In an attempt to send all of us straight back to therapy, Season 2 ofThe Last of Us’ HBO series adapts half of the story fromThe Last of Us Part II(2020), a game thatdominated the awardsat the time and strongly divided the gaming community due to bold narrative choices.
That said, a television adaptation wasn’t going to be an easy task, which also ultimately led to a strongly divided reception from fans, asthe TV show decided to stay faithful to the original material’s key events, while incorporating significant changes that did not please everyone.
10 Best Games That Aren’t Fun (But Are Worth Playing)
Video games are supposed to be fun, right? Not so fast!
Naturally, players started to compare Season 2 to The Last of Us Part II, and we wouldn’t be left out of this, right? So let’s take a look at some of the main differences between the TV show and the original game. Oh, and please be aware that this list has major spoilers!
20Abby’s Motive
A Whole Different Timing
One of the main changes in the story came in the very first scene of Season 2, which reveals Abby’s motive for chasing Joel right away. The scene shows Abby and her former Firefly fellows in front of an improvised cemetery at St. Mary’s Hospital, where Joel killed everyone to stop the cure and save Ellie.
They talk about what happened, and it doesn’t take long for Abby to promise herself that she will find and kill (very slowly, by the way) the person responsible for her father’s death.
19Abby’s Physical Appearance
Where’s The Bodybuilding?
Another one for Abby! We all know thatshe is a very muscular woman in The Last of Us Part II, but that can’t be said about the TV show’s versionof the character.
The actress who plays Abby, Kaitlyn Dever, explained that the live-action adaptation never had the intention to replicate the character’s physical appearance since its focus is primarilyon her emotions.
18Gail And Eugene
With A Brand New Character
The star Catherine O’Hara, known for movie classics such as Beetlejuice and Home Alone, plays a brand-new character in The Last of Us universe: Gail, the only therapist in Jackson. Also serving as comic relief, the character ends up being important for emotional conversations between her and Joel, Ellie, and even Tommy.
Gail is also Eugene’s wife, a character who appears in the game but was significantly altered in the TV show. While he was a former Firefly who died from natural causes in The Last of Us Part II, he is the main motive for Ellie to discover that Joel lied about what happened in St. Mary’s Hospital.
10 Most Iconic In-Game Plagues
Whether natural or supernatural, plagues have been a recurring, often frightening element of game worlds for years.
While patrolling around Jackson, Eugene was bitten and infected by a Runner. Joel and Ellie are the first ones to reach him, and he desperately asks them to let him talk to his wife one last time. Ellie agrees, and Joel doesn’t, but he pretends that he also agrees only to kill Eugene while she is away.
When they go back to Jackson, Joel lies about what happened while reporting to Tommy and Gail, making Ellie realize that he also lied to her in the past.
17Jackson’s Attack
Game of Thrones, Is That You?
Happening at the same time as Joel’s death, Jackson is attacked by an enormous horde of infected in the TV show, resulting in a pumped action scene that wouldmake Game of Thrones proud.
Tommy leads the defense of the small town, resulting in many deaths, and he goes face-to-face with a Bloater, burning it into crisps with a flamethrower. But nothing happened in the game.
16Dina in Joel’s Death
A Different Partner
Remember that we just said that Tommy was leading Jackson’s defense against a horde of infected while Joel was dying? That made Dina the one who was patrolling with Joel when they encountered Abby, instead of him, like in the game.
She got knocked out by Nora and Mel and did not see the killing, but the consequences for this swap is that Dina got a good look at their backpacks with WLF symbols, which made her the only one with real information about Abby and her friends, leading Ellie’s revenge journey to Seattle later.
15Time Jump
Three Months Before Revenge
After Joel dies in the TV show, Ellie goes into a sort of coma due to the traumaof watching him being killed, which delays her departure to Seattle seeking revenge against Abby.
There is a three-month time skip until our protagonist and Dina leave Jackson for the task. In the game, they start their journey to find Abby in the same week that Joel dies.
Also, Tommy never leaves Jackson to seek revenge in the HBO series, while he is the first one to do that in The Last of Us Part II.
14Jackson’s Council
Voting For “No Revenge”
Jackson’s leaders open up a council to decide whether they should form a group to avenge Joel or not, with some members giving speeches about why they should—and Ellie being one of them.
The council ends up deciding that they can’t form a group for revenge, which makes Ellie leave Jackson on her own personal mission. All of that does not happen in the game, and it is completely original from the TV show.
13Finally, Stalkers…
The Worst Kind of Infected
Stalkers are the second stage of the infected. They are smart and have stealth as their main skill, but are rather rare to encounter in The Last of Us games. And it seems that the HBO series tried to replicate that idea, since these creatures were introduced only in Season 2.
Their first appearance in the TV show is an all-original scene, which ends with Ellie getting bitten by a Stalker on the belly.
12…And Spores
Gas Masks Incoming
Another element that has been present in the games since the beginning is spores, but it was only introduced into the series in Season 2, when Ellie is about to find Nora in the hospital basement.
The reason for their late introduction in the HBO series, according to the showrunner, is thatthe spores work a little differently in the live-action series.
Instead of coming out of dead bodies, as in the games, they emanate from humans who haven’t fully transformed yet, getting trapped by the fungus while they breathe out spores to infect others through the air. And that’s exactly thescary scenarioEllie finds herself in.
11Isaac’s Origins
Rebel, Rebel
Isaac is the leader of the Washington Liberation Front (WLF), also referred to as “Wolves”, a rebel militia group that successfully seized control of the Seattle Quarantine Zone. They are a heavily armed paramilitary organization that is installed inside an abandoned football stadium. Quite smart, right?
In the TV show, we get to see how Isaac became their leader.He was a FEDRA officer who killed his whole team to help the rebels overthrow the government group, since he disagreed with how they ruled Seattle.
What’s very interesting about it is that we actually can find the convoy in which Isaac killed his FEDRA teammates with a grenade while exploring with Ellie and Dina in theopen-world-like sectionin The Last of Us Part II. You can even find a letter, written by the WLF’s leader, about how he abandoned his post and joined the rebel cause.
