Following Joel's Death in 'The Last of Us,' What Is Abby's Fate?

Warning: This post contains spoilers for The Last of Us season 2 and The Last of Us: Part II.

The second season of The Last of Us has already delivered a major shocker. In the second episode of the new season, Abby, a character who is new this season, kills Joel, one of the protagonists of season 1 and the game it's based on.

Following Joel's shocking death, plenty of people are wondering whether Ellie will be able to get her vengeance. Vengeance is one of the big ideas of the second game, and now, many in the show's audience have a desire that burns just as hotly as Ellie's. Here's what we know about Abby's fate:

In The Last of Us: Part II, you split your time between playing as Ellie and Abby. In the first half of the game, you play primarily as Ellie in the wake of Joel's death. She heads to Seattle, where Abby lives, in the hopes of finding both her and her friends and getting revenge for Joel's death. Then, you live the same three-day stretch as Abby, coming to understand how the days after Joel's death have changed her.

Although Ellie succeeds in killing many of Abby's friends, including everyone who was at the lodge with her, Abby herself ultimately survives The Last of Us: Part II. Abby and Ellie eventually confront one another in an abandoned Seattle theater, and Abby takes mercy on Ellie, sparing her in spite of the fact that Ellie has murdered many of the people she loves.

Ellie, who has been traveling with Dina, then leaves Seattle and settles on a farm. Eventually, though, Tommy finds out where Abby is and she decides that she has to set off again to find her. When she does, the two have one last, brutal confrontation, and this time, it's Ellie who spares Abby. The two part ways at the end of the game, having utterly destroyed one another's lives but without having killed each other.

It's an intentionally messy ending, one that is designed to showcase all the ways a neverending quest for vengeance can completely destroy your life. Abby decided she needed revenge against Joel, and that sparked a new cycle of violence as Ellie came searching for her. The only way that violence can ever end is when the two women decides that it has to.

So it might seem like a satisfying conclusion for Ellie to find Abby and kill her, and that's likely what many fans want at the moment. If the TV show is faithful to the game it's based on, though, the story we're going to get will be far more complicated than that.

Instead, it will be one about two women who have had their lives hollowed out by hate, both of whom eventually decide to show mercy to the one person most responsible for destroying their lives.