The following article contains spoilers for both Episode 2 of The Last of Us Season 2 and the video game The Last of Us Part 2.
Abby kills Joel. It’s the inciting incident of The Last of Us Part 2, developer Naughty Dog’s darkly violent sequel to its fungal zombie apocalypse hit. Unsurprisingly for a project that mostly adheres to its source material like industrial strength super glue, HBO’s television adaptation also features this shocking moment rendered in live action. It’s the crescendo of the second season’s second episode, and so occurs exactly where it needs to in order to set the wheels of Ellie’s quest for vengeance in motion. But the show’s recreation of Joel Miller’s final moments falls short of the game’s brutal, shocking sequence due to several creative decisions that weaken the bloody blow.
The problems begin an episode prior. Season 2 opens with the reveal that Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) is seeking revenge on Joel (Pedro Pascal) following his rampage through the Fireflies’ Salt Lake City hospital in the finale of season one. As the first episode’s opening scene, this acts as the season’s mission statement: this story is about Abby’s pledge to kill Joel. There’s an unspoken promise that we’ll learn more about her motives, more about her past, and build empathy with a character who wants to kill the lead protagonist. There’s a lot the show needs to do to get us on board with her quest, but hey, this will be an interesting ride towards what’s sure to be a shocking season finale.
One week later, Joel is dead. It’s as if we hit the end of the line before we’d even started.
The timing of Joel’s demise may be faithful to the video game’s timeline, but the context in which it is delivered changes everything. In the game, Joel’s death comes with no warning. You have no idea who Abby is, nor why she hates Joel with such venom. It’s a confusing, shocking moment that sets up Ellie’s mission to kill the evil woman who took away her father figure for reasons unknown. It’s only at the game’s midpoint, when the perspective shifts and you’re forced to play as the “villain”, do you learn that Abby has sympathetic motivations for her actions – Joel killed her father when he rescued Ellie from the Fireflies. It’s an ingenious twist that challenges you to empathise with a character you’ve learned to hate over ten hours of play.
In this week’s episode of the show, Abby plainly explains her motivations to Joel moments before she kills him. Bringing such revelations to the forefront is not inherently a mistake, but it does change the shape of the story. Rather than a straight-up villain, Abby is introduced as something closer to the protagonist she eventually becomes in the second half of the game, and as a result, the moment of Joel’s murder is transformed into a much more complex event. In theory, this setup should have us torn between two conflicting viewpoints. But for that to work, those viewpoints need to be whole. And by killing Joel in episode two, showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann have failed to solidify those viewpoints. Had this season delayed Joel’s death by introducing more original material, we’d have had the opportunity to learn more about Abby’s journey toward this moment. As it stands, Abby has so far had less than a handful of scenes to establish her character, while Joel has had an entire season and change. When the golf club strikes, there’s no escaping it: Abby is the villain here, despite what you know of her motives.
Season 1 offers up a good example of what could have been. “Long, Long Time,” arguably the season’s strongest episode, depicts the turbulent romantic life of Bill and Frank. It’s all brand new material, showcasing a period of time not explored by the game. A similar episode illustrating Abby’s life during the five-year time gap between seasons may well exist further down the line, but its inclusion before Joel’s death would have better supported the creative decision to make Abby’s motives clear ahead of the incident.
Such an episode would also help address the issue of Abby’s physique. In The Last of Us Part 2, Abby is built like an MMA fighter. She’s tall and incredibly muscular. In the show, she’s played by Kaitlyn Dever and looks just like Kaitlyn Dever. Talking to Entertainment Weekly, Neil Druckmann explained that Dever had not bulked up for the role because Abby’s size was related to gameplay rather than story: “Abby was meant to play more like Joel in that she’s almost like a brute in the way she can physically manhandle certain things,” he said. “That doesn’t play as big of a role in this version of the story because there’s not as much violent action moment to moment. It’s more about the drama.”
I’m surprised by Druckmann’s comments because Abby’s physique doesn’t really provide any meaningful gameplay contrast between herself and Ellie in the game, aside from being able to wield slightly heavier weaponry. It does, however, play a significant role in the dramatic heft of the story. During the first half of the game, her stature preys on gender stereotypes; the story assumes you’ll buy into the idea that a woman with masculine features must be evil. When the story flips, Abby’s physique tells the tale of a woman who has spent five years sculpting herself into a weapon with a singular purpose. She has sacrificed everything in order to kill Joel. It’s a physical marker of what the thirst for revenge will do to a person, and represents just how concrete Abby’s dedication to her goal is.
Had the show’s version of Abby been of the same build as her video game counterpart, it would have helped illustrate what happened in the five years between the season’s first scene and Joel’s death. Sure, it wouldn’t be a detailed illustration, but it would be clear that Joel’s actions took their toll and he’s about to pay the price. In the absence of Abby’s physical transformation, what we ideally need is a depiction of how the character mentally sculpted herself into a weapon. Again, this may well exist further into the season, but including it ahead of Joel’s death would better capitalise on the show’s changes to how it presents Abby.
Mazin and Druckmann’s new approach to Abby isn’t the only issue with the show’s version of this tragic event, though. Much of this second episode is dedicated to a Game of Thrones-scale assault on Jackson, with hundreds of infected breaking through the town’s walls. In isolation, this is an incredible piece of television, and a fantastic example of the show introducing original material to the story. But the impact of this event is so strong that it almost overshadows Joel’s death, which is uncontestably the more important moment. The inciting incident of Ellie’s journey shouldn’t be fighting for space, and the time leading into it would have been better served by building tension rather than burning bloaters.
My hope for this season of The Last of Us was that it would have more conviction to tread its own path. As strong as Season 1 was, for much of its runtime it had the air of some (very well-funded) cosplayers performing reenactments of the game’s cinematic cutscenes. Season 2 certainly feels bolder than its predecessor so far, but the changes being made feel rooted in a lack of confidence in the material being adapted rather than the bravery to tread its own path. The game’s unforgettable mid-story twist is exchanged for a cards-on-the-table opening in the name of making sure viewers feel the “right” things about Abby, but the subsequent story beats throughout the first two episodes are not rewritten to make the most of that change. The result is a rendition of Joel’s death that, while practically a facsimile of the original version in terms of the physical events, feels morally confused and dramatically stunted.
For fans of the game, it will be immediately clear which version of this story offers the stronger depiction of this event. But the real issue is not Joel’s death itself, but everything that happens around it. If the season has bungled the framing of its vital inciting incident, will the story threads that spiral out of it stand up to scrutiny? When it comes to Abby, The Last of Us Season 2’s remaining episodes will need to tread a smart path in order to justify its new design, not just to old players, but to new audiences, too.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s Senior Features Editor.
