Latest Development in “The Last of Us” Season 2 Shocks Viewers, Even Fans of the Game
The Last of Us season 2 episode 2 features a heartbreaking plot point from the game that everybody has been dreading since the premiere. However, when the episode did air, it still came as a shock to many.
(Spoiler alert)
It wasn’t supposed to happen this early, was the sentiment circulating around when episode 2 of the HBO apocalypse show finally arrived. This episode contains the pivotal moment where Joel (Pedro Pascal) gets brutally murdered by Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), leader of the Fireflies whose sole mission is to exact revenge on Joel ever since he massacred her father and other Fireflies members in season 1.
The episode takes place years following that traumatic event, and it unfolds just as it did in the game. Abby found Joel and Dina (Isabela Merced) on patrol and, in the guise of rescuing them from the infected, lured them to a lodge where she captured the both of them. What follows is Abby putting Joel through a long, gruesome torture. By the time Ellie (Bella Ramsey) arrived, it was too late and she was left to cry bitterly begging Joel to get up.
Fans of the game (and the general public with prior knowledge) know this was coming all along, but it takes place surprisingly early, which was a conscious decision by the showrunners.
“I think we needed just to settle back into the show,” co-creator Neil Druckmann said in a post-show interview. “Because even in the game, there’s like an hour or something before you get to this moment. But we also knew it needed to be early enough, because this is the inciting incident for this story. So yes, we always pick every permutation, but the later it got in the season, it just felt we were kind of dragging our feet instead of just getting to the meat of what the story is about.”
Going forward, Joel’s death will propel the season-long grievances between Ellie and Abby. As for Ellie, she must navigate both grief and guilt over never reconciling with Joel prior to his demise.