The introduction of Abby Anderson will be a bit different in HBO’s The Last of Us TV series than it is in the game.
Please be aware of spoilers for The Last of Us (both games and show) below.
Just as with the first season, there will be some differences between the game and the TV show due to the nature of each medium, ensuring the story remains satisfying for each audience and spoilers are less likely to occur.
“In the game, you play as Abby, so you immediately form a path to connection with her, because you’re surviving as her, you’re running through the snow, you’re fighting infected, and we can withhold certain things and make it a mystery that will be revealed later in the story,” The Last of Us’ Neil Druckmann shared during a press conference.
He noted the showrunners “couldn’t do that” in the TV series because, obviously, viewers won’t be able to actually play as Abby when season two airs. “So we need other tools, and that context gave us that shortcut,” Druckmann explained.
The showrunners ultimately decided to tweak the game’s timeline framing a notch, and instead The Last of Us series two will introduce Abby (played by Kaitly Dever) and reveal her connection to Pedro Pascal’s Joel and Bella Ramsey’s Ellie to the audience from the off.
“Where that revelation happens in the game, if we were to stick to a very similar timeline, viewers would have to wait a very, very long time to get that context,” Druckmann reasoned.
“It would probably get spoiled to them between seasons, and we didn’t want that, so it felt appropriate for those reasons to move that up and give the viewer that context right off the bat.”
The second season of The Last of Us will kick off next month, on 13th April, and will comprise seven episodes, with one of those episodes being “quite big” in length. Spores have also been confirmed for The Last of Us’ second season, with the showrunners promising viewers “a different evolution” of infection.
Earlier this month, Dever spoke more about her role as The Last of Us’ Abby, stating she wants “to do this character justice and make the fans proud” on the second season’s debut.