‘The Last of Us’ Creator on Bella Ramsey’s Intense “Baby Shark” Scene

As Quint famously drawled in Jaws: “The thing about a shark, he’s got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eyes. When he comes after ya, he doesn’t seem to be livin’.”

That was the vibe that Bella Ramsey gave HBO‘s The Last of Us co-creator Craig Mazin — as well as, assuredly, plenty of viewers — during her climactic scene in season two’s fifth episode (spoilers for the episode below), when Ellie menacingly confronts Nora (Tati Gabrielle) in subterranean maze while repeatedly demanding, “Where’s Abby?” The sequence, bathed in red light, showed a different side of Ellie, far colder and more brutal than we’ve seen before.

“In that moment, in that hallway, [director] Stephen Williams and Bella and I discussed how this would challenge an audience because I think we all innately love Ellie and root for Ellie in part because Ellie is the protagonist — but not here,” Mazin said. “No, not here. She does turn away from Jesse and Dina. She does this horrible thing — the look on her face and the way she transforms in that scene. I was scared of her, and I didn’t like her, and I didn’t want her to do what she’s doing. Tim Good — the editor of that episode — and I referred to Bella in that scene as ‘baby shark’ because there’s something about her eyes that are so dark and dead. There’s this ferocity there that Bella can create. This is so far from what we saw just an episode earlier with her and Dina celebrating love and new life.”

The scene, Mazin continues, is supposed to remind viewers a bit of Abby when she killed Joel.

“Just as Abby started to slip away from her stated reasons, we can see Ellie slipping away from her stated reasons,” Mazin says. “This is no longer rational. She’s so far from that fake speech she delivered at the [Jackson town council] meeting. ‘Oh, this isn’t about vengeance, it’s about us and community.’ Absolutely not. This is going right back to what has always been there in Ellie, which is a rage that I don’t even think she fully understands herself.”

Mazin added, “This is not the last time the season that Ellie is going to do something where we feel like, ‘We can’t go on that walk with you kid.”

Previously, Ramsey said about such scenes, “The most intense scenes to shoot are often the easiest for me because I know exactly what that scene needs to be.”