As you may already know, The Last Of Us capped off its second season on HBO with considerably lower ratings. While it apparently urged gamers to go back and play The Last Of Us Part 2, that doesn’t seem to be for the same reasons that Amazon’s Fallout show led to fans going back to play Fallout games.
The official The Last Of Us HBO Twitter account shared this excerpt from their podcast. Showrunner and co-creator Craig Mazin, who won Emmys for season 1, said this:
Look for the devil, the devil’s gonna find you. And Abby, seemingly is not like Ellie, in that Abby is incredibly competent.
We don’t know yet how she found them. But we that Abby must have found Owen and Mel, and you can only imagine what Abby thought when she saw that.
And when Abby shows up in the theater, she doesn’t screw up. She gets Tommy on the ground as a hostage, she shoots Jesse the instant he comes out the door. She is in complete control of the situation.
And at last, here they are, Abby and Ellie staring at each other in this incredible confrontation. And obviously, we’re not done with this scene. But it is gorgeous acting by Kaitlyn Dever and Bella Ramsey here.
Particularly because we can see now in Ellie that all of her desire at last to punish is gone, at least for now, because she’s lost too many people. She lost whoever Mel’s baby was, it’s gone. She got them killed. She got Mel killed. She got Jesse killed.
She cannot bear to see Tommy killed or, God help her, Dina who’s somewhere back there in the theater.
Many fans immediately recoiled in horror, and perhaps some well-earned indignation. Before this podcast came up, and in the middle of the second season, fans were already noticing that the changes Naughty Dog and HBO’s production made to the story were not favorable to Ellie’s characterization.
Paul Tassi, writing for Forbes, spoke to this sentiment, in an article titled: ‘The Last Of Us’ Showrunner Says Ellie Is Incompetent Compared To Abby
He said this:
In the second game, Ellie activates that potential and becomes a revenge-fueled killing machine that is a match for Abby, which is a key part of the game. It’s not that Abby never gets the drop on her, but calling Abby “competent” compared to the bumbling kid that Ellie has morphed into in season 2 is so frustrating.
This idea that Ellie is just a dumb kid flying by the seat of her pants is so misaligned with every part of the second game, as at one point (spoilers) she acts as an actual, terrifying level boss as you fight as Abby, more than a “competent” match for her.
Tassi goes on to argue that not only does season 2 change Ellie unfavorably compared to the game, it’s also a departure from her characterization in the 1st season of the HBO show.
Washington Post writer Gene Park shared a different opinion on Twitter. He said this:
I think Craig is not implying Ellie is “incompetent,” but that Abby is being portrayed (even in the game) as a calculated, enigmatic trained soldier.
again, the problem is that Ellie in the show is NOT shown to also be trained outside of the one MMA scene from the 1st episode. we desperately needed Ellie action scenes to contrast her scrappy approach to combat against Abby’s military-like training.
unless the show’s intent was to showcase Ellie as inexperienced and childlike, in which case they were successful and i think is the core of many people’s issues with her portrayal
While Park somewhat argues that Mazin is really speaking more to Abby’s strengths than Ellie’s weaknesses, he does acknowledge that many fans dislike the changes made to Ellie.
In a recent interview, the same Craig Mazin has hinted that season 3 will actually step away from Ellie, and may tell more of Abby’s story. So, it is very much possible that Mazin, with some degree of approval from Naughty Dog and Neil Druckmann, chose to emphasize Abby’s story in the HBO adaptation.
For fans who had to play through The Last Of Us Part 2 as Abby and disliked it, this may feel completely unsavory. But it may also be in line with Druckmann’s intention to get gamers to find some way to empathize with a character they already set up to be an antagonist.
It’s certainly an interesting idea to explore more of Naughty Dog’s existing characters in an alternate universe, by telling a completely different story. Fans were not entirely onboard this season, so will they be able to turn it around for the next one? We’ll see if Mazin proves that he had a broader plan behind all this sometime in the future.
