The latest episode of The Last of Us, "Through the Valley," reached into fans' chest cavities, pulled out their hearts, and ate them. A horrible moment from The Last of Us was finally adapted for the screen: Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) brutally killed lead character Joel (Pedro Pascal) in front of his surrogate daughter Ellie (Bella Ramsey).
The scene stayed pretty faithful to the version from The Last of Us Part II video game, but there were some differences. For instance, in the game, we don't see Abby explain why she's killing Joel. On the show, she explains that she's doing it out of revenge for Joel killing her father (and a lot of other people) in the season 1 finale. Joel was doing that to try and save Ellie from getting killed herself, but Abby is clearly not interested in hearing his excuses.
"It's really just about imagining how angry she is and how hurt, but also how correct she is in her mind," co-showrunner Craig Mazin told Entertainment Weekly about adding in Abby's monologue. "What is important for her to convey is that what he did was wrong. The end. Guilty. Sentenced to die. No argument. No debate. No nothing. I do love how Pedro portrayed this kind of acceptance of it there. The truth is, what he did is what she's doing now. We kill for the people we love. Joel has an experience that neither Ellie nor Abby have — and we're going to explore this further in the season — and that is the experience of loving a child, which is different than being a child and loving a parent."
in general, we know more about Abby up front on the show than we did in the game. That's very much intentional. "I guess for us, one we’re not as precious about spoilers, maybe, as I was in the game initially, but I like this trade off that we’ve made, which is, we traded surprise for suspense," co-showrunner Neil Druckmann explained to Deadline. "If you see the structure of the first episode, we kind of reveal what Abby’s about so that we could have this final shot where she’s arrived at Jackson. As a viewer, you’re like, ‘Oh my god, something’s about to go down.’ I’ve been reading every reaction I could find, just because I love that stuff, and it’s interesting that a lot of the people that are bumping against it, they’re saying, ‘Oh, I wish the audience that didn’t know would still be surprised.’"
Why was Dina with Joel rather than Tommy?
Another big change is that, in the game, Joel is with his brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna) when he encounters Abby and her friends. On the show, Joel is patrolling with Ellie's love interest Dina (Isabela Merced) instead. Why did they change that?
"This was part of conversations we had very, very early on of showing the relationship between Dina and Joel that you’ve seen in Episode 1, and this is the extension of that decision that we’ve made…which will have a big impact going forward as well," Druckmann said. "It’s something that in the game, we talk about Dina having a relationship with Joel. You never get to see it. Here, we felt like this was a good choice for this show to see that and to have her specifically be present at that moment of confrontation."
Mazin weighed in as well: "It certainly makes their voyage forward — should that occur, you understand Dina’s motivations, because there is a mechanical benefit to Dina in the game. We don’t have that mechanical benefit. So the question really was, how do we connect Dina to this tragedy in a way that is deeper than just ‘I’m Ellie’s friend.’
"Early on, we talked a lot about clarifying, or at least demonstrating, how much Dina cared about Joel...Dina DID care deeply about Joel. To put Dina in that spot and to make her a front-row participant in this murder, it connects us more to her. Her choice to stay by Ellie's side through thick and thin from this point forward is motivated just as much by her loss as it is by her friendship with Ellie."
So putting Dina at the scene of the crime, so to speak, gives her more of a personal investment when she and Ellie inevitably go after Abby to try and get their own revenge. Bella Ramsey sees that getting complicated: "They've become trauma bonded, in a way, but there's also an element of resentment," Ramsey said. "I think there was some real jealousy. Dina got to be with him, Dina got to spend that last day with him, and there's a lot of guilt and regret on Ellie's part. That was just a little thing that I was laced into, what I took afterwards, especially when they speak about it for the first time."
Why did they add that huge battle scene?
While Joel, Ellie and Dina are trapped away from the town of Jackson, Tommy and the rest of the townsfolk are fending off a brutal zombie attack, something that does not happen in the game at all. Why would the show add in a hugely expensive action sequence here? According to Druckmann, they wanted to demonstrate "what could happen to Jackson when its defenses are down or when they're attacked in a really pivotal way."
"We really wanted to talk about community. This was something that we just couldn't do in the game because we were so dogmatic about POV; you're only seeing events either through Ellie's eyes or Abby's eyes, that's it, in the game...[But in the show] you're seeing Tommy go from 'I'm trying to save the town' to all of a sudden, 'No, no, I'm trying to save Maria, because as much as I care about everybody else in this town, there's two people in this town that I care about more,' and that's his wife and his son."
All of it added up to a pretty spectacular hour of television. New episodes of The Last of Us air Sunday nights on HBO and Max.
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