HBO’s version of The Last of Us is pretty good at maintaining fidelity to the lauded Naughty Dog games, especially when it comes to the blocking of major scenes. But in a way, that exactitude only magnifies the ways in which the show deviates from the games. While viewers expected changes — a good adaptation needs to justify a reason to exist — some of the creative changes have been met with mixed reactions from the audience. As the showrunners tell it, these creative liberties weren’t done thoughtlessly.
In a recent press event for The Last of Us, showrunners Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin dove deep into season 2 as a whole over the course of an hour. Discussions often circled back to the wider topic of what’s possible in games versus film, and how these strengths guided their decisions for what the show would explore and how.
On the cliffhanger ending
Image: HBO
By the time season 2 ends, the show is ambiguous about what happens to Ellie. The last we see of her, it seems as if she gets shot dead by Abby — only for the show to then transition to a totally different day, before any of that happens.
Apparently, other endings to the season were considered but nothing stuck. “This always felt like the natural end point for the season,” Druckmann says.
Mazin went even further, noting that the choice was made to balance out the changes to the story up until that point.
He says, “we have to take risks as a television show, and HBO is to back us taking risks. But then again, we just did kill Pedro Pascal. They understand that this show is going to be a different show every season, which is a sort of a tricky thing to do when you’re a hit show. You keep asking people like, ‘I know you love this, we’re taking it away and giving you this now.‘ And then, hopefully they go, ‘Oh, well, you know what, we actually really like this.’ ‘Oh, that’s nice. Now we’re giving you this now because that’s how the story works.’”
On adding Gail as a character
Photo: Liane Hentscher/HBO
Druckmann revealed that they have a “running list” of things that are easier to do in each medium, and changes in perspective are categorized under the TV list. Unlike games, television doesn’t lock you into the perspective of the person you’re controlling; it can be natural for a show to jump around in storylines from scene to scene.
“And obviously in the game, perspective shifts in cut scenes, but they are limited by design, they have to be,” Mazin says. “[TV is] nothing but cut scenes.”
The ease afforded by TV for different perspectives is partially how the pair arrived at the character of Gail, a therapist in the show who lends Joel an ear. Joel has trouble opening up to Gail, because that would mean admitting that he mowed down a hospital to keep Ellie alive. Gail emphasizes the importance of vocalizing difficult thoughts, which she illustrates by telling Joel that deep down, she hates him. As it turns out, Joel killed Gail’s husband Eugene after he got infected, and it’s something she has never been able to fully get over.
“So, Gail in particular, gave us a moment to figure out, not only where is Joel now emotionally, but what’s the story he’s telling himself?,” Mazin says. “What is the thing he’s most afraid of? And what is his opinion about his actions? And all of that is setting up, ultimately, a moment where he, a) has to finally confront the truth, and then b) has to pay the price.”
As players know, the start of The Last of Us Part 2 focuses on Abby, the daughter of a doctor killed by Joel in the first game. This was meant as a surprise for players. Naughty Dog went to such lengths to contain this piece of information that in an extended preview of the game, a trailer made it look like Joel was still alive during the journey Ellie embarks on. Pulling off something like that, Maizin says, is way harder on TV because “what we can’t do is reproduce the shock of becoming another person.
“In games, you are Joel, you are Ellie, you are Abby, and when that shift happens it’s jarring because you have been someone. But here, we are watching everybody equally on a screen. We may identify with time to time in different ways and we may be conflicted but we’re not them.”
In the season 2 finale of TLOU, Ellie arrives at the aquarium in search of Abby. In the games, there’s a dark moment when Ellie kills a dog named Alice at the aquarium — but it doesn’t happen in the show. In the interactive version, the death is particularly brutal because you also spend some of Abby’s storyline with Alice at your side. The valiant pup saves you from danger and is well-loved, and at least one scene depicts playtime with Alice.
Why leave something like that out? Well, Mazin wrote Chernobyl, and in that show, there’s a segment where pets left behind in the nuclear disaster are culled in an effort to prevent further spread of radiation.
“I think you get like one dog murdering episode a lifetime,” Mazin says. “There are two cardinal rules in Hollywood, one, don’t spend your own money, two, don’t kill a dog.”
That’s the jokey reason, anyway. He continues, “Plus, because it’s live action, the nature of violence becomes much more, well, graphic. It’s more graphic because…it’s not like there’s an animation between you and it, [and] it’s very disturbing.”
Druckmann also notes that the timeline of events during the show, the aquarium is sandwiched between a string of heavy moments. Ellie almost dies in one scene, Mel and Owen are killed, and later on, Jessie meets his end as well. “And in our conversation, we’re like this [is] probably one too many,” Druckmann says.
Image: HBO
In the games, the player does not find out that Ellie spoke to Joel the night before he died until well into the story. The show, on the other hand, parades this pivotal moment right away. Except in this version of events, Joel tells Ellie that he killed all those people at the hospital because he loves her in a way she can’t understand.
“It also speaks to the adaptation process, which is Pedro’s Joel is more articulate, more outwardly vulnerable than Troy Baker’s Joel, and therefore there are these tiny differences that felt appropriate,” Druckmann says. “It’s harder for me to imagine that line coming out of the game Joel.”
The writers wanted to help viewers tie that exchange with the one we see Joel have with his dad earlier in the season. In that episode, Joel confronts his father about his tendency to beat his children. Joel’s dad breaks down and says he’s doing the best he can, and that hopefully, Joel can do a little bit better than he did when he has kids of his own.
Legacy and what we inherit from our parents is a more overt theme in the show. Ellie remarks that she’s going to be a father in one scene that doesn’t happen in the games, and later on, she’s shown picking up a book for Dina’s baby.
Image: Liane Hentscher/HBO
The circumstances surrounding Joel’s death are a tad different in the source material. In the games, Tommy and Joel come across Abby during a patrol. On TV, Dina and Joel collide with Abby’s group while Tommy is seen back in Jackson, defending the town from a wave of infected. In the games, Tommy is the first one to leave for Seattle in search of revenge after Ellie fails to get Jackson’s blessing. For some viewers, this change was frustrating because it made Tommy less active in the story.
As the showrunners see it, Tommy isn’t lessened by these changes. Both Mazin and Druckmann point out that Tommy still sees plenty of action, as we watch him defend Jackson and take down a massive infected monster.
“We thought it would be interesting if, rather than him going, ‘I’m just going to run out there and kill whoever did this,’ especially without a lot of information, that we would give Ellie and Dina that agency.
“But now we know that Tommy is somewhere in there in Seattle, because he and Jesse went after them to save them. And what Tommy does now, once he is outside the confines of Jackson, remember, he’s a veteran. He’s been in war, and we also know that for some time he and Joel were doing some pretty bad things. So, there is the potential of seeing this other side of Tommy, and that is now about him delivering on his promise to his brother, ‘I’m not going to let anything bad happen to that kid’.”
For those keeping track, this list of five changes hardly covers every difference between the show and the games. One of the most controversial changes for the fandom lies with Abby. In the games, Abby sports a buff, imposing frame. Kaitlyn Dever, who depicts Abby on-screen, has a much more svelte silhouette. For some, this casting choice felt too “Hollywood.” We’re told that Abby has been obsessing over Joel since the death of her father, and that she spends years getting ready for that moment. Presumably, this motivates Abby to undergo intense physical training — so viewers attach a lot of meaning to that specific character design.
If you’re wondering why the show didn’t follow suit, though, that’s a topic that Druckmann and Mazin explored a month ago, in the inaugural podcast that accompanies the show. Dever, they said, was initially in the running to be Ellie when the games were being adapted to a movie.
“It was very easy to close your eyes and see her as this character and see that– because this character, going back to what Craig was saying earlier, just has this drive, this passion, this intensity, this intense pursuit of justice, and has to be, like, extremely vulnerable at the same time,” Druckmann said at the time. “And have all these other facets that we haven’t even seen yet. It didn’t take much imagination to view her in that role.”
Here, too, Mazin emphasized the differences between TV and movies. During the podcast, Mazin said that the reason Abby is so muscular in the games is because designers have to think about player experiences. When players change perspective, they expect that their actions will feel different in some way too. An effective way of getting there is by giving characters different ranges in physicality.
TV, though, doesn’t have that constraint. This allowed the showrunners to focus on other aspects of Abby’s character.
“So, to me,” Mazin said, “the key was to find a certain ferocity and a relentlessness. And I think you’ll see some of that as the season goes on and certainly as we go forward with the show.”
