"The Last Of Us" Season 1 Was Heartbreaking, So Here's A Ranking Of 15 Of The Saddest Moments

My eyes are still sore from all the sobbing.

WARNING: This post contains major spoilers for The Last of Us Season 1.

Season 1 of The Last of Us is over, but the tears remain.

HBO / Via giphy.com

Since I've never played the video game the show is based on, I went into this show knowing only the basic premise of the game and a few things I'd gleaned from Twitter, so I thought I was in for more scares and gore than anything.

HBO / Via giphy.com

Before I started my binge watch, I did not expect to spend the day crying my eyes out.

HBO / Via giphy.com

Here are 15 of the saddest moments of the series, from (in my opinion) least to most devastating:

15. When Joel builds a gravestone for Tess

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After Tess dies at the end of Episode 2 (more on that later), we see Joel stacking some rocks at the river shore at the beginning of Episode 3 — the closest he can get to giving Tess a tombstone.

14. When Joel flashes back to Sarah's death before protecting Ellie

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When Joel sees the guard ready to shoot Ellie at the end of Episode 1, he's immediately reminded of the guard who killed his daughter Sarah 20 years earlier. He can't bring Sarah back, of course, but this is essentially the beginning of Joel's do-over, even if he doesn't realize it in the moment.

13. When Ellie confronts Joel about leaving her and tells him she knows about Sarah

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It's not until Episode 6 that Ellie finds out about Sarah, and as she says, it explains a lot about Joel. After Joel tells Ellie he's staying behind and sending her off with his brother Tommy, she tells him she knows about Sarah, and that she's not her. Their whole back-and-forth is a huge bummer, especially because Joel saying "you're not my daughter" — which clearly hurts Ellie — is definitely just a self-preservation tactic, since he obviously does think of her as a daughter at this point.

12. When Bill gets shot

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Episode 3 was really just an emotional disaster, and after Bill is shot by raiders, he's scared enough to tell Frank to call Joel because he'll take care of him. As implied earlier in the episode when Bill tells Frank, "I was never afraid before you showed up," and later when he says Frank was his "purpose," Bill isn't afraid of dying — he's afraid of being without Frank.

11. When Professor Pertiwi explains that there's no vaccine or treatment for the infection

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The beginning of Episode 2 starts out very informational, as mycology professor Ratna Pertiwi is informed of the first few victims of the cordyceps infection. The more information she receives, though, the clearer it becomes that there's nothing to be done, and watching her realize this is borderline painful — especially when she says the only viable course of action is to bomb the city "and everyone in it" to keep the infection from spreading, then asks to be taken home so she can spend her remaining time with her family.

10. When Joel admits to Tommy what he’s been going through

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In Episode 6, as Joel asks Tommy to take Ellie the rest of the way to the Fireflies, he breaks down as he explains the fear he's been feeling and how worried he is that he'll get Ellie killed. Joel hasn't been able to talk to anyone about what he's been feeling (or at least hasn't felt like he was able to), and it's clearly really difficult for him to do so even with his own brother.

9. When Tess sacrifices herself so Joel and Ellie can escape

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We didn't get to spend all that much time with Tess, and you could argue her sacrifice wasn't quite so impactful given that she was going to turn soon anyway, but she still opted to spend her last remaining moments scared and alone to help Joel and Ellie.

8. When Ellie fights off David, kills him, and then reunites with Joel

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This kid has really been through it. It's bad enough just to have been born into a fungus-riddled dystopia, but she's had to see and do a lot of things no one, let alone a child, should. Being attacked and nearly sexually assaulted in Episode 8 by David was just the latest in a long string of PTSD-inducing things she's had to deal with.

7. When Sarah died

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It's extremely cold comfort that Sarah dying right at the beginning of the pandemic, in Episode 1, means she didn't have to live to see what was to come, but it really doesn't make it any easier to watch, especially considering we see the distress she's under in her last hours, as well as the toll it takes on Joel throughout the rest of the series.

6. When we saw Ellie's birth and what happened to her mom, Anna

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After spending a season falling in love with Ellie, it was heartbreaking to see her first minutes in the world and how much her mom loved her, only for Anna to get bitten and then die. It was such a bittersweet moment, made all the more emotional when you find out Ashley Johnson, who played Anna, voiced Ellie in the games.

5. When Joel goes to save Ellie, even though he knows it might mean dooming the world

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In the season finale, Joel is truly a man blinded by the love for his surrogate child. Once he decides what he's going to do, there's no stopping him, and he basically turns into Rambo as he shoots his way through the hospital. Admittedly, the music was mostly responsible for the tears shed here, but it also wasn't easy to watch Joel kill a bunch of people — something that's clearly greatly affected him over the past 20 years.

4. And when he lies to Ellie about it after

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I don't know what's sadder — that he lies because he's sure she'll want to do the right thing and make him take her back to another hospital, or that she doesn't completely believe him and is probably a little relieved either way. Regardless, it's clear that the truth is going to come out eventually, and the potential fallout could be super harmful to their relationship.

3. When Henry shoots Sam and then kills himself after Sam's been infected

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I had a feeling about what was going to happen once Sam revealed he'd been bitten in Episode 5, but yeesh. For Henry to have to kill his brother after everything he did to keep him alive, it's hard to blame him for what he did right after.

2. When Ellie and Riley are both bitten by an infected and we know there's only hope for one of them, even though they don't

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Episode 7 was so bittersweet, because even as you're watching Ellie and Riley have this amazing night, you pretty much know how it's going to end. What makes it even sadder is that the infection can take hours to fully kick in, which meant Ellie and Riley had to just sit there and wait to "lose their minds together" — except Ellie never did, so she had to watch it happen to Riley, before killing her (which thankfully, we don't see, because I would have been even more of a mess if they had).

1. When Bill and Frank spent their last day together

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Thanks to Twitter, I knew Episode 3 was going to be especially devastating, but I really wasn't prepared for this bit of it. I was already tearing up when Frank explained the plan for his last day to Bill, and once "On the Nature of Daylight" began playing, that was it. (I'd like a word with whoever made that song suggestion.)

By the time Bill and Frank exchanged rings, I was sobbing so hard my cat was staring at me like she thought I might be dying, and even though Bill revealing that it was his last day, too, wasn't a surprise, it was still absolutely gut-wrenching.

What moments had you crying the hardest during Season 1 of The Last of Us? Sound off in the comments.