There are implied SPOILERS below if you don’t know what happens in the video game The Last of Us Part II.
The first season of the HBO TV series adaptation of the video game The Last of Us (read our review HERE) covered the entirety of the events players know from the first game, so the second season of the show, which isn’t expected to start filming until the end of this year or early next year, will be based on the second game, The Last of Us Part II. Showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann – who was also creative director on the video games – have said it’s going to take more that one season to bring the story of The Last of Us Part II to the screen… but those who are familiar with the game know that there’s a major event early on that shakes things up in a huge way. During a recent interview with Esquire, Mazin and series stars Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey addressed the idea of bringing that event into the show.
Here’s the section of the Esquire article that deals with this topic:
If you’ve played The Last of Us Part II, which millions of people have, you know that . . . something kind of major happens to Joel. Season 1 of the TV series has taken some liberties while still following the plot of the first game fairly closely. So it’s fair to assume that we’ll have to prepare ourselves for, let us say, a show with a lot less Joel in it. Ramsey has not come to terms with the possibility. “If that does take place in the show,” she says, “I don’t know that I’m emotionally ready for it.” Mazin isn’t talking. “This should be fairly obvious to anyone by now, but I don’t fear killing characters,” he says. “But the important thing to note is that neither Neil nor I feel constrained by the source material.” Pascal hasn’t played the game or watched the scene where the thing happens, but he knows about it. And while he has no information about where the writers will go, he says, “It wouldn’t make sense to follow the first game so faithfully only to stray severely from the path.” He looks at me, eyes lit up with mischief, and shrugs again. “So, yeah, that’s my honest answer.”
The story of the The Last of Us video game is set years after a fungal plague wiped out much of humanity, transforming most into vicious zombie-like monsters, the story follows Joel, who’s living in a militarized quarantine zone. He has a close relationship with Tess, who operates in the black market of this community. Together, they’ve become known by the local criminal underworld for their ruthlessness. On a mission to reclaim their stolen guns, they run into the leader of the Fireflies, a resistance group, who tasks them with smuggling a young girl named Ellie out of the zone. This mission soon becomes much more than they were prepared for.
Pascal plays Joel, who is “tormented by past trauma and failure. He must trek across a pandemic-ravaged America, all the while protecting a girl who represents the last hope of humanity”. He is joined in the cast by Ramsey as Ellie, “a 14-year-old orphan who has never known anything but a ravaged planet and who struggles to balance her instinct for anger and defiance with her need for connection and belonging… as well as the newfound reality that she may be the key to saving the world”; Anna Torv as Tess, “a smuggler and hardened survivor in a post-pandemic world”; Gabriel Luna as Joel’s brother Tommy, “a former soldier who hasn’t lost his sense of idealism and hope for a better world”; Merle Dandridge as Marlene, “the head of the Fireflies, a resistance movement struggling for freedom against an oppressive military regime”; Nico Parker as Joel’s daughter Sarah; Jeffrey Pierce as Perry, “a rebel in a quarantine zone”; Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett as Bill and Frank, “two post-pandemic survivalists living alone in their own isolated town”; and Storm Reid as Ellie’s best friend Riley.
Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson, who did the motion-capture performances for Joel and Ellie in the video game, are also in the cast of the show. Baker plays James, “a senior member of a group of settlers who must fight to keep their community alive in the face of increasingly brutal odds.” Baker also hosts a podcast that serves as a companion to the TV series. Johnson’s character is Anna, “a pregnant woman, alone and on the run, who must give birth under the most terrifying of circumstances.”
The Last of Us is a co-production with Sony Pictures Television, PlayStation Productions, Word Games, The Mighty Mint, and game developer Naughty Dog. Druckmann serves as executive producer alongside Carolyn Strauss, Naughty Dog’s Evan Wells, Asad Qizilbash and Carter Swan of PlayStation Productions, and Mazin.
How do you think The Last of Us season 2 should deal with what happens to Joel in The Last of Us Part II? Share your thoughts on this event by leaving a comment below.