Ellie Williams

After finding out she was immune after being bitten at 14 years old, Ellie was sent by the fireflies in Boston to St. Mary’s Hospital in Utah where another group of fireflies were working on a vaccine. She was sent along to travel to Utah with a man named Joel Miler who owed the fireflies for some weapons. As they travel across the country Joel and Ellie form a strong father daughter like bond. Once they get to Saint Mary’s, Joel finds out Ellie will have to die in order to develop the vaccine. While Ellie is asleep preparing for the surgery, Joel kills everyone in the hospital including the surgeon who was preparing for her surgery. He takes Ellie out of the hospital and to a settlement in Jackson, Wyoming. They live there together for the next several years.

Six years after Joel kills Jerry Anderson, the surgeon at St. Mary’s, a woman named Abby arrives to Jackson from Seattle, Washington with a group of 6 young adults who survived Joel’s rampage at St. Mary’s, Leah, her ex boyfriend Owen, Owen’s pregnant girlfriend Mel, Leah’s Boyfriend Jordan, and Nick. After running off alone, Abby runs into Joel and his brother Tommy in a blizzard. Together they escape the blizzard and a horde of zombies before Abby leads them both back to the lodge her and her 6 friends were staying in just outside of Jackson. Once there they all work together to knockout and bound both Joel and Tommy. Abby begins to torture Joel.

After hearing Tommy and Joel were missing, Ellie goes out to find them. She finds them in the lodge and is ambushed and held down as she has to watch Abby torture and kill Joel with a golf club to the head. After killing Joel, they leave both Tommy and Ellie there and they end up being found by Jesse, Ellie’s friend, and Dina, Ellie’s friend and girlfriend.

After Joel’s funeral service, Ellie makes a plan to travel to Seattle to find and kill Abby after finding out where she lives by the WLF insignia that she saw on Abby’s coat. She and Dina leave for Seattle, following Tommy who had left the day before. Jesse joins them as well a day after they leave. While in Seattle, Ellie’s mental health depletes more and more as she’s filled with rage. She spends most of her time fighting the WLF, the Seraphites also know as Scars (a cult also residing in Seattle), and infected alone after finding out Dina is pregnant with Jesse’s baby and not being able find Tommy, leaving Jesse to go look for him. She kills everyone in the Salt Lake Crew, unable to find Abby.

Eventually, Abby finds Ellie, Dina, Tommy and Jesse in an old theater after finding Ellie’s map, which she dropped in the Seattle aquarium after killing Owen and Mel. Abby kills Jesse, shoots Tommy in the eye and beats Ellie and then Dina half to death after Dina jumps on her when fighting Ellie, slashing up Abby’s face, chest and arm with deep cuts, before a little boy stops her from killing them. She leaves them all in the theater and they return to Jackson.

Ellie and Dina live quietly on a farm just outside of Jackson after the whole ordeal taking care of Dina’s son JJ also known as Jesse Joel after he’s born. They live together for about 2 years before Tommy requests Ellie to go finish Abby off after finding out she was in Santa Barbara. Ellie having been riddled with anxiety, guilt and PTSD from her encounters with Abby decides to leave to Santa Barbara to find Abby, abandoning both Dina and JJ in the process.

When she arrives to Santa Barbara, Ellie finds a faction of people called rattlers who enslave others and use them for labor. She’s captured by them and hung from a tree. While trying to escape Ellie gets impaled by a broken tree branch in her stomach. She manages to escape from the tree, getting bitten in the process. Just before killing one of the men who captured her, he tells her where Abby is and Ellie continues her journey to find her, killing all of the rattlers and freeing their prisoners all while bleeding out from her wound.

Finally, Ellie finds Abby and the little boy from the theater tied to a couple of pillars on the beach. Ellie cuts Abby down and Abby immediately goes to cut the boy down, picking him up and letting Ellie know that they can escape alongside each other on a boats. Ellie denies and beckons Abby to fight her, threatening the boy after Abby denies. They fight pretty much to the death, Ellie gaining the upper hand but not before Abby bites both her ring and pinky finger off. She drowns Abby pretty much to her last breath before releasing her, unable to take her life as she has her first positive, clear memory of Joel, finally able to remember his eyes. She sees herself and Joel in Abby and the boy and cries for them to just go. Abby and the boy escape together and Ellie sulks in the ocean for hours, crying for Joel.

Now, after a year of being back in Jackson alone in the farmhouse after being shunned by both Tommy, Dina and the rest of Jackson upon her return, Ellie lives a sad, lonely existence riddled with depression, PTSD, and anxiety.

Now, on one of her daily walks through the Wyoming National Forest, just a few miles outside of the farm, looking for game to hunt, Ellie finds a girl hunting a deer and confronts her.

“Hey, Ellie, are you doing alright?” I approach Ellie cautiously as she sits on the couch in the living, fiddling with a guitar. She has a blank, almost dissociative look on her face as she stares down at her hands. She blinks a few times at the sound of my voice, her reaction delayed by a few seconds.

“Yeah,” she utters out lowly. “I’m fine. Do you need something?”

She turns to me, looking at me expectantly. She looks sad and tired, the bags under her eyes even darker than usual, signaling her lack of sleep.

“Uh-huh,” I nod, trying to be as casual as possible as not to fluster her in her sensitive state. “You told me to fix the sink some time today yesterday, I was just wondering if you had a toolkit so I can get started.”

“Yeah, come on.” She gets up, waving her hand, beckoning me to follow. She leads me to a large, metal toolbox and hands it to me. I take it in my hands gratefully, nodding at her in thanks. “ If there’s anything else you need just come to the art room upstairs, I’ll be in there.”