With The Last Of Us Season 2, HBO Has A Tricky Tightrope To Walk

This column was originally published as part of our newsletter The Daily Show on February 28, 2024. Subscribe here. (We're awesome about not spamming your inbox!)

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IT'S BEEN nearly a year since the shocking (less so if you’d played the eponymous videogame) conclusion to the first season of The Last of Us. And after a steady trickle of new casting announcements — Kaitlyn Dever (as Abby), Young Mazino (Jesse), Isabela Merced (Dina) and Catherine O’Hara — in addition to returning actors Bella Ramsey (Ellie), Pedro Pascal (Joel), news is in that the second season of the show has begun filming over in Vancouver.

Further, Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann return to helm the television adaptation of game developer Naughty Dog’s divisive The Last of Us Part II that launched on PlayStation 4 back in 2020. While the first game and indeed the first season of the HBO series featured a relatively straightforward story with a host of emotional beats, the sequel is a more complicated affair. As such, there are certain story and character arcs that will need to be handled carefully, and the showrunners will have to be particularly vigilant to ensure they don’t lose their audience by fluffing the lines.

However, before we go any further, it behoves me to issue this warning: Extremely heavy spoilers follow and if you haven’t played The Last of Us Part II, you really should stop here. Please return after you’ve completed it.

With that out of the way, let’s proceed and the first area that will have to be handled extremely deftly is the early twist. 

Traversing the Joel Miller Conundrum

If Helen of Troy had “the face that launched a thousand ships”, then The Last of Us Part II had the character death that pissed off a million fanboys (and girls). While nowhere near as catchy, it was definitely as devastating, if the whining and griping in the wake of the leak that Joel Miller is killed in the opening hours of the game was anything to go by. You did pay attention to that spoiler warning above, right?

As a narrative device in a video game, it worked magnificently in terms of galvanising both the protagonist, Ellie, and the player by giving them an emotional impetus and a clear motivation for their actions. Sure, it was a controversial move and riled up a considerable chunk of the fanbase, but so what? Art is often controversial. Back to the show version and HBO is no stranger to suddenly killing off fan-favourite characters (looking at you here, Game of Thrones), so this shouldn’t be too difficult to execute. However, given the massive acclaim Pascal received for his turn as Joel in the first season, it will be difficult to fill the void left by his early departure. The trap HBO must do all it can to avoid is making the second season unnecessarily flashback-heavy, particularly in order to keep Joel around.

Juggling Two Protagonists

This brings us rather neatly to the second point: Fleshing out two protagonists. Another move that raised the hackles of a percentage of the fanbase was that players would essay the role of Abby for around half the game. It may be recalled that Abby was the one who brutally killed Joel. The game fleshes out her backstory and motives quite well, however, it will be quite a task for the much shorter medium of a TV series to do the same — particularly when it’s got Ellie’s pathos and evolution to chart out.

Considering both Abby and Ellie are equally important when it comes to the overall story, it’s going to require a deft hand to do justice to both their story arcs. This is also why the showrunners must not get too bogged down with Joel flashbacks (for fan service or otherwise). There simply isn’t enough time.

Making Abby “Likeable”

After her introduction as a tough-as-nails and ruthless villain, the game takes its own sweet time to contextualise her and her backstory. And by the game’s denouement, you find yourself empathising with her struggle. Or at least you are supposed to. A number of players decried Naughty Dog’s attempts to shoehorn forced empathy for a character who arrives on the scene to commit such a reprehensible act at the start of the game.

Over the ebbs and flows of her story arc, Abby gains a sense of perspective not only about Ellie and her companions, but also the third faction introduced by the game — the cult known as the Seraphites. But is her arrival at this understanding earned? That’s the poser HBO will need to answer.

Exercising Restraint

Druckmann, The Last of Us creator, has alluded on occasion to the fact that his vision for the second game was to be an allegory of sorts of the Israel-Palestine situation. If a bit heavy-handed and simplistic, this was fine back in 2020 when the game originally released (it was subsequently re-released for PlayStation 5 in January this year). However, the situation in that part of the world has disintegrated so catastrophically that the allegory barely stands up to scrutiny anymore. If anything, it feels like a whitewashing and denial of the ground reality that prevails there. As such, HBO will have to revisit some of the game’s tropes and storylines, and most importantly, exercise restraint with the political messaging.

Another area that will require a great deal of restraint is the game’s tedious third act that drags on and serves largely to prolong its length. It will be interesting to see if the showrunners decide to abandon that section and instead end the season shortly after the second act — the more logical ending to the saga.

Avoiding Peter Jackson-esque Tendencies

The Last of Us Part II video game is over twice as long as its predecessor. As a result, it’s perfectly plausible that its TV adaptation is spread over two (or more) parts. This is a tendency that must be avoided since it will only serve to water down the impact of the story overall. A case in point is the aforementioned Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy running over eight hours in total in service of a book spanning 300-odd pages.

The danger with splitting The Last of Us Part II’s story is that it relies on a sustained focus on the themes of revenge and reconciliation. Certainly, revenge is a dish best served cold, but with enough of a pause even the best revenge tale can turn rather lifeless.

Whether or not all this shakes out that way remains to be seen. Fortunately, you only have to wait a year or so to find out.

The first season of the The Last of Us is currently streaming on JioCinema