Characters#

Overview#

The Last of Us Part II tells a profound story of revenge, trauma and redemption through dual protagonists. Every character carries their own motives, growth arcs and moral complexity. This page analyzes the background, personality development and key story beats of all major characters.

Ellie Williams#

Background#

How Ellie learned the truth about her immunity unfolded gradually after settling in Jackson. Joel’s choice at the Firefly hospital, and the fact that he lied to her about it, left a crack in their relationship that never fully healed. When this game begins, Ellie and Joel exist in a delicate balance — she is trying to forgive him, but the anger and guilt inside never truly dissipated.

Personality#

Ellie’s personality turns darker and more violent in this chapter. She has a fierce sense of justice and loyalty, but the hunger for revenge keeps pushing her past her own moral lines. She plays guitar and tells bad jokes — the trappings of her youth that the road of vengeance steadily erodes.

Ellie’s core contradiction: she never wanted to become someone like Joel, who sacrifices anything for love — and ultimately discovers she is no different from him. Her immunity is both blessing and curse — she survived, but the people around her keep dying because of it.

Abby Anderson#

Background#

Abby grew up in a completely different world from Ellie — raised inside the Fireflies’ militarized environment, trained for combat from childhood. Her father’s death gave her a revenge motive nearly identical to Ellie’s, which makes her storyline a mirror reflection of Ellie’s experience.

Joel Miller#

Background#

Joel is the previous game’s protagonist. Though his screen time drops sharply here, his presence runs through the entire story. The choice he made at the end of the first game — destroying the Firefly hospital, saving Ellie, and sacrificing humanity’s only hope for a vaccine — defines every conflict in this one.

Personality#

Across five years in Seattle, Joel softened the edges of his smuggler past and worked to be an ordinary citizen of Jackson — fixing plumbing, patrolling, attending community dances. On the surface he found peace, but his old sins never really left him.

Dina#

Background#

Dina is the character closest to “normal” in the whole story — she is not consumed by the obsession of revenge, and her hope for the future is building a family and living a quiet life. She follows Ellie to Seattle not because she wants revenge, but because she loves Ellie and won’t let her face the danger alone.

Analysis#

Dina is the story’s touchstone of ordinary humanity. Where everyone around her is swallowed by vengeance, she keeps asking what life could look like afterward — and that question is exactly what makes her arc ache.

Jesse#

Jesse represents the best of the Jackson community — willing to set the past aside and help Dina and Ellie even though JJ is his child with Dina. He is calm, rational, and maintains a soldier’s professionalism throughout his time in Seattle.

Background#

Jesse is a young Asian-American man from Jackson, Dina’s ex-boyfriend and JJ’s father. A loyal, dependable companion, he catches up with Ellie and Dina shortly after they leave, providing crucial support for the Seattle journey.

Analysis#

Jesse embodies what the community could be at its best. His restraint — the ability to hold the line without becoming consumed — quietly contrasts with everyone else’s unraveling.

Nora#

Nora’s pivotal scene takes place in the hospital — captured by Ellie, she refuses to reveal Abby’s whereabouts, and is finally tortured and left to die in a spore-infested area. The scene is the key turning point in Ellie’s moral collapse.

Key Story#

That hospital confrontation is the moment the revenge mission stops being abstract. Nora’s refusal — and Ellie’s answer to it — is where the audience can no longer pretend this is a heroic journey.

Mel#

Key Story#

Mel is encountered at Owen’s boathouse while Ellie searches it. Ellie hesitates upon discovering Mel’s pregnancy, but the fight escalates and Ellie kills her. It is one of the game’s most contested moments — it makes Ellie’s revenge directly harm an innocent and an unborn child.

Owen Moore#

Analysis#

Owen represents the people in this apocalypse who still crave a “normal life.” He wants out of Seattle’s war and dreams of sailing to Santa Barbara to find the Fireflies. His contradiction: he loves Abby, yet is with Mel and has gotten her pregnant. His feelings for Abby mean he can never fully let go.

Yara#

Background#

Yara is a former Seraphite, Lev’s older sister. She stands by her brother after he cuts his hair — an act of heresy in Seraphite culture, where women must wear it long — and pays for that loyalty with her arm and nearly her life.

Key Story#

Yara is the one who first pulls Abby and Lev together. Her sacrifice on the island forces Abby’s arc toward protection rather than destruction, and her death marks the cost of that choice.

Lev#

Background#

Lev is a former Seraphite and Yara’s younger brother. He was branded a heretic for cutting his hair (in Seraphite culture, women must keep theirs long). Lev is transgender — designated female by the Seraphites, he knows himself to be a boy.

Analysis#

Lev is the core of Abby’s redemption path. Through her interactions with Lev, Abby transforms from an avenger into a protector. His kindness, courage and insistence on his own identity show Abby a humanity that rises above tribal hatred.

Tommy Miller#

Background#

Tommy is Joel’s younger brother, a former Firefly, and one of Jackson’s key leaders. More idealistic than Joel, he shares the Miller family’s stubbornness. In this game, Tommy is the character whose desire for revenge comes second only to Ellie’s.

Manny#

Key Story#

Manny is Abby’s reliable comrade through the battles against the Seraphites. His most memorable scene is on the hospital roof — shot in the head by Tommy’s sniper rifle while covering a retreat. His death costs Abby her most loyal ally, and shows the player how thoroughly revenge has changed Tommy.

Isaac Dixon#

Background#

Isaac is the WLF’s commanding officer — a pragmatic military leader who cares nothing for personal grudges, only for victory and the WLF’s survival. He pursues an extermination policy against the Seraphites and refuses all negotiation. Under his leadership the WLF transformed from a resistance movement into the oppressor players meet in Seattle. He represents the war machine itself — cold, efficient, and merciless.

Analysis#

Isaac is what every avenger in this story could become if given an army. His absence of hatred makes him more chilling than any zealot: the cycle runs on logistics as much as on rage.

The Web of Relationships#

The story’s core theme is how revenge spreads through a community like a plague. Joel killed Abby’s father; Abby killed Joel; Ellie killed countless people for revenge, and returned to the farm to find she had lost everything.

Through the dual-protagonist mirror narrative, the game shows that “an eye for an eye” leaves the whole world blind. Ellie’s final choice to spare Abby comes not from forgiveness, but from realizing that revenge cannot fill the hollow inside.

Thematic Analysis#

The Cycle of Revenge#

The core theme is how revenge spreads through a community like a plague. Joel killed Abby’s father; Abby killed Joel; Ellie killed countless people for revenge — and returned to a farm stripped of everything.

Through the dual-protagonist mirror narrative, the game demonstrates that “an eye for an eye” leaves the whole world blind. Ellie spares Abby in the end not out of forgiveness, but because she finally sees that revenge cannot fill the emptiness it creates.

Identity#

Lev’s transgender storyline is handled with remarkable delicacy — in the Seraphites’ extreme religious environment, his self-identity is treated as blasphemy against God. The game never uses his identity as a preaching tool; instead his insistence on himself emerges naturally through everyday interactions.

Ellie’s immunity is likewise part of her identity — she always believed her life should mean something (a cure), and Joel’s act stripped that meaning away. Her revenge journey is, in part, a search for a reason to exist.

Moral Gray Zones#

The game’s greatest achievement is refusing to hand the player simple moral verdicts. Abby kills Joel — unambiguously a revenge killing — but from Abby’s side, she lost her father while his killer lives well. Ellie kills Mel — a pregnant woman — yet Mel had earlier taken part, unknowingly, in Joel’s brutal death.

The game forces players to keep re-evaluating their stance as they inhabit both roles. You are not playing a hero’s story — you are witnessing two broken people search for redemption while wounding each other.

The Supporting Cast#

Beyond the dual protagonists and core supporting roles, Seattle’s ecosystem is populated by characters who push the plot or annotate the world, and their fates complete the tragedy’s full picture.

The Seraphite Prophet#

The Prophet never truly appears on screen, but her doctrine runs through the entire Scar faction’s belief system. As a symbol of religious extremism, her existence deepens the tragedy of Lev’s identity conflict and helps players understand the roots of the Seraphites’ behavior.

The Individuality of Ordinary Soldiers#

Most of the soldiers you encounter have names, dialogue, even glimpses of lives off the battlefield. When you kill them, you hear their comrades call out their names — a design that reinforces the “every enemy is a person” theme and makes each fight morally heavier.

The Firefly Remnants#

In Abby’s chapters, the remaining Fireflies carry different dreams: some insist on rebuilding the organization, others only want out of the war. Their disagreements reflect the Fireflies’ decline as an organization and set up the Santa Barbara reunion.

Performance and Presentation#

The game’s performances are what make its narrative land, and the depth of characterization rests heavily on the voice and motion-capture work.

Facial Capture#

Naughty Dog uses film-grade facial capture, accurately conveying the micro-shifts between rage, fear and guilt. Ellie’s expression when she learns the truth, and Abby’s silence on the beach, are performance moments of the highest order in the medium.

Combat as Characterization#

Each character’s combat style is tightly unified with their personality: Ellie’s movements are quick and urgent, Abby’s strikes measured and powerful. These details make the act of controlling them part of the characterization itself.

Music and Atmosphere#

A score built by multiple composers on strings and low tones, paired with environmental audio design, turns Seattle’s dampness and Santa Barbara’s heat into emotions you can physically feel.

What the Characters Symbolize#

The characters are not merely plot vehicles — each carries thematic weight.

Ellie and Joel’s Inheritance#

Ellie’s revenge motive is directly tied to her struggle against Joel’s legacy of “sacrificing everything for love.” She fiercely denies being Joel’s continuation, yet every decision she makes retraces his path — that tension between inheritance and rebellion is the core of her growth.

Lev and Identity#

Lev symbolizes transcendence of tribal rules and identity labels. His insistence on who he is lets Abby step out of hatred, and lets the player see a “person” rather than an “enemy” beyond faction tags.

Tommy and the Price of Revenge#

Tommy’s transformation from optimistic idealist to obsessed avenger is the game’s most visceral footnote on “how revenge corrodes a person.” His ending offers no heroic redemption — only a heavy meditation on what obsession costs.