The first season of HBO’s The Last of Us TV series adapted Naughty Dog’s 2013 video game of the same name. Now, the second season is all set to adapt the video game’s 2020 sequel, The Last of Us Part II. Since many fans have already played the game, they are sure that one shocking twist will be featured in the show as well.
Warning: Potential spoilers for The Last of Us season 2 ahead!
Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us 2 focuses more on Ellie and Abby than Joel. The game reveals that Joel kills Abby’s father in the hospital at the end of The Last of Us. As a result, Abby gets her revenge in the second game by killing Joel. Fans believe that the show will adopt this storyline. However, the show’s creator, Craig Mazin, has hinted that they might deviate from this storyline.
The Last of Us creator Craig Mazin hints that the show’s storyline might deviate from the game’s storyline
The Last of Us co-creator and showrunner, Craig Mazin, recently appeared on the Scriptnotes podcast and acknowledged the theories surrounding Joel’s death in the upcoming The Last of Us season 2. Mazin said,
“I’ve been monitoring things on the internet a little bit, people are very clever, they like to see where we’re shooting and then they have all these brilliant theories about what it means. I wish I could put my arm around each one of them and say, ‘No.’ Most of the theories are incorrect, some of them are halfways correct, some of the conjecture is like 28% correct. But I do enjoy it all, I like the interest, it’s fun.”
It is unclear which theory Mazin is talking about here but fans have suspected that this is about the theory regarding Abby killing Joel in the show. In The Last of Us 2 video game, Abby kills Joel for killing her father, Jerry Anderson- a Firefly surgeon, at the end of the first game to save Ellie.
As per Deadline, the filming of The Last of Us season 2 has officially begun in British Columbia. Recently some shooting locations for the show went viral on social media and fans noticed that one of the locations was very similar to the location where Joel dies in the game, this further fueled this theory.
What can fans expect from The Last of Us season 2?
Considering Craig Mazin’s statements, it appears like they might stray away from the game’s storyline. Indeed, fans had a hard time coping with Joel’s death in the game but this major change in the show would completely change the outcome of the story as the second game is all about Ellie’s revenge. Even in the first season of The Last of Us, the show deviated from the game’s storyline with the introduction of Frank as a character, who had already died in the game when Joel met Bill.
The second season’s production was slowed down due to WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike but the filming quickly began in February 2024. As per TheGamer, the filming will reportedly conclude in September 2024, while Cosmopolitan has stated that season 2 is expected to premiere in 2025.
