The Last of Us has come to the end of its first season, which adapted the Naughty Dog game of the same name in an incredibly accurate manner.
The HBO show saw Joel Miller (Pedro Pascal) save Ellie Williams (Bella Ramsey) in the only way he knows how, with violence.
But Joel’s actions in the Season 1 finale will have major consequences on the franchise’s future, at least if the second game is anything to go by. Here is everything that The Last of Us Part 2 game tells us
Warning: This article contains major spoilers for The Last of Us Part 2 game and the Season 1 finale of the HBO show.
Show co-creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann spoke to reporters at a virtual press conference ahead of the Season 1 finale, and the pair shared some details about their plans for Season 2.
Mazin addressed the lack of infected that appear in the first season, explaining that they wanted to stress “the power of relationships and trying to find significance within moments of action” which meant there were less encounters with the creatures in the first season compared to the game.
“There may be less action than some people wanted because we couldn’t necessarily find significance for quite a bit of it, or [there was] concern that it would be repetitive,” Mazin said.
“After all, you’re not playing it, you’re watching it. And although a lot of people do like to watch gameplay, it needs to be a little more focused and purposeful when we’re putting it on TV.”
However, Mazin teased that in Season 2 it is “quite possible that there will be a lot more infected later. And perhaps different kinds.”
He added that the story for Season 2 may not necessarily play out as close to the original game as Season 1 does with The Last of Us Part I
Mazin shared: “We will present things, but it will be different, just as this season was different.
“Sometimes it will be different radically, and sometimes it will be barely different at all, but it’s going to be different. It will be its own thing. It won’t be exactly like the game. It will be the show that Neil and I want to make.”
The Last of Us ended the same way as the first game, with Joel killing everyone in the hospital he took Ellie to when he learned the operation to find a cure for the Cordyceps Brain Infection would kill her in the process. Joel also read to Ellie about what happened at the hospital.
The Last of Us Part II is set four years after these events, Joel and Ellie live in Jackson, Wyoming, with Tommy and their fellow survivors. But things take a dark turn when Joel and Tommy help save a woman named Abby Anderson from a hoard of Infected.
Joel and Tommy take Abby to their group, who are comprised of former Fireflies members, named the Washington Liberation Front (WLF). It is then that Abby and her team attack the brothers, and as this is going on, Ellie and her girlfriend Dina go in search of them.
Abby, it is revealed, is the daughter of the doctor that Joel had killed in order to save Ellie all those years before, and she kills him to get revenge.
Ellie watches as Joel is murdered and his death leads her to try and avenge him, and she goes on a journey across America in order to find and kill Abby.
Whether Joel’s death or Ellie’s journey is presented in the same way in Season 2 of the show as it is in the game is yet to be seen. Given Mazin remarked that some things will be “different radically” in the show compared to the game, fans will just have to wait and see.
The Last of Us Season 1 is available to watch on HBO and HBO Max now.
The Last of Us has come to the end of its first season, which adapted the Naughty Dog game of the same name in an incredibly accurate manner.
