‘The Last Of Us’: Differences Between HBO Series & Video Game Across Seasons 1 And 2

SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers for both seasons of The Last Of Us.

HBO‘s television adaptation of the Sony Playstation game The Last Of Us took several departures from its source material in Season 1, with the creative direction of Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann, who is also responsible for the award-winning game.

Season 2, which has reached its halfway mark, also splits off here and there from The Last of Us Part II — the sequel RPG game of which it is based.

Below find an in depth breakdown of the major changes to the narrative in the television adaptation.

Season 2

Abby’s Physique & Motive

Fans were quick to point out that Kaitlyn Dever, who portrays Abby in HBO’s adaptation of the video game, does not match Abby’s build in the game itself. However, Druckmann has already explained why Dever’s physique was not a concern when casting her for the role.

RELATED: ‘The Last Of Us’ Creators Discuss Season 2 Premiere & Tee Up What’s To Come: “So Much Of The Season Is About Consequence”

“We need someone to really capture the essence of those characters…. We don’t value as much, ‘Do they look exactly like the character with their eyebrows or their nose or their body?’ Whatever it is. It’s not nowhere on the priority list, but it’s below a bunch of other things that we consider,” he previously told Entertainment Weekly.

Another huge change from The Last of Us Part II involves the revelation that Abby is a former member of the Fireflies, the militia group that Joel is delivering Ellie to in the first game/season in the hope of finding a cure for an Infected bite using Ellie’s immunity. In the beginning of the Season 2 premiere, viewers learn that Abby has a personal connection to someone who was killed in the hospital when Joel murdered everyone in his path to save Ellie from her own demise — and she vows to make Joel pay. In the video game, viewers are not privy to Abby’s motives or her backstory until much later, even playing as her at times without fully knowing who the character is.

Joel’s Death

In the second episode, Joel goes out on patrol with Dina and, as they’re seeking shelter from a snowstorm, stumble upon Abby being chased by a horde of Infected. This sequence unfolds a bit differently in the game, as Tommy is on patrol with Joel, not Dina. However, much of the remainder of the sequence is very similar to the game.

RELATED: ‘The Last Of Us’ Creators Break Down Season 2’s Heartbreaking Second Episode & Its Enduring Implications

Abby offers to let them seek shelter at the lodge that she and her friends are in. When they arrive, Abby introduces the strangers she’s brought, and the crew set to work knocking out Dina (in the game, Tommy) and brutally murdering Joel. As Abby is beating Joel to death, Ellie walks in and is tackled, forced to watch as Abby delivers the killing blow.

The Horde of Infected Resurrecting From Snow

In the game, Abby is being chased by a horde of infected when Joel finds and saves her. This also happens in the series, except the horde of Infected then descends upon Jackson and breaches the town.

Ellie and Dina Go To Seattle

Joel’s death is the inciting event for the story in The Last of Us Part II, which focuses on Ellie and Dina’s trek to Seattle and, more specifically, Ellie’s quest to make Abby pay for killing Joel. There are a few notable differences between the show and the game in terms of how this unfolds.

Since Tommy is with Joel when he’s killed in the game, he’s also the one who tells Ellie the names of Abby and her crew. In Episode 3, Dina is the one to tell Ellie who Joel’s killer is, and she’s also tracked down more information about them and their whereabouts, as well as their affiliation with the Washington Liberation Front. They bring the information to Tommy, who discourages them from leaving because Jackson doesn’t have the resources to support them, which is similar to a conversation he has with Ellie in the game.

RELATED: ‘The Last Of Us’: Gabriel Luna Reflects On Tommy’s Trauma In The Aftermath Of Jackson’s Infected Attack & A Major Character Death

Ultimately, in the series, they put it to a vote with the Council, which votes against sending manpower on this mission, but Ellie and Dina sneak out in the middle of the night and go anyway. In the game, there’s no council vote, and Tommy actually leaves in the middle of the night in hopes that he can take care of Abby before Ellie and Dina have a chance to, but upon learning he left, the two of them go after him.

Ellie & Dina’s Relationship

In Episode 3, Ellie and Dina have a conversation about their kiss during the New Year’s party that is almost identical to a conversation they have in the game, where Dina asks Ellie to rate the kiss. In the show, they’re sleeping in a tent on their way to Seattle. However, in the game, this conversation happens when Ellie and Dina are on patrol near Jackson and Joel is still being tortured by Abby. They are eventually interrupted by Jesse, who tells them that Joel and Tommy are missing.

Ellie and Dina are also intimate for the first time in that game sequence, but in the show they don’t get physical during that interaction. 

Three Month Time Jump

In the game, there’s no explicit time jump after Joel dies like there is in the series, though it implied there is at least a small one. The opening sequence of the third episode shows Tommy visiting Joel’s body in the morgue and Ellie waking up in a panic in the hospital, clearly still suffering intense PTSD from watching Joel die. There’s then a three-month time jump before Ellie finally gets out of the hospital and visits Joel’s house (similar to a sequence in the video game) before Dina tells her everything she knows about Abby and her crew.

On their way out of Jackson, Ellie visits Joel’s grave for the first time. In the game, Joel’s death scene cuts almost immediately into a scene of Ellie at Joel’s grave. 

Isaac’s Introduction

Isaac is the leader of the WLF, played by Jeffrey Wright, who is reprising his role from the video game in HBO’s adaptation. In the game, most of the player’s understanding of Isaac and his ruthlessness comes from references by other characters. Episode 4 of the show, however, expands greatly upon his character with two scenes that are not in the game at all.

The first opens the episode, with Isaac betraying his FEDRA unit by throwing grenades into their armored vehicle. This is a pretty significant change from the game, which never insinuates that Isaac was once associated with FEDRA. The second scene takes place 11 years later, when Ellie and Dina are searching for Abby in Seattle. Isaac is interrogating a Seraphite for information on the group’s plans for their next attack, and the dynamic adds to the audience’s understanding of the conflict between the WLF and the Seraphites.

Seraphites and the WLF

The third and fourth episode of the series take quite a few liberties in depicting the conflict between the WLF and the Seraphites early on. However, there are also several notable moments from the game that made it into the show, including the scene where Ellie and Dina stumble upon the disemboweled bodies in the radio station and deduce that the Seraphites were responsible.

This comes after an Episode 3 scene, which isn’t in the game, where Ellie and Dina come across a group of Seraphites who have been massacred by (they assume) the WLF.

Dina and Ellie Reveal Their Secrets

Undoubtedly one of the most anticipated moments from the game is when Ellie reveals that she is immune and, in turn, Dina tells Ellie that she’s pregnant. The moment unfolds similarly in the television show, although there are some notable differences.

Perhaps the biggest difference is the way in which Ellie’s immunity is unveiled. In the game, Ellie and Dina encounter spores in the transit tunnel while running from the WLF soldiers and, when Ellie’s mask breaks, she’s forced to explain to Dina why she won’t become Infected. In the show, Ellie throws her arm in front of Dina to save her from getting bit.

Dina’s reaction is pretty similar in both the game and the show, and she ends up revealing her pregnancy in this moment of duress. However, Ellie’s reaction to that news is quite different in the game than in the show. In the game, Ellie is very angry that Dina didn’t tell her about the pregnancy earlier, calling her a “burden” and illustrating the dark and hardened path Ellie is already barreling down by this point in their journey. In the show, Ellie is quite excited by the news and essentially tells Dina she’s looking forward to starting a family with her. This is likely because of other changes in the timeline of Ellie and Dina’s relationship. In Episode 4, the revelation of their secrets is what finally sparks the physical intimacy between the two of them that breaks down all the walls they’d been fighting to keep up about their feelings for each other. In the game, Ellie and Dina have already been romantically involved for quite some time by this point.

Ellie & Joel Flashbacks

Many of the flashbacks of Ellie and Joel featured in Episode 206 come directly from the game, including the museum for Ellie’s birthday and the porch scene, where Joel finally tells Ellie the truth about what he did in Salt Lake City. However, unlike the HBO series, those flashbacks are spread throughout the gameplay, and they are much longer. For example, the museum flashback in the game can take upwards of an hour to play through. In Episode 206, all of the flashbacks combined span just one hour of TV.

TLOU creator Neil Druckmann explained in an interview with Deadline that there were multiple reasons that he and series co-creator Craig Mazin felt making that change would be more emotionally impactful for the show.

Jesse & Tommy in Seattle

As previously mentioned, in the game, Tommy goes to Seattle first, and Ellie and Dina follow. While the show has Ellie and Dina head out before Tommy, Episode 5 reveals that he does still make his way to Seattle with Jesse — who is revealed to be in the city around this time in the gameplay as well. In the game, Dina hears WLF soldiers chattering on the radio about a guy who is killing their men. She tells Ellie, and they think it has to be Tommy. Dina stays at the theater, and Ellie heads out to investigate. When she approaches the area where they heard gunfire, she’d grabbed from behind, and it turns out to be Jesse.

Once they link up, Jesse and Ellie search for Tommy and eventually get a lead that Nora is at the hospital. However, they can hear more gunfire in the distance, so Jesse wants to go that way, believing it might be Tommy. Ellie wants to go to the hospital, though, insistent that she continue her mission to find Abby and her crew. Frustrated, Jesse splits off from Ellie.

In the show, Jesse saves both Dina and Ellie after the pair decide to head toward the hospital, where they suspect they will find Nora, under the cover of night. They map out a plan to go through a building that has been left off of WLF patrols but, when they arrive, they quickly find out why. The building is infested with Stalkers, which almost overtake them before Jesse arrives to help get them out. But, their path to safety isn’t easy, as they encounter both Seraphites and WLF soldiers in the process. Dina is shot in the leg with an arrow, marking yet another minor departure from the games, and Jesse heads back to the theater with her while Ellie heads toward the hospital to find Nora.

Evolution of the Cordyceps

The HBO adaptation is adding an interesting element to the Cordyceps threat that the game does not really contend with: evolution. Episode 205 opens with a WLF soldier warning about spores in the air that were Infecting people, prompting them to seal off lower levels of the hospital in Seattle. In the series, it is presented as a new development to the way that the Cordyceps spread, putting everyone on edge about what this means to the future of humanity.

However, spores are present in the video games from nearly the very beginning. In fact, some major plot points have already been changed in the show to accommodate the lack of spores thus far.

In fact, Episode 5 is the first time that a game sequence involving spores wasn’t significantly changed in the series. At the end of the episode, Ellie hunts down Nora (Tati Gabrielle) with the intention of interrogating her on Abby’s whereabouts. Nora runs from Ellie and eventually finds herself in the very depths of the hospital that the WLF soldiers were warned about in the beginning of the episode. Ellie kills her before she can turn Infected. 

Ellie’s Revelation to Dina

In the Season 2 finale, Ellie tells Dina about Joel’s massacre at the hospital in Salt Lake City. This doesn’t happen in the game and, in fact, nobody from Jackson (even Ellie) ever really knows why Abby killed Joel. They do know that Abby and her crew were fireflies, and they assume they killed Joel for revenge, but they don’t know that it’s because of what he did at the hospital in Salt Lake. In the show, Ellie and Dina don’t know all the details at first, either. However, Nora tells Ellie the details about Abby seeking revenge for her dad, who was the doctor operating on Ellie. This is a departure from the game as well, because Nora never divulges all those details before Ellie kills her in the game. She only tells Ellie to think about “how many people are dead because of [Joel],” which is rather ambiguous.

WLF Attacks the Seraphites

The island fight between the WLF and the Seraphites does happen during the game, and it’ll likely be explored further in Season 3. As the final scene in the Season 2 finale indicates, the third season will reset the clock on those three days in Seattle, this time telling them from Abby’s point of view.

UPDATE TO JESSE & TOMMY IN SEATTLE

Eventually, Ellie and Jesse do go their separate ways in the show, but not until the finale, when Ellie wants to go to the aquarium to continue her mission to find Abby. At that point, they get in an argument and Jesse leaves to find Tommy.

Ellie Captured by Seraphites

In the Season 2 finale, Ellie is captured by Seraphites after a wave overturns her boat and sends her ashore on their island off the coast of Seattle. The Seraphites are ultimately drawn away by a threat to their village, and Ellie continues on unscathed. Creator Neil Druckmann says this is actually a sequence that was originally in the game, but it was ultimately cut.

Ellie Kills Mel & Owen

This sequence is very similar in both the game and the show. In the Season 2 finale, Ellie finds Mel and Owen at the aquarium and interrogates them at gunpoint on Abby’s whereabouts. She tells Owen to bring her a map and point to where Abby is, but he reaches for his gun instead. Ellie shoots him and inadvertently kills Mel as well. As Mel is bleeding out, she reveals she’s pregnant and asks Ellie to remove the baby before she dies. She stops breathing moments later.

The two do not have that conversation in the game. However, in both, Ellie goes into shock and is rescued by Tommy and Jesse.

Ellie-Abby Confrontation

This is also a sequence that is adapted very faithfully. Abby brings down Tommy and kills Jesse, holding Ellie at gunpoint in the final moments of Seattle Day 3 from Ellie’s perspective. The screen goes black as Abby points her gun at Ellie. The Season 2 finale ends with a shot of Abby waking up on Seattle Day 1 in some sort of military compound. In the game, this is when users begin to play through the same three days again, this time as Abby.

Season 1

Pilot Episode’s Talk Show Opening

The talk show that opened the very first episode of The Last Of Us Season 1, in which two doctors were being interviewed about a potential pandemic related to cordyceps, only happened in the TV show. The video game takes viewers back to the early days of the cordyceps infection, but the show takes it back even further to a fictional 1968 TV program in which one researcher pitches the problem of a potential fungal infection that global warming could accelerate.

The Timeline

The pilot episode introduces a slightly different timeline in the TV show versus the video game. The game begins in 2013 before jumping to a post-apocalyptic future set in 2033, while the show starts in 2003, and the 20-year time jump leads to post-pandemic 2023, which was the year the show launched its first season.

Sarah’s Story Is More Prominent

The show spends much more time on Joel’s (Pedro Pascal) daughter Sarah, who gets his watch repaired and wants to celebrate his birthday, which falls just short of Outbreak Day, or September 26.

Tess & Joel’s Relationship

In the game, the relationship between Tess (Anna Torv) and Joel is less romantic, but the show suggests they are more than friends and partners in crime in a few ways, through a scene in which Tess embraces Joel in bed one night and then also Bill’s (Nick Offerman) letter to Joel telling him to use what he and Frank (Murray Bartlett) left behind to protect Tess.

The Way Cordyceps Spreads

In the game, spores are a huge threat to players as when ingested, the funges can start to grow inside the body, but the show stresses direct contact as more of the ultimate way people get infected — specifically being bitten.

Craig Mazin, who developed the series with Druckmann, previously explained that the elimination of the spores was a practical move, given that, in reality, spores would likely spread very quickly into open air and infect most of the population. Anyone who was not infected would need to wear a mask at all times, which would not make for interesting television.

Tommy’s Absence

In the show, Joel has lost contact with Tommy for a bit after they would contact each other regularly via radio while Tommy was in Wyoming. In the game, the pair are separated seemingly because they aren’t close anymore.

The Scientist In Jakarta

Christine Hakim’s Dr. Ratna Pertiwi, who was tracked down by the Indonesian government to secretly identify a cordyceps-infected woman, is introduced in Episode 2 of the show. This background context sequence is not in the video game. The game focuses more on the outbreak within the U.S., so this addition to the show suggests Jakarta was the starting point of the infection where Patient Zero bit the dead woman.

Ellie’s Immunity

In the game, Tess and Joel become convinced that Ellie can’t be infected because she inhales spores and doesn’t come down with the disease. Of course, with the shift from spores to direct contact through bites, Ellie in the show has a bite and some scarring from when the infection attempted to take hold in her body after the fateful night where an Infected person bit her and her best friend Riley (Storm Reid).

The show also has her get bit again, which ultimately solidifies her status as someone immune to cordyceps. The show fleshes out this backstory in the finale.

Tess’ Death

In the game, Tess is killed by FEDRA agents that tracked the trio outside the QZ. Tess takes a stand in the show against a horde of Infected because she is herself also infected and knows she only has so much time left either way.

Ellie’s Love of Mortal Kombat

In the video game, Ellie finds an arcade cabinet for The Turning, rather than Mortal Kombat, which alludes to her love of Mortal Kombat II.

Bill & Frank’s Love Story

The third episode in Season 1, which tells the story of how Bill and Frank met, is one of the biggest departures from the video game. In the game, Bill hasn’t died before Joel and Ellie get to him, and he has actually split from Frank by that point.

Kansas City

Instead of Kansas City like in the show, the game watches Joel and Ellie head to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, after visiting Bill’s compound. Melanie Lynskey’s Kathleen also does not exist in the video game. Her show character amalgamates a few different characters from the game.

RELATED: ‘The Last Of Us’ Season 2 New Characters: Who’s Who?

The pit of Infected people who were banished underground in KC also does not show up in the game, though the show has quite a sequence involving a pack of them overrunning Pittsburgh. That moment also introduces a Bloater — the type of infected person covered from head to toe in cordyceps mushrooms with the split apart brain of a Clicker. The Bloater actually first show’s up in Bill’s section of the game.

Ellie’s “First” Kill

In the video game, Ellie kills a raider attacking Joel, but the show has her stab a raider whom Joel delivers the final killing blow to.

Henry and Sam

Ellie and Joel bump into Henry (Lamar Johnson) and Sam Burrell (Keivonn Woodard) on the street in Pittsburgh versus the pair of brothers sneaking up on Ellie and Joel in their sleep.

Sam’s deafness depicted prominently in the show, is not as specific in the game. Henry’s FEDRA informant backstory is unique to the show, as is the lack of Infected people in the Kansas City tunnels the quartet navigates. Ellie’s application of her blood to Sam’s infected wound also doesn’t appear in the game.

Wyoming

The couple Ellie and Joel encounter at the beginning of Episode 6 in The Last of Us Season 1 are not present in the video game.

When Ellie and Joel find Tommy and his wife Maria (Rutina Wesley) at their compound in Jackson, Wyoming in the show, Tommy tells Joel that Maria is pregnant. She is not expecting a baby in the video game.

RELATED: ‘The Last of Us’ Season 2 Release Schedule: When Do New Episodes Come Out?

Joel also does not have panic attacks in the game like he does in the show in Wyoming.

Ellie’s Response to Joel Asking Tommy to Escort Her the Rest of the Way West

In the game, when Ellie overhears the brothers talking about passing her off to Tommy for the remainder of what would have been her journey with Joel, she runs away.

Joel’s Wound at Eastern Colorado Campus

Joel fell onto a metal rod in the game to cause his near-fatal puncture wound that a raider gives to him by stabbing him with a knife in the show.

Ellie and Riley’s Backstory

In Episode 7 of The Last of Us Season 1, Ellie flashes back to the story of how she first got bit by an Infected person in an abandoned mall. In the game, this flashback is brought about when Ellie is forced to scavenge for supplies to try and heal Joel’s wound in a different mall, but that sequence changes in the show when she finds a needle and thread in the kitchen of an abandoned house where she leaves him.

The show also expands Ellie’s time at the FEDRA academy where she met Riley. Riley and Ellie also attempt to play The Turning in the mall in the game vs. Mortal Kombat II in the show. Riley’s Firefly status is not as clear in the game when she takes Ellie to the mall, while she was stationed there in the show.

Riley and Ellie’s encounter with the single Infected in the show was made different from the horde they face in the video game.

Ellie’s Birth

The details of Ellie’s mother Anna (Ashley Johnson, who voices Ellie in the game) giving birth to her as they unfold in the show are not seen in the game. Anna being bitten by an Infected person before she cut Ellie’s umbilical chord expands the lore of why Ellie is immune. This is not explicitly laid out in the game, but as Marlene (Merle Dandridge) says in the show, a doctor thinks Ellie is immune to infection because the cordyceps in her has grown with her since her birth, and anytime she was infected with the other strain, her natural one would fend it off, making the fungal cordyceps infecting everyone else think Ellie was already cordyceps.

RELATED: ‘The Last Of Us’ Cast And Characters Across Seasons 1 And 2 Of Videogame Adaptation