Tess Servopoulos
Tess Servopoulos is Joel's smuggling partner in the Boston quarantine zone and your companion through the first two chapters after the prologue. She is the one who talks Joel into taking Marlene's job, and she escorts Ellie with him across downtown Boston toward the Capitol Building.
- Role
- Companion
- Affiliation
- Smugglers
Appears in
The Quarantine ZoneThe Quarantine Zone starts the story proper 20 years after the outbreak, inside Boston's military-run zone in August 2033. As Joel, now a smuggler, you and his partner Tess slip outside the wall to track down Robert, a dealer who owes them guns, and end up taking a new job from the Fireflies.- The OutskirtsThe Outskirts takes Joel, Tess and Ellie out of the Boston quarantine zone and across the ruined city toward the capitol building, where Fireflies are meant to collect Ellie. It is where you meet clickers and learn to slip past them with thrown bricks and bottles, on a route through downtown, the Goldstone Building and a history museum.
Good to know
- Voiced and performed by Annie Wersching.
- Born in Rockford, Illinois, and lives in Area 4 of the Boston zone.
- The planner of the partnership, with Joel as the muscle; she has contacts across the Boston underworld and nicknames Joel Texas.
- Gets Joel past the closed checkpoint through an underground route full of spores, where both of them need gas masks.
- Bribes a gate guard with ration cards to learn that Robert is hiding at the docks.
- Shares ammo and health kits with Joel when he runs low in the downtown section.
- Says she hates sardines.
Who she is
Tess is street smart, impatient and feared in the zone. She trades favors and ration cards, runs supplies in from Bill, and has a reputation as ruthless as Joel's. She is gentler with Ellie than Joel is at first, reassuring the girl that the trip will be fine.
Chasing Robert
The Quarantine Zone opens with Tess coming home cut up after an attack arranged by the arms dealer Robert, who owes the pair a cache of guns. She leads Joel out of the zone and back in through the slums to his warehouse at the docks, breaks his knee with a pipe, and gets him to admit he sold the weapons to the Fireflies. Then Marlene shows up and offers double the guns if they smuggle something out of the city.
Across the outskirts
Tess agrees to the deal once she can see the guns, and travels with Joel and Ellie through a collapsed skyscraper, the subway and the Freedom Museum. Separated from Joel in the museum, she and Ellie fight off runners until he catches up. She is the one who believes Ellie's story about a cure and insists they finish the job.
What happens at the CapitolSpoilerShow
Tess shoots Robert dead once he confesses. In the museum a runner bites her shoulder, and she hides it. At the Capitol Building they find the Firefly team dead and soldiers closing in; Ellie spots the bite, and Tess compares it to Ellie's healed wound as proof of immunity. She makes Joel promise to get Ellie to Tommy, then stays behind to hold off the soldiers and is gunned down. Joel refuses to talk about her afterward.
- BostonBoston, Massachusetts is the first region after the time skip and the city where Ellie grew up. You play The Quarantine Zone and The Outskirts here, and Left Behind's flashbacks with Riley take place in the same city. FEDRA holds the North End as one of the last working quarantine zones in the country.
- Boston slumsThe Boston slums, marked Area 5 on military maps, are the poor district of the Boston quarantine zone where the smugglers run an open black market. You walk through them in The Slums section of The Quarantine Zone while hunting the smuggler Robert.
- Freedom Museum of BostonThe Freedom Museum of Boston is a history museum about the American Revolutionary War that Joel, Tess and Ellie cut through in the Museum section of The Outskirts. A wave of infected chases them inside, and you fight clickers and runners through its exhibits.
- Massachusetts State HouseThe Massachusetts State House, usually called the Capitol Building in the game, is where Marlene sends Joel and Tess to hand Ellie to a waiting Firefly group. It is the goal of The Outskirts and gives the chapter's last section its name.
Related characters
- Minor
Malick
Malick is a tough in the Boston slums who tries to block Joel's path in The Quarantine Zone. Tess knows him and sends him back to his seat with a single word.
- Minor
Terrance
Terrance is a black market trader in the Boston slums who tries to sell Tess something as she and Joel head to Robert's warehouse in The Quarantine Zone.
- Protagonist
Ellie Williams
Ellie Williams is the 14-year-old girl Joel is hired to smuggle out of Boston, and your companion for most of The Last of Us Part I. She was bitten weeks earlier and never turned, so the Fireflies believe her immunity could lead to a vaccine. You play as her in the winter chapter and in the Left Behind DLC.
- Protagonist
Joel Miller
Joel Miller is the man you play for almost all of The Last of Us Part I. A hardened smuggler in the Boston quarantine zone, he takes a job escorting 14-year-old Ellie out of the city, and the drop-off turns into a year-long trip across the country to find the Fireflies.