The good thing that HBO has decided to make an adaptation of The Last of Us is that we are learning details that video games do not explore. The relationship between Bill and Frank, the origin of cordyceps and many other details that enrich an already outstanding plot. Now, a new mystery has been solved after years of unknowns.
ATTENTION SPOILERS: from this moment on the plot of the video games and the series will be discussed openly.
During the Naughty Dog games we can see a scar on Ellie’s right eyebrow. At no time is it talked about in this regard, but many followers have always maintained the doubt about what happened in Ellie’s past so that she suffered an injury there. Neil Druckmann, director of The Last of Us Part II, noted at the time that she “got the scar before Left Behind, American Dreams and The Last of Us. But noOr is it time to tell that story yet?“.
A long time has passed, but the seventh episode has revealed the unknown. Through a conversation between Ellie and Riley we discover that an incident at a 7-Eleven supermarket was the origin of the scar. Exactly what happened to cause that injury isn’t explored, however, but both Druckmann and Craig Mazin have addressed the issue on the series’ podcast:
“I get asked a lot of times, ‘How did Ellie get the scar? Craig and I talked about it and I told him some ideas I had about it. So I was like, ‘I don’t necessarily want to answer that, at least not yet. And we could hint that there’s a story there. So something happened at a 7-Eleven that’s obviously quarantined and abandoned, where, in my mind, it happened while they were together, right? Ellie and Riley must have been together. They must have been together. They must have gotten in. They must have had to run out fast. There was glass, they got in through a window. Something happened.
But the notion that there are scars from living in this world is really interesting. And it was important, since Joel and Ellie talk about Joel’s scar at the beginning of episode three, this was an interesting opportunity to at least acknowledge that something happened. And here it’s like, well, we don’t know exactly how Ellie got the scar. We also don’t know exactly how Joel got the scar. All he says is, you know, ‘there was a shootout… and the other guy missed.’ So we’re hinting at these things. But what we explicitly say is that violence is permanent and leaves traces. And sometimes the only way to close a wound is to sew it up.”
So, it seems that Ellie must have suffered a cut with a glass, or at least that is what the HBO showrunners slide, although it does not seem that we are going to see exactly what happened on the screen. The seventh episode has also left us with one of the worst ratings to date with a strong wave of homophobia.