Spoilers for The Last of Us Part 2 and season two of HBO’s The Last of Us ahead.Fans have been a little bit apprehensive about how Dina and Ellie’s relationship would be handled in season two of HBO’s The Last of Us. Dina and Ellie are clearly best friends and partners in crime, but some pivotal scenes from the game that solidify their romance have been written out, like when they smoke together before hooking up. Because the pair never got this scene in the show, they haven’t confessed their feelings to each other when they set out to find the WLFs who killed Joel.
The concern came to a head with last week’s episode, when Dina told Ellie, “You’re gay, I’m not.” On its face, this seemed like a rewrite of Dina’s bisexuality, though it was clear to many that this was an effort to delay them falling in love and add another aspect to Dina’s character – her struggling with her sexuality.
The latest episode has revealed that this theory was, in a way, right. Dina does confess her love for Ellie, but in a way that’s less compelling than the game’s portrayal of their relationship, because it doesn’t celebrate Dina’s bisexuality to the same extent.
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How Did Dina And Ellie Get Together?
In episode four, we see the pair exploring Seattle just as they do in the game. Ellie and Dina hide out in a music store where Ellie sings to Dina, who cries like a baby – understandable, under the circumstances. Later, after coming across massacred WLF soldiers and escaping the backup they had called, Ellie valiantly allows herself to be bitten by an Infected to save Dina.
They escape to an abandoned theater, which will look very familiar to fans of the game. Dina is distraught at the thought of having to kill Ellie before she turns, but she proves she’s immune by taking a nap in a chair at gunpoint. Once it’s proven that Ellie isn’t turning, Dina abruptly confesses that she’s pregnant, and then they immediately hook up.
The next morning, they wake up cuddling on the ground. Dina tells Ellie that she’s known she liked both boys and girls since she was a kid, but that her mother told her that no, she only likes boys. She’s been on and off with Jesse for so long because she’s tried to make it work, but she knew that he wasn’t “the one”. She wanted to be with Ellie, and knew how Ellie felt about her, but she just couldn’t. The night before, thinking that she’d almost lost Ellie and the life she’d imagined for them made her realise that she had to do something.
What Dina Is Experiencing Is Not Pride
Let’s set aside that this sequence of events is… well, kind of wild. Hooking up with your best friend seconds after revealing that you’re pregnant is a little much, but you could make the argument that emotions were running high and Dina was overwhelmed with relief and happiness that Ellie was fine.
What bothers me more is that episode three made it seem as though their romance had been rewritten to make it more of a slow burn, and it ended up not being that at all. Dina having more of a relationship with Joel felt like it was in service of giving it more time to develop and for tensions to grow, but just an episode after Dina says she’s not gay, the two women are having sex on the floor. Sure, it’s very gay of them to do that, but why rewrite the romance at all if it pays off so quickly?
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I’m particularly unhappy with the framing of their relationship, and not necessarily because it’s different from the games, but because of what the episode’s themes were. The girls walk around Seattle, looking at rainbows and Pride flags with no idea what they mean, and have nothing to say about them. The whole episode seems to circle the idea of queer pride without actually having pride.
HBO’s version of Dina is less sure of her sexuality, which is why she denies that she’s gay, or that the kiss between them meant anything in the previous episode. She’s afraid of the implications of pursuing a life with Ellie, and it’s only when she leaves Jackson and Jesse, and is faced with the prospect of losing Ellie, that she realises she has to act on her feelings. It doesn’t feel like Dina made her move out of love, but out of a fear of loss and the thrill of freedom from abandoning her old life
I understand what the show was going for. Many queer people have questioned their sexuality, and there’s clearly an attempt to depict this faithfully in the episode. But despite the show’s allusions to Pride, Dina feels like she’s capitulating to her feelings instead of embracing them. It’s not a declaration of love against all odds, it’s an act born out of fear. And what is Pride but the opposite of fear?