Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Entertainment
  3. News

The Last of Us episode 9 trailer teases an explosive season one finale

Dan Girolamo
By

One of 2023’s most acclaimed shows is almost over. After a terrific run of episodes, The Last of Us will conclude its first season with an explosive finale this Sunday night. In the episode 9 trailer, Joel (The Mandalorian season 3’s Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Game of Thrones’ Bella Ramsey) make their final trek to Salt Lake City to meet up with a group of Fireflies who may be able to create a cure for the Cordyceps infection. As Ellie says to Joel in the footage, “There’s no halfway with this. We finish what we started.”

Fans of the video games will notice a familiar face in the episode 9 trailer. Ashley Johnson, who portrayed Ellie in the video games, will play Anna, Ellie’s mother, in episode 9. The tense footage shows Anna writhing in pain as she tries to stave off an infected woman.

Related Videos
Episode 9 Preview | The Last of Us | HBO Max

In The Last of Us episode 8, Ellie continues to care for Joel, who is recovering from his stab wounds received at the end of episode 6. While hunting for food, Ellie meets David, a preacher and leader of a group of settlers in a neighboring town. At first, David is polite and cordial to Ellie, offering medicine for Joel in exchange for deer meat. Ellie learns that the man Joel killed was a member of David’s settlement, and his followers want revenge for the murder.

David captures Ellie and places her in a cage while his followers attempt to kill Joel. Ellie is horrified to learn that David fed his followers human meat. When David offers her a chance to join the settlement and start a relationship with him, Ellie declines and breaks his finger. Before David and his sidekick James (Troy Baker, the voice of Joel in The Last of Us video games) can torture her, Ellie kills James and hides in the steakhouse. David finds Ellie and attempts to rape her, but the young girl grabs a meat cleaver and repeatedly stabs David to death. Joel, who killed the followers that went after him, eventually reunites with a startled Ellie, comforting her as the two leave the town.

A young girl stares and looks in the Last of Us.
HBO

The Last of Us episode 9 will premiere at 9 p.m. ET on Sunday, March 12. You can watch The Last of Us on HBO Max.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
The best characters in The Last of Us season 1, ranked
Ellie and Joel stand beside each other in the season one finale of The Last of Us.

Now that we've seen the entire first season, it's safe to say that The Last of Us is going to be remembered as one of the great shows in recent memory. While the show's story has been deeply compelling from the jump, what got most people invested in it was the wealth of great characters that exist in this universe.

In addition to the memorable season 1 The Last of Us cameos, the show had a cast of characters that were among TV's best. As difficult as it was to narrow it down to just 10, these are the characters from the show's first season that have stuck with us the most.

Read more
The Last of Us season 2: plot rumors, possible characters, likely cast
Joel and Ellie look at the camera in The Last of Us.

The first season of HBO's hit show The Last of Us has come to an end. After such a shocking and heart-wrenching conclusion, fans have been left anxious to see what will become of Joel and Ellie in season 2. Since the show's source material continues far beyond where the first season concludes, there is still so much to look forward to, and so many possibilities for the second.

Note: This article features spoilers for the second season of The Last of Us.
Plot rumors
Season 1 of the show adapted events from both the first game and the Left Behind DLC, so it's likely that season 2 will follow the story from The Last of Us Part II. Taking place four years after the original, this sequel follows Joel and Ellie after the latter learns that Joel stopped the Fireflies from killing her and making a cure for the Cordyceps pandemic. Here's everything that audiences could see in terms of the story.
Season 2 is just the half of it

Read more
The Last of Us is over. But can a zombie outbreak happen in real life?
Joel holds a rifle in front of him as he enters a door covered in dried fungus in The Last of Us on HBO.

The Last of Us may be over for now, but the post-apocalyptic world it created, and the Infected zombie-like monsters that inhabit it, still linger in the memory. While clearly a work of fiction, The Last of Us is effective because of its realism. From its authentic performances by leads Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey to its gritty depiction of a world gone mad, the show convincingly creates a reality where the outbreak that occurs at the beginning of the show is entirely possible. But how likely is such a scenario?

Jennings Gabriele is a microbiologist and a teacher with a master’s degree in microbiology and molecular genetics from Oklahoma State University. He’s also a lifelong gamer, having grown up in the 16-bit SNES and Sega Genesis era, who has been playing The Last of Us since it was first released a decade ago on the PS3. Digital Trends sat down with him to discuss the science of The Last of Us, what those creepy tendrils are all about, why fungi are uniquely suited to be the perfect monsters, and how feasible a fungal zombie apocalypse really is.

Read more