‘The Last Of Us’ Creator Neil Druckmann Believes He Was Able To Successfully “Recapture The Moment” Of Abby And Joel’s Confrontation For HBO Series
In the opinion of The Last of Us franchise creator Neil Druckmann, while most video game adaptations fail to faithfully adapt and/or truly capture the emotional weight of their source material, he and HBO series showrunner Craig Mazin were able to pull off just that when it came to retelling Abby and Joel’s infamous confrontation in live-action.
[SPOILER WARNING: Significant spoilers for The Last of Us Season 2 follow below. If you’d like to avoid them, please refrain from reading any further.]
As seen in the recently-aired second episode of Season 2, Through the Valley, rather than delaying the inevitable and opening themselves up to a months-long storm of questions regarding whether or not they would actually go through with it, Druckmann and Mazin instead chose to rip the band-aid off and have Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) use Joel’s (Pedro Pascal) head as a driving range early into the series’ take on The Last of Us Part II.
Intended by Druckmann to be one of the more emotional and shocking scenes of the PlayStation duology, while some players walked away from the game having experienced those exact feelings, more found themselves unimpressed and even outraged at what they saw as a narratively nonsensical attempt (as it asks players to believe that despite everything, Joel had somehow either forgotten his post-apocalyptic survival skills or chosen to randomly abandon them) to ‘subvert expectations’.
However, despite this clash of opinion among The Last of Us game fans, Druckmann believes that the scene’s live-action recreation was wholly able to recreate the heartbreaking feeling (or at least the intended one) of the digital original.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly‘s Nick Romano regarding the ins-and-outs of Joel’s on-screen death alongside the aforementioned Mazin, Druckmann’s reflection was preempted by his partner’s reflection that “It wasn’t surprising to me when Neil talked about [Joel’s death] when we were just starting to work on the first season.”
“Part of what makes The Last of Us relevant to those of us who aren’t living in a fungal apocalypse is that it portrays the shattering nature of loss,” said the Chernobyl series creator. “It talks about what is left behind when somebody is torn away from you. Then you start to wonder what price we all pay in our lives — all of us — for caring about people that much.”
From there, Druckmann himself affirmed, “So many times adaptations don’t, and you can’t recapture that moment. Here, I feel so lucky that we did.”
“Honestly, knowing now Pedro [Pascal] and Bella [Ramsey, who plays Ellie], I had no doubt that we would, because I know how they act and what they throw into it. The fact that it still works just speaks to the magic of these incredible actors.”
Reflecting on the fact that, unlike in the game, the live-action Abby instead pre-empts her killing of Joel by outright explaining her full motivations to him (and the audience), Mazin ultimately concluded that when it came to deciding upon this change, “It’s really just about imagining how angry she is and how hurt, but also how correct she is in her mind.”
“What is important for her to convey is that what he did was wrong,” said the co-showrunner as he closed out his thoughts on the topic. “The end. Guilty. Sentenced to die. No argument. No debate. No nothing. I do love how Pedro portrayed this kind of acceptance of it there. The truth is, what he did is what she’s doing now. We kill for the people we love. Joel has an experience that neither Ellie nor Abby have — and we’re going to explore this further in the season — and that is the experience of loving a child, which is different than being a child and loving a parent.”
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