Interview: Tommy’s desire for revenge in The Last of Us Part 2 is rooted in “shame”

The Last of Us Part 2 explores the way in which grief compels even the most hopeful individuals down a path of revenge, with voice actor Jeffrey Pierce breaking down how his character Tommy is impacted by loss and transformed by it.

When The Last of Us Part II first released on June 19, 2020, gamers around the world held their breath as they played through the brutal, heartbreaking, and at times terrifying narrative. A sequel that focuses largely on revenge, morality, and the idea of good versus evil.

After the death of Joel, Ellie and Tommy driven by their grief and pain, both journey far and wide to find closure and avenge their loved one.

Throughout Ellie’s path of destruction in Part II, Tommy Miller plays a key role in encouraging her pain.

In an interview with Dexerto, voice actor Jeffrey Pierce broke down the path his character walks in the sequel. How his pain and the “emptiness of vengeance” propels a complete metamorphosis in the character from what we see of him in the first game.

Learning of Tommy’s dark path in The Last of Us Part II

For Pierce, Tommy’s arc in Part II was rooted in a man once filled with hope now consumed by pain. Something that game director Neil Druckmann had lengthy discussions about with Pierce before the first draft of the script was even finished.

“Neil and I sat down for lunch and he walked me through the entire arc of the script before it was finished. He said, this is what I want to do and he just wanted to get my thoughts and see how I responded to it.

“The second one is the emptiness of vengeance, the idea that it ruins everything that you could possibly build prior to it.”

Pierce then went deeper into the motivation behind Tommy and why he goes down such a dark path in The Last of Us Part II.

“Tommy’s journey to Neil and to me as well is one where he takes everything he’s built up, Jackson, Maria, and a life. A place that is a place of hope and possibility for others. Out of his shame at not being able to save his brother, he flushes all that down the toilet and loses everything.

“He lives through it which is not necessarily how he would want to see it ending. I’ve given up everything and that now just lets me die, but then he can’t.”

Tommy’s inability to overcome his own grief impacts Ellie’s fate

While the whole of Part II focuses on grief as a driving force for revenge, a standout moment from the final parts of the game truly encapsulate the essence of the sequel. The moment in which Tommy returns to Ellie and encourages her to finish what they started.

After finally making a life for herself with Dina and her child, this push from Tommy, the way in which he targets her own grief and thirst for revenge despite knowing she is trying to move on, is the final step in Tommy’s decline towards grief. 

For Pierce, this moment was a truly “heartbreaking” part of Tommy’s arc.

“It is heartbreaking that he sends Ellie to do a job that he was unable to do himself, tragic for this guy who had a lightness and had a hope within him and had it stripped away by violence.

“For me, Tommy knows this is a wrong thing to ask. This compulsion is driving him the way that it drives so many of us. A powerful and very real moment that he can’t escape.”

Shame is what drives Tommy’s desire for revenge

However, Pierce does believe this scene, while hard to watch and experience as a player, highlights how the shame of not being able to save Joel is at the core of why he sends Ellie back into the pits of despair.

“I remember talking to a guy who was the head of clinical psychology for the prison system in Massachusetts. He talked about shame as the motivation for every type of violence you can imagine. Didn’t matter race, background, or wealth. 

“For me, it’s something that is a very animalistic thing that we do as human beings. So for Tommy, his shame is the fact that he couldn’t save his brother. Trying to erase Abby and all the wolves is what he thinks is going to get him to the other side, but that’s false.”