Making television is hard, especially when you’re adapting from already well-loved source material. The first season of HBO’s The Last of Us has ended, and ever since, showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann have been inundated with questions from people who are, understandably, excited about how The Last of Us Part 2 will be adapted.
Some people have wondered about how Abby’s story will be woven into the narrative. The Last of Us was a fairly linear game, but its sequel was split between two protagonists, jumping in both time and perspective. Some assumed the coming seasons would mimic the form of the game, but we’ve learned from previous interviews that what comes next could be“radically different” from the game it’s based on.
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The Last of Us stuck fairly close to the game, replicating scenes almost exactly in places, but that might not be the case for the show’s second season. In fact, it might even take place in the time-jump from the first game to the second, showing us what happened in between. We didn’t get this in the games, apart from some flashbacks – butcertainly not enough of them to fill a season.
Mazin seems to have indicated toColliderthat The Last of Us won’t experience huge leaps in time, suggesting that the flashbacks will be covered in the second season. This makes sense in that Ellie won’t be recast, leaving Bella Ramsey as the show’s star – but they just convincingly played a 14-year-old for the whole season, and it might be hard to make them seem aged up enough to play Ellie as a young adult in the next season, despite Bella’s actual age.
Mazin has also saidhe hasn’t “committed” to focusing on Abby in season two yet, and is doing whatever best suits the television medium. That means we might not see Abby for a while, maybe even until the fourth season, and the show could focus on the time between the games. I’m not convinced that’s going to play out well at all.
Part of what makes The Last of Us 2 so compelling is that flashbacks build backstory for each character, leading us to reframe our understanding of both protagonists. It is flashbacks that remind Ellie to be merciful in the last fight she has against Abby, flashbacks that build our understanding of how Joel and Ellie’s relationship has soured, flashbacks that tell us Abby’s motivation and why she’s so bent on revenge. They are an important part of the game in the form it takes now – reshuffling the narrative so it plays chronologically could reduce their impact in the overall story.
I stand bymy previous assertionsabout the show needing to make changes appropriate for its new medium, and my thoughts now could be biased by how much I love Abby Anderson as a protagonist. The Last of Us was a relatively straightforward adaptation, since it’s one of the most cinematic modern video games we have, but its sequel will be a whole new challenge. We can only wait to see how the show deals with this, but I can only hope that they do it well. If we’re lucky, their changes will keep fleshing out the show’s world, while fixing some of the second game’s pacing issues. If we’re not, the second season will flounder, and one of video games’ most powerful stories will lose some of its impact.
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