Merced and director Kate Herron unpack Dina’s big news and bringing queer joy to a world like “The Last of Us.”

• Isabela Merced and director Kate Herron dig into all the game-to-show changes that went into Dina’s pregnancy reveal and romance with Ellie.
• Merced unpacks the way in which Dina felt stuck before coming out as bisexual.
• “I think it’s more of an intense sequence,” Merced says of the pregnancy reveal in the show versus the game.

This article contains spoilers from The Last of Us season 2, episode 4, “Day One.”

Isabela Merced is deep into what she calls “the silly side of TikTok.” The star of The Last of Us and costar Ariela Barer regularly swap memes and videos back and forth. How silly are do they get?

“Specifically, I’m on the side where they’ve been doing The Last of Us drag,” Merced, who plays Dina on the HBO drama, tells Entertainment Weekly. “I just saw a Cordyceps queen. It’s just so random. I’m in a niche area and I’d like to stay there because anything too mainstream can maybe hit too close to home.”

Merced also spotted some of the fan art that formed around her take on Dina and Bella Ramsey’s Ellie, whose love story is a prominent element in season 2. Those art pieces, too, get silly at times. “Somebody made me and Ellie as a croissant,” she says. “It’s one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever seen, but talent is talent regardless. I like croissants, I guess. I think Dina would enjoy a croissant if that was a delicacy they could afford in the apocalypse.”

All of that fan art will surely explode after Sunday’s episode of The Last of Us. As Ellie and Dina arrive in Seattle in season 2’s fourth episode, on their mission to avenge Joel (R.I.P. Pedro Pascal), a ton of s— goes down involving infected and “wolves” (members of the local militia group, the Washington Liberation Front, a.k.a. WLF). Ellie gallantly reveals she’s immune to the Cordyceps virus by saving Dina’s life, Dina reveals she’s pregnant with Jesse’s (Young Mazin) baby, and the two finally solidify their relationship status.

This sapphic story receives a more slow-burn payoff in HBO’s The Last of Us than in the source material, which sees Ellie and Dina get together before they even leave Jackson for Seattle. Merced gives a lot of credit to Halley Gross, who served as a writer on the Part II video game and was brought on by showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann to work on the series adaptation.

“Because of her voice, it feels like a really authentic, sweet, wholesome, realistic relationship between two women,” the actress comments.

Kate Herron, who directed this particular episode, also came in with a background working on shows like Loki, where she discussed the lead character’s bisexuality; and Doctor Who, for which she directed the “Rogue” episode involving a romance between Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor and Jonathan Groff’s bounty hunter. “I won’t direct or write on anything that I’m not a fan of,” Herron, who uses queer or lesbian to describe her own sexuality, tells EW separately. “It’s not necessarily intentional, but I suppose a lot of the characters I’m drawn to are queer.”

Mazin previously explained how the concept of being stuck is crucial to understanding many of the characters on The Last of Us this season. In episode 4, Merced’s Dina reveals the specific way she feels this way, which marks an expansion to the character’s backstory in the game. The morning after their romantic night in an abandoned theater, Dina explains how she tried coming out to her mom as bisexual but was aggressively dismissed. When her mother then died, Dina forced herself to adhere to those wishes of only liking boys, even if it wasn’t working, as in the case of Jesse.

“Craig is not a queer individual, but being one myself, I understood where she was coming from,” Merced says of this character. “I don’t think it’s so clear cut. With Dina, it was important to show the contest within her, whereas Ellie’s way more assured. Ellie’s always been sure about it. In this world where it doesn’t really exist, Pride and all the LGBTQ+ community, she’s navigating it blind with no guidance. She probably doesn’t even know the word bisexual. There’s really no such thing as labels here. So without having that roadmap, I don’t even know if she thinks it’s an option, which is fascinating.”

A brief comical scene shows Ellie and Dina unable to identify the rainbow Pride flags adorning the city of Seattle. They theorize these people must’ve been optimists because what else could a rainbow mean? Merced also wears a subtle nod to the rainbow flag through Dina’s jacket, though she says, “I think Ann Foley, our costume designer, just thought it was a cute jacket and then the fact that it was gay was just a cherry on top.”

“Dina’s jacket was a big discussion that started early on in prep with Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann,” Foley comments over email. “I put the Aviator Nation jacket on my mood boards because of its early 2000s vibe, which everyone was drawn to… It became clear that the jacket was perfect because it suited her character who is so effervescent and full of life.”

The events play out often in completely different ways than gamers are familiar with. In The Last of Us Part II, initially released on the PlayStation 4 in 2020, Dina first gets together with Ellie in Eugene’s secret weed room prior to Joel’s death. She then learns about Ellie’s Cordyceps immunity during the infected subway sequence when Ellie’s protected gas mask is cracked. Though, in the game, there are airborne spores that can infect humans, which isn’t an element the show has introduced… yet.

“I think it’s more of an intense sequence,” Merced comments of the way the show now presents these events. “The game is a little bit more casual. She finds out in a completely different setting and it’s too fast, so she doesn’t really get to fully process it.”

As viewers saw watching the episode, Ellie saves Dina from infected in the subway by letting one of them bite her. However, Dina doesn’t yet know she’s immune and stays up all night to see if Ellie will turn. Merced remembers the emotional intensity required for this scene, where we don’t see Dina’s face as she holds a flashlight and gun to Ellie.

“I was able to ramp myself up because the scene starts in an already emotionally charged place. I was kind of nervous to get myself there and then stay there throughout the whole day, but luckily, every take my face was hidden,” Merced recalls. “We knew it would be hidden, and we were very smart and careful with the choreography of the lantern versus the flashlight versus the walk and the speed. I always had to end up at the same point right before I tell her that I’m pregnant. It was really calculated.”

A common phrase uttered in the world of The Last of Us is, “When you’re lost in the darkness, look for the light.” In a poetic filmmaking choice, Herron uses the flashlight to show how Dina is Ellie’s light. “I wanted it to feel like we were as in the dark as Ellie was on how Dina felt in that moment,” she says. “That was very important, so when the scene does have that turn and they kiss, it catches you by surprise.”

Herron keeps returning to the idea of queer joy. She references a previous scene where Ellie plays A-ha’s “Take On Me” for Dina in a record shop, a variation of a sequence that occurs in the game. “Yes, there are action moments in my episode, but at the same time, you don’t get moments like you do in the music shop very often in a world like The Last of Us,” the director adds. “It’s about cycles of violence and Ellie’s decision to go on this path. It is a heavy story. So for me, it was about letting the characters have those moments of relief.”

And there are many heavy moments to come as Ellie continues her revenge odyssey. There’s a bit of a tease towards the end of this episode. Sitting with the realization of Dina’s pregnancy, Ellie comments, “I’m gonna be a dad.”

“It’s really f—ing cute,” Merced remarks of that line delivery. “It’s so sweet. I also wanted Dina to be a little bit nervous about what Ellie was going to say, and Ellie being Ellie just immediately alleviates any tension or doubt and absolutely embraces this information.” More than that, we’ve seen how ferocious someone like Joel became in defending the one he considered to be his child. Now Ellie is in a similar place.

“S—. I don’t know anything about that, but I will say from the people that I’ve seen procreate, they all inherently become these people who no longer live just for themselves,” Merced continues. “In a post-apocalyptic situation, God, I can’t imagine how much more exacerbated that is and how scary it could feel and then, therefore, scary someone could become in order to protect who’s theirs.”