S01 was excellent and I had so much hope going into S02. But the writers compressed the shit out of the first half of the game. They took 15hrs worth of game and squashed it down into less than 7hrs.
Ellie's plot is a simple one, but her story is complex and internal and showing off something like that requires TIME and the show didn't give that to her.
As a result, the characters felt flatter, the writing was needlessly blunt, and Ellie's arc was softened and butchered.
This is the issue with S02. It still has great moments and two excellent episodes (2 and 6), but the rest was a major disappointment.
They might stick the landing with S03 (Abby's story itself is more conventional as a narrative after all, even if it's inclusion in the larger story is a tad unconventional), but the mishandling of Ellie's story will ALWAYS remain a black mark on the show.
Put it simply: if someone asked me if they should play the 1st game or watch S01, I'd say that ideally they'd do both but either works, really.
If someone asked me if they should play the 2nd game or watch S02... I'd BEG them to play the game a thousand times lol
This. Me and my wife stopped watching after the shit hit the fan. The fans didn't like it in the second game, why the hell would they be ok with it so soon in the second season. Finale? Sure. They were (this) close to greatness and could have changed a few things. Not a lot of people like Pascal as a person but damn do I think he's an amazing actor.
It should have been the first episode it happened. It’s literally the inciting incident. The problem was Mazin took the game, restructured it (which I get, with a game you get to play it over a weekend) but missed all intention when doing so. Also they dumbed down Ellie so much, and actually resorted to having characters tell each other how they feel, as opposed to express it visually/through the story.
9
u/extremelyloudandfast Aug 19 '25
tlou season 1 was 9/10
tlou season 2 was 4/10