The Last of Us: A Deep Dive into Adaptation and Narrative Choices

Exploring the Season Two Finale

The Season Two finale of HBO's The Last of Us aired on the 25th of May, sparking significant online controversy. It became the second lowest-rated episode of the series. Opinions on this drop in popularity are abundant. Many critiques revolve around a common theme: the show failed to capture the same narrative beats as its video game counterpart, The Last of Us Part II, or it executed them in a less satisfying manner.

For what it’s worth, I found this season finale to provide a fascinating spin on the game’s moral dilemmas. It offered a truly thought-provoking exploration of community concepts. However, I’m not particularly interested in weighing the merits of each deviation against the source material.

The Challenges of Adaptation

The whole situation got me thinking about the challenges that adaptation presents compared to the seemingly safer space of recreation. Season 1 of the HBO series, which transplanted moments from the game to the screen more frequently than Season 2, received greater critical acclaim. It generally garnered a higher viewership and was hailed by multiple outlets as the greatest video game show of all time. This is all relative, of course. Season 2 was hugely successful by any metric. Yet, the universal approval of Season 1 and the impossible standard it set provide food for thought.

If you’ve found a winning formula as strong as that of the games, why change it? Why attempt to blend different narrative ingredients into the same satisfying story?

The easy answer is that the first game lent itself to the screen more easily. It revolutionized the medium of gaming back in 2013, telling its story through cinematic language. The second game is more complicated and less linear, warranting these changes as a result.

The Writer's Perspective

As I kept up with Season 2 while making final editorial decisions for my forthcoming debut novel, Lichtenberg, I began to think about it from another angle. Re-engaging with my work, knowing it was my last chance to change it, made what was once complete feel disarmingly open again. I became preoccupied with the things I didn’t say and the ideas I didn’t express, rather than the ones I did. This mindset can be dangerous.

Stephen King’s The Stand, for example, is another post-apocalyptic tale that was updated, extended, and revised to the point that the setting changed from 1980 to 1985, and then to the 1990s. A work can become permanently unfinished if you allow it to be.

Themes of Violence and Community

In this vein, the comments of The Last of Us co-creators Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin in a behind-the-scenes look at the Season 2 finale resonated with me. They discussed their rationale for incorporating a sequence cut from the game into the show. In this scene, Ellie washes up on the island of the mysterious ‘Scars,’ who mistake her for a member of the WLF and swiftly condemn her to a brutal execution, prevented only by nearby gunfire. Suddenly alone, Ellie steals a boat and resumes her pursuit of Abby.

Many fans have formed an online consensus that this scene was unnecessary. They argue it takes up precious minutes of screen time to reiterate Ellie’s drive for revenge, even as countless dangers block her path. However, Druckmann argues that we also "get to see how chilling it is to be surrounded by everybody that’s trying to exact violence, including children that have been taught to hate people outside of their group." Mazin adds, "These were the very people that [Ellie] was trying to defend earlier when the very same thing was happening to one of their kids. This is the problem with people who have lost any sense of similarity of sin. 'What we do is justified. What you do is evil.'"

These themes are prominent in Lichtenberg, so I empathize strongly with the desire to flesh them out. There’s always an opportunity to clarify something, to raise new ideas or old ones in new ways. However, deciding a piece of work is open to revision risks destroying what people liked about it in the first place. Stories are an art form, not a science, and maybe the ones that resonate should be left alone.

The Courage to Adapt

That said, I realize that revising a published work is not the same as adapting it for another medium. I think it was quite brave to take The Last of Us in a new direction for television. It doesn’t detract from the game or retcon it in any way. You can choose to interpret particular scenes as having occurred in the background of the games, where they don’t contradict the narrative. However, that’s about the biggest impact the show can have on the source material. Not to mention that some changes likely have just as much to do with budgetary and logistical decisions as writing choices.

Leaving the realm of recreation is a risk. I think interesting adaptations deserve admiration, particularly when we seem to be on the cusp of countless one-to-one, live-action remakes of animated films from the past few decades. The upcoming How to Train Your Dragon springs to mind. Ironically, the animated film is such a departure from the book that it would be more dynamic to recreate the source material onscreen. These beat-for-beat remakes can feel more like repackaging than storytelling. However, the first season of The Last of Us should not necessarily be counted among them; it occasionally diverged from the game’s narrative in interesting ways.

Balancing Expectations

I wonder where the line should be drawn between indulging and subverting the expectations of fans. There will always be people who claim adaptations have missed the mark, misunderstood characters, or butchered key themes. But might they sometimes have a point? It was one thing for me to accept that Lichtenberg was a finished novel when it had only lived in my head. But if a writer is called upon to adapt their existing story, as beloved as The Last of Us, should they take their audience’s initial yes for an answer? Should they tinker again with their own creation, or just recreate it faithfully?

It’s an interesting dilemma, and ultimately a good one for any writer to have.

Lichtenberg

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