How did The Last of Us change Ellie and Riley from the video game?

Does Riley die in The Last of Us game? (And does Ellie kill Riley?)

In both the game and the show, this beautiful moment leads to tragedy when the loud music Ellie and Riley are dancing to draws infected. In the game they’re attacked by a small group of infected which pursues them through the mall. Just as it seems Ellie and Riley are about to escape, Ellie slips and falls. Riley comes back for her, which leads to both of them being bitten.

In the show, they fight a single infected in the Halloween store. But the slow, belated realization that they’ve both been bitten, and their reaction to it, is pretty much the same in the show as it is in the game. We finally see the crosscutting from the Left Behind show up as the scene flashes back and forth between Ellie smashing things in the past and ransacking the house for supplies in the present.

Ellie and Riley’s final moments together are extremely faithful to the game. Most of that dialogue, including Riley’s iconic line that they could “just be all poetic and shit and lose [their] minds together” are from the game.

In both the game and television series, we don’t see what actually happens to Riley. The last time we see her is when she and Ellie decide to wait out the cordyceps infection rather than take their own lives. We get confirmation later on in the game that Riley eventually succumbed to the infection and turned; meanwhile, Ellie discovered she was immune.

The game never clarifies whether Ellie was forced to take Riley’s life or whether she left her behind as an infected. All we know, from a quote which crops up near the end of the story, is that in Ellie’s mind, Riley is dead. “Her name was Riley and she was the first to die,” Ellie eventually admits to Joel. But how exactly Riley died is one of The Last of Us’ enduring mysteries.

The Last of Us premieres new episodes Sundays on HBO and HBO Max.

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