The Last Of Us Season 2 Set Photos Confirm HBO Cut A Key Moment From The Games

Adapting a story from one medium to another is as much about what you keep from the source material as what you don't. Especially when coming from the world of video games, where stories unfold over dozens of hours and rarely cut away from their central character, bringing that world to life in the much tighter confines of a TV show is all about finding what moments from your source material are essential and which can be modified or left behind entirely.

Enter: HBO's "The Last of Us," which has been notable for its slavish devotion to recreating the original game on the small screen. Not only has the creative team brought pivotal story beats to life word-for-word and sometimes even shot for shot, but they've also brought back actors Merle Dandridge and Jeffrey Wright from the games to reprise their characters on the show. They've even kept the controversial structure of The Last of Us Part II, with season 2 following Ellie (Bella Ramsey)'s path for revenge and positioning season 3 to give us Abby (Kaitlyn Dever)'s side of the story.

That the team making "The Last of Us" has stuck so close to the original game results in the changes they have made feeling more impactful. They added a major battle scene with the infected laying siege to Jackson Hole in season 2 episode 2, which heightened the drama of that episode. But one of the more subtle changes is equally impactful when it comes to the changes the show has made with Ellie's new love interest, Dina (Isabela Merced). Additional scenes have fleshed out not just Dina's relationship with Ellie, but with Pedro Pascal's Joel as well, giving us a better understanding of why Dina would put herself at such risk for Ellie's misguided revenge mission.

That's why it might be surprising to see set photos that confirm one of the most important scenes between Ellie and Dina from the game was left on the cutting room floor.

Ellie and Dina walked through the gates of the Seattle QZ in a cut scene from HBO's The Last of Us

In the game, Ellie and Dina make the long trek to Seattle on their hunt for Abby but are shocked to find the FEDRA gate to the Seattle Quarantine Zone is abandoned. This sequence serves both a narrative and a gameplay purpose: It establishes that FEDRA is no longer in control of Seattle (meaning our heroes have no idea who they are up against), and it also serves as a puzzle for the player to find a way through the gate now that it's no longer functioning.

What it doesn't do is further the story of Ellie and Dina's relationship nearly as well as the new scene that was added to the episode, in which they come across the bodies of murdered Seraphites, an ominous warning of the bloodshed to come. This new scene explains why we never saw the entry gate to Seattle make it into the show, but it doesn't mean they didn't shoot the scene: Production designer Don Macaulay shared photos of the set they constructed for episode 3, but the filmed scene was left on the cutting room floor. 

Just like everything else in the show, it's handsomely crafted and exquisitely detailed, but based on these photos, it looks like Ellie and Dina only had to stroll right through the open door, which is hardly as suspenseful as what's waiting for them on the other side, so it makes sense why this was left out of an already jam-packed episode.

What else from Ellie and Abby's story will survive the adaptation process in the show's much anticipated third (and probably fourth) season is still a mystery.