The Last of Us just wrapped up its second season, and the finale ends in a means that units up a significant change for the present. It’s one which displays an identical shift in perspective that fans of the game it’s adapting will keep in mind effectively: one designed to make viewers see the story in a complete new means.
This story comprises spoilers for the primary two seasons of The Final of Us, in addition to each video games.
After the relative peace and respite of season 2’s penultimate episode, which tracked Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie’s (Bella Ramsey) shifting relationship over the course of a number of years, the finale will get again to the darkish stuff. Particularly, Ellie’s quest to seek out and kill Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), who murdered Joel as revenge for killing her own father.
Regardless of being caught in a literal warzone in Seattle, and having a pregnant girlfriend who simply suffered a grievous damage, and listening to a speech from Jesse (Younger Mazino) in regards to the significance of eager about the nice of their neighborhood as a complete, it appears nothing can cease Ellie in her personal quest for revenge. So when she learns Abby is perhaps in a close-by aquarium, she abandons every thing to go there, solely to by chance kill two of Abby’s mates, one among whom is pregnant herself.
This second is pivotal in that it actually drives dwelling simply how decided Ellie is, and the way a lot violence she’s prepared to create and endure in pursuit of revenge. However it’s additionally not the top of the episode. The final two minutes immediately shift to Abby in a large settlement inside a baseball stadium. After following Ellie’s three-day-long quest, we see Abby alongside the phrases “Seattle: Day One.”
Picture: HBO
For many who have performed The Final of Us Half II, this mirrors the construction of the sport. Within the first half of the sport, Abby is a villain to be chased, earlier than gamers take management of her to see the identical time period by way of her eyes, turning her into a personality that you may each hate and sympathize with, a lot as Ellie steadily turns into. In accordance with co-showrunner Craig Mazin, one of many challenges of re-creating this second got here right down to the variations between video games and tv. The crew wished to get an identical feeling throughout, even understanding that it wouldn’t hit fairly as onerous.
“We are able to’t reproduce the shock of changing into an individual,” Mazin stated throughout a press Q&A forward of the finale. “Within the video games you might be Joel, you might be Ellie, you might be Abby. When that shift occurs it’s jarring as a result of you could have been somebody. However right here we’re watching all people equally on a display screen.” He added, “What we’re doing is honoring the notion that there’s a time interval the place one particular person experiences it a method, and one other is experiencing it so wildly completely different, and but they converge.”
The suggestion is that season 3 will largely observe Abby’s aspect of the story, one thing that Neil Druckmann, co-showrunner and in addition inventive director of the video games, alluded to. “Had we ended this season someplace else, like a number of moments earlier than, I feel we wouldn’t be making the correct promise of what that is about,” Druckmann stated. “We’re telling you that subsequent season, one, there may be simply an epic nature to what’s about to occur, and two, this different story goes to be actually essential.”
This doesn’t imply there gained’t be Ellie in season 3 — or Joel, for that matter — because the TV present has been pretty liberal with shifting moments around to better suit its own style of storytelling. So it’s not possible that season 3 can be solely, and even primarily, from Abby’s perspective. However studying her aspect of the story can be essential, notably for the way it each mirrors and differs from Ellie’s perspective and makes viewers root for or towards each events.
“We perceive that each Ellie and Abby are shifting ahead in hassle,” defined Mazin. “They’re in ethical hassle, as a result of their certainty is starting to fail them, and we are able to see it right here with Ellie for positive. As a result of confronted with the implications of the factor she’s carried out, and the those that didn’t should die dying, she’s beginning to really feel perhaps a swing of the pendulum.”
Even nonetheless, including in a 3rd main character to sympathize with will mark a significant shift for the present going ahead, a lot as killing off Joel was for season 2. And Mazin believes it is a core a part of the construction of the collection. “This present goes to be a distinct present each season,” he stated.