The Last of Us premiere was originally two episodes

HBO is starting the year off strong with The Last of Us, a new prestige zombie show with the second-largest premiere that HBO has had since 2010 (besides House of the Dragon). Based on the beloved video game by Naughty Dog, The Last of Us follows Joel (Pedro Pascal), a hardened survivor of the zombie apocalypse tasked with escorting a precocious teenager named Ellie (Bella Ramsey) across a ruined United States. Ellie is immune to the Cordyceps fungus that has turned the world inside out, and the hope is that scientists can use her immunity to create a cure.

The premise is simple, but the characters are complex. Joel and Ellie will go on quite a journey, and it will affect them both deeply. Their relationship gets off to a messy start as we saw in the premiere, as Joel snaps and beats a soldier to death to defend Ellie while she watches with grim fascination.

Showrunner Craig Mazin and The Last of Us creator Neil Druckmann have revealed that this climactic scene wasn’t originally planned for the premiere at all. Appearing on the first episode of HBO’s The Last of Us Podcast (hosted by none other than Troy Baker, who played Joel in the video games), Mazin and Druckmann explained how the show’s 85-minute premiere started out as two episodes before being combined into one mega-sized episode to better center Joel and Ellie’s relationship.

Why The Last of Us series premiere combined two episodes

According to Mazin, the show’s original premiere ended well before Joel and Ellie meet, but the brass at HBO pushed to get the two on screen together during the premiere.

“If we want to talk about things that we didn’t get right, episode one used to be episode one and episode two…It used to just end on the ’20 Years Later,’ and seeing the kid, and Joel throwing the kid in the fire. And that was it. That was episode one,” explained Druckman, who wrote the video game and is also a producer on the series.

“[HBO executives] Casey Bloys and [Francesca Orsi] — were saying [episode one] is not necessarily going to make me want to come back,” Mazin explained. “The whole season, the whole story of The Last of Us is about Joel and Ellie. If we only get a little glimpse of her at the end of episode one, and we don’t bring them together, and we don’t understand their journey, and just ends with a kid dying and then another kid dying and then credits, people may just not want to come back. It was important for them, because they love the show. It would hurt all of us in our hearts if they don’t want to come back.”

Mazin and Druckmann both feel that this was the right call. “And in hindsight the feedback makes complete sense,” Druckmann said. “We had a version where we ended on Ellie looking out the window, and you see that she’s changed. Oh, you’re like, ‘There’s a mystery here.’ But we haven’t established why you should care about this kid. We care about his kid because we know where this journey’s going and how important this kid is.”

"I remember when I worked on the game, this was always like a test for people. I’d be like, “What’s the inciting incident?” And they’d be like, “Oh, when Sarah dies, obviously.” Nope. It’s when Joel runs into Ellie. That’s the thing that changes his life. And I’m like, “We didn’t get to that moment. We have to get to that moment. That’s the start of this journey.” So that’s why in hindsight that feedback makes complete sense and the episode is so much better for it."

Right from the show’s logline and marketing art, it’s immediately clear that this is a story about Joel and Ellie and their journey. Getting to that in the first episode was smart.

We’ll find out what’s in store for the duo in the weeks ahead. New episodes of The Last of Us air Sundays on HBO and HBO Max.

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h/t Screen Rant