‘The Last of Us’ Star Isabela Merced Unpacks Dina’s Big Episode 4 Reveal

Note: This article contains spoilers from “The Last of Us” Season 2, Episode 4

After taking time to grieve Joel’s death last week, Sunday’s episode of HBO’s “The Last of Us” saw Ellie and Dina arrive in Seattle as part of their revenge against Abby and her crew of ex-Fireflies.

The journey proved to be more dangerous than the pair was expecting as they encounter the Washington Liberation Front (WLF), dead Seraphites and infected around every corner. But the biggest bombshell of Episode 4 comes towards the end as Ellie (Bella Ramsey) reveals to Dina that she’s immune — and Dina reveals to Ellie that she’s pregnant with Jesse’s child.

“It isn’t your average pregnancy experience. I think learning while she’s already on the way plays a big factor [in why she chooses to stay on the journey with Ellie]. But she has her own motivations for it and I don’t think much is going to get in the way,” Isabela Merced, who plays Dina, told TheWrap. “That shows how devoted she is to the people she loves. She’s ready, willing and able to do this. She’s devoted, but not like a cult follower, maybe more just a good girlfriend.”

Despite all the challenges they face, Episode 4 balanced the tone with a light-hearted moment between Ellie and Dina taken straight from the game, in which the former serenades the latter with a rendition of A-ha’s “Take on Me.”

When asked about recreating the scene and what’s going through Dina’s head as she stares longingly at Ellie, Merced said it’s not only a moment where Dina and Ellie get to express joy and love for one another, but also another opportunity to mourn Joel (Pedro Pascal).

“A lot of the love Dina has for Ellie is thanks to Joel. He taught her how to play the guitar, he taught her a lot of the values that she holds, he taught her a lot of the jokes and whatnot. So I think it’s a happy sort of grieving for Joel, and one of those moments where you’re happy thinking of them even though they’re gone,” Merced said. “When she gets sad, it’s actually because the feelings she has for Ellie potentially scare her, because it’s that deep and it’s much more than she anticipated. By that point, she knows she’s pregnant, she’s already peed on the stick. So she’s also going through a lot of emotions because she’s a very pregnant woman. There’s a lot of hormones. So there’s a lot of factors that go into that look and why I think that scene is such a special and true moment for both of those characters.”

Ultimately, that scene proves to be one of the last moments of levity we see in the rest of the episode, as the pair come face to face with a horde of infected shortly after while running through an abandoned and destroyed subway system.

“My favorite part of that sequence is when Dina is counting the infected noises, incorporating that from earlier in the season. But also on top of that, incorporating the crouching in the game where you’re normally able to see where the infected might be around you,” she said. “So it’s incorporating that element but in a more clever way.”

The sequence culminates in Ellie getting bitten to protect Dina, a slight change from the game due to the absence of spores. It also sets up a difficult choice for Dina: to believe that Ellie is immune or to kill her.

“[Bella and I] both had a really interesting task. It was to tell the truth and then to decide if Dina was going to believe it. I can only speak for myself really and I really appreciate Bella giving me that performance,” Merced said. “A lot of it was internal. It didn’t matter what Ellie said to Dina in that moment because there was a lot of questioning if she was lying. There’s also a lot of questioning if she’s telling the truth because that also is pretty sh—t and changes everything. So either way, it’s a messed up situation for everyone involved. But I wanted people to really think that I could have shot Ellie and Bella really had to act that way, which is really stressful.”

Ellie ultimately proves her immunity to Dina and the two proceed to passionately show their love for one another. Despite her love for Jesse, Dina admitted that she doesn’t see him as “the one” and was forced to hide being bisexual growing up.

“I think with acceptance of feelings for Ellie naturally comes her acknowledgement of her relationship with Jesse, and sort of a mourning for what she thought it would be or could be. And an acceptance of like ‘Damn, I was really just forcing myself into complicit heterosexuality’,” Merced said. “I think she also did care for Jesse genuinely and that’s confusing for her, because bisexual is not a word that she even knows.”

“They don’t know what the LGBTQIA+ community is. They don’t know about Pride. They were in Seattle and in a literal gay community and were like, ‘Well, they must have been a bunch of optimists.’ So they were just really out of the loop,” she added. “Every time she does accept her feelings for Ellie, she feels conflicted when it comes to her experience with Jesse.”

Merced praised both co-creator and executive producer Craig Mazin and co-executive producer and writer Halley Gross, who was a co-writer on “The Last of Us: Part II,” for making Dina and Ellie’s relationship so relatable and expanding upon the idea that sexuality is a spectrum.

“People are really multifaceted and fascinating and layered and I love how Craig Mazin writes and how Halley Gross, who came on board for the second game, really expanded upon that and made these two women in a really believable sapphic relationship,” she said. “I have to thank Halley a lot for Dina.”

“The Last of Us” airs new episodes Sundays on HBO and Max.

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