Summary
- The biggest challenge for The Last of Us season 2 is to make TV audiences empathize with Abby without the benefit of gameplay.
- Kaitlyn Dever will play Abby in the TV series, recreating the best scenes from The Last of Us Part II.
- HBO has a history of making audiences empathize with morally ambiguous characters, like Abby, in other shows.
Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Last of Us Part II.
The Last of Us season 2’s biggest challenge will be making the audience empathize with Abby without the benefit of gameplay, but it’s HBO’s signature move to make audiences empathize with the last character they expected to empathize with. After season 1 adapted the first game, season 2 will begin to tackle the epic narrative of The Last of Us Part II, presumably with a similar chronology. Kaitlyn Dever has been cast to play Abby, one of the greatest but also most polarizing characters in video game history.
The game’s best narrative trick is making the audience hate Abby right away with the gruesome inciting incident, then slowly forcing them to empathize with her as they experience the story from her perspective. For the first half of the game, the only thing the player knows about Abby is that she beat Joel to death – and they want revenge. But the second half puts the player in her shoes and shows them that, from her point of view, Joel is the villain. It’s ingenious storytelling, but it’ll play a little differently on TV than it did in the game.
The Last Of Us Season 2's Biggest Challenge Will Be Getting TV Audiences To Empathize With Abby
The TV show won't have gameplay to actively endear the audience to Abby
The Last of Us Part II uses gameplay to actively endear the audience to Abby. As they play as Abby escaping from a horde of infected and keeping Lev safe from the Seraphites hunting him down and killing the Rat King, the player can’t help but love Abby as much as they love Joel or Ellie. But without being able to use gameplay to literally put the audience in Abby’s shoes, The Last of Us TV show will have a tough time getting viewers to empathize with her.
HBO Has Made Audiences Empathize With Much Worse People Than Abby
HBO has a deep bench of antiheroes who have done horrible things
Although it’ll be a lot tougher for The Last of Us TV show to force audiences to empathize with Abby than the game, which literally controlled the player’s perspective, this is where it comes in handy that the show is on HBO. HBO has a long history of introducing characters who seem despicable and irredeemable – much like Abby after a certain Last of Us Part II scene at a snowbound mansion – and making the audience see them as a three-dimensional human being and empathize with them. HBO has a deep bench of sympathetic antiheroes that audiences didn’t expect to like.
Succession’s Logan Roy is an abusive patriarch whose own children fear him; The Sopranos’ Ralph Cifaretto murdered the woman who was carrying his child; Game of Thrones’ Jaime Lannister assaulted his own sister; and Barry’s Barry Berkman is a professional killer. HBO managed to get audiences to empathize with all these characters, and they’re all worse people than Abby. It might not be as impossible as it seems for Abby to win over TV audiences in The Last of Us season 2.
