Here's how the HBO Max exclusive The Last of Us might deviate from its video game origins.
Spoiler Warning: The Last of Us Video Game
Developed by the game studio Naughty Dog and published by Sony, 2013’s The Last of Us is considered by many a defining game of the PlayStation 3 and one of the greatest video games of all time. It received acclaim for its writing, characters, soundtrack, world-building, and pacing, among other things. It was a driving force behind the advent of Sony’s push for big-budget cinematic video games. It really is no wonder why such a wildly successful game would wind up the focus of a television show.
Among many adaptations, The Last of Us could be considered a ripe opportunity. There is an emphasis on realism and grit in this game world that would translate well to television, and the bulk of the game’s story already relies on excellent acting and dialogue. But like any adaptation, there are bound to be changes. We can only guess for now what those changes may be, but they’re safe assumptions.
For any who may not be familiar with the game itself, The Last of Us takes place twenty years after the collapse of society. A parasitic mushroom called the Cordyceps fungus — which is a real thing — is now capable of infecting the minds of human beings, turning them into aggressive zombie-like creatures. The story focuses on Joel Miller and Ellie Williams, played by Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson in the game, respectively. Joel is a gruff, hardened smuggler who lost his daughter the night the infection spread to his hometown. Meanwhile, Ellie is a fourteen-year-old girl who was born after the apocalypse began. Martial law, strict quarantine procedures, and the inside of thick city walls are all she’s known until a tragic turn of events leads to her discovering her immunity to the Cordyceps fungus.
Joel is tasked with smuggling Ellie — now a final hope for humanity — across the United States to a militia group called the Fireflies. They are planning to use Ellie’s immunity to create a vaccine. Where Joel is blunt and guarded, Ellie is optimistic and still possesses some childlike naïveté. Over the course of their journey, they grow closer together and change one another, forming a pseudo-father-daughter bond. Though a common enough dynamic, it is a captivating one to watch unfold.
One way we know the show will differ from the game is its time period. Whereas in-game, the apocalypse begins in 2013 and the main plot takes place in 2033, marketing materials have revealed that the show’s events will run ten years behind, with the apocalypse starting in 2003 the plot beginning in 2023. The purpose behind this shift may be a marketing choice and a practical one. For one thing, making the fall of humankind start in the early 2000s also means an earlier cease to humanity’s technological evolution. Showrunners don’t need to worry so much about the finer details of what happened to our phones, laptops, or gaming consoles. As for marketing, a show about the apocalypse hits far closer to home when it takes place just a couple of years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some may find this fact distasteful, while others may find it makes the show more relatable.
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In-game, the story starts the night Joel loses his daughter. We are then shown a short opening credits sequence that moves us twenty years into the future, to where Joel has become a guarded man who has done horrible things to keep him and his younger brother, Tommy, alive. While we are never shown these awful things, they are alluded to through dialogue between Joel and Ellie. During an argument between Joel and Tommy, the younger brother declares he still has nightmares from “those years.”
It leaves room to wonder if any of that will be shown in the streaming series, either through flashbacks or an episode or two of buildup before reaching where the main plot begins. Neil Druckmann, who is writing for the show and co-directed the game alongside Bruce Straley, has stated that while the show will mostly follow the game, there will be moments it deviates greatly in the drama between characters. Giving time to show Joel (to be played by Pedro Pascal) in the years following the start of the apocalypse — how he transformed into a man willing to kill to survive and his falling out with his brother — would certainly count as something dramatic to explore.
Throughout their journey, Joel and Ellie run into many interesting characters. They may be there to aid them — like with fellow smugglers Bill or Tess — or to hinder their progress, such as in the terrifying case of David and his community of cannibals. Either way, these characters don’t stick around for long, dying or simply going their separate ways once their part to play is over.
It would be interesting to see the roles of these characters expanded upon in the show. For instance, Joel and Tess have been smuggling partners for a long while, and there is a hint of a romantic side to their relationship as well. Bill, too, has known Joel for some time, with the latter telling Ellie that Bill owes him a few favors. As for Ellie, it would be nice to see more of Riley Able, her best friend and crush, who dies prior to the start of the main game. The most we see of her is in the side-story Left Behind and spin-off comic American Dreams, but she plays such an important part in Ellie’s motivations and inner struggles that allowing her more screen time would be appreciated.
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For video games, combat is usually limited in some way or another. Enemies have scripted patrol patterns and can only behave in the way their AI dictates, while even player-controlled characters are restricted to their given animations. This isn’t to say that The Last of Us’s combat doesn’t have some thrill attached to it, especially when thrown into a room with a bunch of crazed mushroom zombies between you and the exit. Still, one great thing about a game to television adaptation is that actors and directors have the freedom to go wild with their action sequences.
Though it’s been said that HBO is looking to dial down on the amount of combat compared to what’s present in the game, when fights do break out, it would be great to see some crazier moves and set pieces. Scenes could be made tenser with an increased amount of enemies, or perhaps clickers — blind cordyceps zombies who use heightened hearing and echolocation to get around — that are much harder to fool and avoid. There are many possibilities.
Everybody who played The Last of Us knows that the forward momentum of gameplay slows to a crawl the moment ladders or planks come into play. Picking up a huge piece of wood or metal and watching Joel ever so slowly haul it across a room didn’t exactly scream fun. At least not as much fun as trying to sneak past hordes of infected mushroom people. So, if Pedro Pascal never has to pick up a plank of wood or a ladder in the show, good for him. Or… maybe he can pick up one or two. For the inside jokes, right?
We’ll see for ourselves just what creative changes HBO has in store for The Last of Us when it releases on their streaming platform later this year.
Maddie News has been writing for what feels like all her life. She enjoys video games, psychological thriller films, and the occasional long walk on the beach. Of particular interest to her is the representation of mental health, LGBT culture, and women in entertainment media.