The Last of Us: 8 biggest changes from the video game in season 1

8. We learn exactly what happened to Riley

In true The Last of Us fashion, let’s end with one more emotional sucker punch. The show’s seventh episode, “Left Behind,” pulls back the curtain on Ellie’s backstory to show us how she was first bitten while at the mall with her best friend and first crush Riley. Ellie and Riley’s story is adapted extremely faithfully from the Left Behind expansion to the original game. The episode makes a few surface-level changes, but on the whole it’s probably the single most game-accurate segment of the TV show.

Following the fateful moment where Ellie and Riley are bitten, the episode shifts back to the present, where Ellie is trying to keep Joel alive following him getting injured. In neither the game nor the show do we see how Riley dies.

And just like the game, the show circles back around to Riley at the end, with Ellie revealing the details of her death to Joel as they have a heart-to-heart on the hill overlooking Jackson. But the show goes one step further than the game by having Ellie admit that she was the one who killed Riley after she turned. This tied into an earlier bit of foreshadowing in Kansas City where Ellie claimed she had killed someone before. That someone was Riley.

This change might seem small, but considering that the exact details of Riley’s death have been an enduring mystery for years, it’s worth noting.

The Last of Us season 2 will adapt The Last of Us Part II. How will the show change that game? See you in a couple years to find out.

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