Just when it looks as if Dina and Ellie may be zombie chow (or at least Dina … Ellie is still the star of this show), they are saved by someone wholly unexpected. It turns out Jesse has been tracking them across the Northwest, alongside Tommy, who is elsewhere in Seattle. Jesse shoots the attackers and escorts his friends out of the murder-building and into a nearby park, where the Wolves refuse to go.
If these three were not in such a panic, they might be thinking exactly what those of us watching at home are shouting at the screen: that The Wolves probably stay out of this park because the Seraphites’ camp is there. Sure enough, within minutes of ducking into the foliage, our heroes hear an eerie whistling and see torches in the darkness. From their cover, Dina, Ellie and Jesse watch a Seraphite priest (Maurice Dean Wint) hang and disembowel a Wolf prisoner, showing no interest in any bargain the man has to offer. (“Now he is free,” the priest insists.) Then Dina is shot by an arrow, and everyone scatters.
The episode ends with Ellie — almost by accident — fleeing to the hospital. Once inside, she has the good/bad fortune to run into one of Abby’s Jackson posse, Nora (Tati Gabrielle), whom Ellie knew was stationed at Lakehill. The two of them tussle, and in the melee they end up in an elevator shaft, which drops them to Level B2.
What they find there is deeply unsettling, with the cordyceps cluster’s usual psychedelic colors and shapes joined by little bursts of spores, emitting from the human figures pinned to the wall (one of whom, played by Cheonguk Park, is Leon). Nora chokes on these particulates and accuses Ellie of killing them both, to which the immune Ellie says, with a slight smirk, “Did I?”
Ellie and Nora don’t have much time to talk before Nora dies — a process Ellie speeds along by clubbing the Wolf repeatedly with a metal pipe. Once Nora realizes Ellie is the fabled “immune girl,” she tells Ellie what Joel did in Salt Lake City: how he killed Abby’s father, who could have saved the world. Ellie says she knows all this and does not care.
People keep trying to tell Ellie stories — cautionary tales, mostly. But she is disinclined to heed them. The only story she wants to hear is the one that ends with a dead Abby. Although Dina has warned her that this ending will probably not be happy, right now it is all that Ellie can imagine.
Side Quests
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I said that this episode ends with Ellie beating a dying Nora, but that is not strictly true. There is a short coda that flashes back to Joel and Ellie in Jackson, smiling and ready to face another day together. I suspect this is setting up a full flashback episode next week. Will we find out how Ellie learned about Joel’s lies? Will we see how Joel killed Eugene? Stay tuned!
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Dina gets to show off some impressive smarts as she triangulates the position of the Wolves using maps and radio chatter. Jesse is later able to use Dina’s work to find the two young women in the scary building, and as they escape into the park, he praises her skills. He knows Ellie was not responsible for the mapping because she is, in Dina’s words, “nonschool-oriented.”
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The smart zombies make the most upsetting noises, sounding like human moans. It makes me wonder if these creatures are getting closer to developing the power of speech.
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The closing credits song is “Present Tense,” by the Seattle favorites Pearl Jam. It could be read as an answer to the Pearl Jam song Ellie starts to sing at the Pinnacle Theater: the more forward-looking “Future Days.” Or it could be heard as a companion to Dina’s big speech, given its final lines: “You can spend your time alone re-digesting past regrets, / Or you can come to terms and realize / You’re the only one who cannot forgive yourself. / Makes much more sense to live in the present tense.”
