The Last of Us Season 2 has been following Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Dina’s (Isabela Merced) quest to track down and kill five new characters named Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), Owen (Spencer Lord), Manny (Danny Ramirez), Mel (Ariela Barer), and Nora (Tati Gabrielle). They’re the group that captured, tortured, and murdered Joel (Pedro Pascal), robbing the HBO show of its biggest star. They’re also all members of a new (to the show) group nicknamed the “Wolves.”
The cold open of The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 4 catches us up on brutal origins of the Washington Liberation Front, or W. L. F. Like other cities we’ve visited in the show, Seattle found itself under the fascist rule of FEDRA. Naturally, its citizens revolted. However, in Seattle, the group succeeded because the ragtag suburban militia swayed a powerful FEDRA officer to their cause…
**Spoilers for The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 4, now streaming on MAX**
The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 4 opens eleven years in the past, in a Seattle lorded over by FEDRA. We find ourselves in the back of an armed transport vehicle full of FEDRA officers. One in particular, played by Josh Peck, keeps talking incredibly cruelly about people he calls “voters.” When a new soldier named Burton (played by The Gilded Age‘s alarm clock inventor Jack Trotter, aka actor Ben Ahlers) wonders aloud why local civilians are called “voters,” Sgt. Isaac Dixon (Jeffrey Wright) explains it is in mockery. They used to be able to vote and weigh in on their lives. Now, FEDRA has taken that power away.
The vehicle comes to a stop and Dixon meets a local “voter” leader named Hanrahan (Alanna Ubach). The sergeant takes Burton with him under the auspice of teaching the newbie how these tense stand offs are done. Instead, we watch Dixon turn to Hanrahan’s side. He coldly unpins a grenade, throws it into the back of the truck, and locks the door, killing all the FEDRA soldiers inside. Burton is then given the unenviable choice to join the Washington Liberation Front or die.
This sequence establishes how the Washington Liberation Front was eventually able to defeat FEDRA, with the help and strategy of Isaac.
Still confused about who the Wolves are in The Last of Us Season 2? Here’s everything you need to know about the WLF…
The “wolves” in The Last of Us Season 2 are just members of the WLF, or Washington Liberation Front. This militia roared to life eleven years before the events of The Last of Us Season 2, when local citizens and disaffected soldiers like Isaac Dixon joined forces to kick FEDRA out.
However, once FEDRA was out, the Wolves had a new problem. Namely the Seraphites.
Last week’s episode of The Last of Us introduced us to the weirdly antiquated cult, which believes in only using “tech” from after the pandemic. Ellie and Dina stumble upon a mass grave of Seraphites, including children. Who killed them? Well, the Wolves did, of course.
Later in The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 4, Ellie and Dina discover that the Seraphites aren’t necessarily non-violent victims. They discover another scene of mass murder. This time around, the Seraphites have hung Wolves and then disemboweled them.
It’s all very gross and very horrific. The WLF and Seraphites are locked in a sectarian civil war of attrition. Isaac Dixon is now a man who tortures “Scars” with scalding cookware. Wolves kill anyone who’s not them out of fear. Seraphites retaliate, in turn.
At some point in the five years between The Last of Us Seasons 1 and 2, Abby and her friends journeyed to Seattle and joined the WLF because they were the last Fireflies left. Now, though, they aren’t locked in a freedom fight against FEDRA, but this wild civil war with the Seraphites.
(function(d, s, id) {
var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
if (d.getElementById(id)) return;
js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;
js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&appId=823934954307605&version=v2.8”;
fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
}(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));
