The Complete THE LAST OF US Timeline Explained!

within the space of two-in-a-bit games and a tie-in comic the last of us franchise covers quite a lot of ground from its heartbreaking opening moments all the way through to part two's epic tale of revenge there's a huge amount of twists and turns across its extensive timeline that spans well over 25 years and with the remake of the first game out alongside a new tv adaptation what better time to reacquaint yourself with naughty dog's stellar survival series hi my name's adam and this is the complete timeline of the last of us franchise [Music] the last of us's timeline kicks off its post-apocalyptic tale in the only way it knows how full on heartbreak and we're only a minute into our timeline the year is 2013 and it's joel miller's birthday after coming home from a long shift at work he flops onto the sofa with his daughter sarah who surprises him with his birthday gift the celebrations it's safe to say do not last long later that night a host of mysterious events take place namely the overly aggressive tone of joel and sarah's neighbours and i thought my neighbours were bad i'm just joking stephen and eileen you guys are great the cause of this hyperaggression is a new found fungal parasite known as cordyceps terrifyingly a real thing look it up which has kickstarted a full-on pandemic of mushroom zombies around the world closer to home cordyceps is ripping through the population of austin texas where joel sarah and joel's brother tommy live the trio attempt to evacuate town but get caught up in the ensuing chaos which they managed to escape by the skin of their teeth just as they think they're in the clear they bump into the army hooray you might think not hooray trying to contain the austin outbreak the lone soldier joel and sarah run into is tasked with eliminating any escapees and he takes fire somehow joel manages to survive and just as the soldier is going in for the kill tommy pops in with a headshot tragically though sarah is fatally shot and dies in the hands of her grieving father don't welcome to the world of the last of us pals buckle up [Music] fast forward 19 years and the world has descended into absolute anarchy governments have fallen and people are pretty much surviving all on their own save for the odd quarantine zone dotted around various cities in the us we meet 13 year old ellie in one of these qz's in the city of boston in the tie-in comic american dreams having been bounced around various schools she's wound up in this military boarding college where she meets the similarly rebellious teen riley the pair strike up an unlikely friendship which sees them break out of the school and explore the city at night their misadventures take in a horse ride around the local mall a near fatal encounter with one of the infected what the last of us is brand of zombies are known as before finally bumping into a group of renegade freedom fighters known as the fireflies when one of the fireflies recognizes ellie the pair get embroiled in a fight for survival after they get into a firefight with some local smugglers after gunning the smugglers down the woman who recognizes ellie reveals herself to be marlene the head of the fireflies and she tells ellie to head back to school as it's the safest place for her but not before handing her a letter and a knife that belonged to her mum a year later we catch back up with ellie and riley in the dlc story expansion left behind riley is no longer at the military boarding school but she returns to visit ellie in the middle of the night with news that she's joined the fireflies the pair head to the same mall they visited in american dreams and goof about at the arcade angel knives throws her fists in the air you win riley reveals that she's leaving with the fireflies for another city which naturally upsets ellie who harbours feelings for her and not wanting to leave things on a sour note ellie follows riley deeper into the mall the pair argue over the shite hand they've both been dealt in life and riley diffuses the argument with the welcome addition of a pair of super soakers which to be fair is a top tier tactic for stopping a squabble i'm gonna destroy you and then we'll talk this bittersweet reunion reaches a musical crescendo when riley plays one of ellie's cassettes on a store sound system the pair dance and ultimately share a kiss and in this happy moment ellie pleads for riley not to go and she agrees but this love is sadly of the doomed variety as the music has attracted the unwanted attention of a horde of infected who chase ellie and riley down the pair managed to survive but taking stock after the fight they realize they've both been bitten and are doomed to turn into infected themselves and left behind ends with them both accepting their fate waiting for the end or as riley puts it be all poetic and just lose our minds together but as we find out later that summer that's not exactly how things play out but before i get ahead of myself let's reacquaint ourselves with our good pal and super fun guy joel time and stress have naturally done quite the number on the grizzled texan lad and he's found himself getting by smuggling in the city of boston with his partner in crime tess a gun run gone wrong brings them into the path of queen firefly marlene and she tells them she can set their gun run right if they help her smuggle something out of the city and by something she means our rebellious friend ellie who survived the certain death of turning into a snarling mushroom zombie for reasons that aren't made clear at this stage they're made abundantly clear though when joel tess and ellie get caught by a group of soldiers who test them for infection when ellie's test comes back as positive for cordyceps she reveals that it's been three weeks since she was bitten and well that she might just be immune it's three weeks i swear the weight of responsibility for this new crusade for the fireflies crashes down on joel but he agrees to escort ellie out of the city naturally things go south when they get to the drop zone to find all the fireflies dead no no no oh and even further south when tess reveals that she's been bitten too oops right so when the military turns up tess sacrifices herself to allow joel and ellie to escape boston and so our dynamic duo begin their long odyssey to find more fireflies to test ellie for a potential cure [Music] after a rather less than fortuitous stopover in a town run by a salty old fish called bill they secure a car and start heading west towards the city of pittsburgh on the way joel and ellie start bonding around the varied topics of comic books country music and um porn how the hell would he even walk around with that thing get rid of that hold your horses i want to see what all the fuss is about their bonding session gets rudely interrupted by a den of smugglers though who snare them in a trap in the center of pittsburgh without a car the pair have to make it across the fortified city center on foot which they eventually do with the help from another pair of survivors called henry and sam the quartet make it to the outskirts of town by a particularly nightmarish section of the nearby waterways and as they think they're in the clear they're attacked from both sides by infected and smugglers and in the chaos poor little sam is bitten the next morning he attacks ellie and his brother henry is the one to put him down and totally distraught henry then turns the gun on himself and damn this franchise really knows how to strike when your guard is down [Music] after the all-out carnage of summer the pair continue their journey west and eventually reach the outskirts of jackson wyoming why are they here you ask well it turns out that joel's younger brother tommy has settled in the area and lo and behold the pair bumped right into him at a giant hydroelectric dam holy how you doing baby brother with tommy's history with the fireflies joel hopes that his little bro can take ellie to the nearest troop of freedom fires tommy doesn't take too kindly to being his brother's errand boy though but their argument is cut short by an attack from bandits on the dam after the fighting is done ellie makes a run for it on her own sick of being the center of everyone's problems joel and tommy follow in pursuit and track her down to a farmhouse in the woods where ellie pours her heart out to joel sad at being left alone again by someone she trusts don't tell me that i would be safer with someone else because the truth is i would just be more scared joel takes this to heart and as they're planning to head west to the university of eastern colorado to find the fireflies he takes over from tommy the pair make it to the university and locate the fireflies base of operations but surprise surprise they're not there from a dictaphone recording they learn that the scientists have up sticks and travelled even further west to the heady heights of salt lake city but before they can get on their way bandits attack yet again and in the fight joel is mortally wounded leaving ellie to fend for herself and save his lumberjack ass yeah this franchise continues to turn the screws with winter's chill settling in ellie and joel hole up at a nearby shopping mall as we see in the present day sections have left behind ellie sneaks and scours her way around infected and human foes alike and eventually secures some much-needed medicine for joel before the pair can continue their journey to be honest they don't make it that far which is a surprise to absolutely no one because a 13 year old girl is having to look after a grown man with a hole in his stomach hunkered down in a small town in the mountains ellie takes to hunting to survive and while doing so bumps into this lad david who spoilers is an absolute wrongin but we'll get to that shortly that's right before his inevitable heel turn ellie trades the deer she's just killed for medical supplies to help jal after surviving an attack from a huge hoard of infected david shows his true colours by hunting down and kidnapping ellie from outside her hideout turns out david is even more of wrong than first thought as ellie discovers that he and his lads are actual cannibals joel eventually wakes up from his winter hibernation and you know the damage done by his injuries but whatever tortures a pair of david's crew and discovers where ellie is being held he hightails it over to ellie and finds the place up in smoke courtesy of ellie who's halfway through rearranging david's face with a machete as you do and if he wasn't a cannibalistic man man i might feel sorry for him [Music] so you might have noticed that this century actually has a full date and that's because well it's kind of a big deal in the franchise's timeline for starters joel and ellie encounter actual giraffes ah look at these cute lads after the horrible winter they've had they really deserve this moment imo but on a more serious night the pair finally made their way to salt lake city where the firefly said they were setting up shopping joel and ellie eventually crossed past with the fireflies themselves and they're not the kindly planet-saving scientists you might have been expecting they knock joel out and grab ellie to start experimenting on her and oh uh marlene is here as well and it's her that informs joel of the severity of the situation the cold hard sobering truth of the matter is this ellie could be the key to saving humanity but she'll likely die in the process because you know cutting her brain open for a cure and all joel isn't having any of that though you see over the course of their long odyssey across the u.s he's come to see ellie as a surrogate daughter a near replacement for his actual daughter sarah he tears through the firefly base of operations like a man possessed and he eventually makes it to the room where they're operating on ellie in a blind fit of rage he shoots the doctor working on ellie in cold blood i won't let you take her don't come any closer i mean it as he's escaping in the elevator he bumps back into marlene who pleads with him to reconsider instead he doubles down on his decision by shooting marlene before leaving the firefly's base in an absolute state of carnage in the car ellie comes too and joel feeds us some absolute nonsense story about there being a load of immune people like ellie and that he's decided to take them home to tommy's settlement i told you this was a big day for the franchise's history and to be honest i've only really told you half of what happened across this intense day for the other half we're gonna have to rewind earlier that day we catch up with someone new to our timeline a young firefly called abby anderson she's out trying to find her dad jerry who's gone off looking for a pregnant zebra of all things yeah you heard that right they eventually find the poor lass caught up in some barbed wire and help set her free but more importantly they bump into another firefly called owen who hastily tells them that some infected girl has arrived at the hospital and jerry a senior firefly scientist needs to check her out now she has an old bite mark on her arm no signs of infection they all head back and jerry starts running tests on ellie before concluding that the only way to make a cure will kill her in the process he informs marlene of this and she runs off to give the bad news to joel flash forwards once again to that pivotal moment in the operating theatre and we find out that jerry is the doctor that joel shot down in cold blood and in the wake of all this carnage abby eventually discovers that her father has been murdered by joel setting in motion a particularly vicious grudge as summer comes back around again ellie and joel find themselves back at the outskirts of jackson wyoming with only joel's word for all the that went on while she was unconscious at the hospital in salt lake city ellie admits to having a degree of survivor's guilt over the whole matter joel the shifty bastard consoles her and ellie takes him at his word for now which i'm sure won't come back to bite him in the ass joel does tell his brother tommy though as we find out in the prologue of the last of us part two jesus christ joel and while shocked by the revelation he agrees to take it to the grave instead of telling her the truth joel scavenges a guitar gifts it to ellie along with a song and this charming if misjudged gesture ends a pretty hectic summer for the pair there you go [Music] a year later we catch up with our central duo exploring the wyoming wilderness on ellie's birthday of all days joel has a little surprise in order which ends up being a trip to the wyoming museum of science and history the pair bond like the good old times putting hats on dinosaurs that is a hat on a dinosaur cracking jokes sorry the dinosaurs are busy right now what are you doing oh wait one of the dinosaurs is here and even sharing a touching moment in the cockpit of a spaceship i do okay for all the horrific stuff that happens in these games these heartfelt moments really help balance things out meanwhile abby and a group of ex-fireflies have left salt lake city and headed west to seattle to join the washington liberation front or wlf for short we catch up with abby and her partner owen as they explore seattle's aquarium what is this place well clearly this is some sort of theater but for uh fish and as they explore the half-flooded building abby confesses that she still wants to hunt joel down even if all of her leads have dried up spoilers but abby isn't the kind of person to let that get to her [Music] fast forward another year and we're back with joel ellie and tommy on the outskirts of jackson on a routine sweep of a hotel riddled with infected ellie opens the wounds of two summers past namely the truth behind what happened while she was unconscious i had so many questions for them joel carries on telling porcupies but it's clear that doubts are starting to seep in and as these doubts continue to fester ellie eventually returns to the hospital in salt lake city later that year to investigate for herself there she finds clues to a particularly uncomfortable truth and when joel comes looking for her she demands he tell her what happened making a vaccine would have killed you this news naturally hits her like a truck and while she agrees to go back to jackson with joel she tells him she wants nothing to do with them anymore [Music] ah christmas in seattle what a wonderful time of the year for revenge we're back at the aquarium with abby and she reveals to owen who's no longer her boyfriend but she finally has a lead to joel through a rumor that his brother is based out of a settlement in jackson wyoming with the blessing of the wlf she and a handful of ex-fireflies head off to get payback on joel and so we've finally reached the start of the main narrative of the last of us part two which takes place in snowy wyoming here we find joel and ellie fully settled into the community that tommy talked about during the events of the first game and we get to meet a handful of new characters too for starters there's jesse a young wisecracking lad who's part of jackson's recon lookout and then there's dina who comes onto ellie at the winter dance and the pair share a kiss under a metric ton of soft lighting seriously this is the post apocalypse how are they generating this electricity their special moment is cut short though by this homophobic lad who asked them to please think of the children joel breaks things up and when he tries to talk to ellie she snaps at him to mind his own business but later that night ellie drops by to talk to joel in a bid to reconcile their relationship which is you know very nice of her i'd likely still be fuming the next day joel and tommy are sent out as an early patrol to check out a sighting of a horde of infected at a nearby ski lodge meanwhile abby and her crew have finally arrived at the jackson settlement and are rightly quite hesitant to attack such a large community in the name of revenge abby on the other hand isn't and she ventures off in search of joel and lo and behold bumps right into him when he saves her from a ravenous horde of infected overwhelmed by the sheer amount of mushroom zombies the trio fall back to a nearby mansion where the rest of the wlf are lying in weight while all of that is going down jesse ellie and dina are sent out on separate patrols with jesse set to replace joel and tommy's only they never turn up at their rendezvous dina and ellie get caught in a snowstorm and have to take cover in a lads hideout that's absolutely reeking of weed oh my god it's weed and getting high from all the fumes proves to be a natural aphrodisiac and they bed down for the night the next morning they're found by jesse who tells them that joel and tommy are missing ellie races to find them and eventually winds up at the mansion just in time for well this please please get up yeah part two is not about to pull any punches in the wake of joel's shocking death a new revenge mission kicks off well a couple actually first tommy leaves jackson to find clues to the whereabouts of abby and the wlf in the direction of seattle but hot on his heels as well are ellie and dina who eventually make it to seattle a few months later now a lot happens in the summer of 2038 in the world of the last of us and to be honest it's a bit all over the place as we get to see the events of the next three days from a couple of different perspectives ellie's and abby's as ellie and dina begin their investigations around seattle they eventually stumble onto a few clues to abby's whereabouts but in the process they get jumped by a huge swarm of infected and ellie's gas mask a precaution against the contagious spores breaks prompting the pair to take refuge in an old theater while there ellie reveals the truth of her immunity to dina while dina announces that she's pregnant don't worry it's not yours the next day ellie heads out on a recon to find more clues to abby and runs into jessie who's come looking for her and dina the pair survive an onslaught of wlf soldiers and infected and eventually make it back to their theatre hideout using the theatre as a base of operations ellie and jesse start scouring seattle for abby's whereabouts which eventually leads them to the waterfront aquarium where owen is holed up with his pregnant partner mel and in yet another shocking moment for the franchise ellie in blind pursuit of abby brutally murders both of them unaware of mel's pregnancy damn this franchise can be super grim when it wants to be at the aquarium ellie and jesse bump into joel's brother tommy and the trio head back to the theatre and here not long after the last shocking flash of violence abby takes her swift revenge by shooting jessie in the head and holding tommy and ellie at gunpoint and now it's time to go back and witness these horrible three days all over again but from abby's point of view right now with abby we get to learn a little bit more about a character that is effectively the main antagonist for the first half of the game abby is a high-ranking soldier in the wlf which itself is a sort of militia at war with a group known as the serophites after a routine patrol goes awol abby and her colleagues manny and mel one and the same as the doom pregnant lady we met at the end of eli section managed to survive an attack from seraphite soldiers and make it back to their base of operations within a sports stadium here abby learns that the wlf is planning a full-scale attack on the seraphites island base off the coast of seattle and she and manny are going to lead it wanting to include owen on her team abby heads off to find him at the aquarium but is attacked by a group of seraphites on the way here she's rescued by a pair of seraphite outcasts called yara and lev and the trio escape although not unscathed as yara is sporting a hideously broken arm yara and lev take refuge in an office trailer while abby continues on to owen's aquarium they have a massive argument which descends somewhat quickly into makeup sex damn guys mel is very very pregnant either way owen is done with the wlf and tells abby about his and mel's plans to leave for santa barbara to sniff out rumors of a potential firefly reunion no not that kind abby leaves dejected and heads back to yara and lev and with yara's condition at a critical point abby has no choice but to take her to the aquarium to receive the urgent medical attention she needs after securing the medical supplies they need from a hospital on the other side of town from the lair of a cordyceps version of a rat king no less yara's arm is all fixed up and by all fixed up i mean cut off the next day abby learns more about yara and lev's history the reason that their outcast is down to lev transitioning when he shaves his head to look more like the male soldiers it's a step too far for his backwards community and it forces yara and lev to go on the run for fear of their own safety while abby is learning all of this lev takes a boat and heads back to his island home to confront his mum abi and yara follow in pursuit and while their journey is cut short by a deadly sniper that turns out to be tommy they finally make it to the seraphi island they eventually catch up to leviticus family home where he's had an altercation with his mum and killed her in self-defense yara comforts her brother and the trio make to escape the island you did nothing wrong but what do you know that wlf attack is picking up steam and yara meets her end when they get jumped by a group of abbey's former pals lev and abby make it off the island by the skin of their teeth and row back to the mainland while the seraphite community burns to the ground back at the aquarium they encounter even more violence this time at the hands of ellie yep they walk straight into the aftermath of ellie's brutal murder of both owen and mel while abby is distraught with the senseless death of her friends lev finds a clue that leads them back to the theatre which just about brings us back to i don't know about you but i'm not sure i can take much more death but let's keep going right tommy pounces on abby and for his heroics gets an arrow to the knee and a bullet to the head and seemingly dies then abby and ellie fight it out for what feels like forever seriously this is one long fight dina eventually intervenes and as abby is about to kill her lev shouts out for her to bring a stop to the cycle of violence abby heeds his words and the pair head off leaving ellie and dina half dead on the floor and you know what i'll take half dead at this point all right flash forward another year and we finally have something more hopeful to latch on to ellie and dina have finally made a happy life for themselves on the most idyllic looking farm in the known world seriously look at how lovely this is hey you know what i'm gonna teach you how to play guitar when your hands are bigger but this is the last of us and naturally that piece doesn't last you see tommy didn't die and is popped by the farmhouse to give ellie a heads up on a lead to abby's whereabouts as tommy can't go on account of his injuries he implores for ellie to go and get revenge in his place this as you can imagine doesn't go down all that well with dina who just wants to be done with all this revenge crap only ellie can't let it go and she turns her back on her family for the sake of her history with joel meanwhile abby and lev have made it to santa barbara and are deep in their search for news on any fireflies a dodgy lead of theirs brings them to what they think is the base of operations for a firefly reunion no still not that kind but actually leads them headfirst into a trap a few months later ellie makes it to santa barbara and while she's following abby and lev's trail she also falls into a trap when she's released by a couple of the same douches that captured abby she learns if they're aware about after she springs a counter-attack ellie tracks abby down to a compound which is basically a slave camp seriously are there any good people left in this world and she finds abby strung up on a beach waiting for the high tide to drown her and live ellie cuts abby down and demands that they fight because we've come this far i guess an emaciated abbey naturally declines until ellie threatens lev abby gives in and they resume their epically long fight from earlier which ends with abby half drowned in the pacific ocean only for ellie to have a change of heart at the 11th hour the moral of this story is revenge won't heal your wounds and abby takes this moment of mercy and escapes into the mist with leverboard a boat leaving our anti-hero to lick her wounds [Music] all of which brings us to the bittersweet epilogue of the last of us part two ellie finally makes it back to the farmhouse she shared with dina and their child jj only to find it abandoned she picks up the guitar that joel gifted her way back when and starts strumming it right into a flashback to her last moments with joel the night before his death and with her memories of joel seemingly reconciled she puts his guitar down and walks off into the distance presumably in search of her estranged family and that friends is the last of us timeline done and dusted well until they announce part three if they ever do i hope you enjoyed this video guys and if you enjoy gaming timelines we've got a load more on the channel including metroid resident evil uncharted halo loads of them so make sure to check those out thanks a lot for watching guys i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: GameSpot

Views: 180,737

Keywords: the last of us timeline, last of us timeline, the last of us chronology, last of us chronology, the last of us timeline explained, last of us timeline explained, the last of us story explained, last of us story explained, the last of us explained, last of us explained, the last of us part 1, the last of us remake, the last of us lore, the last of us part 2, last of us part 2, naughty dog, the last of us, the last of us 2, last of us show, last of us hbo, show vs game

Id: 3gaFRoP4RUA

Length: 27min 29sec (1649 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 29 2022