Can We Please Chill Out About The Last Of Us Season Two's Photo Leaks?

Photos from the set of HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation have leaked, and fans are mad. In the images floating around Twitter, it looks like Ellie’s tattoo from The Last of Us Part 2 is much smaller in the adaptation, so instead of extending from the elbow to the wrist and wrapping around the majority of her forearm, it covers a significantly smaller area on actor Bella Ramsey’s lower arm.

Another gripe that’s been raised is that Ellie has longer hair than in the game – Ramsey’s Ellie has wavy hair that falls past the shoulders, with the front of the hair tied back in a bun, while game Ellie has the same hairstyle, but slightly straighter and chin-length. One fan referred to it as the ‘butch bob’, because Ellie is gay. It’s a good name. Maybe I should get a butch bob.

Yes, The Tattoo Has Significance

I see where these people are coming from. The headline of this op-ed might not indicate that, but I do. The hair stuff is overly nitpicky, but the tattoo does have story significance, and is iconographic of the series to many fans – loads of people have gotten Ellie’s forearm tattoo on themselves, which I personally would not do, but to each their own.

The tattoo is part of Ellie’s characterisation. In the game, Ellie tells Dina that she chemically burned her own arm to hide her infected bite. Functionally, the tattoo serves to cover up that wound, and therefore, that bite. Conceptually, there’s a lot of meaning that you can read about in this Washington Post interview with the devs, but none of that really affects the story, per se. It’s background, a detail you might pick up on if you pay attention and connect the dots.

Ultimately, Ellie’s Hair And Tattoo Aren’t That Important

Come on, a hairstyle and the size of a tattoo (not even its inclusion! The size!) are extremely small details that matter to nobody but those who already know what Ellie looked like in the game. The hair is close enough, and the tattoo serves its purpose even if it doesn’t wrap all the way around the arm. Maybe it was just a small chemical burn, guys. Maybe the photo was taken at a weird angle. It’s not a big deal.

I can’t help but feel like this is just an extension of the regular criticism that because Bella Ramsey, Ellie’s actor, doesn’t look like Ellie, they can’t do the job well. We already know this isn’t true. Ramsey doesn’t have to be a top-to-toe replica of Ellie to represent the character convincingly – they were already nominated for an Emmy for their performance in the series, if that doesn’t say something about the quality of their acting. Are some details of the game important to bring over to the show? Sure. I’d say Abby being jacked is one of those details. But a tattoo and a hairstyle are not among them.

Again, I have to reiterate that we need to let adaptations actually adapt instead of expecting them to replicate every shot and detail wholesale. What would the point of that be? You could just play the game. The show’s first season has changed major things, adding timely political commentary, tweaking characters for dramatic effect, adding an entire storyline for minor characters that led to one of the most moving episodes of the season, and even inventing characters out of thin air. None of those things made the show worse. I’d go so far as to say they were improvements, and fit the adaptation’s television medium better than they would have in the game.

Considering how many changes HBO’s The Last of Us has already made, the size of a tattoo and longer hair are inconsequential. Let’s all be normal and just wait for the show to air before making our judgments, okay?