Why ‘The Last of Us' Season 2 takes big departures from the video game

Washington Post

31-03-2025

Every video game adaptation to TV or film has to face the urgent question: What happens to the audience's relationship to characters when we're no longer the puppeteer?
After all, it isn't us playing as Abby in the upcoming second season of HBO's 'The Last of Us' adaptation. It's Kaitlyn Dever, Emmy-nominated star of 'Dopesick.'
Abby is a new character for the TV series, but she's well-known among fans of the video game. In 'The Last of Us Part II,' first released in 2020, her motivations and background were a mystery held off for the back half of the game. In the very first episode of this second season, premiering April 13, Abby is immediately introduced, removing the veil of intrigue that shrouded her in the first half of the original story.
Game director and co-showrunner Neil Druckmann said there are two reasons for this change. First, it's because the second game has been split into two TV seasons, and Abby's motivations wouldn't be a factor at all for an entire season.
Leaving that critical context unexplored for another season years from now 'didn't feel correct,' Druckmann said in an interview. 'The other reason, in the game, you play as Abby, you're connected. We can withhold certain things here.'
Druckmann pointed to the famous opening of the game and the first TV season: In the first game, players control the protagonist Joel's ill-fated daughter, Sarah, for a few minutes. Upon her death, players are wrenched into another character. Druckmann's studio, Naughty Dog, has a long history of using this technique, in which narrative shake-ups are tied to the player's ability to suddenly switch perspectives.
'When you play as Sarah, there's something about when you play a character, you have an immediate empathic connection to that, and it's a shortcut that the interactive medium affords us. We don't have that here,' Druckmann said of the show. 'We need you to connect through a different way, through empathy, through sympathy or just tying it back to the events. ...
'This felt correct for this version of this story.'
'The Last of Us Part II' was controversial for many reasons, including an ambitious, nonlinear story structure that was broken up by location, time and perspectives. Its story continues to follow Joel Miller, a bereaved father who lost his daughter during a zombie outbreak, Ellie, a teenager who's grown to love and admire Joel as a father, and introduces Abby, whose journey becomes entangled with theirs.
The sequel's structure was also informed by its very nature as a video game. Splitting the game between two protagonists, Ellie and Abby, meant honoring the player progression of 'skill trees' for each character.
'The reason we limited how much we go back and forth is because of upgrade trees,' Druckmann said. 'You play the character a particular way based on how you're upgrading them, and then you have this mental shift you gotta do when you have a totally different upgrade tree. Every time we would do it, it would be incredibly disruptive from a gameplay standpoint. We don't have any of that for this show, so obviously we don't take that into consideration. It often leads to different choices.'
The HBO follow-up introduces new elements, including a tough, wizened therapist played by Catherine O'Hara. She's cynical enough to see through Joel's macho posturing and deflections. The show also expands the lore from the game, adding a postapocalyptic city council for Joel and Ellie's new adopted home of Jackson, Wyoming.
Then there are small changes. The first game and season featured a surprise discovery of a giraffe herd roaming a wasted Salt Lake City, one of the more memorable, quiet interludes in a violent story. This second season features that same giraffe herd seen through a new context.
'The question was, what if those giraffes hang out there all the time, and what if other people who now live in Salt Lake, broken by Joel's actions, see them,' said co-showrunner Craig Mazin. 'It would mean something else, the memory of a beautiful thing that has been ruined. We try as best to synthesize and combine all those things in a way that are consistent with the game.'
Mazin, an evangelist of the games who pitched the show to HBO executives, calls the original works 'the world's best pre-visualization ever.' It's why the show replicates so many shots from the game. The game's most memorable scenes often remain intact. For Mazin, that's the whole point. But there are many conversations with his team about how to adapt certain scenes for TV.
'You can tell how carefully Neil and his team directed the light to move or what a set should look like,' Mazin said. 'So Ksenia Sereda, who is our lead director of photography, has a way of saying, if we did this in reality, it would look horrible. She finds things that evoke the feeling you had in the game without necessarily copying.'
The show will once again have a companion podcast hosted by Joel's original actor from the game, Troy Baker, along with Mazin and Druckmann. Baker often brought interesting creative insight as the quintessential, original embodiment of the character, and Druckmann said no doubt he will have plenty more things to say about being Joel in the second game.
While 'The Last of Us Part II' remains one of the most critically acclaimed games of all time, there's been ceaseless discourse about whether its story could've been structured better.
'Halley Gross, who co-wrote the game with me, and I stand by every decision we've made of the game,' Druckmann said. 'Yet we're not precious about any of it. So now when we approach it for this new medium, I'm okay to interrogate every moment. And then what we try to do is just remove any external pressure so we don't read what people are saying, what they want us to do. We have to just interrogate and ask what is the best version of this story that's being delivered as roughly one-hour-long episodes, week to week.'
In an age of art fueled by key performance indicators, it's rare to hear a creator of pop entertainment commit to ignoring what an audience claims to want. It's the reason 'The Last of Us Part II' was an unforgettable, challenging experience, and it's why, for veterans of this series, the most interesting viewing experience is not what happens in the show, but how new audiences might respond to it.
'When I've met people that only watched the show and not played the games, I would ask them, 'Do you know what happens?'' Druckmann said. 'They're like, no, why? And I just say they should just watch it. It'll be fun. Right?'