This article contains spoilers for The Last of Us Part II and HBO’s The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 4.
Movie or TV adaptations of video games are always tricky. How closely do you stick to the source material? Will you make meaningful changes that build upon the foundation, or will those changes take away from it?
For the most part, HBO’s adaptation of The Last of Us has been a stellar effort. It’s expanding the universe in ways that make it feel richer. At the same time, some of the liberties taken with the source material are starting to snowball into bigger, less defensible issues that I’m not entirely sure the show can recover from. Specifically, I’m talking about the way Ellie’s character arc has been handled, and how it seems to detract from the unsettling darkness that underscores the entirety of Part II.
The Little Changes Add Up
To be clear, I don’t want a 1:1 recreation of the video game. If I wanted that, I’d just play the game again or watch the cutscenes on YouTube. I’m a fan of some of the creative liberties taken with the source material, like the attack on Jackson, and of course, Bill and Frank’s fantastic standalone episode from Season 1.
HBO and showrunner Craig Mazin have done an excellent job fleshing out side characters who never got any screentime in the games and making them feel like well-realized people. Long, Long Time was such a standout episode from Season 1 and I’m excited to see what the show does with Eugene this time around.
The other changes, though, I’m much less fond of.
It all started with Dina. In the games, it’s heavily implied that Dina and Ellie have had this “will they won’t they” thing going on for a while, and it culminates in that dance scene where they finally kiss. The next day, they go on patrol together. When they take shelter from a snowstorm, Dina asks Ellie to rate the kiss and that’s when they officially get together.
In the show, their relationship doesn’t start until three months after Joel’s death. In fact, it only starts once they get to Seattle, when Ellie is already knee-deep in her revenge plot.
This completely knocks Ellie’s character development off-course as a result, because we either simply don’t have time to bask in her moment of joy, or it just feels tonally wrong. At this point in the story, Ellie should be completely focused on her mission. There’s no three-month gap in the game — Ellie and Dina pack up and leave for Seattle mere days after Abby’s attack, and everything still feels fresh. This isn’t to say that Ellie’s just angry and bloodthirsty the entire time; she simply feels more somber, more melancholic.
The problem with the three-month gap in the show is that Ellie’s feelings have had time to settle. Her revenge mission doesn’t feel as urgent, especially when the show dedicates a whole episode to her trying to convince the council in Jackson to send a squad to Seattle, only for them to say no and she sets off on her own anyway.
More importantly, though, it was crucial for Dina and Ellie’s relationship to be set up before they got to Seattle. When Ellie finds out that the former is pregnant, she reacts in a cold and frankly cruel way. She’s so focused on finding Abby that when she learns of the pregnancy, it feels like a betrayal because she thinks Dina’s holding her back.
“Well, you’re a burden now aren’t you” will always live rent-free in my head. This is the first time in The Last of Us Part II where the player starts to feel a little uncomfortable with Ellie’s behavior. Her first day in Seattle starts with killing Jordan (who was also notably removed from the show), followed by the radio station and subway segment, culminating in that harsh conversation with Dina at the movie theater.
By removing Jordan, creating the time gap, and establishing the relationship with Dina after Joel’s death, this creates a lot of small character discrepancies for Ellie. Joel’s death feels less impactful because we needed to spend three months faffing around and watching the council make a decision we already knew they were going to make. Ellie’s mission feels less urgent because we need to celebrate her relationship with Dina after the mission already started.
Perhaps most egregiously, all things come together to make Ellie feel a lot softer than she did in the game.
The Last of Us Part II Was All About Ellie’s Hard Edges
Part of what made The Last of Us Part II so controversial and emotionally draining was the fact that Ellie quickly became a very unlikable protagonist. We were on her side when Joel died, absolutely, but at some point, it became clear that she was willing to throw everything away for revenge, including her friends and family.
Everything she did and said was tinged with sadness, eventually leading to her blowing up at Dina and treating her unfairly. What I’m saying is, the movie theater scene was a pivotal one for Ellie’s character development, and it’s unfortunate that we didn’t get it in the show.
What did we get instead? An out-of-place sex scene after Ellie fell asleep and forced Dina to stay up all night afraid that she would turn into a zombie. “I’m gonna be a dad,” which felt a lot more like a line Season 1 kid Ellie would say, rather than a young woman who very acutely understands the danger that she’s now putting Dina in, and does it anyway. A cheesy shot of Dina and Ellie holding hands and saying “Together” while looking over Seattle like they’re in some trashy CW show.
As a staunch defender of The Last of Us Part II and a firm believer that truly brilliant art will always have its share of detractors, I’m not a fan of these changes. Just like what the show did with Abby, it feels like the TV adaptation is trying to sand off Ellie’s hard edges too. Why? To make the show more palatable for a mainstream couch audience? Because no one wants to watch a show with a murderous protagonist who’s willing to put her pregnant girlfriend in danger so she can go on some suicide revenge mission because self-destruction is the only way she knows how to deal with her grief? Maybe.
To cop that famous Tom Hanks quote from 1992’s A League of Their Own, “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.”
The Last of Us Part II is supposed to make you feel uncomfortable and sick to your stomach when you play it. It’s one of my favorite video games of all time, but I seriously doubt I can bring myself to play through the entire thing a second time because of how exhausting it is. I still wouldn’t change a thing about it, though. After all, the hard is what makes it great.
The Last of Us is now available for streaming on Max.
