Spoilers for “The Price,” season 2, episode 6. Told through memories of Ellie’s birthdays, the episode follows Joel and Ellie’s closeness as it frays—and shows how Joel’s killing of Eugene makes Ellie recognize the lie he has carried since the Fireflies’ hospital. Its final flashback returns to the porch, where Joel finally tells her what he did.
What happens in “The Price”?
After the violence of the preceding episode, the story steps back from the present and moves through memories from the years between seasons. Rather than following one continuous patrol, it uses Ellie’s birthdays to trace the relationship: moments of warmth and playfulness sit beside Joel’s growing protectiveness and Ellie’s questions about the Fireflies.
![The Last of Us Season 2 [2025] [Blu-ray]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41FoaY99CuL._SL160_.jpg)
A birthday among dinosaurs and spaceflight
One of the episode’s tenderest memories takes Ellie to a museum, where Joel gives her the birthday experience she has longed for: a visit to an Apollo space capsule. Ellie’s imagination makes the spaceflight feel vivid, while Joel’s willingness to create the experience shows the affection between them. That warmth matters because the episode does not present their history as a simple progression from closeness to estrangement; both love and damage are present in the memories.
The years between the birthdays
As the flashbacks move forward, Joel’s attempts to protect Ellie become harder to separate from his effort to keep the truth from her. Ellie remains uneasy about what happened at the Fireflies’ hospital. The birthday structure lets the episode show time passing and affection persisting even as trust erodes.
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Why does Joel kill Eugene?
On patrol, Joel and Ellie discover that Eugene has been bitten. Eugene wants to see Gail, and Joel says he has to act to protect the community. But when Ellie leaves, Joel promises he will not shoot Eugene—and then kills him.
The broken promise is the turning point. Ellie recognizes the familiar look Joel had when he denied the truth about the Fireflies. Eugene’s death does not give her the details of what happened at the hospital; instead, it makes her understand that Joel is lying to her again, turning suspicion into knowledge.
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What does Joel tell Ellie on the porch?
The final flashback returns to the New Year’s Eve porch conversation, now seen with the missing context. Ellie presses Joel to tell her the truth about the Fireflies. He admits that he killed the doctors to save her.
The confession explains the distance between them without erasing the love behind Joel’s decision. Ellie has the answer she was seeking, but the episode leaves the emotional cost of that answer in the space between them.
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![The Last of Us: The Complete 1 & 2 Seasons [7-Disc Set] [2023–2025] [Blu-ray] [Region Free]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51xxB0fkBTL._SL160_.jpg)
- COMPLETE SEASONS 1 & 2 COLLECTION – Includes every episode from the first two acclaimed HBO seasons across a 7-disc Blu-ray set
- BASED ON THE AWARD-WINNING VIDEO GAME – Faithfully adapts Naughty Dog's legendary post-apocalyptic masterpiece with cinematic storytelling
- STARRING PEDRO PASCAL & BELLA RAMSEY – Outstanding performances alongside Gabriel Luna, Kaitlyn Dever, Jeffrey Wright, Isabela Merced, and Catherine O'Hara
- HIGH-DEFINITION BLU-RAY – Experience every episode with exceptional picture quality, immersive audio, and bonus features
- REGION FREE BLU-RAY – Compatible with Blu-ray players worldwide
How is the episode different from the game?
“The Price” draws on The Last of Us Part II, including the museum birthday material, but changes how Ellie comes to recognize Joel’s lie. In the television adaptation, Joel’s promise to Ellie about Eugene—and his decision to break it—gives her a present-day example of his dishonesty.
In the game account described in episode coverage, Eugene is not encountered alive at this point in the story and has died of a stroke. The show instead makes his fate a consequential event in Joel and Ellie’s relationship. This is a comparison of the episode’s reported adaptation choices, not a claim that every detail of the game’s wider story differs in the same way.
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- Pedro Pascal, Gabriel Luna
Why tell the story through flashbacks?
The structure lets the episode set loving memories alongside the erosion of trust, rather than placing affection and conflict in separate chapters. Director and co-creator Neil Druckmann described the flashbacks as a way to show “loving moments between Joel and Ellie while simultaneously unraveling their relationship.”
Showrunner Craig Mazin has explained that television and games handle time differently: viewers do not control the timeline as players do, so the series can group and supplement events to create an episode-length arc. As he put it, “There are things the game can do that we just can’t do as effectively,” and “there are things we can do that [the game] can’t do.” The episode uses that difference to make Ellie’s recognition of Joel’s lie the hinge between the birthday memories and the porch confession.
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