The Last Of Us Season 2 Just Changed The Game’s Most Gut-Wrenching Twist

Pedro Pascal in Season 2 of "The Last of Us."Spoilers ahead for the latest episode of The Last Of Us.After a two-year wait, The Last Of Us has finally returned for the second season of the post-apocalyptic drama, which adapts the critically acclaimed video game, The Last Of Us Part II.But if you’re a fan of the franchise, you may have noticed something strange: Season two’s debut episode just casually spoiled one of the game’s biggest twists.Let’s back up for a second because it’s been a while since we’ve spent any time with Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey). Season one and the original video game both ended on the same brutal twist: After an epic cross-country journey, Joel brings Ellie to a medical facility in the remains of Salt Lake City. There, they find a resistance group called the Fireflies, who are working on a cure for the zombie virus that’s decimated the world. They believe that Ellie, who has a rare immunity to the virus, may be the key to developing that cure.Unfortunately, it turns out that this requires removing a piece of Ellie’s zombie-immune brain — which would kill her in the process. Joel, who lost his own daughter during the initial zombie outbreak and has grown protective of Ellie, decides to save her instead, murdering multiple Firefly doctors as he makes his escape.Ellie is already unconscious on the operating room table when all of this happens, so she has no memory of her violent rescue. When she wakes up hours later, Joel lies to her, claiming the Fireflies couldn’t come up with a cure at all. In season one’s final moment, Ellie turns to Joel and says: “Swear to me that everything you said about the Fireflies is true.” He replies: “I swear.”The Last Of Us season two opens with that very same scene, a quick reminder of the horrors that just occurred, but in a surprise move, the story then shifts perspective to reveal a group of surviving Fireflies in the process of burying their dead friends and family. The leader of the group is Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), and while everyone else is visibly in mourning, she’s exhibiting a very different emotion: rage.Kaitlyn Dever in "The Last of Us" Season 2.“Why would he do this?” she asks no one in particular. The group discusses Joel’s rampage, pointing out that they aren’t even sure what his name is, but Abby shoots back with a spot-on description: “Fifties, grey, beard, 6-foot tall, scar on his right temple, and yeah, they say he’s handsome.”The Fireflies discuss their next move. Someone suggests heading to Seattle, where a man named Isaac is organising survivors, but Abby pushes back. They aren’t going anywhere else until they get revenge on Joel. Before the scene can end, Abby makes one more promise: “When we kill him, we kill him slowly.”It’s a gripping set up for the rest of season two, which then jumps forward five years to find Joel and Ellie living with a community of survivors in Jackson, Wyoming. But here’s the thing: In the original game, we don’t find out Abby’s motivation for going after Joel until deep into the story. Instead, she just shows up unannounced in Jackson and tries to kill him. It’s only after many hours of gameplay that players find out why Abby was so mad in the first place.In the game, this reveal comes as a huge shock. By that point in the story, Abby has been firmly established as the primary antagonist of the video game, and a two-dimensional villain, so the revelation that her own grief is what’s driving her quest for vengeance comes as a huge shock.That reveal also gets paired with the game’s smartest twist: Halfway through the story, we abruptly jump perspectives from Ellie to Abby and experience her side of the story, forcing the player to suddenly empathise with a character they’ve come to hate.Bella Ramsey in Season 2 of "The Last of Us."So why is HBO giving away this big reveal right at the start? It’s tough to say after watching just the first episode of season two, but one possibility is that the show’s creators realise they can’t pull off that same big twist on a TV show. Television isn’t an interactive media, and our perspective isn’t usually limited to just one character like it is in a video game. So recreating the perspective shift of The Last Of Us Part II in this format might not be practical.There’s also the question of whether season two of The Last Of Us will even tell the full story of Part II. The showrunners have already hinted that they plan to spread that story out over multiple seasons — while also changing some major details — so the game’s original narrative structure likely needs to change as well to account for the long break between seasons two and three.What that means exactly remains to be seen, but hopefully the team behind The Last Of Us can come up with something equally impressive to replace the big twist they just spoiled in episode.The Last Of Us airs in the US on HBO on Sunday nights, and arrives on Sky and Now in the UK on Mondays.Related...Critics Have Their Say On The Last Of Us Season 2 And All We Can Say Is... Brace YourselfPedro Pascal And Bella Ramsey Both Went All Out For The Last Of Us Season 2 Premiere Red CarpetThe Last Of Us Fans Have 1 More Reason To Get Excited Ahead Of Season 2's Debut

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