Tess doesn’t get enough credit. Honestly, most people remember her as the "tutorial lady" who dies three hours into the first game, or the woman who had that really weird tendril kiss in the HBO show. But if you actually look at the DNA of the franchise, The Last of Us Tess is the only reason the story even exists. Without her, Joel is just a grumpy guy in a basement in Boston, and Ellie is just a kid waiting for the Fireflies to show up.
She's the engine. She’s the boss. And frankly, she’s a lot scarier than Joel is when you first meet her.
What Most People Get Wrong About Tess
There’s this common misconception that Tess was just Joel’s sidekick. If you play the game or watch the show carefully, you’ll notice it’s the other way around. In the Boston Quarantine Zone (QZ), people didn’t fear Joel; they feared Tess. Joel was the muscle, sure, but Tess was the brain and the reputation.
When Robert steals their guns, Tess is the one who hunts him down. She’s the one who makes the deal with Marlene. She’s the one who decides they’re taking the kid. In a world that is basically a meat grinder for human hope, Tess was the one with the grit to keep a business running.
The Scrapped Backstory You Never Knew
Did you know Tess almost had a much darker origin story? Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin actually talked about a cold open they wrote for the HBO show but never filmed.
In this version, Tess had a husband and a son before the world ended. They both got infected. She had to kill her husband, but she couldn't bring herself to kill her boy. So, she did what any mother in a nightmare would do: she locked him in the basement. The theory was that, decades later, he was still down there as a Clicker.
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It’s heavy stuff. It adds this layer of "haunted" to her character that makes her final sacrifice feel less like a plot point and more like a woman finally finding a way to make her life matter after years of just surviving.
The Last of Us Tess: Game vs. Show
There’s a huge debate about which version of Tess is "better." Honestly? They’re just different.
In the original 2013 game, voiced by the late, incredible Annie Wersching, Tess is a stone-cold killer. She’s ruthless. When she finds out she’s bitten, she doesn’t cry; she gets angry. She demands that Joel take Ellie because she needs her death to mean something. She dies in a hail of bullets fighting FEDRA soldiers. It’s a "blaze of glory" ending.
Then you have Anna Torv in the HBO series. This Tess feels more human. She’s still tough, but there’s a weariness in her eyes. The relationship with Joel is more explicit here—they’re clearly a couple, even if Joel is too emotionally stunted to say it.
The death scene in the show is what everyone talks about. Instead of soldiers, she faces a horde of infected. And then there's the "kiss."
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The Tendril Kiss Controversy
Okay, let’s talk about it. Some fans hated the tendril kiss in Episode 2. They thought it was gross or "sexualized." But the creators’ point was actually way more terrifying. They wanted to show that the fungus isn't "evil"—it just wants to spread. Since Tess wasn't fighting back, the fungus didn't need to tear her apart. It just wanted to connect.
It’s a violation of a different kind. It makes the Cordyceps feel like a hive mind rather than just a bunch of monsters. Whether you liked it or not, it cemented Tess as the character who showed us exactly how the world ends: not with a bang, but with a fungal connection you can’t escape.
Why Her Sacrifice Changed Everything
If Tess doesn’t get bitten in that museum, Joel never leaves Massachusetts. Period.
Joel didn't believe in the cure. He didn't care about the Fireflies. He barely cared about Ellie. He only kept going because Tess asked him to. "Set this right," she tells him. That wasn't just about the world; it was about their lives as smugglers. They were "shitty people," as she puts it.
Tess saw Ellie as a chance to balance the scales. She gave Joel a mission that eventually turned back into a soul. Without her dying wish, Joel would have just turned around and gone back to smuggling ration cards.
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The Evolution of Her Look
If you haven't played The Last of Us Part I (the remake), you should look at the side-by-side comparisons of Tess. In the original PS3 version, she looked a bit like a Hollywood version of a survivor—maybe a little too "smooth."
The remake changed her to look more like her voice actress, Annie Wersching, and added twenty years of stress and sun damage to her face. She looks like a woman who has lived in a QZ for two decades. It makes her character feel lived-in. You can see the history of every bad deal and every narrow escape in the wrinkles around her eyes.
Lessons from Tess for the Modern Survivor
If we're looking for actionable insights from a fictional apocalypse, Tess is actually a masterclass in leadership and pragmatism.
- Know your value: Tess knew she was the "brain" of the operation. She didn't try to be anything else.
- Pivot when necessary: The moment she realized her "business as usual" life was over (because of the bite), she immediately shifted her entire focus to the long-term goal (the cure).
- Trust, but verify: She trusted Joel with her life, but she still pushed him because she knew his weaknesses better than he did.
Tess wasn't a hero in the traditional sense. She was a smuggler who did bad things to stay alive. But in her final hour, she chose to be something more. She is the literal foundation of the entire franchise's emotional arc.
Next time you're playing through the outskirts of Boston, don't just rush to the next combat encounter. Watch how she moves. Listen to how she talks to Marlene. You’re looking at the most important person in Joel Miller’s life, even if he was too scared to admit it until she was gone.
To really appreciate the depth of the character, it’s worth watching the behind-the-scenes "Making Of" documentaries for both the game and the show. They reveal how much the actresses brought to the role—especially how Annie Wersching’s performance in the mo-cap suit defined the character's physical presence before a single line of code was even finished.
Actionable Insights:
If you're a fan of the lore, go back and read the in-game artifacts in the Boston QZ. There are notes that mention "Tess and Joel" from the perspective of other smugglers. It builds a world where they were legends long before Ellie ever entered the picture. Also, keep an eye out for the "Tess" Easter egg in The Last of Us Part II—it’s subtle, but it proves that even years later, her impact is still felt in the world.