How can a TV show adapt a video game as narratively complex as “The Last of Us Part II”? We’re about to find out.
“The Last of Us” returned April 13 on HBO for the premiere of its second-season, which is based on the game franchise’s 2020 second installment. But even more so than in Season 1, the “Part II” story relies so heavily on the way a video game works that translating it to TV requires major changes.
In Sunday’s premiere, co-creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann’s plan for tackling that challenge comes into focus. Here’s how the episode differs from the game and what that means for the future of the show.
How does the dance scene compare to the game?
Sunday’s premiere culminates in one of the game’s most famous scenes: a dance where Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Dina (Isabela Merced) kiss, which makes local bigot Seth (Robert John Burke) upset and sparks Joel (Pedro Pascal) to defend them. The scene is roughly the same in the game, though the show’s version of Joel is more aggressive; Joel knocks Seth to the ground in the show, but only lightly pushes him in the game. A bigger change is that this scene comes at a much different point in the narrative.
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The game’s main story begins the day after the dance, meaning players initially only hear about what happened there through dialogue. But the dance isn’t shown until near the end of the game, which frequently jumps around in time and makes liberal use of flashbacks. Because the show is adapting “Part II” across more than one season, this means a more literal adaptation wouldn’t show the dance at least until the end of Season 3. (HBO has already renewed the show.)
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The rearrangement has larger implications beyond one scene. The game’s sprawling, time-hopping narrative structure is beloved among some players but hated by others, and both camps have wondered whether it was even possible to translate it to TV. But the premiere suggests Mazin and Druckmann aren’t necessarily married to the original structure, and are open to reimagining it when it makes sense.
Were Joel and Dina friends in the game?
Both Season 2 and the game begin with a time jump. But the game skips forward four years, whereas the show jumps ahead five. In both cases, Joel and Ellie now have a strained relationship. But in the show, Joel gets along well with Dina and talks with her about Ellie. Joel and Dina don’t have this kind of one-on-one friendship in the game, and barely interact.
Joel constructing homes in Jackson, Wyoming, while dealing with the question of how many people to let in also isn’t a plot point in the game, nor is the existence of a town council.
Was Ellie bitten (again) while on patrol in the game?
Later, Ellie goes out on patrol with Dina and has to hide the fact that she’s been bitten. While this patrol sequence is included in the game, Ellie isn’t bitten.
Ellie and Dina also went on patrol as a duo in the game, but in the show they go with several other characters, including Kat. The show marks the onscreen debut of Ellie’s ex, who is only referred to in the game.
Were Joel’s therapist Gail and her husband Eugene in the game?
Joel’s therapist Gail (Catherine O’Hara) is a new character who wasn’t in the game. Druckmann says adding her provided an “opportunity to get more into Joel’s head and to see what is he honest about” by exploring “What does he lie about? What does he get really uncomfortable about?”
While Gail’s husband Eugene is mentioned in the game, his backstory has been dramatically altered: The premiere reveals that Joel killed him.
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That’s almost the complete opposite of Eugene’s function in the game, which uses him as an example of someone lucky enough to die of natural causes. He dies from a stroke in the game, and Ellie tells Dina she hopes to go out as he did, peacefully. Eugene never appears in the game, but Joe Pantoliano plays the role on TV, suggesting flashbacks may depict his new, very much not-peaceful end.
How does the depiction of Abby compare to the game?
Easily the premiere’s biggest change concerns the new character of Abby (Kaitlyn Dever).
In the opening scene, viewers learn she’s on a mission to kill Joel as revenge for his massacre at the hospital where he saved Ellie’s life. Revealing this upfront is a big departure from how Abby is originally presented. In the game, she is initially an enigma, and players are given almost no information about her identity or motives.
In her first scene in the game, Abby arrives outside Jackson pursuing an unnamed man, and we only later learn she’s searching for Joel. Still, even then Abby’s motive for hunting him remains a mystery. The connection to the hospital is revealed much later, meaning TV viewers will process her story in a drastically different way than gamers do.
In a press conference last month, Druckmann said the show spilled the beans in part to ensure viewers connect with Abby. “You play as Abby (in the game), so you immediately form an empathic connection with her, because you’re surviving as her,” he said. Because this isn’t the case in the show, “we need other tools” to build this connection, Druckmann said, so “that context gave us that shortcut.”
Another reason to reveal Abby’s motives sooner stems from the fact that the story will be told on TV across several years, whereas the game can be played in a single weekend.
“Where that revelation happens in the game, if we were to stick to a very similar timeline viewers would have to wait a very, very long time to get that context,” Druckmann said. “You would probably get spoiled between seasons, and we didn’t want that.”
Contributing: Bryan Alexander
