The Last of Us Season 2 introduces Kaitlyn Dever’s Abby, a central character to the story. Obviously any adaptation will make changes to fit the medium, and that’s no different for Season 2 with respect to Abby’s story.
In the game, players are introduced to Abby by way of a cutscene (via GamesRadar) that transitions to players taking control of Abby as the playable character for a period of time. This allows players to “immediately form an empathetic connection” with Abby because you’re playing as her, writer Neil Druckmann said during an interview attended by Entertainment Weekly.
Obviously, the TV show is not interactive, so Druckmann and the team changed things up, including the timeline. As fans will recall, they only learn about Abby’s backstory after a certain major event plays out, with the game then going back in time to see how things came to be from Abby’s perspective.
The TV show shifts the timeline so viewers get this context earlier on.
“We can withhold certain things and make it a mystery that will be revealed later in the story. We couldn’t do that in the show because you’re not playing as her. So we need other tools, and that context gave us that shortcut,” he said. “If we were to stick to a very similar timeline, viewers would have to wait a very, very long time to get that context,” he noted. “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 that context right off the bat.”
Showrunner Craig Mazin previously teased a major timeline change for Season 2.
“We certainly are going to mess around with time the way it was in the source material… we messed around in ways that we felt were appropriate for the show,” Mazin told Entertainment Weekly. “When I say ‘messed around,’ I mean scientifically determined in a narrative way what we thought would be most impactful.”
The Last of Us Season 2 arrives Sunday, April 13. Season 2 brings back Pedro Pascal as Joel and Bella Ramsey as Ellie, with Kaitlyn Dever joining the cast as Abby. Alongside the three are Young Mazino as Jesse, Isabela Merced as Dina, and Catherine O’Hara as Joel’s therapist, Gail. The Matrix actor Joe Pantoliano plays Eugene, a character referenced in the game but never seen.
