"The Last Of Us" Season 1 Was Heartbreaking, So Here's A Ranking Of 15 Of The Saddest Moments

After Tess dies at the end of Episode 2 (more on that later), we see Joel stacking some rocks at the river shore at the beginning of Episode 3 — the closest he can get to giving Tess a tombstone.

When Joel sees the guard ready to shoot Ellie at the end of Episode 1, he’s immediately reminded of the guard who killed his daughter Sarah 20 years earlier. He can’t bring Sarah back, of course, but this is essentially the beginning of Joel’s do-over, even if he doesn’t realize it in the moment.

It’s not until Episode 6 that Ellie finds out about Sarah, and as she says, it explains a lot about Joel. After Joel tells Ellie he’s staying behind and sending her off with his brother Tommy, she tells him she knows about Sarah, and that she’s not her. Their whole back-and-forth is a huge bummer, especially because Joel saying “you’re not my daughter” — which clearly hurts Ellie — is definitely just a self-preservation tactic, since he obviously does think of her as a daughter at this point.

The beginning of Episode 2 starts out very informational, as mycology professor Ratna Pertiwi is informed of the first few victims of the cordyceps infection. The more information she receives, though, the clearer it becomes that there’s nothing to be done, and watching her realize this is borderline painful — especially when she says the only viable course of action is to bomb the city “and everyone in it” to keep the infection from spreading, then asks to be taken home so she can spend her remaining time with her family.

In Episode 6, as Joel asks Tommy to take Ellie the rest of the way to the Fireflies, he breaks down as he explains the fear he’s been feeling and how worried he is that he’ll get Ellie killed. Joel hasn’t been able to talk to anyone about what he’s been feeling (or at least hasn’t felt like he was able to), and it’s clearly really difficult for him to do so even with his own brother.

We didn’t get to spend all that much time with Tess, and you could argue her sacrifice wasn’t quite so impactful given that she was going to turn soon anyway, but she still opted to spend her last remaining moments scared and alone to help Joel and Ellie.

This kid has really been through it. It’s bad enough just to have been born into a fungus-riddled dystopia, but she’s had to see and do a lot of things no one, let alone a child, should. Being attacked and nearly sexually assaulted in Episode 8 by David was just the latest in a long string of PTSD-inducing things she’s had to deal with.

After spending a season falling in love with Ellie, it was heartbreaking to see her first minutes in the world and how much her mom loved her, only for Anna to get bitten and then die. It was such a bittersweet moment, made all the more emotional when you find out Ashley Johnson, who played Anna, voiced Ellie in the games.

I had a feeling about what was going to happen once Sam revealed he’d been bitten in Episode 5, but yeesh. For Henry to have to kill his brother after everything he did to keep him alive, it’s hard to blame him for what he did right after.

Episode 7 was so bittersweet, because even as you’re watching Ellie and Riley have this amazing night, you pretty much know how it’s going to end. What makes it even sadder is that the infection can take hours to fully kick in, which meant Ellie and Riley had to just sit there and wait to “lose their minds together” — except Ellie never did, so she had to watch it happen to Riley, before killing her (which thankfully, we don’t see, because I would have been even more of a mess if they had).

Thanks to Twitter, I knew Episode 3 was going to be especially devastating, but I really wasn’t prepared for this bit of it. I was already tearing up when Frank explained the plan for his last day to Bill, and once “On the Nature of Daylight” began playing, that was it. (I’d like a word with whoever made that song suggestion.)

By the time Bill and Frank exchanged rings, I was sobbing so hard my cat was staring at me like she thought I might be dying, and even though Bill revealing that it was his last day, too, wasn’t a surprise, it was still absolutely gut-wrenching.