New trailer for The Last of Us 2 paints a new picture of the Fireflies

Posted on October 31, 2017

Last year at the Playstation Experience event in December, Naughty Dog had the collective tongues of gamers around the world wagging. Giving us a quick glimpse of the follow up to their smash hit, The Last of Us. The team showed us enough to get the mind racing but left so many questions unanswered about the world of The Last of Us Part II. Well as opposed to answering all those questions, fans have instead been treated to another glimpse of the world and the state it has been left in — or perhaps the state it was once in?

One of the biggest questions that I was left with after the initial trailer is what had the Fireflies done to earn the ire of one of the series protagonists, Ellie? She announces that she’s going to kill every last one of the their ranks — now this seems like a very extreme turn for the character and I find it hard to believe that this stance would be taken over the ending of the previous game. That rage feels like it would be more focused on Joel, no spoilers go and play the original now!

I can only assume the group we are seeing in this trailer is the Fireflies as they gruesomely cripple a woman and reference it as “clipping her wings” for being an apostate. This raises the question, have the Fireflies devolved from a devoted revolutionary militia group into a violent movement of “believers”? I say I assume as it’s never mentioned, as the trailer waits for literally the final second to make it clear that it is The Last of Us Part II as we get a glimpse of oncoming clickers. However the most interesting part of this trailer is the mysterious woman who narrowly misses a grizzly end.

In a Tweet from Naughty Dog we learn that the woman will be voice by actress Laura Bailey and that she her name is…redacted. Naughty Dog, the team behind The Last of Us Part II, know exactly what they’ve done here and the internet is already a buzz with theories. Taking centre stage of these theories is that this trailer is actually set long before the original game and that the fact that this woman has some resemblance to Ellie is no coincidence.

There is no doubt that this character is important, but is she Ellie’s mother who passed away through childbirth? Ellie’s connection to her deceased mother and the letter she left her is a driving motivation behind Ellie’s drive to survive. Is it possible that Ellie has discovered that her Mothers death could have been at the hands of the original Fireflies? did she share the same antibodies as her daughter? Was Ellie swept away to keep her safe? Could the letter be falsified?

So many questions and almost no answers until The Last of Us Part II arrives on PS4 in 2018. What are your thoughts? Be sure to let us know your wildest theories after you watch the new trailer, but fair warning, viewer discretion advised.