Two weeks in the past, information broke that actor Kaitlyn Dever was becoming a member of the solid for the second season of HBO’s The Final Of Us TV sequence—which continues to be floating alongside and not using a launch date, with “a while in 2025” the most effective anyone in TV land can guess. However regardless of that delicate ambiguity, Dever’s casting kicked off a small firestorm of hypothesis, as a result of it was revealed that she’d be enjoying a personality named Abby Anderson when she joined the Emmy-winning video-game adaptation’s second season—which implies The Final Of Us is nearly actually diving complete hog into the story of 2020’s The Final Of Us Half II. And meaning issues are about to get … messy.
[Editor’s note: This article contains spoilers for 2020 video game The Last Of Us Part II—and, likely, for at least some of the plot elements of the still-filming second season of HBO’s The Last Of Us TV show.]
As a result of whereas the vital consensus on Half II has principally calmed down within the 4 years since its launch—give or take some reasonable consternation recently at the truth that Sony has already rolled out a “remastered” model of the barely retro sport, out final week–the sport was one thing of a lightning rod when it first got here out. A few of that wasn’t developer Naughty Canine’s fault. (A high-profile leak from the sport’s improvement, showcasing a number of cutscenes and character fashions, fired up the sorts of chuds who get offended when feminine video-game characters aren’t “female” sufficient, to select one of many extra vitriolic examples.) However a few of it was in direct to response to the sport’s huge narrative swings, which have been, relying on who you requested, both “daring” or “super-aggressive and type of manipulative.”
A lot of which, we now have to imagine, will now be inherited by its TV adaptation: Excepting its critically heralded third episode, Craig Mazin’s adaptation of the primary sport into the present’s first season was virtually overwhelmingly devoted–all the way down to the season’s ultimate scene virtually precisely mimicking each the dialogue, and the staging, of the sport’s well-known ending. With sport sequence artistic director Neil Druckmann on board for the second season, as he was for the primary, it might be surprising to see the sequence diverge various inches from established canon.
What does that each one imply? A couple of issues—all of which might make The Final Of Us’ second season a really bizarre run of TV.
The Pedro Pascal “situation”
![Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsay](https://i.kinja-img.com/image/upload/c_fit,q_60,w_645/8fc1fcaf6530b8e9d0bdca84ca236de9.jpg)
Anybody hoping to keep away from spoilers for both the sport sequence, or the present’s subsequent season, ought to hop off this practice now, as a result of there’s actually no strategy to discuss both with out addressing the fungus-encrusted elephant within the room: protagonist Joel Miller’s sudden dying, an hour or so into The Final Of Us Half II.
Pedro Pascal, who performs Joel on the present, has, understandably, hedged a bit when requested about this plot component–as a result of how might he not? (No person desires the HBO Spoiler Squad on their ass.) However The Final Of Us Half II actually doesn’t operate as a narrative with out it: Joel’s sudden dying, by the hands of a bunch of survivors who come to the just about ludicrously idyllic group the place he and Ellie (Bella Ramsay) have been dwelling out their post-apocalypse, is rooted in each the aftermath of the primary sport and the narrative obsessions of the second. All the pieces The Final Of Us Half II desires to say about humanity–and it desires to say quite a bit—grows out of that early second of sudden, surprising brutality, one second of horrifying trauma birthed immediately from one other.
This was controversial, to say the least, within the video games, the place Joel was a beloved character performed by well-liked voice actor Troy Baker. Making use of it to a rising/risen star like Pascal—who did a lot work to construct a gorgeous, damaged human out of some pretty inventory components along with his efficiency as Joel within the present’s first season–could be much more disruptive. Pascal and Ramsay each got here up by way of Sport Of Thrones, after all, so neither is unfamiliar with being on a sequence that jettisoned its “star” at a vital early level. However seeing the present’s most marketable star go the best way of Logan Roy one episode into its new season continues to be prone to depart followers a bit discombobulated.
Absolutely the brutality of Ellie Williams
![Bella Ramsay](https://i.kinja-img.com/image/upload/c_fit,q_60,w_645/4120fa100ec93ed4f502ebe5909c30cb.jpg)
If the above paragraphs didn’t clue you in, The Final Of Us Half II is an aggressively grim sport. Even its real moments of affection or levity include the unavoidable data that one thing actually terrible is true across the nook—and barely within the type of one thing so simple as a rampaging fungus monster. That goes doubly true for the character of Ellie, who got here of age within the first sport/season—and who spends the second sport having her previous few shreds of innocence sliced off of her piece by piece.
And actually, we’re wanting ahead to seeing what Ramsay, who was wonderful within the first season, will do with this materials, as Ellie turns into tougher and tougher, and tougher and tougher to root for, the additional into her want for vengeance she descends. Nevertheless it’s going to be a lot for audiences, even by the requirements of HBO: We’ll be curious to see if the TV present stays true to the second that may, in a much less ugly narrative, be Ellie’s all-time low—i.e., the confrontation with Mel, for sport gamers—or if it’ll again away from fairly that stage of character-alienating horror. However both method, we’ll possible depart the present’s second season with little or no concept of who, if anybody, we need to see getting what they need out of this damaged and depressing world.
A query of perspective
![Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsay](https://i.kinja-img.com/image/upload/c_fit,q_60,w_645/13117accda67f9f24aa9f65c18309cc4.jpg)
There’s additionally a query of construction to be addressed right here, requiring us to spoil The Final Of Us Half II’s different huge twist: the truth that solely about half of the sport is performed from Ellie’s perspective, with the sport rewinding at a serious turning level to point out what its three violent days in Seattle have been like for Joel’s killer, Abby.
On the one hand, this may truly be simpler for the TV present to deal with than the sport; one in all The Final Of Us franchise’s huge tips is adapting methods from movie and media, the place they’re much less acquainted, to the medium of video games, and this type of perspective flip is way nearer to previous hat for tv. That being stated, the components of the sport the place you play as Abby represent an enormous portion of the sport, introducing new characters, tales, motivations, and issues, all to drill in for gamers that she’s simply as a lot an individual, a “protagonist,” as Ellie herself. A 24-hour-long online game can take that type of time to make its factors—a nine-hour TV sequence, not a lot. It’s key to Druckmann’s imaginative and prescient of The Final Of Us Half II that Abby really feel as “actual” to the participant/viewer as Joel or Ellie did. Constructing that type of identification, with out feeling repetitive or digressive, goes to be a captivating battle for the present to deal with in a fraction of the time.
Is there room for an additional “Lengthy, Lengthy Time”?
![Nick Offerman, Murray Bartlett](https://i.kinja-img.com/image/upload/c_fit,q_60,w_645/2edeed72d86a42ae0bd4298e79ce8ea3.jpg)
As we famous above, the primary season of The Final Of Us deviated from the sport’s plot in just one severe regard—and was rewarded powerfully for it, with critics and viewers alike holding up that digression level, “Lengthy, Lengthy Time” as a sequence spotlight. With Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett transferring mountains to flesh out characters who have been, within the sport, an asshole and a corpse, respectively, the episode served as a vital antidote to the grimness of the remainder of the season, reminding viewers that there was nonetheless the potential of life, even for “the final of us.”
Mazin, and author Peter Hoar, might match that materials into the sequence partially as a result of they have been adapting a largely episodic narrative: The primary Final Of Us performs out as a sequence of vignettes as a lot as it’s a extra cohesive story, and it was pretty easy to swap out the working and taking pictures of the sport’s “Invoice’s City” phase for one thing with significantly extra coronary heart. Simply as importantly, it demonstrated not less than some justification for your complete present, dialing into quieter, extra human moments, at a distance from Joel and Ellie’s story.
The Final Of Us Half II is a a lot tighter narrative ship, although, with an enormous chunk of its energy coming from the best way it buries you in first Ellie after which Abby’s head. And so it stays to be seen the place Mazin and his group can discover room for a bit of sunshine to shine by way of. (Even if you happen to zoom out of the Ellie-Abby battle, the sport’s background plot is a few brutal inter-clan battle waged between navy despots on the one hand and transphobic non secular zealots on the opposite; there’s not a number of room for gentler shading there.) We suspect that the Abby materials must stand in for that type of digression, however her story is so married and mirrored to Ellie’s that it’ll be troublesome to get significant respiration room out of it.
All that being stated: It’s value stepping again and remembering that we’re speaking a few TV present that hasn’t even been filmed at this level, not to mention aired. Hypothesis can solely go to this point earlier than it simply turns into fortune-telling and simply as helpful. However The Final Of Us’ nature as an adaptation—and one particularly beholden to its supply materials—invitations these sorts of questions. The Final Of Us Half II landed like a bomb in 2020, detonating video-game discourse for months round it. We will solely think about what its adaptation to tv will do when it arrives a while subsequent yr.
This story initially appeared on The A.V. Membership.