With the Fireflies dead and without anywhere else to go, Abby and her friends headed towards Washington. In the first scene from The Last of Us’ second season, Owen told them, “Ed has a brother who runs an outfit in Seattle. A guy named Isaac.” Two episodes later, we saw that Isaac’s outfit isn’t some small regional group like Eugene used to talk about. It’s the city’s ruling power, a well-armed militaristic operation. In episode four we finally got to meet the man who runs it, Jeffrey Wright’s Isaac Dixon. He voiced the character in the video game, but what did we learn about the TV version of W.L.F.’s leader? He’s as ruthless as the organization he defected from, FEDRA.
Before he joined the Washington Liberation Front, Isaac Dixon was a FEDRA sergeant in Seattle’s Quarantine Zone. In 2018 Isaac left FEDRA with an actual bang. He blew up his own soldiers (minus one new recruit he took with him) when he formally joined W.L.F. The resistance group knew he was coming. They were waiting for him.
As Isaac pointed out that day. FEDRA mockingly referred to Seattle’s citizens as “voters” because the group had stripped people of its rights. That tyranny was the apparent impetus for Isaac’s defection. FEDRA was already fighting W.L.F. for some time when Isaac killed his squad. By 2029, the present timeline on HBO’s The Last of Us, the fight was long over. FEDRA was gone in Seattle. W.L.F. had eliminated the organization and taken control of FEDRA’s weapons and supplies. In episode four, Ellie noticed that FEDRA soldiers turned on each other, indicating some elected to join Isaac and W.L.F.
In episode three we learned what Isaac had accomplished. Large, armed W.L.F. patrols march through the city’s streets with tanks. The Washington Liberation Front also controls Seattle’s hospitals and has outposts in strategic locations.
They also have their own enemy, Seraphites, who W.L.F. calls “Scars.”
W.L.F. is a militaristic organization with hi-tech weapons led by a soft-spoken man who was once shy around woman, a man with a fondness for cooking and Williams Sonoma cookware. The primitivism Seraphites worship a dead prophet whom some believe was actually a god. (Scars who think she was just a normal woman are considered “heretics” by fellow followers.) And at some point the two very different groups had a truce. Who broke it and why is unknown and no longer matters. “F***ed up” Seattle’s two biggest sects are at war. And Isaac, despite defecting from and then defeating the oppressive FEDRA, employs violent tactics against his enemy.
He tortured a captured Scar to find out information about the Seraphites’ next attack. When he knew he would be unable to extract the info, Isaac murdered his prisoner. One guard outside the kitchen found the whole thing repulsive, showing not every wolf soldier agrees with Isaac’s tactics. But the very FEDRA soldier Isaac spared in 2018 was fully behind his leader.
The W.L.F. and the Seraphites truly hate one another. Wolves torture Scars. Scars string up and disembowel wolves. And both kill their enemy’s children. But only one side ever seems to join the other. Isaac’s prisoner told him the Seraphites will win, because it’s not about weapons or land. It’s because every day a wolf joins the Scars, while no Scar ever joins W.L.F.
Isaac disputed everything that ill-fated man said except for that. Is that why he really killed that Scar? Only he knows for sure, but everything we’ve learned about the TV version of Jeffrey Wright’s character indicates the war between W.L.F. and the Seraphites isn’t going to end anytime soon. And it’s not going to get any less deadly.
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. He’s very anti torture even though he’s very pro Jeffrey Wright. You can follow him on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.
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