after giving beginning to her, but it surely’s unclear if this combat with an contaminated was a part of it.
The Anna scene is without doubt one of the few deviating moments for the finale, which performs out fairly near the story beats of the sport. Although the framing does really feel a bit totally different after conversations between Joel and Ellie do a variety of work to contextualize Joel’s actions within the last moments.