Honestly, we need to talk about Tommy Miller. Everyone loses their minds over Joel’s choice at the hospital or Ellie’s descent into madness in Seattle, but Tommy? He’s the one who actually paid the highest bill. By the time the credits roll on The Last of Us Part II, he isn’t just a side character anymore. He’s a broken man living in the shadow of a life he spent decades trying to build.
Most people see him as the "good" brother. The one who wanted to save the world with the Fireflies while Joel was busy being a smuggler. But if you look closer, The Last of Us Tommy is a case study in how the apocalypse eventually breaks even the most principled people.
He didn't just lose a brother. He lost his eye, his mobility, his marriage, and his soul.
From Texas to the Fireflies: The Early Days
Before the world went to hell, Tommy was a carpenter in Austin. Just a guy. Then 2003 happened, and he found himself in a Jeep with Joel and Sarah, trying to outrun the end of civilization. While Joel became a hardened hunter in the years that followed, Tommy couldn't stomach the "nightmares" of what they had to do to survive.
He joined the Fireflies because he needed to believe in something. Anything. He wanted to fix the world, not just exist in it. But the Fireflies weren't exactly saints either. They bombed QZs and got people killed in the name of a "cure" that felt more like a pipe dream every year. When he finally walked away and founded Jackson with Maria, it felt like he’d finally won. He had a community. He had a wife. He had electricity and a sense of normalcy.
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Then Abby showed up with a golf club.
What Really Happened to Tommy in Seattle
When Joel was murdered, Tommy didn't just snap. He calculated. He knew Ellie would go after Abby, so he tried to beat her to it. He left a note for Maria, grabbed his sniper rifle, and turned into the "pro sniper" that the WLF soldiers feared like a ghost.
There’s this one sequence on the marina where you play as Abby, and you’re being hunted by a sniper. That’s Tommy. He’s picking off WLFs from hundreds of yards away with terrifying precision. It’s the first time we see just how dangerous he is when he isn't playing the role of the friendly town leader.
But then comes the theater confrontation. Lev shoots him in the leg with an arrow, and Abby shoots him in the head.
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Survival and the Physical Toll
A lot of fans argue about how he survived a point-blank gunshot to the face. The bullet grazed his skull, taking his right eye and leaving him with permanent brain damage and a severe limp. He survived, sure, but the Tommy who came back to Jackson wasn't the same guy who left.
The injury changed his personality. He became bitter. Short-tempered. Obsessed.
When he visits Ellie and Dina at the farm later, he’s a shell of himself. He’s "on a break" from Maria, which is basically code for their marriage being over because he can't let the revenge go. He guilts Ellie—the person he once tried to protect from this very path—into going back out there to finish what he can no longer do physically. It's a low point for a character we once saw as the moral compass of the series.
Game vs. HBO: The Tommy Evolution
The TV show, featuring Gabriel Luna, adds a massive layer of stakes that the game didn't have: a child.
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In Season 2 of the HBO series, Tommy and Maria have a son named Benjamin. This changes the math entirely. In the game, Tommy leaves Maria behind, which is bad enough. In the show, he's leaving a kid. It makes his choice to pursue Abby even more self-destructive. You can see the internal war on Gabriel Luna’s face—the struggle between being the father Joel never got to stay and the brother who needs to avenge Joel’s death.
Jeffrey Pierce, the original voice and motion-capture actor for Tommy in the games, actually appears in the show as Perry (the bearded rebel in Kansas City). It’s a cool nod, but it also highlights how much DNA the character has across different versions of the story.
The Actionable Truth About Tommy Miller
If you’re trying to understand the full arc of the franchise, you have to stop looking at Tommy as a supporting player. He is the mirror of Joel.
- Understand his "Joiner" nature: Tommy always needs a cause—whether it’s the Fireflies, the Jackson council, or his own revenge quest.
- Acknowledge the trauma: He watched his niece die, then his brother. He has lived through three separate "lives" (survivor, revolutionary, leader) and failed at all of them by the end.
- The Sniper Legacy: His skills aren't just for show; they represent the military-grade lethality that Joel tried to keep him away from for years.
The tragedy of The Last of Us Tommy is that he tried to be the "good man" for twenty years, and the world still took everything from him. He ended up exactly where Joel started: alone, angry, and broken.
To get the most out of his character development, pay close attention to the dialogue in the Jackson chapters of Part II. His shift from a peacemaker to a revenge-obsessed shell is subtle until the very last scene at the farm. Replaying the "Sniper" mission with the knowledge of his physical and mental decline makes those shots he takes feel a lot more desperate.
You can dive deeper into the Jackson lore by exploring the optional notes found in the Miller house, which detail the early days of the settlement and the friction between the brothers before the events of the first game.