The Last of Us season 2's premiere immediately puts those familiar with the games on unsteady ground.
Instead of mirroring The Last of Part 2's opening – which sees Joel ride on into Jackson as players get acclimatized to their new surroundings – it instead introduces another character way ahead of schedule.
In its place, the opening few minutes instead deal with the aftermath of Joel's actions at the Firefly hospital during The Last of Us season one ending. As the bodies stack up, ringleader Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) coldly outlines her plans to strike back at Pedro Pascal's survivor, declaring, "When we kill him, we kill him slowly."
We have no intention of stepping into spoiler territory here – only to say that game fans will be acutely aware that Abby is introduced later in the story, with her motives and actions being the source of some confusion until around the midway point.
But, as co-showrunner Craig Mazin tells GamesRadar+, that was a decision borne of a desire to remove any chance of baffling an audience that won't have hands-on time with Abby.
"[Co-showrunner] Neil [Druckmann] and I really thought quite a bit about how to introduce her," Mazin begins. "When you meet her in the game, you don't know who she is, you don't know why she's there, why she's doing what she's doing. It's all a mystery. But what you do is play as her."
Mazin continues, "So, right off the bat, part of your job is to keep yourself [as the player] and Abby alive, which invests you instantly in her wellbeing and her point of view. That's kind of how we function as humans: instant empathy there. That's not something we have the advantage of in a television show. We thought it was important not to hold back those cards, to let you know who she was, what had happened, and what she wanted at a bare minimum. So we could – on some level – at least connect with her to the extent that we aren't confused by who she was."
As Mazin neatly summarizes, "If mystery goes too far, it becomes confusion. So we made that decision. I think it was the right one to make."
The Last of Us season 2 is now airing weekly on HBO in the US and Sky and NOW TV in the UK. For more, head on over to our The Last of Us season 2 release schedule.
For a deeper dive into the premiere, be sure to check out The Last of Us season 2, episode 1 game differences and an answer to the question you may be asking: 'who is Eugene?'
