The season finale of HBO’s The Last of Us is finally here, and with it the end of all our hopes and dreams for a happy, neat ending for Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Joel (Pedro Pascal). After surviving all sorts of terrifying ordeals on their journey across the ruined United States, they finally found the Fireflies…but things didn’t work out the way any of them expected.
Let’s break down how “Look For The Light” compared to the bestselling The Last of Us video game by Naughty Dog. As always, there will be SPOILERS ahead.
Was Ellie’s mom in The Last of Us game?
Starting right at the top, the cold open shows Ellie’s mother Anna giving birth to her while fighting off an infected. This is a brand new sequence created for the show. We never see Anna in the video game, although we learn that she and Marlene were close through several of Marlene’s journals which Joel can stumble across while he’s fighting his way through the Firefly base.
The Last of Us: American Dreams comic book miniseries revealed more details about the relationship between Anna and Marlene, including how Marlene took care of baby Ellie and eventually passed on Anna’s switchblade. But it stopped short of ever actually showing us Ellie’s birth or Anna’s death.
By contrast, the series reveals the source of Ellie’s immunity: her mother was bitten by an infected during labor. This is a huge reveal; neither The Last of Us game nor its sequel ever explored how Ellie’s immunity worked or where it came from.
And of course, we have to mention that Anna is played by Ashley Johnson, the same actor who portrayed Ellie in the video game series. Considering that Marlene is played by Merle Dandridge in both the show and game, it adds a whole extra meta layer to when Anna and Marlene talk about how long they’ve known one another.
Topping it all off, this wonderfully layered scene takes place in an abandoned farmhouse. Golden fields surround it, with a broken down tractor just outside. A very similar setting plays a pivotal part in The Last of Us Part II.
Was Salt Lake City different in The Last of Us game?
That brings us to the present, where Joel and Ellie arrive in Salt Lake City to look for the Fireflies. This scene starts in the exact same way in the game, with Joel trying to speak to Ellie and her hardly hearing him because she’s in her own head. The flip in their personalities, with her acting withdrawn while Joel runs his mouth in an attempt to cheer her up is pretty much the same. There are minor differences, such as the inclusion of Boggle in the show, but on the whole this part hews pretty close to the game.
This includes the part when Joel and Ellie get an up-close look at a giraffe. This is an iconic scene from the game and the show adapts it beautifully. From the moment Joel finds the ladder and boosts Ellie up to the bit where they decide to carry on with their mission as they watch the herd…it’s all almost exactly the same as the game, with only a handful of minor dialogue differences.
Once the duo head back down to the streets, we get hit with perhaps the biggest deviation of the episode. In the game, Joel and Ellie travel through a system of underground tunnels on their way to Saint Mary’s Hospital, evading infected and clambering across vents suspended above a raging river. Joel eventually falls into the water, getting trapped in a sinking bus. Ellie tries to rescue him despite the fact that she can’t swim, leading to her falling in the water and nearly drowning. As Joel administers CPR, the Fireflies arrive and knock him out.
In the show, we skip the tunnels, the infected, and the river. Instead, a Firefly patrol drops a smoke bomb on Joel and Ellie shortly after they see the giraffes. They still knock him out just like in the game, but Ellie is conscious when it happens.