The Last of Us season 1 made a handful of changes to the game’s narrative and lore that will have a ripple effect on season 2’s adaptation of Part II. The first season of Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann’s TV show kept all the first game’s major plot points – Joel takes Ellie across the country, the Fireflies want to kill her to make a cure, Joel doesn’t take kindly to that information – but made plenty of tweaks and embellishments along the way. These changes eased the story’s transition into a new, passive medium.
While the games are restricted to one character’s perspective at a time, the TV show used its cross-cutting abilities to explore new perspectives. TV audiences saw Bill and Frank’s love story, Kathleen’s hunt for Sam and Henry, and even Ellie’s birth. The games use the presence of spores to create tension, but the TV show did away with the spore vector so Pedro Pascal’s wonderfully expressive face wouldn’t be covered by a mask (for the second time in two TV shows). These changes were all good, but they could alter the course of The Last of Us Part II.
10“Future Days” Came Out After The TV Show’s Outbreak Day
Just before the four-year time jump at the beginning of The Last of Us Part II, Joel pays Ellie a visit and gives her a guitar he found. As promised, he’s going to teach her how to play and, as promised, he sings something for her. He plays Pearl Jam’s “Future Days,” which beautifully expresses Joel’s fatherly love for Ellie in its lyrics: “If I ever were to lose you / I’d surely lose myself.” The song persists throughout the game and, as more details are revealed, it takes on a bunch of new meanings.
But “Future Days” came out in 2013. It exists in the games’ universe, because their Cordyceps outbreak happened in 2013. But the TV show moved the outbreak back to 2003 so that the present-day action would play out in the actual present day. This means Joel might have to play a different song (although “Future Days” is so darn perfect that they should probably just use it anyway).
9Joel’s Mental Health Struggles In The TV Show Might Change His Encounter With Abby
When Abby reveals who she is to Joel, he remains a stoic badass who accepts his grim fate and takes all the triumph out of Abby’s vengeance with a snarky one-liner. But that’s the Joel of the games: a hardened killer who slaughters rooms full of people without batting an eye. The Joel of the TV show is much less stoic and much more sensitive. He suffers from regular panic attacks.
Rather than giving Tommy the sales pitch he gives him in the game, TV’s Joel pleads with his brother to take this girl off his hands, because it’s affecting his mental health. These mental health struggles depicted in the show might change Joel’s encounter with Abby. Instead of accepting his fate, he might beg for his life. The saddest scene in The Last of Us saga might get even sadder when Pascal brings TV Joel’s vulnerability into the mix.
8Dina Can’t Find Out About Ellie’s Immunity Via Spores
The TV show’s removal of spores will undoubtedly change a key plot point between Ellie and Dina in the first “Seattle Day 1” section of Part II. While they’re trying to get up to the street from a spore-filled subway station, Ellie falls from a crashed train carriage and her gas mask breaks upon impact. Dina frantically tries to give Ellie her gas mask, but Ellie stops her and insists that she can’t get infected. Much like Joel in the first game, Dina watches in disbelief as Ellie breathes spores without coughing.
Since the TV show doesn’t have spores, Dina will have to find out about Ellie’s immunity another way. In the first game, Joel believes in Ellie’s immunity when he sees her breathing spores, but in the TV show, it was when she got a fresh bite and nothing happened. Maybe season 2 could repeat this and have Ellie get bitten again – or maybe, in this version of the story, Dina doesn’t find out about Ellie’s immunity at all.
7Tommy Will Be A Father By The Time He Heads To Seattle
One of the biggest changes in The Last of Us season 1 was Maria’s pregnancy. She’s a few months along when Joel and Ellie arrive at Jackson in the fall. By the time they return to Jackson in the following spring, Maria might have already had the baby. In The Last of Us season 2, after the four-year time jump that kicks off Part II, Tommy will be the father of a four-year-old child.
This will color Tommy’s journey throughout the second game with even more tragedy. It’ll mean that Tommy is abandoning his four-year-old child when he goes to Seattle to seek revenge. It’ll mean that when he returns from Seattle and he and Maria separate, they’ll have to work out a custody agreement. It’ll put more weight on Ellie’s decision to keep pursuing Abby instead of going with Jesse to help Tommy. Tommy’s Last of Us Part II storyline was already heartbreaking, but the TV show might actually make it sadder.
6Joel Won’t Have A Picture Of Sarah In His House
In The Last of Us Part II, what’s even sadder than watching Joel get beaten to death is going to his house and having a look around right afterward. He has a guitar collection, a bunch of paintings of horses, and some framed photos. He has a picture with Tommy, a picture with Ellie, and the one that Ellie can pick up is a picture of Joel and Sarah hugging each other after a soccer game.
This is the same photo seen throughout the first game. It can first be spotted hanging in Sarah’s bedroom. Then, years later, Tommy offers it to Joel, and Joel shows just how closed-off he is when he turns it down like he’s turning down a cup of tea. Then, just before reaching the Fireflies, Ellie reveals that she stole the photo from Tommy and gives it to Joel, at which point Joel finally accepts his past and moves on. Unfortunately, the TV show never featured this photo, so it’s not set up to appear in Joel’s house in season 2.
5The Cordyceps Hive Mind Will Change Most Of The Infected Encounters
The Last of Us TV show made several key changes to the way Cordyceps infection works. It cut out the spore factor, but it also introduced a terrifying “hive mind” concept. Everyone infected with Cordyceps is connected through an underground fungal network. If some poor soul steps on a potent patch of Cordyceps, it could signal their location to a dozen nearby infected. (By the way, this is a really awesome concept and it would be great if it’s introduced into the gameplay in The Last of Us Part III.)
The TV show’s changes to the Cordyceps lore will undoubtedly alter a lot of the infected encounters in The Last of Us Part II. The horde that chases Abby right to Joel and Tommy will likely be triggered by the hive mind. The clickers and shamblers congregated in the subway tunnels that Ellie and Dina sneak through will all be on the same page in their ruthless hunt.
4Lev Won’t Need A Gas Mask In “The Descent” Sequence
As Abby and Lev are crossing a makeshift bridge to the hospital, Abby slips and they both fall through a glass ceiling into a hotel pool. There’s no way back up to the bridge or the elevators, so their only way out is through a heavily populated nest of stalkers, shamblers, and clickers in the bombed-out hotel. This sequence is called “The Descent” and it’s one of the most stressful and terrifying stretches of the game.
Before they can begin the descent, Abby needs to find a gas mask for Lev, because the nest is full of spores. But in the TV show, Lev won’t need a gas mask, because there are no spores. This isn’t a huge change – it just removes a pesky plot hurdle – but it means the TV show can’t feature the adorable moment of Abby helping Lev with his mask. That’s one of the first moments where players get to see Abby becoming a sort of big sister to Lev, and that relationship is the key to her redemption.
3Showing Off-Screen Villains Like Kathleen Will Shed More Light On The Wolves’ War With The Seraphites
The first season of The Last of Us TV show got plenty of dramatic mileage out of introducing off-screen characters and showing certain storylines from their perspective. Episode 3, “Long, Long Time,” turned Frank’s role in the story from the writer of a suicide note to the co-lead of a standalone romantic drama. Melanie Lynskey appeared as a brand-new character, Kathleen, the ruthless rebel leader spearheading the hunt for Sam and Henry.
If The Last of Us season 2 brings in other off-screen characters, like Boris Legasov and the Seraphite prophet, then it could shed more light on the Wolves’ war with the Seraphites. It’s possible to piece together the history of the war by collecting all the notes dotted around Seattle. But it would be interesting to see Isaac’s rise to power, the twisting of the prophet’s teachings, and the failure of the truce from a first-hand perspective in the TV show.
2Nora Can’t Get Infected By Spores
This is another major plot point that’ll have to be tweaked slightly due to the TV show’s aversion to spores. When Ellie finally tracks down Nora at the hospital, she chases her to a dead end: the edge of a ceiling that collapsed into a floor full of spores. After getting cornered by armed W.L.F. soldiers, Ellie makes the snap decision to drag herself and Nora over the edge and into the spores. Nora instantly starts coughing, while Ellie isn’t affected.
When she tracks Nora down, Ellie uses the fact that she’s doomed anyway – thanks to the spores – and her own ability to inflict unbearable pain to brutally torture Nora into revealing Abby’s location. In the TV show, Nora can’t be infected by spores before she’s tortured by Ellie. Maybe she’ll get bitten instead, or Ellie will use inflicting pain alone to get the information out of Nora.
1J.J. Will Have A 4-Year-Old Cousin
Most of HBO’s changes to The Last of Us will make the second game’s story even more heartbreaking, or equally tragic but just in a different way. But one of the TV show’s changes could actually make one of the game’s rare heartwarming parts even more heartwarming. After returning from Seattle, there’s a brief section in which Ellie and Dina settle into a normal life on a farm, raising their son J.J. and a couple of dozen sheep.
These scenes of Ellie trying to move on from her trauma and just be a good mom to J.J. are some of the only wholesome, good-natured moments in the game. If Tommy and Maria have a kid in the TV show, then little J.J. will have a four-year-old cousin to play with. The Last of Us season 2 won’t be all doom and gloom – just mostly.
