HBO Has A Bold Plan For The Last Of Us – And It Will Reignite An Old Video Game Controversy

HBO is planning around four seasons for The Last of Us, which will allow the TV show to pull off the same controversial switch of perspective as the game. While co-showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann aren’t committing to a specific number just yet, the current plan is for The Last of Us to run for three more seasons. Season 2, set to begin airing in April, will start to adapt The Last of Us Part II, as Ellie heads to Seattle to exact revenge, but it won’t cover the whole game.

It’s unclear exactly when The Last of Us season 2 will end — it could be when Ellie finds the aquarium, when Abby arrives at the theater, or when Abby’s backstory is finally revealed — but it won’t be when Ellie returns to an empty house in Jackson. It might seem like overkill to take three whole seasons to cover one game when the first game was covered in one season. But The Last of Us Part II is a much more complex narrative than its predecessor, and adapting it across three seasons will allow the TV show to capture that complexity.

The Last Of Us Having Four Seasons Means We'll Go Deep Into Abby's Story

Abby's Story Will Have As Much Room To Breathe As Ellie's

One of the most effective (and polarizing) rug-pulls in The Last of Us Part II is the switch from Ellie’s perspective to Abby’s perspective. After the mysterious Abby comes to Jackson and brutally murders Joel in front of Ellie, the game forces the player to share Ellie’s desire for revenge. Ellie goes to Seattle and spends three days relentlessly hunting down Abby to avenge Joel. After losing her humanity along the way, Ellie is persuaded to give up on her quest for vengeance and turn back. But then, Abby shows up, wanting her own revenge for the friends Ellie killed. 

On that bombshell, the game goes all the way back to Ellie’s first day in Seattle, this time from Abby’s perspective. The player then goes through the same three days all over again. By going for another three seasons, HBO’s The Last of Us will have plenty of time to dig deep into Abby’s story. What makes the perspective change so powerful in the game is that the audience has just as much time to get to know Abby as they did Ellie. It rounds Abby out as a three-dimensional human being, and now, the show can do the same.

The Last Of Us Part II Makes The "Enemy" A Playable Character (The Show Can Do It Too)

The Genius Of This Story Is Making The Audience Care About The Villain

The genius of The Last of Us Part II’s storytelling is that, by making the “enemy” a playable character, it hammers home that there are no heroes and villains in real life. There’s no such thing as good guys and bad guys; everyone is complicated, with their own flaws and redeeming qualities. The player spends three days singularly focused on finding Abby and making her pay for killing Joel. Then, it shows that Abby had a good reason to kill Joel: he killed her father and she wanted revenge. It’s the exact same reason Ellie wants to kill Abby herself.

Up to that point, Abby has been a faceless enemy that both Ellie and the player wish dead. But after that revelation, this faceless enemy suddenly has a face and a sympathetic motivation. Then, by making Abby a playable character and reliving the same events from her perspective, the game literally puts the audience in their enemy’s shoes. The TV show can’t do that quite as literally, but it can still recreate that change of perspective by giving Abby’s story its own season separate from Ellie’s, giving her equal footing as a main character.

Whereas Ellie’s story is a revenge story, Abby’s is a redemption story. She spent four years plotting her revenge against Joel and expected it to make her feel better about her dad’s untimely death, but it just left her feeling empty. As she takes two young Seraphites, Lev and Yara, under her wing and becomes a loving protector to them, she manages to claw back the humanity that she lost when she murdered Joel (the humanity that Ellie slowly loses on her rampage through Seattle). To really capture those parallels, Abby needs as much screen time as Ellie.

Why It Makes Sense For The Last Of Us To Have At Least Three More Seasons

The Last Of Us Part II Is Split Into Three Distinctive Sections

It may seem excessive to adapt The Last of Us Part II across three seasons (or maybe even more), but it actually makes perfect sense. While the first game is a linear story with a clear beginning, middle, and end, the second game is split into three distinctive sections. After a brief prologue in Jackson setting up the journey to Seattle, the game follows Ellie’s three days in Seattle, then Abby’s three days in Seattle, and ends with an extended epilogue in which Ellie chases Abby to Santa Barbara for one last showdown.

It makes sense to give each of these sections their own season. Given TV’s cross-cutting abilities, it might’ve made sense to tell Ellie and Abby’s stories simultaneously, but it’s best to keep them separate. They take place within the same timeframe, but they’re two very different stories that explore very different themes — and diving into Abby’s story after Ellie has already hunted her down is part of its emotional impact. There’s a school of thought that the Santa Barbara section isn’t long enough for a whole season, but there’s a lot of interesting drama to expand on.

HBO's The Last Of Us Can Give Us A Whole New Perspective On Abby

The TV Show Isn't Burdened By Getting To The Gameplay

While video games have the benefit of putting the audience directly in the perspective of the characters, they’re also burdened with getting to the action as quickly as possible. Gamers are anxious to start twiddling their thumbs, so there are only so many talky dialogue scenes they’re willing to sit through. The Last of Us games get a bit more leeway, because their talky dialogue scenes are the best in the business, but they still have to have an action sequence teed up around the corner. On television, talky dialogue scenes are encouraged, and action sequences are just the icing.

This means that the TV show can give audiences a whole new perspective on Abby. The trailers for The Last of Us season 2 are already teasing Abby scenes that weren’t in the game. She’s seen mourning at her father’s graveside, and there’s a hint that the show will reveal she’s a Firefly much earlier than the game does. Kaitlyn Dever’s Abby is more physically vulnerable than her video game counterpart, so she’ll be a very different character than the lean, mean fighting machine seen in the game. The Last of Us season 2 can present a whole new Abby.