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We're digging further into new characters and storylines in The Last of Us Season 2, with one hell of a basement situation opening up in episode 5.

A name that comes up during the opening scene is Leon. But who is he, how does he relate to the storyline, and does he appear in Naughty Dog's game? Let's go through the details.

In the opening scene of episode 5, Hanrahan (Alanna Ubach) interrogates Washington Liberation Front (WLF) commanding officer Elise Park (Hettienne Park) about a mission that went terribly wrong in Seattle's Lakehill Hospital. During their conversation, Elise says she sent her team into the hospital basement to secure it after clearing the floors above it of Infected — orders Hanrahan gave her.

Elise mentions that a soldier called Leon was put in charge of the unit for the mission "because he's my best," and we also learn in this scene that Leon was her son.

It was always a risky mission, as Elise mentions the hospital basement is where doctors brought the first Cordyceps patients to be treated in 2003. After finding the first floor of the basement strangely empty, Elise sent her unit to the second, with Leon up front.

"Few minutes in, he radios back, 'There's Cordyceps on the walls, the floor.' Chances are they'll find Infected next, but that's what they were down there for, so I told them to proceed," Elise says. "Five minutes later, he radios again — this time he was struggling to breathe."

It's here Leon reveals his team discovered not only that villainous fungi, Cordyceps, growing on the walls as usual, but also spores from it floating through the air. And in a tragic moment of heroism, he tells his own mother to seal the unit in the basement's second floor.

"We did what Leon said. We sealed them in," she says.

Later in the episode, when Ellie (Bella Ramsey) chases Nora (Tati Gabrielle) into the hospital basement, she discovers the area overrun with Cordyceps — and spores are not only floating through the air, they're being emitted by a couple of humans infested with the mushrooms and sealed on the walls.

One of these poor souls is wearing a name patch, L. Park, which confirms him as the ill-fated Leon (Cheonguk Park), doomed to spew spores in a half-alive state.

The name Leon is mentioned only in environmental storytelling in The Last of Us Part II, and it references another character. But there's some ironic overlap.

Ellie and Dina find a note in the abandoned Westlake Bank in Seattle beside a gym bag of cash, describing a bank robbery gone wrong at the outbreak of the Cordyceps pandemic. In the letter, written by a very pissed off person involved in the heist, you learn that he was attacked by Infected then sealed in the bank by his accomplices, including his friend Leon Travis.

It could be a coincidence here, but if this is a deliberate use of Leon's name, The Last of Us creator Druckmann is almost giving cruel poetic justice to Leon's imprisoned bank robber friend — both of them sealed in thanks to the threat of Infected.

The Last of Us Season 2 is now streaming on Max. New episodes air weekly on Sundays 9 p.m. ET on HBO.

Watching The Last of Us and want to play the games? Here's how.

Did you hear that? It's the sound of a song we've been waiting for in The Last of Us, fluttering out the window.

In Season 2, episode 5, Ellie (Bella Ramsey) takes to the stage of Seattle's crumbling Pinnacle Theater, where instruments remain set for a performance never given. In a similarly moving moment to Ellie's rendition of "Take On Me" in the previous episode, she hesitantly picks up an acoustic guitar — an ever-painful reminder of her music-teaching, late father Joel (Pedro Pascal) — and takes a seat.

Then, Ellie sings one unmistakable line: "If I ever were to lose you." It's the first line of Pearl Jam's 2013 song "Future Days" and an incredibly important element of The Last of Us games.

Reader, I screamed.

But suddenly, Ellie reconsiders playing the song and stops completely, overcome with suppressed emotion. It's way too much, too soon. But surely that can't be it?

Music remains a crucial, human element of The Last of Us. The song Ellie begins to play in Season 2, episode 5 is deeply meaningful to her and Joel, and subsequently, to fans. But we don't know this from the show; we know it from Naughty Dog's game The Last of Us Part II.

In the sequel to The Last of Us, there's a scene right at the beginning of the game in which Joel plays Pearl Jam's "Future Days" for Ellie on a butterfly-necked guitar he found for her during a patrol, not long after they've returned to Jackson from Salt Lake City. Joel is a man of few words, never really expressing love aloud, and Ellie and Joel are in a tense state in their relationship, with Joel having done what he did.

The song is a moment in which he tries to show his found daughter, Ellie, how he feels about her. And despite their tension and her complicated feelings about his actions, Ellie's face is pure love and appreciation in this moment — and importantly, this is the first time she would have ever heard this song.

The lyrics speak directly to Ellie and Joel's relationship — "If I ever were to lose you / I'd surely lose myself / Everything I have found dear / I've not found by myself" — and considering the tragic fate awaiting Joel, they're devastating in their doomed hope for "future days" together.

"I believe 'cause I can see / Our future days / Days of you and me."

Surely, The Last of Us HBO series will let the entire Pearl Jam song have its moment. Lead singer Eddie Vedder even played the song live at The Game Awards 2020 with the game's release, knowing its impact and connection with Part II. Ellie playing one line cannot be the whole thing.

The Last of Us Season 2 is now streaming on Max. New episodes air weekly on Sundays 9 p.m. ET on HBO.

Watching The Last of Us and want to play the games? Here's how.

We're still a long way from being over what happened to Joel (Pedro Pascal) back in The Last of Us Season 2, episode 2, so suddenly seeing him again at the end of episode 5 is a bittersweet surprise.

But it's also a slightly confusing one, given how brief the moment is and what's come before it. So what exactly is the deal with the episode's ending, and what might it mean for what's to come next? Let's break it down.

After narrowly escaping both Seraphites and Wolves, Ellie (Bella Ramsey) finally locates Nora (Tati Gabrielle), one of Abby's (Kaitlyn Dever's) party who was present for Joel's murder. Ellie chases Nora down to a spore-infested hospital basement, where Nora finally vocalises the terrible truth about what happened at the Firefly hospital in Season 1 — and why Abby did what she did to Joel.

"He killed everyone in that hospital, including the only fucking person alive that could make a cure from you," hisses Nora. "That was Abby's father, and Joel...Joel shot him in the head. That's what he did."

At this point we're expecting some kind of reaction from Ellie, but her face remains unchanged. There isn't even a hint of shock, and a second later we find out why. "I know," says Ellie. Then she takes a length of pipe and proceeds to beat Nora with it while asking her where Abby is, over and over again.

It's a violent and somewhat confusing scene, given that we've spent Season 2 thinking Ellie was still in the dark about Joel's secret. The scene that comes after, though, it is even more jarring.

Cutting from the dark of the hospital basement we suddenly see Ellie waking up in her bedroom back in Jackson, with sunlight filtering in through the window. The door creaks open behind her and suddenly there's Joel, very much alive and smiling in at her.

"Hey, kiddo," he says, and Ellie smiles back at him.

"Hi."

Coming right at the end of the episode just before the credits, the final scene with Joel doesn't make much sense at first. It's clearly a flashback, but what's it got to do with what we've just witnessed in the hospital? Isn't it a little out of place?

Well, maybe not. In the scene in the hospital, Ellie doesn't appear to be lying when she says she knows what Joel did. Her expression is that of someone who really does know, and at this point, really doesn't care (or doesn't want Nora to think so). The thing is, though, we don't know how she knows. When, and why, did Joel's closely guarded secret get out?

When you follow that through, it seems pretty clear that the flashback at the end of episode 5 is building up to something. The Last of Us is well known for breaking the mould with its standout episodes, some of which — think episodes 3 and episodes 7 in Season 1 — take us on journeys into the past.

Is it possible that the flashback with Joel will lead to a longer flashback in episode 6? Maybe one that explains how Ellie knows what she knows?

The Last of Us Season 2 is now streaming on Max. New episodes air weekly on Sundays 9 p.m. ET on HBO.

Watching The Last of Us and want to play the games? Here's how.

The Last of Us Season 2 dropped a major bombshell in its fifth episode. The Cordyceps fungus is no longer just transmitted through bites. You can also become infected through airborne spores.

This revelation won't come as news to The Last of Us game fans, as spores have been a mechanic since the very first game. However, the scene that introduces spores to the show also hints at a major Infected enemy from The Last of Us Part II: the Rat King.

The Rat King is a boss from the second half of The Last of Us Part II, and it's without a doubt the most disgusting creature in both games. It's based on the real (but rare) phenomenon of rat kings, which occur when a group of rats gets their tails irreversibly tangled.

When it comes to the Rat King in The Last of Us Part II, replace rats with the bodies of the Infected, and the tangled tails with the Cordyceps fungus, and you have a pretty good idea of how this unholy amalgamation was formed. Seriously, you thought a Bloater was bad? Well, a Rat King is Clickers on top of Stalkers on top of a Bloater, so it's just bad news all around.

In The Last of Us Part II, the Rat King lurks in the basement of the WLF-controlled hospital the series introduces in episode 5. Even though we don't meet it in this episode — and with two episodes left, it's unlikely we'll meet it in Season 2 — The Last of Us still finds a way to hint at its existence.

In the episode's opening sequence, Hanrahan (Alanna Ubach) talks to WLF soldier Elise (Hettienne Park) about why she made the decision to block off all entry points to the hospital basement, dooming several of her men to die.

The reason Elise gives is the spores, but she adds that even though the hospital basement was where the first Cordyceps patients were brought when the outbreak started, it was oddly devoid of Infected.

"Nothing, the whole floor was empty," Elise tells Hanrahan of what's in the basement. "Not even rats."

The specific mention of rats feels like a pretty clear hint to The Last of Us gamers that the show writers are thinking about the Rat King. But even the basement's emptiness is a chilling reference to what's coming. It's been 25 years since the Cordyceps outbreak — enough time for the basement to get horribly overgrown with fungus. And if those first Infected bodies were left down there, undisturbed, for 25 years, that's also enough time for them to become fused together into the mass that is the Rat King.

That means the basement floor isn't actually empty. All the bodies just grew into one giant enemy that no one knows is down there. Maybe the missing rats even fused with the Infected Rat King. (Or maybe they were an early food source.) Either way, we're in for a nightmare whenever the Rat King finally shows up.

New episodes of The Last of Us Season 2 premiere on HBO and Max Sundays at 9 p.m. ET.