HBO’s The Last of Us show has a lot to live up to, and the show will have to include some important moments from The Last Of Us games to ensure that audiences get the proper emotional payoff for this narrative. A Last of Us live-action adaptation has been in the works since shortly after the original video game’s release in 2013. With plans for a movie to be scrapped, the adaptation changed to be a TV show with hopes that the medium would be better able to explore more of the characters' narratives.
The HBO The Last of Us story is set 20 years after the downfall of civilization as it is known today, and sees the remains of humanity trying to survive in a world plagued by a cordyceps brain infection that turns hosts into creatures similar to zombies. The protagonists Joel Miller (Troy Baker in the game, Pedro Pascal in the Last of Us live-action adaptation) and Ellie (Ashley Johnson in the game, Bella Ramsey in the show) struggle to make their way across the United States in search of a cure. The writers for the series have said that the majority of changes being made for the Last of Us TV show are additions to the original story, rather than cutting elements out. Here are the Last of Us moments HBO needs to keep for the show.
Sarah's Death
One of the most important scenes for The Last of Us live-action adaptation to include is also one of the game’s very first scenes. In the only part of the game that takes place before the infection spreads across the United States and the rest of the world, the player controls Sarah, Joel’s daughter (played by Nico Parker in the show). As Sarah and Joel flee the infected, they are saved by a soldier who is then ordered to shoot them in an effort to prevent the infection from becoming a full outbreak. The soldier fires as Joel dives to protect Sarah. Tommy, Joel’s brother, then kills the soldier before he can shoot again. However, Sarah has been mortally wounded and dies in Joel’s arms.
The Last of Us moment is a huge part of Joel’s (Pedro Pascal) character as twenty years later, he still struggles to accept his daughter's loss, avoiding talking about her and still wearing a watch that she gave him. Sarah’s death is the driving element behind Joel’s relationship with Ellie, and the fact that Sarah was killed by the military, not the infected, motivates his distrust of organizations like FEDRA. While the HBO The Last of Us story needs to include this scene, and the latest footage suggests that they will, the game narrative had been criticized for killing Sarah purely to drive Joel’s character. The show can mitigate this element by using the medium to provide additional flashbacks to pre-infection life and make Sarah feel like a more fleshed-out character.
Tess’ Sacrifice
Tess is Joel’s friend and partner in illicit dealings in the Boston quarantine zone who persuades Joel to take the job of getting Ellie (Game of Thrones' Bella Ramsey) out of the city against his better judgment. When they find that the team of Fireflies they were supposed to get Ellie to are dead, Joel is ready to take her back to the quarantine zone. Tess argues that Ellie presents a credible hope for a cure and insists that Joel takes her to another group of Fireflies. She reveals that she has been bitten and sacrifices herself to buy Joel and Ellie time to escape from FEDRA soldiers.
Tess’ sacrifice is the first death of a major character after the prologue and demonstrates what is at stake in this new world. However, more than that, it forces Joel to push through his own cynicism about the world as he tries to get Ellie across the country. HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation needs to include Tess’ sacrifice to show that at his roots Joel cares about the people he is close to before anyone else as his original motivation for continuing the mission is not to find a cure for humanity or for Ellie, but for Tess.
Joel And Ellie’s Fight at the Ranch
After Ellie realizes that Joel intends to hand her off to Tommy in Jackson and have him take her the rest of the way to the Fireflies, Ellie steals a horse and runs away to a nearby ranch. Joel catches up with her and the two have an argument when Ellie challenges Joel about abandoning her. Ellie reveals that Tommy’s wife has told her about Sarah’s death and she tries to assure Joel that she won’t end up the same way.
The scene is crucial for HBO’s The Last of Us dark adaptation as it presents a pivotal moment in Joel and Ellie’s relationship. While Joel aggressively asserts that Ellie isn’t his daughter and that they are going separate ways, once they return to Jackson, Joel has a change of heart and continues the journey with Ellie. It shows that the two have come to rely on each other and that Joel has accepted Ellie as someone he truly cares about.
The Giraffes In Salt Lake City
Not long before the end of the first game, The Last of Us provides a brief respite from the chaos when in Salt Lake City, Joel and Ellie come across a herd of giraffes and share a moment together. It might seem like a small scene and could be tempting to cut due to the logistics of representing giraffes on screen, but it is an important moment that HBO should keep in their The Last of Us adaptation. There are a string of small giraffe easter eggs that recur throughout the game, often around children or areas that once held children. They become a symbol of youth and innocence within the game and the herd’s presence towards the end of the story highlights the idea that there is hope and beauty still in the world, despite all the horrors that Joel and Ellie have seen.
Joel’s Hospital Showdown
In the climactic finale of The Last of Us game, Joel gets Ellie to the hospital where the Fireflies are searching for a cure. It is revealed to him that the process to try and develop a cure will kill Ellie. Joel can’t accept trading Ellie’s life for the potential of saving humanity and cannot face losing her at this point, so he instead kills the Fireflies and takes Ellie from them while she is unconscious, later lying and saying that the Fireflies simply didn’t need her.
The scene is important to maintain in the HBO adaptation of The Last of Us as it is the culmination of Joel and Ellie’s journey together. The finale demonstrates the connection that the two have made across the whole game while also being the inciting incident for all the events of the sequel. While this moment pays off their relationship and shows how much Joel cares for Ellie, it also underscores the selfishness of Joel’s actions. As The Last of Us Part II highlights, the choice was not his to make and resulted in him placing his own interests above the rest of humanity.
Plenty Of Absolutely Terrifying Clicker Scenes
Throughout the game, Ellie and Joel come into contact with and must fight off clickers. The zombie-like clickers are people whose Cordyceps brain infection has evolved for over a year, marking the third (out of four) possible infection stages. Using echolocation, since fungi has grown over their faces, clickers are much stronger than normal humans and are vastly intelligent. Unlike runners (the recently infected) or stalkers (those infected for 2+ weeks), there's no humanity left in the clicker's appearance. Clickers are exceptionally terrifying in the game, and some fo the most jump-out-your-seat moments in The Last Of Us game are because of them.
The Last of Us TV show must include the clickers in order for the series to work. Though the show is focusing more on the dramatic aspects of the game, there needs to be serious action to ramp up the tension, and the clickers are a good place to start. The latest footage from The Last of Us has shown that the clickers look incredible, and that they'll definitely play a role in the show. However, just how big that role will be remains to be seen. If The Last of Us utilizes these monsters too little, then the show will definitively fall flat. Pulling punches and holding back on the tension will do The Last of Us no favors, so fights against these horrific but iconic beasts must be included.
Ellie And Riley’s Trip To The Mall
The final scene that the HBO adaptation of The Last of Us needs to keep from the games strangely didn’t appear in the original game, but instead was the subject of the game’s one and only DLC, The Last of Us: Left Behind. The scene is a prequel to the main game that sees Ellie and Riley sneak out after curfew to go to an abandoned mall. When the two are bitten, it provides the origin story for Ellie learning that she is immune, while also demonstrating the source of her survivor's guilt, an aspect that is key to her fight with Joel at the ranch. Based on what's seen in The Last of Us trailer, it looks like the Last of Us moment will be included in the show.
This final scene can be peppered in throughout the series with flashbacks and will also allow the showrunners to highlight The Last of Us’ consistent LGBTQ+ representation and themes. The Last of Us Part II took these themes further, including multiple other queer characters. It seems likely that the HBO adaptation of The Last of Us might improve on the game’s original LGBTQ+ representation as they have cast Murray Bartlett as Frank, who is implied to have been in a relationship with Bill but only appears as a corpse in the video game.