The Last of Us Season 2, episode 6 packs such an emotional punch that it's difficult to see past Joel (Pedro Pascal) finally playing "Future Days" for Ellie (Bella Ramsey), or the teary scene in which he comes clean about what really happened at the Firefly hospital.
But woven throughout the flashbacks that span the five years between Season 1 and Season 2 is some subtle symbolism, which may have bigger implications for the characters and the story going forward.
We're talking, of course, about the moths. Why do they feature so strongly in this episode, and what exactly do they mean to Ellie? Let's break it down.
Where do moths feature in episode 6?
Moths feature strongly in the first three birthday flashbacks in episode 6. On Ellie's 15th birthday, just two months into their stay in Jackson, Joel uses the many moth drawings on Ellie's bedroom wall as inspiration for a pattern that he carves into the neck of the newly restored guitar he gives her as a gift.
A year later, as they're walking back from the delightful museum visit Joel takes her on for her 16th birthday, he tells Ellie that they should do this more often. "In!" Ellie responds, before something off the path catches her eye. She stops and stares, her expression blank, before Joel asks if she's okay. Ellie replies, "Yeah," and keeps walking. The camera then pans and we see light glinting off the wings of several moths that are flying around a dead tree stump.
Another year on, on her 17th birthday, Ellie gets a tattoo of a moth to cover up the self-inflicted burn on her arm, which she gave herself two years earlier in order to conceal her bite mark.
"Never did ask, what is it with the moths?" Joel asks her that night, after agreeing to let her move into the garage.
"Um, nothing," responds Ellie. "I just read about them in a book on dreams and stuff. It's kind of symbolic."
"Oh, right," says a clearly confused Joel. "Yeah, like change and growing and such."
But as we find out shortly, that's not what moths symbolise at all.
What do the moths really symbolise?
Not long after the conversation with Ellie, Joel ambushes his therapist, Gail (Catherine O'Hara), and asks her about what moths symbolise in dreams.
"So a moth... That probably means change and growth?"
"No," she replies. "That would be a butterfly."
"Oh. So, what's a moth?"
"Death," comes the response. "If you believe in that shit."
In the next scene, when Ellie is clearing out her bedroom, we see a piece of paper covered in moth drawings. "You have a greater purpose" has been written across it.
So what exactly do the moths, and this idea of a greater purpose, mean to Ellie?
What do the moths mean to Ellie?
The first thing to bear in mind is that Ellie's entire life has been dominated by death. As she says at the end of Season 1, when she's telling Joel about the first person she killed: "Her name was Riley, and she was the first to die. Then it was Tess, and then Sam."
If the moths symbolise death, then it makes sense that Ellie would have a fascination with them — because death follows her everywhere she goes.
It's also possible that, as a result of this, Ellie is suffering from survivor's guilt. Why is she still around when so many of her loved ones aren't? Why is she the one with the immunity to becoming Infected? This links to the line woven through her moth drawings about a "greater purpose," which suddenly makes more sense during the final conversation she ever has with Joel, right at the episode's end.
"Making a cure would have killed you," Joel tells her, after admitting that he murdered the Fireflies in order to save her life.
"Then I was supposed to die!" Ellie responds. "That was my purpose, my life would have fucking mattered, but you took that from me! You took it from everyone."
Ellie is clearly haunted by the responsibility that she carries, just as she's haunted by all the people she's lost along the way. Drawing the moths is perhaps a way of processing, and taking some control over, the death that shadows her everywhere she goes.
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