‘The Last of Us’ Star Isabela Merced on Making Dina ‘A Little Bit More Calculated’

Note: This story contains spoilers from “The Last of Us” Season 2, Episode 5.

Sunday evening’s episode of “The Last of Us” saw Ellie’s revenge quest take its darkest turn yet as she and Dina tracked down Nora (Tati Gabrielle), one of the ex-Fireflies who killed Joel.

Despite being pregnant, Dina chose to go along on the journey with Ellie rather than lay low at the theater, revealing that she not only carries guilt for the death of Joel, but also for her own mother and sister, who were killed by a raider when she was eight years old.

“Dina and Ellie walk very similar paths in the sense that they both have lost people they loved, and they continue to lose people they loved,” Isabela Merced, who plays Dina, told TheWrap. “So they’re bopping out of the fear of abandonment.”

Though Dina ultimately kills the raider and gets her vengeance, Merced points out that traumatic event still consumes her.

“When it comes to losing people you love, no matter how much you may not be responsible, that doesn’t stop your brain from going over and over and over the sequence of events, and replaying it and imagining what you could have done differently to potentially change the outcome,” Merced added. “I think that moment should have been a message that resonated differently with her. But she just learned to think of it like ‘Yeah, I killed this man when I was eight years old but for good reason I swear.’ It’s justification of the vengeance.”

When asked about the process of expanding on Dina’s character from the game for the HBO adaptation, Merced revealed that the majority of the decisions were made long before she was hired, but she did ask executive producer Craig Mazin about cutting some lines.

“I wanted Dina to be a little bit more calculated and maybe hold her cards closer to her chest,” she said. “When I came in, it was a great guitar with all the strings. I just needed to tune it up a little bit with my own ear.”

By the end of the episode, Ellie’s mission is accomplished as she finds and brutally beats Nora, who’s been exposed to spores inside a lower level of the hospital that was ground zero for the outbreak in Seattle. But not without her and Dina getting nearly killed themselves by a pack of stalkers and having to be rescued by Jesse (Young Mazino), who has been separated from Tommy (Gabriel Luna) after following the pair to Seattle to bring them home.

“It’s the irrationality and power of love,” Mazino tells TheWrap. “As much as a stickler as Jesse is, even he can’t get past that one thing. He’s willing to face armageddon to try to get them back.”

Though Jesse is focused on his mission to get everyone back to Jackson safely, Young Mazino admits the former is “livid” and “on the edge” of hitting his breaking point with the Ellie by the time he finds her and Dina in Episode 5.

“It’s one thing to let the revenge overtake you, but she’s dragging Dina, who Jesse has a lot of love for into Seattle, which we all know is a hell hole and f—ng terrible place to be in,” Mazino said. “Throughout the season, Jesse is always trying to rein Ellie back, trying to tell her to ease on the breaks and tone it down and help her scale it back because in a lot of situations, not just combat, if you lose that coolness and level-headedness and you overstep that’s how you end up dying. He’s trying to tell Ellie to calm down and chill out a little bit and she just refuses and now Dina’s life is on the line too.”

Merced said that the moment Jesse rescues her and Ellie is “so dramatic” and “very conflicting,” but also “very relieving” for Dina.

“I mean, it’s her baby daddy or stepfather to her baby. Jesse is so reliable and Dina really does admire and adore him for his strength and he’s really level headed. I think it’s going to be interesting and really heightens the tension of the love triangle,” she said. “Ellie was also gonna die, so he’s not only saving Dina. It would have changed everything if he hadn’t.”

When asked if Dina plans to tell Jesse the truth about her pregnancy, Merced said she believes she would “eventually be very straightforward.”

“In her head, she would ideally wait until they got back to Jackson safely. I think she fears that Jesse would leave without Ellie and just take [Dina and the baby] out of there,” she explained. “She knows he’s such a good leader and would be such a devoted father, but honestly it would ruin things between her and Ellie a lot. Right now, the tension is too high and it’s too much happening.”

“The Last of Us” airs Sundays on HBO and Max

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