Isabela Merced Teases ‘the Bigger Picture’ to Come in <i>The Last of Us</i> Season 2

Spoilers below.

In season 2, episode 5 of The Last of Us, Dina (Isabela Merced) finally tells Ellie (Bella Ramsey) that she loves her. But she also makes it clear that her reasons for joining Ellie’s quest to Seattle extend beyond love. She shares Ellie’s black-and-white view of justice and revenge. Someone hurts you? You hurt them back.

Although Merced’s Dina is adapted from a version that first appeared in the video game The Last of Us: Part II, originally portrayed by Shannon Woodward, Merced believes that “show Dina is a little bit more calculated than game Dina,” she says. “I think she’s a little bit more autonomous and has more reasons for being Ellie’s ride or die.” One of those reasons is her own history, which she reveals for the first time in episode 5.

Raised in a cabin outside Santa Fe, Dina lost both her mother and sister when she was only 8 years old. A raider murdered them both while Dina was out exploring the surrounding woods, but he hadn’t evacuated the property by the time she returned to find their corpses. Dina, in turn, shot him in the head.

“What if I hadn’t snuck out?” she asks Ellie, comparing her own experience to Ellie’s with Joel (Pedro Pascal). “What if my mom and sister were beaten to death in front of me? What if that motherfucker made me watch as he did it? Would it make a difference if my family had hurt his people first?” She decides that, no, it wouldn’t. She would have spent “forever” hunting down her mother and sister’s killer, if that’s what it took.

And so she commits herself to Ellie’s mission, as well as their budding romance. But there are more than a few complicating factors at play midway through season 2: As first revealed in episode 4, Dina is pregnant. In episode 5, Jesse (Young Mazino) lands in Seattle to escort his friends back to Jackson. The warring factions of the Seraphites and the WLF are turning the city into a bloodbath. And that’s without even mentioning the infected, who seem to be making the Seattle hospital their fungus playground.

By the end of episode 5, Ellie commits a heinous act of violence in pursuit of Joel’s killer, Abby (Kaitlyn Dever). Merced claims that Dina “plays into what people want her to be,” but what happens when Dina can no longer recognize what Ellie wants from her? What if she can no longer recognize Ellie at all? Below, Merced breaks down the events of episode 5; discusses her approach to Dina’s backstory; and hints at the “bigger picture” yet to come in season 2.

To me, it feels like Dina is someone who brings out Ellie’s lighter side in this dark season. Through Dina bringing that out of Ellie, we see more of who Ellie was in the first season. Whereas, in the game, I feel like Ellie just goes full dark mode. She totally goes on a rampage, and we barely see her light side at all in the game.

The creators [Mazin and Druckmann] wanted to bring back some of that silliness in the series. I believe by keeping that silliness, Dina reminds the audience of who Ellie actually is, underneath all of her grief.

She’s 19 to 20, right? Even being 23, I look at 20-year-olds and I’m like, “You are babies.” It isn’t realistic to me that [Dina and Ellie] would suddenly completely shift to being quote-unquote “adults” and lose all of their jovial energy and insecurities. I think I was an idiot until last year.

Yeah. I’m sure I’ll say I was an idiot until last year in a year from now.

But I think it’s so important that we portrayed them as actual 20-year-olds.

Ellie’s inability to be anyone but herself. Dina’s attracted to things in Ellie that are quite different from why she’s attracted to Jesse. I think Jesse being a perfect golden boy and Ellie being the opposite of that was a big draw for her. I think Dina craves imperfection and tries to pull that out of people, like she’s pulling off a mask. With Ellie, she doesn’t even have to try.

What I thought was important about this scene was that Dina deliver her monologue in a nonchalant way. It wouldn’t be melodramatic. It was very much like, “I know how messed-up of a situation it was, but that’s just the way things are.”

I think Dina playing into the idea of “good is good and bad is bad; there’s no gray area; we either seek justice or we don’t, and then we regret it the rest of our lives” is really consistent with the rest of the characters’ approach to loss, trauma, and grief. I thought it was important for Dina to establish that she’s not high and mighty above the rest of the characters simply because she seems to be the level-headed one in her relationship with Ellie. She needed to show her own inability to move on unless she seeks “justice.”

On top of that, I think the scene establishes what a ride-or-die she is for Ellie. One of my favorite moments in that whole scene is when Bella puts her hand to my cheek, and all of a sudden you see the tension lifted off of me—and Dina comes back. It’s almost like she was getting sucked back into her grief and PTSD, and then all of a sudden Ellie grounds her. It’s the one moment where Ellie does for Dina what normally Dina does for Ellie.

Right. It’s going to be interesting to re-watch once people finish the season, because you’ll see moments where Ellie is holding back the truth. In this initial watch, I think people are going to be emotionally invested like, “Oh, it’s so sweet. They’re there for each other.” But then you get the bigger picture by the end of the season, and you’re like, “Oh, this was so shitty.”

A lot of this season you’re going to see through a different lens once you’re done with it.

I think they’ve said it to each other in many ways prior to this scene, just without those specific words. So when Dina says it, it’s not dramatic. Because she’s been thinking it and feeling it for a long time. Before Ellie can even answer, she knows Ellie’s answer. She’s like, “I anticipated this, so I’m telling you: I already know.”

No. That was just Dina knowing that Ellie’s being an asshole to Jesse. It was Dina being like, “He just saved our fucking lives; you’re being a dick to him. Just be a little bit nicer because he’s the one who got us out of this. He’s not going to do what we want from him if you’re continuing to cause controversy.” It wasn’t Dina changing perspective at all. It was like, “Girl, behave yourself.”

When it came to Dina’s charm, I think Shannon nails it. Shannon’s got this charisma that she brought to Dina...and then [the game creators] were like, “Oh, let’s work off of that because that’s great.” Shannon’s also queer, so Shannon understands what it’s like to flirt with girls. It’s a different energy; it’s a different approach.

With all this new material that I got...Dina seems so much more like a channel through which other characters expressed their desires. So with Joel, he was able to open up about Ellie to Dina. With Ellie, she’s able to open up about Joel and her hatred for Abby and her real intentions. And then with Jesse! Everyone sees her as this channel for their desires. I think Dina’s aware of that and kind of plays into it in the show and uses it as a superpower.

The cheeriest people in the room are often the most underestimated. I think that’s what makes Dina so wonderful in my eyes: She’s equally as strong and potentially terrifying as Ellie, but she goes about it in a different way. I think she plays into who people want her to be, whereas Ellie doesn’t care to do that.

She’s initially terrified, and then I think she goes through acceptance. It’s also why she’s really emotional in the music shop scene [in episode 4]. A lot of that is the baby hormones, but also she’s imagining a future with Ellie and what it could look like. Then she goes through all these near-death experiences, and in realizing her love for Ellie, she understands how much... It’s like when people are like, “I didn’t think I wanted a kid, but then when I met my partner, suddenly I knew I didn’t want a kid without them.” Maybe the only piece Dina was missing was that security from Ellie, that she’s not going to do it alone. And if they can overcome this mission together, they can overcome having a baby, absolutely. Raising a child, it’ll be easy work compared to taking down a whole army!

[When it comes to Ellie’s hunt for Abby], Dina is like, “I’m aware that I’m pregnant and I really do not give a shit, I will be helping you.” But it’s the pregnancy looming underneath everything that makes Ellie question what she’s done by bringing Dina to Seattle.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.