Note: This story contains spoilers from “The Last of Us” Season 2, Episode 7.
Sunday’s action-packed Season 2 finale of HBO’s “The Last of Us” finally saw the return of Kaitlyn Dever’s Abby as she and Ellie finally came face-to-face in Seattle.
Episode 7 saw the latter’s revenge quest take her to the Seattle aquarium, where she killed Abby’s friends Owen and Mel. After ditching Jesse earlier in the episode, he and Tommy finally catch up to a now distraught Ellie, who realizes that Mel was pregnant.
But after returning to the theater, Tommy says that they got what they deserved and the trio decide they’ll head home in the morning and let Abby alive — which Ellie begrudgingly accepts. But then Abby shows up for her own revenge, killing Jesse and holding Tommy and Ellie at gunpoint.
Ellie tosses her weapon and confesses that she killed Abby’s friends and takes the blame for Joel’s actions in the Season 1 finale. Abby replies, “I let you live and you wasted it!,” and points her gun at Ellie. But as the gunshot goes off their feud is left on a cliffhanger as everything cuts to black. The final moment transports viewers back to Seattle Day 1, but this time from Abby’s perspective.
“There is another side to this story that we have yet to really delve into. And there’s no question that Abby is the hero of her story. Where we go next, all I can say is it will always be centering on somebody, whether it’s Ellie and Dina or whether it’s Abby,” co-creator Craig Mazin said. “But really, if you want to boil it down, everything is under the cloud or sunlight of Joel — what Joel did to Abby and what Joel did for Ellie — and that will never change.”
A natural end point
When it came to adapting “The Last of Us Part II,” Mazin and co-creator Neil Druckmann had many discussions about how they wanted to structure the second season of the HBO series, including where to end it. Ultimately, where they landed felt like a “natural end point,” Druckmann said.
“Had we ended the season somewhere else, like a few moments before, I think that we wouldn’t be making the right promise of what this is about,” he explained. “We’re telling you next season that one, there’s just an epic nature to what’s about to happen, but also this other story is going to be really important coming back to Joel and Ellie and everything that you’ve seen so far.”
“We considered everything,” Mazin added. “Of course, you want to play around, like, maybe we should just interlace the stories, maybe we should just go back and forth, maybe we should try this, maybe try that. And then in the end, I just remember saying, ‘Isn’t this part of the genetics of how this story functions?’ It’s just part of the genetics.”
Much like killing off Pedro Pascal’s Joel early on, ending Season 2 on the cliffhanger moment and setting up a shift in perspective to Abby for Season 3 was a risk that HBO was willing to back.
“They understand that this show is going to be a different show every season, which is a sort of a tricky thing to do when you’re a hit show,” Mazin said.
Making changes
Despite sticking to many of the major story beats of the source material, the Season 2 finale episode also features a fair number of changes.
Among them were Ellie’s terrifying detour to the Seraphite island where she’s nearly lynched, which Druckmann said was material left on the cutting room floor from when he was developing the game.
The finale also spared two animals from the video game: Ellie’s horse Shimmer, who Jesse revealed is alive and well; and Alice, Mel and Owen’s dog who Ellie stabs to death when she first enters the aquarium.
“We had like three horrible things in a row: that [Seraphite] sequence, Alice and then Mel,” Druckmann said. “And in our conversation, we’re like [Alice is] probably one too many.”
“There are two cardinal rules in Hollywood. One, don’t spend your own money. Two, don’t kill a dog,” Mazin said. “It’s very disturbing. And we know what was going to happen to Mel and Owen was disturbing and also what had just happened to Ellie was disturbing.
“You don’t want to feel exploitative, you don’t want to feel like you’ve crossed some line, so you make some choices,” he added.
Sealed fates
Despite sparing the animals, the deaths of Mel, Owen and Jesse were key moments from the source material that were always going to be included.
When asked if the pair ever considered sparing the latter from the death for the HBO adaptation, Druckmann said, “I don’t think we ever entertained an alternative. His fate was always sealed.”
As for the death of Mel, Druckmann admits that it was made even darker in the show than in the game. “But sometimes we have to go there,” he said. “It was important for this moment if you’re rooting for Ellie to make you feel dirty, because that’s what collateral damage does.”
“I think it’s clear to [Ellie] that Mel didn’t deserve to die. Mel didn’t hurt her, Mel didn’t hold her down, Mel didn’t hurt Joel,” Mazin explained. “Even more than that, we saw before Ellie shows up in the room [in episode 2], Mel is trying to help and is horrified by what Abby is doing and tries to stop it and fails, which is her own shame.”
“I think it’s important for people to see that it’s not like Ellie is going ‘I’m cool, whatever, it happened, let’s keep going for Abby.’ This breaks her,” he added.
Moving forward in moral trouble
When it comes to what to expect in Season 3, Mazin said Ellie and Abby are both moving forward in “moral trouble.”
“Their certainty is beginning to fail them, and we can see it here with Ellie for sure, because faced with the consequences of the things she’s done and people that didn’t deserve to die, she’s starting to feel maybe a swing of the pendulum, and we don’t know where these two are going to end,” he explained. “What I would hope the audience feels is that they are not done. They’re not done growing, or they are not done falling. We’ll have to wait and see which it is.”
“All I can say is we haven’t seen the last of Kaitlyn Dever and we haven’t seen the last of Bella Ramsey,” Mazin added. “And we haven’t seen the last of Isabela Merced and we haven’t even seen the last of a lot of people who are currently dead in the story.”
“The Last of Us” Seasons 1-2 are now streaming on Max.
The post ‘The Last of Us’ Creators on What’s Next After Deadly Finale Cliffhanger: ‘This Is Going to Be a Different Show Every Season’ appeared first on TheWrap.