'The Last of Us Part II': The Evolution of Ellie

Note: This article contains major spoilers for "The Last of Us Part II" and 2013′s "The Last of Us." A man is shot in the chest and chokes on his own blood. A pregnant woman falls, fatally stabbed in her neck. They just wanted to reach Santa Barbara. Now they're dead because a woman needed information. The murderer, standing amid their bodies, is not the little girl you remember. Five years after the events of the first game, Ellie is cold, brutal and often merciless. Driven by revenge, the girl we knew from "The Last of Us" has morphed into something more sinister. Her optimism is dimmed, her humor muted -- her pun book, once filled with jokes, has been replaced by a journal. "The Last of Us Part II" chronicles Ellie's descent from innocence to match the darkness of the post-apocalyptic hellscape around her. The death of Joel, her guardian and traveling partner from the first game, has set Ellie's moral compass spinning as she struggles to find purpose.