Is Joel Going to Die in The Last of Us Season 2? Here’s Why Canon Could Change

This interrogation contains spoilers for The Last of Us Season 2 premiere, arsenic good arsenic The Last of Us games.

The Last of Us HBO made a constituent to play with canon successful Season 1 of the series. They ditched spores for tendrils, and delivered what was astir apt the champion occurrence of tv successful 2023 by giving Bill and Frank the communicative they deserved. While determination is the purist statement that immoderate fans are lone present to spot what they loved successful the game, bid creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann archer IGN that erstwhile adapting thing into a antithetic medium, it’s imperative to see that mean arsenic good arsenic the root material. As they constituent out, games and tv person precise antithetic styles erstwhile it comes to storytelling.

“If we're conscionable trying to transcript it 1 to one, you should question wherefore are we adjacent doing this?” Druckmann wonders during our chat.

It’s the Joel of it each wherever that faithfulness to canon gets tricky. In the Season 2 premiere, we spot that the narration betwixt Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) is much strained than ever. The erstwhile conscionable wants to support her safe, portion the second is sick and bushed of being protected and conscionable wants to beryllium a teen and bash teen worldly (read: being benignant of an asshole to her surrogate parent). But it’s the instauration of Kaitlyn Dever’s Abby that spells occupation for Joel.

Players of The Last of Us are much than acquainted with Joel’s fate. It’s hard to make surprises successful worldly that fans cognize truthful well. How bash you instrumentality that presumed certainty that Joel volition not past and usage it to work the existent communicative you’re telling?

“What we effort to bash is sphere the aspects of canon that I would telephone load-bearing walls,” Mazin explains. “You indispensable person Ellie successful that country accidental to Joel, ‘I would lone beryllium much scared.’ You request that. … Does Joel person to bring Ellie to that abstraction capsule? Yes. It indispensable happen.”

The happening is, Joel is played beauteous otherwise successful the bid than helium is successful the game. The aforesaid important beats remain: helium slaughtered a infirmary of radical to support Ellie, and is mostly known arsenic a close bastard by anyone not adjacent to him. But adjacent the quality of the infirmary slaughter changes erstwhile you displacement definite aspects of canon similar the alteration from spores to tendrils, the Fireflies being illustrated arsenic mostly inept beyond Marlene (Merle Dandridge), etc.

Those shifts took the hard question of whether oregon not Joel made the close prime to prevention Ellie much chopped and dried, with adjacent Druckmann admitting “I judge Joel was right.” In the game, it felt similar the incorrect prime but you understood wherefore helium did it. In the series, that sympathy for his determination remains but is amplified by the information that, based connected what the tv assemblage witnessed, Joel was close to bash what helium did. Problem is, close decisions astatine the extremity of the satellite inactive often mean that you wounded idiosyncratic else. For Joel, that idiosyncratic other is Abby, whose begetter was the surgeon meant to experimentation connected Ellie to extract from her encephalon a cure for the cordyceps infection. He took a slug to the forehead for his troubles, and his girl is, arsenic you’d expect, beauteous pissed.

We conscionable Abby successful passing successful the Season 2 premiere, but cognize that with her instauration comes the precise existent accidental that Joel doesn’t spot the extremity of the season. In the game, helium is precise definitively murdered, beaten to decease by a play club-wielding Abby.

“We don't get excessively caught up successful the thought of the communicative arsenic religion,” Mazin says successful respect to canon. “We conscionable effort and marque the champion show, but we bash it with, I think, an tremendous respect for the aspects of the crippled that enactment truthful well. Otherwise, honestly, what the fuck are we doing it for?”

There’s besides the aforementioned precedent acceptable distant by Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlet), successful that you’re taking a portion of canon and conscionable morphing it slightly. Mazin goes connected to admit that these shifts are rather important to the originative process, calling them “reflections of canon,” but arsenic a tv viewer, what’s astir important to maine is his devotion to telling the champion communicative possible, nary substance the cost.

It’s Druckmann who gets to the bosom of the contented truthful acold arsenic treating the root worldly arsenic gospel, noting “if we [copy the crippled 1 to one], it's going to beryllium a lesser mentation of the game, due to the fact that it doesn’t person interactivity.”

Though it mightiness beryllium casual to look astatine thing you clasp beloved and beryllium acrophobic astir large changes to it, those changes tin pb to wholly caller experiences for fans. I’ll spell backmost to the Bill and Frank illustration forever, due to the fact that it’s 1 of the champion episodes of tv successful the past decade. Druckmann and Mazin are cognizant of however those changes and caller additions elevate the work.

“Certain changes are indispensable to adapting this. We look astatine everything successful beforehand of us, and say, is this better? Or is this amended again for this benignant of story?” Druckmann says. “That creates those fantastic surprises that I, sometimes, bask the most.”