HBO
The main elements of The Last of Us Season 2: time jump, deaths, new protagonists…
As the first season of The Last of Us wraps up, we take a look back at everything we can expect from the HBO series when it adapts the sequel.
Episode 9 marks the end of the first season of The Last of Us, and the debate on social media in the coming weeks will be like the Great Fire of Rome. As in the video game, viewers will be divided between those who justify Joel and those who condemn him, just as Naughty Dog and HBO wanted. Is he a villain? Would we have done the same thing? It is a topic that can be discussed at length, but it also creates a thirst for answers.
And we will give it to you.
Below, we're going to go over everything we can expect from The Last of Us Season 2. Obviously, this will include some spoilers for The Last of Us: Part II, the sequel to the original game, but we'll try to keep them to a minimum, warning you of the most important ones and speaking only in general terms.
The time skip
Right now, the big concern among fans is that there are five years between the story of the first game and the second game. At that time, Ellie's physical change was most noticeable, and she went from 14 to 19 years old, from a girl to a grown woman. She looked much stronger and more ruthless, perfectly capable of taking care of herself. HBO does not intend to wait that long to shoot Season 2 and has made it clear that they will continue to count on Bella Ramsey, who is exactly 19 years old but was chosen because she looks younger. Although episode 8 and the scenes with David give cause for optimism, it remains to be seen whether the actress will be as good in the role as she has been so far.
New key characters
Part 2 of the game introduces a new protagonist who took everyone by surprise. We are talking about Abigail Anderson, better known as Abby. She is the daughter of the Fireflies surgeon who was going to operate on Ellie, the one who died at the hands of Joel, and as you can imagine, she doesn't get along very well with either Joel or Ellie. Deeply scarred by this event, her story will be fundamental to addressing one of the major themes of the sequel: revenge.
On the other hand, we have Dina, Ellie's love interest. After the events of this first season, Joel and the young woman will settle in Jackson, the town they passed through in episode 6, and it will be there that Ellie will meet Dina. In fact, she will be the one who follows our protagonist in her next adventure. Jesse, another inhabitant of the town who will complicate the story as he is Dina's ex-boyfriend and (little spoiler) the one who got her pregnant. A love triangle that will have to put aside their differences in order to survive.
HBO has a very complex casting process ahead of them, as they will have to find the right actors for Dina and Jesse, as well as for Abby's group they will have to deal with (and where Lev stands out, a transgender character who, like Abby's character, received all kinds of harassment and threats from Ellie's fans). But things will not end there, because if in the first season, we had factions like David's cannibals, in The Last of Us: Part 2 groups of this type multiplied, like the Seraphites, a primitive cult that goes hunting for each other.
A different relationship between Joel and Ellie
The lie that ends the first season of The Last of Us will take its toll on the relationship between Joel and Ellie. From being inseparable to almost not being able to see each other, at least Ellie, who will be strained and hurt by what happened every time they meet. She would not have chosen the same and is unable to forgive him (another key theme of the second part, forgiveness). Through several flashbacks, we saw what happened between them in the five years between the two parts, how Ellie found out about everything, and how she reacted. We will also see how Joel told his brother Tommy, who will return for the second season with his wife (and son).
The Death Everyone Will Talk About
(Warning: Major spoilers to follow)
As we said, The Last of Us: Part II has revenge as one of its main themes. Because Abby will seek revenge on Joel after what happened to his father... and she will succeed. Abby's character, which players were forced to control, killed the protagonist of the original, and her revenge gave way to Ellie's, which was even more bloody and terrible. The young woman was then caught in a terrible whirlpool of hatred and rage that took her across the country and from which she had to learn to emerge, to fulfill the proverb that says: "Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves."
In the second season of The Last of Us, we will see the consequences of Joel's choices in the first season. Does anyone believe the Fireflies survived after such a failure? Who replaced them?
Of course, with all these clues and new developments, if HBO and Craig Mazin can pull it off, Season 2 has the makings of being even more compelling than the first.