The first season of HBO’s The Last of Us was a very faithful adaptation of the first game. Many shots and lines of dialogue are ripped straight from the source material even as Craig Mazin and company built on them with new characters and fresh scenarios for Naughty Dog’s world. It didn’t go outside the lines very often, though it excelled when adding context to Bill’s story. Considering the strength of its original yarn, it’s hard to stay mad.
Everything we’ve seen from the second season appears to follow the same trajectory, with the majority of scenes, dialogue, and characters eerily similar to the 2020 sequel. Once again, it is not a surprise, and unlike last time, I no longer find myself swirling in doubt over retreading the same old ground resulting in mediocrity. Instead, I’m excited to see how these scenes are adapted, how new actors choose to interpret them, and how exactly it will retell a story that is far longer and more ambitious than the one that came before it. So let’s dive into a couple of scenes from the recent teaser.
Flashbacks Are Going To Play A Pivotal Role
Ellie and Abby have a number of playable flashback sequences in The Last of Us Part 2 as the narrative bridges the time between the first and second games. Taking place after major events in the first game’s story, we follow Ellie as she visits a museum with Joel during a birthday or hunting with Tommy after learning the truth about the Fireflies. Abby, meanwhile, begins her part of the game patrolling outside the hospital alongside her father shortly before the duo stumble upon a Zebra trapped in barbed wire – an obvious parallel to the giraffes in the original game and a quick and concise way to paint the doctor as a sympathetic guy.
After this comes the flashback featured at the start of the latest trailer, in which Abby arrives in the hospital and approaches the room where her father’s freshly murdered body awaits. It features the same sense of dread and bleak sirens obnoxiously blaring out. We are going to be following Abby’s journey as she is turned into a vicious murderer, then into a heroine we badly want to root for. The show is likely going to deconstruct her villainous origins like the game did, but I’m curious how exactly it will do this over the course of a single season, or whether it will take longer.
Showing such scenes in the trailer also tells me that HBO is marketing this show not just towards newcomers, but also fans of the game who know exactly what’s coming.
There are pivotal moments of storytelling in The Last of Us Part 2 and I can’t imagine the show doing without them. What I do want to know is the structure in which they will be shown. It’s clear in this trailer that the upcoming season is going to follow both Ellie and Abby, unless the wool is being deliberately pulled over our eyes.
Bella Ramsey Has Gone From Perfect Casting To Weirdly Out Of Place
Ellie grows up a lot between The Last of Us Parts 1 and 2. She goes from a teenager trying to figure out the person she wants to be in a post-apocalyptic world to an adult with her own life to live and relationships and responsibilities to manage. This passage of time is trivial to see in video games where avatars can be aged up, but it’s much harder in live-action.
So it is strange to see a virtually unchanged Bella Ramsey take on the same role with the same physical stature when she is meant to be portrayed as a ruthless murderer capable of killing hundreds to enact her revenge. It feels out of place, and the show is going to have a tough time addressing this general dissonance.
We haven’t seen characters like Lev or Jesse in HBO form yet, although Jeffrey Wright is confirmed to reprise his role as Jacob, the leader of the WLF.
Perhaps this will be reflected in the casting of Kaitlyn Dever as Abby, who can be presented as physically stronger and more capable than Ramsey, but place them in a fight scene, and it won’t be too unbelievable to see them on an even playing field.
Expect Plenty Of Familiar And Iconic Scenes
As someone who has played through both games multiple times, it didn’t take long for me to notice a number of familiar scenes in the brief tease, some of which help shine a light on the potential structure and execution of the entire season. Ellie and Dina are seen dancing in the village hall, a definitive early scene in which Joel defends Ellie from a homophobic old man. Slowly but surely, it is the catalyst to mending their relationship mere hours before Joel’s untimely demise.
It cements the fiery romance both of these women share that will become a major part of events to come, and how Joel is so desperate to defend Ellie despite hurting her so much and arguably not deserving her forgiveness. Whether these scenes will take place during the show or whether they will be presented as flashbacks remains to be seen, but their presence alone suggests that HBO will be adapting entire scenes and lines of dialogue from the game instead of taking creative liberties with the material.
Once upon a time, I was scared of HBO refusing to make this show its own, but with the first season being so exceptional in spite of this, I trust the network to do right with the stories to come. It’s not completely out of the question that a few surprises await up its sleeve, either.
The Last Of Us Part 2’s remaster is more than just a better-looking version of the original game. Enhanced for PS5, the remaster also adds a roguelike mode, DualSense support, and three lost levels that were cut from the original game during early development.