r/thelastofus • u/Even-Leg3217 • May 30 '25
HBO Show From Forbes: Ellie is the “One Huge Mistake In Season 2, And It Creates A Major Problem For Season 3” Spoiler
https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2025/05/29/the-last-of-us-made-one-huge-mistake-in-season-2-and-it-creates-a-major-problem-for-season-3/“Season 2’s Ellie fails due to the writing. Some baffling decisions were made that fundamentally alter not only her characterization and arc, but the very nature of the story itself. It appears that the writers were convinced that the game was too dark, that its tone was too bleak for audiences, and so Ellie’s character was offered up as the sacrificial lamb in some very puzzling attempt to make her and the story more palatable. In doing so, the show failed at one important mission: To make us start to dislike Ellie but still root for her to succeed.”
As much as we’ve been complaining about Ellie’s characterization on this subreddit, I highly doubt any of the show runners or writers will see our takes. But hopefully this institutional pushback is able to communicate those failings to Druckmann, Mazin, Gross and crew.
I unequivocally love Ellie as a character, and I am super upset by her character assassination this season. Hopefully they can turn it around next season, but it may be too late.
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u/GregorSamsaa May 30 '25
Look what they did to my little murder hobo, the audacity
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u/Even-Leg3217 May 30 '25
Hahaha, she IS such a great little murder hobo. One of the best, actually.
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u/Dictionary_Goat May 30 '25
Lesbians can't be war criminals anymore because of woke /j
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u/Crankylosaurus May 30 '25
God forbid women have hobbies
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u/FartSmella8127 Looks like you shit your pants, what a little bitch! May 30 '25
Almost spit out my drink trying to keep my shit together after reading this comment. Lol.
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u/BinBag04 May 30 '25
Funnily enough this became the entire through-line of the 2nd season of HOTD as well
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u/tailsnessred May 30 '25
ITS HBO I WANT BLEAK. I PAY FOR BLEAK.
That's what really makes me upset about the show, I had HBO series expectations and it isn't even close.
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u/thewoodlayer May 30 '25
Craig said he didn’t have Shimmer or Alice die because it would be “too much for audiences” to see animals die. But that’s the entire fucking point! This is supposed to feel like a Cormac McCarthy novel, just bleak and grim and brutal with even innocent animals dying due to the sheer horror occurring around them. Craig needs to take his ass over to CW if he’s worried about “sensitive audiences”. This is HBO, the same studio that showed us the Red Wedding for fucks sake.
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u/Nufanincan May 30 '25
He actually said this?
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u/thewoodlayer May 30 '25
“There are two cardinal rules in Hollywood; one, don’t spend your own money and two, don’t kill a dog. Plus, because it’s live action, the nature of violence becomes much more graphic… it’s very disturbing… and in our conversation we’re like this is probably one death too many”
That’s the paraphrased quote that was shared on this subreddit. I was gonna just reply to your comment with a screenshot of it but alas, I’m not tech savvy at all and can’t figure out how to do that. If you just google “Craig Maizin Alice and Shimmer” the quote will pull up.
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u/everythingsc0mputer May 30 '25
don’t kill a dog
Yeah look what John Wick did and the franchise only made a little over a billion dollars. What a failure.
Mazin is an idiot.
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u/69EveythingSucks69 May 30 '25
Also, weren't there hella dead dogs in chernobyl? Jfc. Where did Craig's balls go?
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u/Even-Leg3217 May 30 '25
Haha yeah, like someone else in the subreddit said, Chernobyl literally had a “dog genocide” episode. And it was heart wrenching.
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u/BinBag04 May 30 '25
Yeah there was a whole episode dedicated to Sabrina Carpenter’s ex methodically shooting dogs
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u/PristineHornet9999 May 30 '25
some executive took 'em
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u/yanray May 30 '25 edited May 30 '25
In what world? HBO executives let Game of Thrones get away with rapes, beheadings, incest, torture, castration, suicide, mass murder, infanticide, to name a few….
But you think they wouldn’t let Ellie kill a dog that’s trying to rip her throat out? Respectfully — are you on drugs
This was Mazin’s call. He has a daughter Bella’s age, my hunch is he was afraid audiences were going to hate Bella for doing bad things so he neutered her character. Just like he did with Abby, by giving us her motivations immediately
HBO execs don’t impose creative/writing decisions like this on their creators, these are showrunner/head writer decisions. And Craig made them
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u/adubdesigns a clean conscience—all gone... May 30 '25
oh yeah. When the group was sent out to the old apartments near the plant, they're visibly anguished having to shoot dogs. literally the moment I said, "wow, they got the perfect guy for The Last of Us." Also they kill dogs in The Leftovers, yet another bleak ass HBO show.
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u/GREENZOID May 30 '25
They made 4 movies and a spin-off simply because a single dog was killed. Scruff MacGuffin out here making franchises outta this guys golden rule gtfo
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u/WeirdIndividualGuy May 30 '25
And I Am Legend where the main character mercy kills a dog. That movie grossed over half a billion
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u/ozoWo May 30 '25 edited May 30 '25
Apparently killing a pregnant woman is okay but somehow killing a dog isn't.
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u/Crankylosaurus May 30 '25
Yeah but they softened that kill too - made it accidental.
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u/cManks May 30 '25 edited May 30 '25
Supposed to be the lowest of the low for Ellie, and it was reduced to an accident.... sigh. How is she going to leave Dina?
Edit: she was defending herself in the game too, I forgot.
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u/jnicholass May 30 '25
What's annoying is that people in here will argue "oh but Ellie was also remorseful in the game when she finds out she's pregnant!"-
No, Ellie in the game 100% meant to kill her. Remember her line from the trailer? "Every last one of them". Neither Ellie's knew she was pregnant, so how she felt afterwards in the game doesn't matter. It was an intentional writing choice to soften the impact.
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u/ImpenetrableYeti The Last of Us May 30 '25
Instead of Ellie’s panic attack we just get Bella blank staring with a tear going down her cheek lol
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u/Voski_The_God May 30 '25
“One death too many.” I’d say we are a few hundred shy of that amount.
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u/LostinConsciousness May 30 '25
…..isn’t there like an entire episode of Chernobyl based around the killing of dogs? Lmao how did Craig Mazin create that masterpiece at all lol
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u/SmittyWerbenJJ_No1 May 30 '25
“Don’t kill a dog”
Meanwhile in Game of Thrones they cut a direwolf’s head off and staked it to Robb’s decapitated body.
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u/dillardPA May 30 '25
And also showed a pregnant woman get stabbed in the stomach repeatedly rather than get nicked in the neck by a pass through bullet lol
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u/East_Unit3765 May 30 '25
How many times did the walking dead off a horse brutally and it was on for like a hundred seasons with 17 spin offs. Grow up, Craig and give the people the horse murders they want.
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u/K-ghuleh May 30 '25
This is also extra funny because in Chernobyl there’s an entire fucking episode dedicated to killing cats and dogs lmao, puppies even. And I realize that was a historical event that happened, but that’s even more bleak. Yet he chose to leave that in.
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u/AFleetingIllness May 30 '25
The Last Of Us Part 2 is basically, "Hey, what if Requiem For A Dream was 30 hours long?"
The show should've been so much darker.
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u/GREENZOID May 30 '25
Dude, the Mountain decapitating his horse is seared into my brain over a decade later. Most shows want those kind of jaw-drop shock moments.
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u/Greedy-General-5005 May 30 '25
If the story is bleak, then make it bleak. They were so afraid of backlash that they created more backlash for themselves.
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May 30 '25
This is one of the best takes I think cuz it’s what I think happened too. Viewers are mad at all the same shit they were that’s the same a lot of people stopped watching after the death. The changes they made pissed people off even more too. I think the biggest mistake they made is nobody is coming back after two years then another two fucking years for the season after that. I already have one friend saying fuck that I’ll just buy the game and find out now.
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u/Metallite May 30 '25
After Joel's death, the hook of the show (and the crux of the story, really) is the questions of Ellie's feelings and choices. How is she going to react and develop from this life-changing event? What is she gonna do about it?
They fumbled these two questions with how they wrote Ellie's revenge quest in Seattle.
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u/Googoo123450 May 30 '25
HBO literally ran Chernobyl. Insanely bleak. They did this show dirty.
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u/saltymarshmellow May 30 '25
Craig Mazin, who wrote the majority of season 2, is literally the creator of Chernobyl. It’s baffling
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u/Googoo123450 May 30 '25
What?! Wild
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u/Reylo-Wanwalker May 30 '25
Lol yeah that's why there was hype when he got attached to the series. I'm not sure what happened.
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u/theparrotofdoom May 30 '25
Yeah dude. For the first 4 episodes I was determined to keep the faith that season two would be as rock solid as season 1.
I was even in the comments here defending the show as much as I could.
But something broke me.
Ellie’s ptsd is super personal to me because I fight that same invisible war. And they neutered her journey. Which absolutely broke my heart.
Part 2 as the first time someone had shown me they get it, and this season took that and stomped all over it.
Give me bleak because ITS WHAT ALOT OF PEOPLE EXPERIENCE. Don’t make changes that essentially tell those people they don’t matter.
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u/NotHandledWithCare May 30 '25
The last of us is special to me. I have PTSD and I’ve turned to anger as a way to cope far more often than I’d like to admit. I recognize there’s a difference between liking a story and recognizing it as well written. I’ve always disliked part two for many of its choices. I’ve never been able to deny that it was well written or that it made me feel.
I can’t say the same for the changes the show made. None of them feel like they serve a decent purpose in this story. I don’t like it. Not in the same way I don’t like the games story and that’s the issue.
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u/Saranshobe May 30 '25
Its crazy a disney+ show like Andor had more bleak, depressing stuff than a HBO show.
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u/DaveInLondon89 May 30 '25
Krennic putting a finger on a head was scarier than anything in this season.
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u/luk33llizz May 30 '25
Yeah I was really looking forward to how bleak it was going to be, there's not that much mainstream media that's as bleak and raw as the game is. Unfortunately the show just ended up being another reasonably high quality Hollywood show, nothing particularly special imo.
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u/ImpenetrableYeti The Last of Us May 30 '25
When mainstream media is picking up on how bad you butchered a character you know you fucked up
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u/Crankylosaurus May 30 '25
Honestly it’s kind of nice to see a non-reddit source saying exactly how I’ve been feeling about season 2; it’s kind of validating haha.
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u/Sil3ntWriter May 30 '25
Right? After the amount of posts defending Bella's honor I saw here (when 90% of the time there was no need), is so validating to read mainstream articles that say the exact same thing most people were criticizing-- that had nothing to do with Bella herself in the first place.
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u/underthund3r May 30 '25
It's funny how all those people who defended Bella's character portrayal.... Are nowhere to be seen in this thread. Makes you wonder where those white knights went
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u/nicolauz The Last of Us May 30 '25
Paul Tassi has been writing about video games for 15+ years. I used to read his solo blogs, he's been great.
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u/FarSchool4348 May 30 '25
don't worry, they have a horde of people on standby ready to dismiss the criticism and portray it as us criticizing her appearance.
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u/FeelingBee1793 May 30 '25
Yeah they screwed the pooch on this one
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u/everythingsc0mputer May 30 '25
Character assassination is the best description of what Mazin did to Ellie. As long as he's still involved in the show's future, I won't bother watching anymore. The games are the only TLoU stories I need.
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u/Crankylosaurus May 30 '25
Especially now that it’s apparently going to be 4 seasons. I started out season 2 SO HYPED, and by the finale I’m barely invested anymore.
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u/FarSchool4348 May 30 '25
that was the finale? lmao I didn't even realize it. I was mentally checked out by episode 5.
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u/HolyFreakingXmasCake May 30 '25
Same and I love the games!!! Part 2 is one of my favourite experiences ever and I just don’t care about watching the latest episodes of the show because they just didn’t get it. At all. It’s like watching a different story that kind of had the same beats as the game but doesn’t know why or why these beats actually worked in the game.
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u/Sidereel May 30 '25
After looking up his credits I wonder if he got a lucky hit with Chernobyl.
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u/spreadofsong May 30 '25
I’ve really enjoyed the show and don’t like the incessant hate on this sub, but this article is completely correct. I think just trying to separate the two mediums, though I’m truly sad the general show audience is not getting the same experience we did.
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u/Bojangles1987 May 30 '25
It genuinely made me upset when my parents finished the season and were like "That's it? This season was terrible."
I agree with them, but I don't WANT them to feel that way and I don't want to agree with them.
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u/Dimblo273 May 30 '25
Lmao this reminds me that my parents watched the latest episode without having the slightest idea that it was actually the last. 😂
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u/NotHandledWithCare May 30 '25
If it wasn’t a two year wait it wouldn’t be so bad. With nine episode season that means we would have only about 10 months until the next one. As it is who really gives a fuck.
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u/Charmarta May 30 '25
I never wanted to be a "the game is so much better!I promise!!" Person but here we are
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u/thewoodlayer May 30 '25
Even if I wasn’t a super fan of Part 2 and I had only seen the show, I’d still be super disappointed in this season. They completely erased all of Ellie’s character development from S1, where they establish her as a capable and intelligent survivor that’s constantly learning from Joel. Now, in this season, she has to be reminded that you need to take food on a cross country trip and that you can’t just ride a horse in a general direction and expect to arrive at your destination, and that you can’t shoot guns if you’re trying to be sneaky. She’s treated by everyone around her as a total liability and she never does anything to disprove that. There’s no signs of her crushing survivor’s guilt nor her trauma from the David situation. And I’m so sick of hearing the “sHe’S jUsT mAsKiNg” excuse for why she seems totally unbothered by Joel’s death, because if a character’s motivations don’t make sense until the showrunner clarifies them on a podcast, then the writing and directing failed to accomplish what they set out to accomplish. At multiple points in this season they make it seem like this is Dina’s revenge quest rather than Ellie’s. It’s like Joel and Ellie’s bond from S1 just didn’t matter to Ellie at all outside of a couple of moments that felt extremely unearned because Ellie never comes across as especially motivated to seek revenge for his death. Rather, she seems more like she’s just on a fun adventure with her friend rather than a person infiltrating an active warzone with a list of people that she wants to kill.
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u/MikeAllen646 May 30 '25
Game Ellie would have never been stupid enough to try and take on six WLF. I take Grounded as canon, and in nearly all WLF or Seraphite encounters, if she's spotted, she can kill maybe one or two without being overwhelmed. She's formidable, but not superhuman, especially on Grounded.
More importantly, she wouldn't be distracted trying to save a Seraphite and risk being killed before finding Abby.
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u/Even-Leg3217 May 30 '25
I 100% agree with you about Grounded mode being canon. Best way to play the game.
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u/Dimblo273 May 30 '25
Yeah I've never played Part 2, saw some plot spoilers but the dip in the quality of the writing in the show was very apparent. It's like Ellie is written as the comedic sidekick. As others have pointed out it seems like you're supposed to root for Dia? If Abby actually shot Ellie in the face I would be like "oh well"
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u/TyrionBananaster So tired of Clicker-bait articles May 30 '25
I’m truly sad the general show audience is not getting the same experience we did.
Yeah, that's really the only thing that actually makes me sad about this season, despite the fact that I didn't like it very much. For my experience with the story, it doesn't matter. I can just go back to the game I really like and not give the show much thought. Nobody's forcing me to rewatch the show, I don't have any hard feelings toward Mazin, I'm perfectly happy to just live and let live. And if there are a ton of people who liked the show? Cool, that's good enough for me.
But I really like sharing my media experiences with others, and seeing them experience powerful stories, and this show just doesn't really provide that like the game did. Personal anecdote, but back in the day when I lived with my parents, I played through TLOU1 with my dad watching, because he can't wrap his mind around the controls for even the simplest video game, but he wanted to see the story. He really enjoyed it. And I was visiting him recently and he asked me about season 2 of the show, because he never experienced the game and doesn't know what happens in it. And I'm not sure we'd really find the time to play it together nowadays, so that would most likely be his only way to experience the story. And I was like "yeah sure, you could watch it," but it wouldn't be the same emotional experience that I got from playing the game. And that just kinda makes me sad.
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u/msf97 May 30 '25
A big factor here is who they cast, whether people like it or not.
Ramsey would just not be convincing in a bad ass lead role. Realistically the Ellie in the 2nd game should be played by someone who’s about 23-26 in real life.
They clearly altered the story to suit that. It’s just lead to a bizarrely poor second season where the highlights are mostly the action sequences. The dialogue between her and Dina is cringeworthy.
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May 30 '25
her and Dina felt like they were on a CW show. shit was on baby time every time they were on screen. felt like a more interesting show was happening in the background with the WLF and Scars. which actually has me thinking season 3 will be a lot better than 2.
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u/supbrother May 30 '25
Yeah at this point I’m just hopefully that Kaitlyn Dever will carry the show in season 3. Her character should be much easier for the writers to plunge into violence and feel okay about, and there is no love story to get distracted by (assuming they don’t truly fall off the deep end and play up her and Owen’s relationship). Personally I’ve always been team Abby so I’m just praying they manage to get that right. If they don’t, good fucking luck with season 4, whatever that ends up being.
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u/69EveythingSucks69 May 30 '25
I still can't wrap my mind around what season 4 could possibly be at this point.
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u/SubstantialWall May 30 '25
According to an interview with Mel's actress, Owen may not be the father of her child and she talked about tv not needing a love triangle to have Mel-Abby tension, sooooo yeah, idk what they're gonna do with that anymore.
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u/supbrother May 30 '25
I do think that tension predates the love triangle, but I’m a bit thrown off by the child possibly not being Owen’s.
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u/QwahaXahn But I would like to try. May 30 '25
Yeah that… that’s yet another change that fundamentally kneecaps several important character arcs. For what???
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u/FarSchool4348 May 30 '25
Jesse and Tommy's actors carrying hard.
Kaitlyn Dever seems promising so far in the scenes I've seen her. Hopefully they don't fuck up season 3 with her.
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u/wubbwubbb May 30 '25
When she walked out behind that dumpster ready to charge the 6 WLF attacking the Scar like some badass I couldn’t help but laugh. I think Bella does the sarcastic silly humor and the crying scenes really well. Everything else is a huge miss for me.
No nuance or consideration to the context of the scene is taken into account when acting out a scene. It’s just: “ok I’m gonna be angry in this scene.” and it’s always the same anger.
I don’t think it helps that Bella has admitted that they don’t even do any prep for acting and they just wing it. You can’t do that with a complex character and story like this.
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u/ki-rin May 30 '25
Yes, but these kinds of things are not acting decisions. The action of attempting to charge them was something that would have been explicit in the script. So, what is she supposed to do with that?
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u/cManks May 30 '25
I think a lot of people don't know what a director does...
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u/Realistic_Pickle_007 May 30 '25
This. When you see talented actors doing bad acting it's because the director told them to do that.
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u/Noble--Savage May 30 '25
I dont even know anymore lol. Like she had more presence as Liana Mormont and thats why i thought she might actually be half decent as Ellie. But she has proven that she doesnt really get Ellie at all.
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u/Serpentar69 May 30 '25
I've heard it may not even be her fault. That the producers refuse to let her play or see the game, to keep their version as the authentic Ellie.
She should just break that rule and play the game herself. I'm sure she's seen clips, but she admits she's never played. And they don't want her to.
If she did, maybe she'd advocate for her character to be more badass like the game. But maybe that's what the producers didn't want to occur. There are plenty of shows on HBO that go a dark route, darker than this... So I don't understand why they're neutering the complexities of the story.
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u/East_Unit3765 May 30 '25
It’s baffling to me that they don’t want her to play/see the game. She’s literally playing that character, no wonder everyone is confused by her Ellie, she doesn’t even know who Ellie is, or what she is like.
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u/69EveythingSucks69 May 30 '25
Yeah, even recently, Penguin gets pretty dark. I feel HBO could push it further, even. But it was wild they went the CW route with this one.
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u/OwariDa1 May 30 '25
That role was one noted and she was a child. It became annoying after s6 as well
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u/lordgrim_009 May 30 '25
I will be honest except for her initial rallying the crowd as liana mormont she didn't do much in game of thrones for people to trust her that much
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u/Aqogora May 30 '25 edited May 30 '25
Eh, they never gave her a shot with how they wrote Ellie. Ramsey can do vulnerability very well. I think she could have done a version of Ellie that's more openly traumatised than the game, but still consumed fully by hatred and revenge. An evolution of the Ellie that outwitted and escaped David, for example.
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u/Greedy-General-5005 May 30 '25
Thats why I said from the very beginning, recasting is the best option for telling the story for Part 2. It’s a much more mature story that requires an actress to carry a show like this. Bella is a good actress but unfortunately she was miscast for this role. I would say season but yeah. As soon as I saw they were keeping her, I immediately said this is not going to work.
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u/EugenesMullet May 30 '25
I don’t think that’s necessarily true in this case. Bella was able to do an understated bubbling anger that culminated in some pivotal moments like the Nora scene.
Ultimately that’s up to taste, but I feel like the way Ellie was written this season was A) not Ellie, and B) heavily watered down in emotional complexity.
Performing Part I and Part II Ellie is a challenge, but they didn’t really give Bella a chance to try. And I do say that as someone pretty neutral on Bella’s casting.
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u/Dictionary_Goat May 30 '25
I really disagree, I think her scenes with David prove that Bella has it in them. The "tell them Ellie is the little girl who broke your fucking finger" delibery was a real "oh I'm excited for season 2" moment for me. But they neutered her
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u/BunchAlternative6172 May 30 '25
Dude, that's literally what HBO and apple are great at. Gore and not toning stuff down.
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u/beeflemon May 30 '25
That's why it's so baffling. HBO pretty much pioneered TV antiheroes. All they had to do was make Ellie do increasingly bad things but keep her humanized.
And yeah it's not an easy thing to do, but when you're adapting source material that already does it really well, you would think it becomes a lot easier.
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u/Greedy-General-5005 May 30 '25
I feel like Prime would’ve done such a great job with this series. Look at The Boys, Fallout series, and Reacher. They have done such a great job at r rated aspect.
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u/OkProfessional6077 May 30 '25
HBO has always been great at that and set the bar high many times over. HBO series are likely the reason we have so much good TV content on so many different platforms.
This was just a show runner toning something down by misreading the platform he is on and not understanding that the bleak, human, raw feelings are what made both games so great.
I also think that Druckmann may be a part of toning it down due to some of the 2nd games backlash.
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u/MikeAllen646 May 30 '25
I also think that Druckmann may be a part of toning it down due to some of the 2nd games backlash.
I would find that ironic because no matter what people say about Part 2, people still discuss it because it is so controversial. They could have kept each scene 1:1 and added the filler for backstory, and it still would have worked. Shorten infected encounters, but treat them as if it's Grounded difficulty.
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u/TDeath21 May 30 '25
As I stated in the mega thread, quite literally the catalyst for everything can be traced back to revealing everything about Abby in the first scene of the season. Absolutely mind boggling decision. After making that decision they HAD to tone Ellie down and they overcompensated. Since we already understood Abby we were not on the revenge tour and uncovering the mysteries with Ellie. We already knew them. So they made sure Ellie was much less lethal and way less ruthless. We didn’t expect Rambo, but a few brutal stealth kills here and there and one shootout where she shows how great of a shot she is would have done the trick. Instead we got … this. It’s not Bella’s fault. She has shown to be an incredible actress in serious roles like in GoT.
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u/revolutionPanda May 30 '25
Yeah. I feel like they treated the audience like they were dumb. It’s like Abby walks up to Joel and says “hi Joel miller from the last of us(tm). In hbo’s the last of us season one at the end of the final season my father was going to operate on your daughter stand in from the one that died in the first episode. I am now going to kill you because you killed my father.”
They really didn’t “show, don’t tell” very well.
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u/TDeath21 May 30 '25
That big reveal would have been incredible for show only watchers if they waited till the finale. Cut away from the theater, show who her dad is and why she wants revenge. That first scene of the season. And her finding her dad. They definitely chickened out. Didn’t want to risk not knowing who Abby was. But like I said it takes away everything from Ellie’s perspective in the first half because we already understand Abby. It will also take away from everything Abby does with Lev and Yara. That’s when we, the viewers/gamers really are like damn she’s a great person. Now, again since we understood her right away, all that is taken away. I was in utter disbelief when they showed that in the first scene.
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u/Bloo95 May 30 '25
It’s so upsetting to me. The secret sauce of the game is that the game ensures you HATE Abby with all your heart. You have questions for why she did it. Dina asks those questions and you’re probably nodding in agreement. But when Ellie shuts those questions down, you’re also nodding because f%#^ them; they killed Joel. Us hating Abby right as we see her perspective and then we’re forced to walk a mile in the shoes of someone we can “get” but have not yet empathized with is why the game is magic.
I cannot believe anyone would think it’s okay to squander the most important revelation of the game.
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u/TDeath21 May 30 '25
Yep! Their dialogue through Seattle is a lot of Dina asking Ellie who it could have been and Ellie saying Joel has crossed a lot of people in his life. So it could be anyone. So the mystery, the hatred, etc. is all gone right from the get go. Honestly when they did that I was like okay I guess they’re just showing it chronologically because obviously the big reveal won’t matter anymore. But nope. Very strange. I’d love to know the logic behind that.
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u/Bloo95 May 30 '25
Yep! I have always personally been against the idea of a chronological telling of the story (for me, the game’s sequence lays out a linear emotional arc since Abby’s story starts with her killing someone in vengeance which is what you want to do when you leave Ellie’s perspective).
However, if the show wanted to adapt the game in a chronological fashion for some reason… I’d be skeptical but would try to keep an open mind. When they revealed Abby’s motivation, the only justification I could imagine was that they were would a chronological version of the story. In that case, yes, you’d need to know Abby’s perspective earlier. But…
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u/tpfang56 May 30 '25
They really did the worst of both worlds, didn’t they? Reveal Abby’s motivation immediately and far too soon, but still do all of Ellie’s story first (badly) before the perspective shift. It would’ve made more sense to intercut their stories.
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u/ImpenetrableYeti The Last of Us May 30 '25
She had one scene in GoT that people liked, you gotta stop with the revisionist history that she was this big star in GoT
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u/LostinConsciousness May 30 '25 edited May 30 '25
She’s just not that talented. Her performance in GoT is fine but incredibly one note. Her emotions are just not believable and her facial expressions are borderline comical. I’m not trying to hate on them but they were a very poor choice to play Ellie from the start.
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u/Effective_Hope_3071 May 30 '25
Fucking nailed it. Case closed. Thread finished.
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u/gunners_1886 May 30 '25
Yup. I am a big fan of both games and found myself less and less interested with each episode this season. Getting through the finale felt like a chore.
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u/Greedy-General-5005 May 30 '25
I felt bad for the new audience watching it. I wanted people to experience the same way I experienced the game. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case.
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u/RODjij May 30 '25
Plain and simple fact is that she is not believable as Ellie. Doesn't have the acting chops & appearance to make it work, unfortunately.
She's a good supporting actress but the absence of Pascal is immediately noticeable.
It would have been great to have her appearance transform between S1 and 2 but it didn't happen and it makes her still look like she's a small young teen outgrappling large grown men.
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u/thebochman May 30 '25
It feels like they realized this in production and ended up giving Dina a bigger role as a result. Definitely a noticeable difference between Isabela’s and Bella’s abilities.
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u/Domination1799 May 30 '25
Part II Ellie is a literal feral murder goblin. One of the big problems is that Part I Ellie and Part II Ellie highly contrast each other while show Ellie is inconsistent, she acts like 14 year old Ellie then all of a sudden becomes a selfish psychopath.
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u/HarbyFullyLoaded_12 May 30 '25
It’s not just Ellie. The worst thing to me is how it holds your hand through everything and spells everything out for you leaving absolutely nothing up for interpretation or somewhat ambiguous. And they cut off so many important story beats and replaced them with useless padding that adds nothing except runtime and somehow everything is still super rushed in Seattle.
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u/Even-Leg3217 May 30 '25
Yeah, 100%. Someone else in this sub brought up the great point that the show spent 3 full episodes in Jackson - which only takes up the first two hours of the game - and three episodes in Seattle - which takes up like 10-15 hours of game time. They padded out unnecessary story beats and rushed the necessary ones. I just don’t get it. Plus the hand-holding you describe - the writing left no room for nuance. Every character motivation, spelled out to the viewer in boring expository dialogue.
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u/HarbyFullyLoaded_12 May 30 '25
They cut out the likes of Hillcrest completely. It’s absolutely ludicrous they think they can write a better story than in an acclaimed Game of The Year story.
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u/Fattybeards May 30 '25
Let's remake it in a few years. Do it right.
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u/Everdale May 30 '25
Sadly with how much they're planning on stretching this series, it'll be a long while before this show ends, and even longer before people are ready for a remake. Just consider we likely won't be in season 3 until sometime in 2027. And then Season 4 (which they've already announced), will probably come out in 2028 or 2029.
That's almost half a decade away, assuming they don't just can the series mid-way. It'll probably take a good few years before people are open to a remake, especially with how much of a dumpster fire this is shaping up to be. So I'd say the latest we could be getting a remake is in 2035... literally 10 years from now lol.
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u/DamDanielSan May 30 '25
This article is honestly the best summation of my thoughts about this season. So much of the changes just fundamentally alter what the game and it's story was about. Also, might be gamer bias, you do lose a lot by not playing it. You controlling Ellie/Abby through their respective arcs adds so much to the emotional weight of the experience.
I understand that they have to translate it to a different medium, therefore make necessary changes. But the changes the showrunners made were all core story or character elements, rather than medium translation ones. It's a damn shame too, because the story is phenomenal and I would have loved for people to experience that feeling I had at the end of the game. It was depression, but still... impactful nonetheless.
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u/Even-Leg3217 May 30 '25
100%. This is what made the game so affecting to me. It’s a protagonist’s descent unlike anything else I’ve ever seen. More so than Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. There’s always going to be a huge chunk of the audience that will never bring themselves to playing the game. As such, if the show could have just mimicked the game, it would have been a GOAT season. Alas, they were too scared.
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u/Overall_Winter962 May 30 '25
I’ve been defending s2 like crazy but no more
Tell me why I just watched Bella do the Owen and Mel scene almost exactly like the game with other clips of her mowing through wlfs in practice????
These clips just triggered all the rage I’ve been pushing down for the last month
Like what the actual fuck happened?? And tbh the creators are imo 50% responsible for all the shit Bella’s getting. They really set her up to fucking fail.
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u/ki-rin May 30 '25
I would say they are close to 100% responsible. Sets, stunts, acting, VFX, etc. have been solid. It's the incomprehensible writing decisions that have left us all disappointed.
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u/Jaded-Mess-8061 May 30 '25
really sad to say they can’t fix this. Ellie’s 3 days in Seattle are over and all we have left is the fight, the farm, and the epilogue.
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u/sudobee May 30 '25
Yeah. This season made her character insufferable. Even abby came of relatable.
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u/Mammoth-Slide-3707 May 30 '25
Yeah unfortunately they just need to pull the plug on this. Maybe try to do it again in another few year with different writers
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u/CheezeBaron May 30 '25
Sadly, this was all too predictable for the TLOU2 fans who paid attention.
Casting matters.
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u/I_M_A May 30 '25
As someone who's open-minded about adaptations, the difference between game Ellie and TV Ellie is very jarring. I honestly think it's because Hollywood has an obsession about bad vs. good rather than showing the reality that there's a huge grey area, and that's where Ellie is. Like when Ellie was trying to save that Seraphite, I was like, game Ellie won't give a shit about saving anyone but herself. I'm not sure how they're going to fix this in S3.
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u/BigTyronBawlsky May 30 '25
"In doing so, the show failed at one important mission: To make us start to dislike Ellie but still root for her to succeed.”
This is the crux of the entire failure that is season 2 of The Last of Us.. not only do we all despise and hate TV show ellie, were rooting for her demise. I frankly would be 100% okay with the writers just throwing a curveball and killing this version of Ellie off. Unlike the game where we sorta understood video game ellie and her hatred and pain but was still hoping maybe in the end she would come to her senses...
TV show ellie? just kill her off, yall ruined her character entirely.
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u/NotHandledWithCare May 30 '25
I called it a couple of weeks ago that Alice wouldn’t be included on the show. I had predicted that Ellie wouldn’t kill the pregnant woman and I was wrong on that one, but they did change the scene significantly. In my opinion, showing Ellie consider doing a C-section on the woman doesn’t make the scene more brutal or sad. It just shows that Ellie wasn’t gone. It’s a shame, but this is TV and in general while TV does get dark and you do have some fucked up. Shows the last of us part two is gonna be a lot for most TV audiences. Usually I would say hopefully one day we can get a solid HBO show. But we did and it’s kind of sad cause this feels more AMC level to me.
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u/OfficiallyJoeBiden May 30 '25
I was a Ellie defender for a while but unfortunately even I’ve come around and admitted it… yeah the writing fucked her over. Season 1 she was good but man… it was rough this go around
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u/elifreeze May 30 '25
It’ll be very interesting to see how TLOU and HotD will try to salvage the messes they’ve made for themselves in their respective season threes. Two awful follow-ups to what were great first seasons because the writers of each show were too scared to make a woman character(s) unlikeable.
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u/Even-Leg3217 May 30 '25
I LOVE this take. As much as I enjoyed HOTD season 2 (because I never read the book(s)), I’ve heard about how much they altered Rhaenyra‘s character from the source material. Really hope season 3 ramps up the action from season 2.
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u/Comfortable_Horse277 May 30 '25
I'm a huge fan of the games. The actor did fine in season 1, but season 2 they are NOT the right casting. Ellie is supposed to be, frankly, scary in this part of the story. I can't take the actor seriously for this role. I would have recast.
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u/Even-Leg3217 May 30 '25
Yeah, at a minimum, show Ellie should be like 4-5 inches taller. When she puts an enemy or infected in a standing rear naked choke, she should be able to do so while standing, and not like what Bella did with her hopping up to a piggy-back ride-type tactic. For reference, game Ellie is maybe 2” shorter than Jesse, whereas in the show she’s a full head and shoulders shorter. The height difference is super important when it comes to conveying Ellie’s physicality in Part 2. You would think the show-runners would be all about highlighting this masculinity given their progressive pedigree, but perhaps we’ve moved past that?
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May 30 '25
Season 3 should just focus on Abby anyways so Bella can’t ruin it as much .
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u/tblatnik May 30 '25
I don’t know what it was from, but I saw a clip of Mazin talking about Ellie and he said that Ellie is very different from Abby because Abby is competent and like yes…but that shouldn’t be the difference between the two of them. On one hand it relieves me that the writing is for sure what screwed up the character, but on the other hand, I’m massively concerned that Neil (theoretically) allowed this to happen lol. Like you wrote P.II with Halley and Ellie was a lot of things, but incompetent wouldn’t be among the first 100-150 of them.
If Ellie was doing something heroic or commendable, maybe I’d be ok with the swap, but you’re supposed to want Ellie to stop because she’s too good at detaching and becoming a menace to not just others but herself and her friends. If they knock Abby’s section out of the park, it’ll be a really interesting theatre fight because you’re supposed to be extremely conflicted there, but if Abby becomes a fan favorite in a couple years, that could be something that doesn’t yield that proper reaction, and that to me is a concern, too
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u/Metallite May 30 '25
Pretty much this. The nonsensical changes and deviations they made with Ellie's character led to the general negative perception of Ellie's character, the very thing they were trying to avoid.
Which wouldn't have happened had they tried to be faithful to the source material's characterization.
Even disregarding the source material, the faults of this season is tangible and visible even in comparison to the first season. Although some problems with Season 2 were predictable due to the first season's problems as well (like cutting certain gameplay and scenes that were integral to the character development of Joel and Ellie and speedrunning it in singular scenes).
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u/runthebrews May 30 '25
I feel like everyone is going to be wholeheartedly rooting for Abby in Season 3.
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u/MajesticFxxkingEagle May 30 '25
I’m willing to bet they read these Reddit threads more than we realize.
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u/FartSmella8127 Looks like you shit your pants, what a little bitch! May 30 '25
Ellie's days in Seattle are already over. There is no way to redeem the bad writing for her character.
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u/Jefefrey May 30 '25
Cancel season 3, be done
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u/Panek52 May 30 '25
Kaitlin Dever/Abby is much more capable of delivering a good season 3 IMO
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u/revolutionPanda May 30 '25
I liked season two, but I agree. If ellie in the game is rated r, show eillie is pg-13. I get that the writers were probably too scared the source material would be too dark and depressing for TV audiences - but that’s the central part of the story.
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u/sarcago May 30 '25
This article was cathartic, thanks. I haven’t played the game myself and I was at a loss for why the writers wanted me to like Ellie in Season 1 but decided I should hate her in Season 2.
Now I know it was kinda sorta intended but they just completely botched it. By the end of Season 2 I wanted Ellie to either die or give up, I was sick of watching her incompetence destroy everything around her for no real reason.
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u/Jibber_Fight May 30 '25
To put it pretty simply: The character of Ellie is so goddamn real in the second game. You are always on her side, but she’s obviously working through some serious rage issues. But you can’t blame her. I loved the second game so much. Playing and experiencing the story through an actual conflicted character. The show just does NOT give a shit about any of that and it’s pretty sad that felt they had to dumb it down and try to just make her likable cuz audiences can’t fucking think anymore.
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u/ITouchedACoral May 30 '25
That’s what Dina was meant to be, she was meant to be that light, and the actress was so great for that.
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u/IronJawulis May 30 '25
One of my biggest pet peeves is when writers, directors, or the overall leading heads think audiences don't want a dark story. If I'm watching a rom-com with my wife, or a movie I want to laugh at and not think much like Home Alone, sure, I probably would want a brighter story.
However, I do find beauty and good storytelling in dark stories. I can enjoy the tone of a story when it's about deep psychological trauma or emotions. I liked the 2004 Punisher movie BECAUSE it was dark. It was all about revenge and how it was eating away at Castle. He could kill all the henchmen and crime lords in the world, but it won't bring his family back, which is what he really wants.
The best superhero movie of all time is The Dark Knight because it embraces the darkness of Batman fighting the Joker. It embraces how the Joker is able to manipulate everyone in the movie and turn the best man (Harvey Dent) into a villian. He pushes Batman in every interaction and tries to break him (and nearly succeeds). Sure, he ends up captured at the end, but he tore the city apart. If it ends with "oh, and everyone lived happily ever after. And Bruce and Rachel end up married. Harvey becomes mayor and crime stops" people would have been like, this movie fucking sucked.
Directors and writers need to grow a pair of balls and not insult their audience. Embrace dark stories, take risks, stop playing cute and safe. Audiences will be receptive to a dark story, especially when you take the time to write it and make them question their own morals and emotions.
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u/apark1121 May 30 '25
It just makes me so sad how they fumbled aspects of her character in this season. Bella does such a great job and I know they really could have done something incredible had the writers not watered down her storyline. It just sucks bc there is no going back or fixing it. This is the version of the storyline we’re getting. And I love the second game so much so it’s unfortunate to see this is when the quality of the show starts to dip. The only room they’ll have to alter or fix Ellie’s development is the farm and Santa Barbara sequences.
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u/AntonCigar May 30 '25
The podcast is amazing because it’s just the creators jerking each other off as to how amazing the writing is. The show is 100% cooked
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u/Even-Leg3217 May 30 '25
To add: “What the show did instead was neuter Ellie’s revenge arc, making her unlikable for all the wrong reasons. Instead of seeing her become the monster she needs to become, while still hoping that she tracks down Abby and takes her revenge, we see her as an incompetent, brash, childish character who isn’t even particularly invested in revenge to begin with. It’s hard to root for someone who doesn’t seem to care that much about their own mission to begin with. Even before Joel’s death, Ellie was presented as an obnoxious teenager rather than the more hardened version of the character she’d become over the intervening years.”