Daily Inspire
Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Last of Us season two and The Last of Us Part II video game.
The Last of Us‘ second season ended with a literal bang.
After all, a single gunshot rang out when the standoff between Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) suddenly cut to a black screen à la The Sopranos series finale, leaving viewers wondering who actually won in the fight.
To make things even more puzzling, the scene then switches to Abby waking up at her W.L.F. camp, noting in a title card: “Seattle: Day One.”
So, did Abby kill Ellie? Was it all a dream? Not quite.
At this point in the video games on which the HBO series is based, player controls shift over from Ellie to Abby’s perspective and the story jumps back in time. The narrative then follows Abby during the two days leading up to her skirmish with Ellie, before converging back to the present timeline.
And if there’s one thing to know about The Last of Us‘ showrunners, it’s that they like to “preserve the aspects of canon” set by the games, according to series co-creator Craig Mazin.
“We just try and make the best show, but we do it with, I think, an enormous respect for the aspects of the game that work so well,” he told IGN in early April. “Otherwise, honestly, what the f–k are we doing it for?”
This means The Last of Us season three, which was given the greenlight earlier this year, will more than likely shift its focus away from Ellie. As Catherine O’Hara, who plays therapist Gail on the show, recently teased to Variety, “It’s the Abby story.”
But that’s not to say the season two finale was the last of Bella’s screen time. In fact, the show has taken liberties of changing—or adding—plot points to draw out character development.
Take Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett), for example. While their video game counterparts didn’t have much of a backstory, they had their a decade-long love story fleshed out on heartrending season one episode “Long, Long Time.”
Eugene (Joe Pantoliano) also got the same treatment in the second season. Instead of dying of natural causes like in the game, he gets executed by Joel (Pedro Pascal) before Ellie has the chance to help him pass on his final words to Gail.
Liane Hentscher/HBO
And the betrayal ultimately leads Ellie to tearfully confront Joel in what would be their final conversation, a flashback sequence that actually plays out at the very end of the game.
“No one has really done an adaptation like this, because if you think about other adaptations, let’s say from a novel, we all have a different idea of what the characters are,” the game and the show’s co-creator Neil Druckmann told Deadline in a May 18 interview. “But the game was already so cinematic, and I think that’s why people have very specific expectations of what it should be when it’s adapted.”
He continued, “But by its very nature of adapting it, it shifts and evolves. So that process has just been fascinating to me.”
For more secrets about the making of HBO’s The Last of Us, read on.
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