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The Last of Us Introduces a Key Character From Part II
This article contains spoilers for The Last of Us on HBO and The Last of Us Part II.
The Last of Us just retroactively introduced a pretty important character from The Last of Us Part II. The Last of Us is obviously based on a video game, but it is currently only sticking to the first game. The second game, which was released a whole seven years after the first one, recontextualizes a lot of the initial title. It doesn’t necessarily retcon things so much as give additional context to some of the events from the first game. However, the show now has the benefit of hindsight on both of those games, so it has the luxury to plant seeds to set up things that will pay off in future seasons. Given Naughty Dog had no idea if it would do a sequel or what that would look like, a lot of these things don’t show up in the first game.
In the latest episode of The Last of Us, we get a glimpse of at least one character from The Last of Us Part II. As Maria and Tommy are showing Ellie and Joel the town of Jackson, they take them to a horse stable. Ellie is then introduced to a baby horse named Shimmer, which fans will recognize as the horse that belongs to Ellie in the second game. She rides it on her patrols around Jackson and then even takes Shimmer to Seattle where she is going on a quest to find and kill the game’s antagonist. Needless to say, Shimmer is quite noteworthy.
There’s also some speculation that the girl spying on Ellie while she’s eating in the dining hall could be Dina, though it’s really up in the air. Dina is Ellie’s love interest in The Last of Us Part II and is one of the most important characters in that game. Only time will tell if that was her or just some random teen living in Jackson.
What did you think of the latest episode of The Last of Us? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @Cade_Onder.
