While The last of us TV program Remaining so loyal to the PlayStation, it has deviated at times in important ways. The third episode, which aired last night, featured the biggest change from the source material yet, and was co-written by Neil Druckmann. and Craig Mazin have gone out of their way to explain why a New interview with IGN.
Spoiler warning: The following post details major plot points from both the game and the show. If you haven’t played or watched either yet, now’s your chance to hit the brakes and take a step back.
Entitled “A Long, Long Time”, the third episode of The last of us TV program He finally introduces Bill, a combative but no-nonsense aficionado played by Nick Offerman (Amusement parks and resortsAnd developers). The game indicates that Bill had a romantic relationship with a man named Frank, but it never goes into detail. Last night’s episode not only delved into the relationship in detail via flashbacks, I also changed how it ended.
“When we get to this part of the season, Craig makes a really interesting point which is… there are a lot of examples of things that haven’t gone well for people, and these are often Joel’s reflections and cautionary tales about ‘what you have to lose’,” Druckmann said IGN. “It was, what if we showed them what you can afford to win?”
in the gameBill helps Joel and Ellie find a truck that they can use to head west. Bitter and foul-mouthed, he is the only person left in a town called Lincoln, Surrounded by infections and their homemade booby traps. He lectures the couple about how caring for others is a surefire way to kill yourself, referring to a close partner who tried to take care of him in the past. Later, it is revealed that this partner hanged himself after becoming infected, and wrote in a note that in the end it was better than staying with Bill.
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In the show, Bill is already gone by the time Joel and Ellie arrive in Lincoln. And viewers get to see how Frank, played by Murray Bartlett (Looking, The White Lotus), first meets Bill, as well as bits and pieces of the 20-year relationship that followed. Frank eventually becomes debilitated by a terminal illness and Bill helps them both take their own lives together. When Joel and Ellie arrive, they find a letter from Bill talking about how protecting Frank after the outbreak was precisely what had made his life worth living, a complete reversal from what happens in the game. The change was apparently Mazin’s idea, though Druckmann warmed up to it when they did the math on how it would help support the rest of the story.
“I think it is a happy ending,” Mazin told IGN. “I think we tend to view death as failure, particularly when you’re talking about playing a video game. It is literally failure. And for our show so far, there’s been some brutal moments where Joel has failed or at least perceives that he’s failed: he failed his daughter, he’s failed Tess, and he’s certainly feeling that weight at both the beginning and end of this episode.”
It’s this sort of compassion and hope that The Last Of Us was arguably missing, and Druckmann said the changed plot point also served as a warning sign for Joel; that, without someone to take care of, surviving just to survive is pointless. It’s also the sort of deviation Druckmann would have said “fuck no” to in the past, he told IGN. “Are we better in this version of the story, in this other medium, or are we worse?” he said. “If we’re better, we should embrace it fully. And this was such a beautiful story. It was very easy for me to say, ‘Let’s do it. Sounds amazing.’”