Why A Pivotal “Last of Us” Scene Was Shifted

SPOILERS AHEAD FOR HBO’s “THE LAST OF US” S2x06 As expected the sixth and penultimate episode of the second season of HBO’s “The Last of Us” delivered us a flashback episode, one that basically resolved all the Joel and Ellie storylines and provided proper emotional closure regarding Joel (Pedro Pascal). The episode surprised in that […] The post Why A Pivotal “Last of Us” Scene Was Shifted appeared first on Dark Horizons.

May 19, 2025 - 14:30

Why A Pivotal “Last of Us” Scene Was Shifted

SPOILERS AHEAD FOR HBO’s “THE LAST OF US” S2x06

As expected the sixth and penultimate episode of the second season of HBO’s “The Last of Us” delivered us a flashback episode, one that basically resolved all the Joel and Ellie storylines and provided proper emotional closure regarding Joel (Pedro Pascal).

The episode surprised in that it basically showed the remaining Joel sequences from “The Last of Us Part II” game – not just expected scenes like the museum visit but even the porch conversation. That porch scene doesn’t come until near the very end of the game, after Ellie and others have gone through much more hell than they have on the HBO series thus far.

Its inclusion here – blended with some of the conversation from the early St. Mary’s return visit scene in the first half of the game – is a surprise. Ellie’s recall of the moment is key to her emotional closure and, in some ways, it’s the single most critical scene of the entire story. Why go early with it?

Speaking with Variety, game creator and this episode’s director Neil Druckmann says that with TV and the years-long gap between seasons – they needed closure for what was set up this season:

“In talking about it with Craig [Mazin], it’s the first time I really thought about the time between seasons. So much of writing is set ups and payoffs, and we would have set certain things up that get paid off years later.
That felt too long, especially because this season focuses so much on Ellie’s journey and this emotional truth of what did she know? What didn’t she know? To wait additional years until Season 3 will come out — or maybe even Season 4, it depends where all the events land and how many seasons we have — I was easily convinced by Craig that that would be too long.
It was a day’s worth of conversation of us wrestling with it. The way I work is, when a suggestion like that is made, I say, ‘Let’s play it through’. I just assume that it’s correct, and then we play it through and not only talk about this season, but talk about the future seasons, and then say, does it make sense? If the answer is yes, we go with it. If the answer is no, we either keep wrestling with it until we find another solution, or we just go back to how it was in the game.”

Asked if this will impact how the show will end, he waits a long pause and says: “That’s right”. In fact, the just-released trailer for the season finale already hints at heading into the unknown.

The finale is expected to translate ‘Day Three’ of Ellie’s time in the game, but multiple scenes in the trailer aren’t in the game, and one was originally an Abby scene which has Ellie substituted in.

Some who’ve already seen the episode via press screeners have suggested the second season ending will not be the same as the game’s midway cliffhanger. What are we getting? We’ll have to wait and see.

We’re gonna miss Joel and Ellie together #TheLastOfUs pic.twitter.com/HLOedLH8Nw
— The Last of Us News (@TheLastofUsNews) May 19, 2025

Joel and Ellie on patrol#TheLastOfUs pic.twitter.com/3ooCXLE3eS
— The Last of Us News (@TheLastofUsNews) May 13, 2025

The post Why A Pivotal “Last of Us” Scene Was Shifted appeared first on Dark Horizons.