Spoiler warning: This review discusses Joel’s death and the ending of “Through the Valley.”
“Through the Valley,” the second episode of The Last of Us Season 2, makes its defining choice early: it brings forward a devastating turn from The Last of Us Part II, then surrounds that intimate loss with an expanded infected siege on Jackson. The scale gives the tragedy a community-wide shadow, but it also risks pulling attention from the characters at the center. The result is a forceful, formally ambitious episode whose biggest swing does not land equally for every viewer.
What happens in “Through the Valley”?
Season 2, Episode 2 follows Abby’s desperate effort to survive an infected attack and the assault on Jackson, the settlement where Joel and Ellie have made a home. The episode culminates in Joel’s death. Rather than postpone that major story turn, the adaptation places it near the beginning of the season’s larger narrative.
Craig Mazin wrote the 57-minute episode, which Mark Mylod directed. It premiered April 20, 2025, and adapts material from The Last of Us Part II.
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Why does the show bring Joel’s death forward?
The placement is an adaptation decision, not an inevitable rule. In the game, this event marks the beginning of the story in earnest. In the account of the episode’s companion podcast, Neil Druckmann favored putting it early for that reason, while Mazin was concerned that delaying a turn familiar to many viewers could feel like the show was withholding it.
That choice changes the season’s shape. Instead of making anticipation of Joel’s death the dominant question for a long stretch, the episode makes the aftermath—and the consequences of violence—the dramatic ground the story must now cover. It is a blunt opening of the larger conflict, but it also means the show has less time to build dread around the event itself.
Rank #2
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Does the Jackson siege deepen the loss or overwhelm it?
The siege is the episode’s largest departure in scale. The game’s player-character perspective does not depict Jackson under attack this way; the series expands the assault to show infected threatening the settlement and to make the danger to Tommy, Maria, and the community visible. Infected on this scale turn the setting from a refuge into a vulnerable place that must be defended.
That expansion gives Joel’s death a communal context. The episode is not only about one person being lost; the people and structures around him are also under pressure. But the same choice can diffuse the emotional focus. The battle asks viewers to track a settlement-wide emergency just as the story narrows to an intensely personal rupture. Whether the scale enlarges the loss or competes with it is the episode’s central tension.
Rank #3
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How do the action scenes balance horror and spectacle?
The episode uses two distinct registers of action. Abby’s pursuit by infected is close and claustrophobic: the threat is experienced as immediate bodily danger, and tight framing makes escape feel uncertain. The battle at Jackson opens outward, shifting attention to the scale of the assault and the effort to hold a community together. One mode traps the viewer with a person; the other emphasizes the size of the crisis.
The broader sequence draws on elements associated with the game, including a flamethrower used against a bloater and expanded material involving frozen infected. These additions make the attack more visible and cinematic, but they also bring the risk of action spectacle. The siege is most effective when its scale sharpens the sense of vulnerability; when the display of danger takes over, individual stakes can recede.
Rank #4
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How is Joel’s death staged?
Joel’s death is framed as painful drama rather than a triumphant action beat. The scene’s force comes from its brutality and from the abruptness with which the surrounding conflict becomes personal. The production account says Mazin and Mylod discussed how much violence to show: Mazin worried that graphic blows could feel gratuitous or resemble an action movie, while Mylod did not want the scene to evade what had happened.
The finished approach makes the violence difficult to look past without presenting it as spectacle to celebrate. Its explicitness is a deliberate choice, and viewers may differ on whether that degree of detail is necessary. What it clearly does is deny the moment a clean, heroic shape.
Best Value
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Does the episode work for viewers who have not played the game?
The episode gives its major turn and its immediate stakes plainly, so knowledge of The Last of Us Part II is not a prerequisite. Familiarity with the game can change the experience of timing and expectation, but the series has made its own structural choice by bringing the event forward and expanding the siege.
The larger challenge is emotional attachment. Abby and the people around Jackson have less accumulated history for some viewers than Joel, Ellie, and the settlement’s established relationships. The attack’s scale can introduce those characters and their stakes, yet it cannot instantly create the same investment for every audience. This helps explain the critical divide: some responses praised the action’s scope and cinematography, while others found the set piece less compelling when it centered newer or less familiar characters.
Why does Ashley Johnson sing “Through the Valley” at the end?
The episode closes with Ashley Johnson’s cover of Shawn James’s “Through the Valley.” Johnson played Ellie in the games and Anna in the television series. The episode’s version blends her earlier performance with a new recording, including a softer treatment of the second verse. Placed at the end, the song links the adaptation to the game while leaving the episode’s grief to linger rather than resolving it with another action beat.
Billboard reported, citing Luminate, that US Spotify streams of Johnson’s original cover increased 1,005% after the episode aired in 2025. That is a time-bounded post-broadcast increase, not a current listening figure.
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Verdict: a consequential swing with a real trade-off
“Through the Valley” makes its case through contrast: close pursuit against a settlement-wide siege, private grief against public danger, and an adaptation’s familiar turning point against a newly expanded spectacle. Moving the story turn forward gives the season a decisive direction, while the attack on Jackson gives that loss a wider setting. At times, though, the action’s scale competes with the intimate character drama it is meant to intensify. The episode’s ambition is clear; whether its siege fully earns its emotional weight is where viewers are most likely to disagree.
