Horror 'The Last of Us' HBO Series

I think I found the source material for the season:
20250529_102304-jpg.135285
 
Mazin definitely gained my trust with Chernobyl and S1 of TLOU but some of the choices in S2 has me slightly concerned and I feel a little bit more mixed on him moving forward.

TLOU1 is brilliant but in my mind a much easier story to adapt. Protagonist loses his daughter, years later has to take a young girl across the country and growing into the role of her dad. Set to the backdrop of infected, the apocalypse and the survival stuff. I love the game and the season did a good job of adapting it. When they did have room to do other things like expanding (episode 3 with Bill and Frank) it was really great and memorable.

TLOU2 is just a much more complex one to adapt. You're starting off with a very controversial event that will spark a riot among the fans and it's not as simple as 2 characters sharing a journey and growing closer. You have themes of vengeance and forgiveness and fleshing out both the "good" and "evil" characters and showing multiple sides of them. You also have a more complex narrative structure jumping back and forth reliving the same days from different perspectives.

One of my main complaints with S2 is that they did not push Ellie far enough into dark territories of how far she goes in the game or even her mental state. It feels at times like Mazin maybe doesn't quite 'get' the point of certain choices Druckmann made in the game, or they try and change things for whatever reason and it doesn't quite work as well.
 
Zantera said:
Mazin definitely gained my trust with Chernobyl and S1 of TLOU but some of the choices in S2 has me slightly concerned and I feel a little bit more mixed on him moving forward.

TLOU1 is brilliant but in my mind a much easier story to adapt. Protagonist loses his daughter, years later has to take a young girl across the country and growing into the role of her dad. Set to the backdrop of infected, the apocalypse and the survival stuff. I love the game and the season did a good job of adapting it. When they did have room to do other things like expanding (episode 3 with Bill and Frank) it was really great and memorable.

TLOU2 is just a much more complex one to adapt. You're starting off with a very controversial event that will spark a riot among the fans and it's not as simple as 2 characters sharing a journey and growing closer. You have themes of vengeance and forgiveness and fleshing out both the "good" and "evil" characters and showing multiple sides of them. You also have a more complex narrative structure jumping back and forth reliving the same days from different perspectives.

One of my main complaints with S2 is that they did not push Ellie far enough into dark territories of how far she goes in the game or even her mental state. It feels at times like Mazin maybe doesn't quite 'get' the point of certain choices Druckmann made in the game, or they try and change things for whatever reason and it doesn't quite work as well.
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Yeah I have to agree. I feel season 1 even improved on the game in some ways. Where season 2 feels a clear step down from what we got in the game. I think they tried to tone down Ellie's journey from the game but unfortunately that misses the whole point of her journey in the game. She is supposed to go down a dark path.
 
It's a hard one to pull off on TV especially across 7 episodes that we got to portrait the first act of TLOU2. Ellie starts off as our likeable protagonist who we 100% back in her revenge mission and through her actions we kinda turn on her (or at least that's the intention) as she goes deeper down the vengeance path to satisfy her own bloodlust and quest for revenge. I think it's crucial that we see her take out a number of Wolves/Seraphites and also how she acts ruthless towards Abby's friends showing very little mercy.

Aside from what she does to Nora in the show everything else just felt tame. The Owen/Mel scene in particular felt clumsy. What Owen says about "She's gonna kill us either way" isn't really felt in the show whereas in the game that tension is 100% in the air because by then, 7-8 hours into Ellie's story, you have that sense of feeling that she will kill these 2 characters even if they help her. That's meant to be the moment that really shakes Ellie and makes her (and us) realize that what she's doing isn't really "justified" anymore. Sadly in the show it comes across more as "Oops I accidentally killed these 2 characters I guess".
 
Zantera said:
It's a hard one to pull off on TV especially across 7 episodes that we got to portrait the first act of TLOU2. Ellie starts off as our likeable protagonist who we 100% back in her revenge mission and through her actions we kinda turn on her (or at least that's the intention) as she goes deeper down the vengeance path to satisfy her own bloodlust and quest for revenge. I think it's crucial that we see her take out a number of Wolves/Seraphites and also how she acts ruthless towards Abby's friends showing very little mercy.

Aside from what she does to Nora in the show everything else just felt tame. The Owen/Mel scene in particular felt clumsy. What Owen says about "She's gonna kill us either way" isn't really felt in the show whereas in the game that tension is 100% in the air because by then, 7-8 hours into Ellie's story, you have that sense of feeling that she will kill these 2 characters even if they help her. That's meant to be the moment that really shakes Ellie and makes her (and us) realize that what she's doing isn't really "justified" anymore. Sadly in the show it comes across more as "Oops I accidentally killed these 2 characters I guess".
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Yeah, I don't know why they changed Owen and Mel's deaths. I can only think they didn't want to turn people off of Ellie as a character but again that's the whole point. Violence begets violence and vengeance is just cycle that will carry on and on until someone breaks the cycle.

We're supposed to be shocked by Ellie's actions by the end of her segment.
 
XtremelyBaneful said:
this guy pretty much sums up all my thoughts.
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His comment about folks on YouTube 'getting away' with bullying was odd to me. It's not the commenter's job to police what YouTubers say any more than it is for YouTubers to police what their subscribers say. Now rest assured, some of the remarks towards Ramsey are too far, sure, but it's not the responsibility of the people watching the video to tell the YouTuber what they should or shouldn't say. Otherwise, the commenter could just make their own video.
 
OrbOfConfusion said:
His comment about folks on YouTube 'getting away' with bullying was odd to me. It's not the commenter's job to police what YouTubers say any more than it is for YouTubers to police what their subscribers say. Now rest assured, some of the remarks towards Ramsey are too far, sure, but it's not the responsibility of the people watching the video to tell the YouTuber what they should or shouldn't say. Otherwise, the commenter could just make their own video.
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you lost me in the beginning of the post. you're talking about Youtube comments sections, right? so when you say "his comment" you mean a comment under his video?
 
XtremelyBaneful said:
you lost me in the beginning of the post. you're talking about Youtube comments sections, right? so when you say "his comment" you mean a comment under his video?
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Sorry, to clarify, it's in response to a remark he made at around the 41:41 mark.
 
OrbOfConfusion said:
Sorry, to clarify, it's in response to a remark he made at around the 41:41 mark.
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I see. well, he's just telling people in the comments section to do the right thing and call people out when they're being bullies & to not conform to it all
 


I thought this video was pretty interesting and I definitely agree with many of these points. And it's also refreshing with a video like this that dives more into Ellie being badly portrayed in the show through writing rather than taking the "Bella Ramsey looks like a potato and can't act" approach that so many others do.

For me Ellie in S2 has been a big let down but Bella Ramsey isn't the problem.
 
Zantera said:


I thought this video was pretty interesting and I definitely agree with many of these points. And it's also refreshing with a video like this that dives more into Ellie being badly portrayed in the show through writing rather than taking the "Bella Ramsey looks like a potato and can't act" approach that so many others do.

For me Ellie in S2 has been a big let down but Bella Ramsey isn't the problem.
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Haven't watched it, but I'm going to assume it's what I've been saying for 3 years. :o
 
I watched the finale again with my folks and Aunt. Literally none of them cared what happened to Jesse because as I said once episode 5 hit we simply hadn't spent enough time with him.

So many mistakes made this season and in the end many of the changes and additions made no sense. Did we really need to see the town voting about whether to go after Abby in a long drawn out scene? We could have gotten capital hill instead.

Also again if budget was a concern scrap the battle of Jackson. The game got to the same place without it so the show could have too. And what was with Ellie's trip to Seraphite island? Completely pointless.

Thankfully the cast did their best. Thought Bella is definitely better as teenage Ellie than she is 'badass' Ellie. The changes they made to make her less heartless and more sympathetic though had the opposite effect in the end.

I am still excited for season 3 as it was my favourite section in the game, but now I am also worried about what changes will be made. Shame as they I thought they nailed season 1.
 
AVEITWITHJAMON said:
I watched the finale again with my folks and Aunt. Literally none of them cared what happened to Jesse because as I said once episode 5 hit we simply hadn't spent enough time with him.

So many mistakes made this season and in the end many of the changes and additions made no sense. Did we really need to see the town voting about whether to go after Abby in a long drawn out scene? We could have gotten capital hill instead.

Also again if budget was a concern scrap the battle of Jackson. The game got to the same place without it so the show could have too. And what was with Ellie's trip to Seraphite island? Completely pointless.

Thankfully the cast did their best. Thought Bella is definitely better as teenage Ellie than she is 'badass' Ellie. The changes they made to make her less heartless and more sympathetic though had the opposite effect in the end.

I am still excited for season 3 as it was my favourite section in the game, but now I am also worried about what changes will be made. Shame as they I thought they nailed season 1.
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The only reason I could think of for that scene being in there at all is Ellie ends up taking (what I assume is) Abby & Yara's boat back to the aquarium which we might get a call back to in S3, "oh no someone took our boat we gotta go through the village to get another one". But it did feel like a weird detour.
 
I think it's a good addition for episodic, seasonal television. It's a creepy little taste of what's to come in Season 03, with the emotional payoff that Ellie needs to stay out of this conflict and abandon her quest.
 
Zantera said:
The only reason I could think of for that scene being in there at all is Ellie ends up taking (what I assume is) Abby & Yara's boat back to the aquarium which we might get a call back to in S3, "oh no someone took our boat we gotta go through the village to get another one". But it did feel like a weird detour.
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Yeah I thought the same. They will show that Ellie and Abby weren't far from each other a few times next season. But I think the explosion in the background would have done that as well.
 
Zantera said:
The only reason I could think of for that scene being in there at all is Ellie ends up taking (what I assume is) Abby & Yara's boat back to the aquarium which we might get a call back to in S3, "oh no someone took our boat we gotta go through the village to get another one". But it did feel like a weird detour.
Click to expand...
AVEITWITHJAMON said:
Yeah I thought the same. They will show that Ellie and Abby weren't far from each other a few times next season. But I think the explosion in the background would have done that as well.
Click to expand...
In behind the scenes segment after the episode, one of the creatives brought up how it’s there to show how in both situations, nearly drowning and nearly getting hanged and gutted but surviving both, the “universe“ is giving her multiple chances and outs to give up her vengeance quest, as if to say “Stop doing this, stop right now and turn back!”, but she doesn’t take it and stubbornly keeps going. And, by doing so, it leads her to doing something really terrible that she can never take back. She has the opportunity to break the cycle of violence, but she doesn’t and there’s a cost.

It’s also an interesting juxtaposition to Joel and the line “I hope you do a little better than me“. While both of them are violent individuals, unlike Joel, who only engages in violence when it’s necessary and doesn’t enjoy it, Ellie has a “violent heart” and relishes in the violence and can’t let things go. Without anyone to keep her in check, she gives in to her worst impulses, and instead of her doing a little better than Joel, she does worse.
 
Still Wynning said:
In behind the scenes segment after the episode, one of the creatives brought up how it’s there to show how in both situations, nearly drowning and nearly getting hanged and gutted but surviving both, the “universe“ is giving her multiple chances and outs to give up her vengeance quest, as if to say “Stop doing this, stop right now and turn back!”, but she doesn’t take it and stubbornly keeps going. And, by doing so, it leads her to doing something really terrible that she can never take back. She has the opportunity to break the cycle of violence, but she doesn’t and there’s a cost.

It’s also an interesting juxtaposition to Joel and the line “I hope you do a little better than me“. While both of them are violent individuals, unlike Joel, who only engages in violence when it’s necessary and doesn’t enjoy it, Ellie has a “violent heart” and relishes in the violence and can’t let things go. Without anyone to keep her in check, she gives in to her worst impulses, and instead of her doing a little better than Joel, she does worse.
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I know Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann has talked about this, and it sounds all very well and good, but I've seen no actual sign of Ellie relishing violence at all in this season of the show.
 
Bobber said:
I know Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann has talked about this, and it sounds all very well and good, but I've seen no actual sign of Ellie relishing violence at all in this season of the show.
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Yeah that idea might have worked in the game where Ellie became a killing machine, but she killed what 3/4 people in the show? Nora was dying anyway and Mel was an accident in the show.
 
Season 3 has to get Abby’s story right. The casting is so important. I hope they get Eve Ridley to play a certain Scar.
 
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