“The Last of Us” creators tease some major changes may be in store when season 3 returns with a different focus for the show….
SPOILERS AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN ‘THE LAST OF US’ SEASON 2 FINALE
It’s impossible to talk about “The Last of Us” TV series on HBO without fans of the popular game of the same chiming in to compare the two. From characters to the differences between the series and the game, it’s nearly impossible to escape the comparisons and the contracts between the two versions of the same story.
Well, it looks like “The Last of Us” season 3 might take on one of the more controversial parts of the video game.
When season 2 ended, Abby showed up at the Pinnacle Theater, knocked down Joel and ultimately kills Jesse before pointing the same gun at Ellie — the girl she allowed to survive after brutally killing Joel in front of her. Ellie explains that she’s been hunting for Abby ever since and that included the encounter at the aquarium where she shot and killed both Owen and Mel.
Of course, Abby reminds Ellie that she could have killed her when they had that first encounter back in Jackson, Wyoming but she let her life — and now she’s wasted it. The episode closes with Abby pointing a gun and firing at Ellie — but it’s safe to assume that Ellie isn’t actually going to die.
Instead, we get one more scene that showed Abby waking up inside a football stadium that serves as the home base for the WLF. She’s told that she has a meeting with Isaac and Abby eventually steps outside to look at the army being assembled for a war against the Seraphites.
We then get a flash that this is Seattle Day One — the same day that Ellie and Dina first arrive in the city. The season 2 finale takes place during Seattle Day Three. In other words, it looks like we’re going to start “The Last of Us” season 3 from Abby’s perspective to see how she viewed these past few days before culminating in a showdown with Ellie in that theater.
“I don’t think television is supposed to work like this,” ‘The Last of Us’ co-showrunner and creator Craig Mazin told The Hollywood Reporter. “We’re clearly breaking quite a few rules, and I love that. And I love it because that is the point. This is not something we’re doing as a gimmick. The point of this story — and this is looked at from so many different angles in so many different ways — is that the entire concept of protagonist is flawed. The entire concept of villain is flawed.
“Our way of processing the world through heroes and villains is a mistake. It ends up creating these barriers between people that shouldn’t be there. It ends up giving ourselves justifications and conveniences for bad behavior, and it ends up allowing us to judge others summarily for things that we don’t quite understand the motivation behind it. We know this is a challenging thing to keep track of emotionally. We understand people are going to be provoked. But part of this story is about examining why we’re so comfortable with following one person’s point of view about everything.”
While Mazin stopped short of saying flat out that “The Last of Us” season 3 would at least start from Abby’s point of view, it all makes sense considering where this story is going and how the creators have said they’ve envisioned this show doing for four total seasons.
Spending the majority of season 3 seeing how these three days in Seattle happened from Abby’s perspective would also give us a deeper look at the ongoing war between the WLF and the Seraphites as well as Abby’s relationship with her friends — and why their deaths lead us to that climactic moment in the season 2 finale.
“Abby is the hero of her story,” Mazin said. “Wherever we go next, we’ll always be centering on somebody, whether it’s Ellie and Dina, or Abby and Owen … [But] everything is under the cloud or sunlight of Joel — what Joel did to Abby and what Abby did to Joel.’”
There’s no word yet when “The Last of Us” season 3 might even go into production but we know for certain that Kaitlyn Dever is returning as Abby so it’s likely that she’s going to take center stage when the show eventually returns.
Stay tuned for more information about “The Last of Us” season 3 as it becomes avilable.
