By Samuel Mortel
On April 20, the post-apocalyptic HBO series “The Last of Us” released its most anticipated episode yet. The show is an adaptation of a two-part game series that was already successful in its own right. This success only grew after the release of the show’s first season in 2023. It instantly drew critical acclaim and admiration from both fans of the game and people who’ve never heard of the source material.
The show is hardly a direct adaptation, however. Fans would notice little instances of the showrunners changing details and adding new features to the story, a tendency that would carry into the second season. People tend to have an almost instinctive negative reaction to change, especially when it comes to something they have a personal connection to. I, on the other hand, believe these changes might actually end up improving the story. Furthermore, there’s one particular change that may be more significant than just a story-related decision.
In the first game, you play as Joel, a bitter, stone-cold old man who is tasked with transporting Ellie, a teenage girl he just met, across the country. He struggles to keep her safe, not only from zombies but from dangerous, morally corrupt humans. Throughout the journey, Joel slowly begins to regain his humanity and forms a father-daughter relationship with Ellie.
Seven years after the release of the first game, “The Last of Us Part II” takes a shocking turn when Joel is brutally, unceremoniously murdered by a newly introduced antagonist named Abby. This bold narrative choice did pay off. The game garnered impressive reviews across the board and won over 300 Game of the Year Awards from a variety of publications and award shows, making it the second-most awarded game of all time. Despite the critical success, Joel’s death was still the catalyst for a lot of online controversy. While the majority of fans, myself included, agreed with the sentiment of critics, another faction was offended and outraged by this storytelling decision, flooding the game with negative reviews upon release. Nonetheless, Joel’s death has become one of the most iconic moments in the series.
“Through the Valley” is the second episode of the second season and is mainly centered around Abby’s fateful, tragic run-in with Joel, a twist of fate that would result in his death at the end of the episode. At the time of this article being written, “Through the Valley” is currently the highest-rated episode of the series with a 9.5/10 star rating on IMDb. While this is by and large a success, some fans had complaints concerning some changes.
Most of these changes are minor, but have seemingly major implications. For example, the show deviates from the game by having Joel killed while on patrol with Dina, Ellie’s love interest, rather than his brother Tommy, as in the game.
Still, it’s not hard to see how these tweaks to the story raise the stakes for several characters. Now, when Dina will eventually join Ellie in her search to get revenge on Abby, she will have a stronger motive, as she would probably feel some guilt from being present at Joel’s death.
Meanwhile, Tommy is protecting their community in Jackson, Wyoming, from a massive horde of zombies. This zombie horde scene is also something that was completely manufactured for the game, but it’s far from unnecessary, presenting an opportunity to raise the stakes for Tommy. As an important leader in Jackson, Tommy later chooses to abandon the community and his family to pursue revenge when they need him most will further justify the eventual rift that forms between him and his partner, Maria.
What’s more interesting than both of these alterations is a change that might have been affected by elements outside of the show.
In Joel’s death scene, after rendering him immobile, Abby delivers a long, emotional speech where she explains who she is, how Joel affected her, and why she intends to take out her revenge on him. This scene is far different in the game. In that version, when Joel asks Abby who she is, she simply tells him to guess.
Joel, a man who had ruined and ended the lives of countless people, earnestly has no idea where to even start. Instead, he dismissively says, “Why don’t you say whatever speech you’ve got rehearsed and get this over with?”
Unlike the show, however, Abby has no speech. She just picks up a golf club and gets straight to the act. Joel dies without knowing why he was murdered, and you, as the player, watch Joel die without knowing exactly who Abby is and what her motives are. You don’t discover much about Abby until roughly halfway through this (at least) 22-hour game.
At a certain point, the player is suddenly switched to Abby’s perspective after she and her crew return to Seattle, giving you a look into the life of the person whom Ellie has sworn to kill. There is also a flashback sequence where you experience the day that Abby’s life was forever changed: the day when Joel killed her father.
Because it takes so long in the game to learn Abby’s origin, her character, and whether she might’ve been justified in killing Joel, many players spend several hours of the game like Ellie: stewing in their hatred for Abby and seeking revenge. This hatred, unfortunately, finds its way of making it into the real world.
It’s hard to overstate how much Joel’s death provoked certain corners of the Internet. Laura Bailey, the voice actress who played Abby in the game, became the target of online death threats just for lending her voice to the character. There was valid concern that this same level of vitriol may be leveled against Abby’s live-action actress Kaitlyn Dever; so much so that pleas were made ahead of the second season to prevent any potential hate being sent Dever’s way.
In just one example, Vice published an article on March 15 titled “Internet, Can We Please Not Be Weird To/About Kaitlyn Dever in Season 2 of ‘The Last of Us’?” Dever’s co-stars have joined in on the effort to curb any potential hate campaigns, with Joel’s actor Pedro Pascal taking to Instagram a day after the release of “Through the Valley” to post a picture of him and Dever embracing on set.
Ellie’s actor, Bella Ramsey, also made sure to publicly defend their co-star in an interview with Capital Buzz, saying, “Nobody hate on Kaitlyn. Why would you do that? It’s just unnecessary.”
Ramsey also related the issue to the hate that they received when initially cast as Ellie. “I mean, people hate on me, too. People love to hate people, but I don’t necessarily enjoy that. And I just think that we’re playing characters, ok, and that’s all there is to it.” By having Abby explain her motivations early on, this quickly allows the audience to view things from her perspective and maybe even sympathize with her rather than spend weeks hating the character and potentially taking it out on Kaitlyn Dever.
The showrunners have not yet stated why they’ve decided to make any of these changes, but if there’s even the slightest chance they could enhance the story or, better yet, protect an innocent actress from the ire of parasocial “fans”, it’s alright with me. And, regardless of how dearly you hold the story and execution of “The Last Of Us Part II” in your heart, it should be alright with you too.