If you are an HBO subscriber then you may want to check out a bonus episode of The Last of Us. Making of The Last of Us is now available, a 31-minute behind-the-scenes documentary showing how the record breaking show was created. There’s no news on a release date for those on Sky in the UK but I would expect it to appear at some point.
Cast members Gabriel Luna, Anna Torv, Pedro Pascal, Merle Dandridge, Bella Ramsey, Rutina Wesley, Ashley Johnson, Jeffrey Pierce, and Storm Reid feature along with executive producers Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann from Naughty Dog.
Gabriel Luna, who plays Tommy in The Last of Us has revealed he played both games back to back and the story of Part II was very much in his mind during the filming of the first season.
“You never want to assume you’re gonna get a Season 2, but considering it’s probably the biggest show in the world and they renewed us for Season 2, it’s probably good I have a head start thinking about it,” he said in an interview at the SXSW Conversation.
“The idea of everything that happens in ‘Part II’ was always ever-present in my mind. When working on the story we’ve told thus far, you gotta consider where you’re going with all the peaks and valleys. You don’t want play the end, but you certainly want to keep it in mind as you’re rolling forward and building the character,” he continued.
“There’s a lot of peaks and there’s some deep, deep valleys. As much as Tommy is an evolved person, and he’s evolving, there’s certainly a de-evolution that happens in ‘Part II.’ Which is probably the extent I can say about it.”
SPOILERS FOR THE FINAL EPISODE AND PART 1 AHEAD!
Ashley Johnson, who plays Ellie in the game and Anna, Ellie’s mother in the show, and also joined the HBO podcast that accompanies the series, has explained what she think’s Ellie’s final line in both the game and the TV show means.
“You know, and this also sets up the rest of their story in [The Last of Us] Part II, I think she sees that he’s lying,” said Johnson. “And the ‘Okay’ is like, ‘Alright, we’re done. You’re not being truthful with me and I can’t trust you. Like, I love you but this was one thing that my life would have mattered and I could have maybe made a difference somehow.”
“And that’s taken away from me now. And like, who I am now? Like I don’t know this person that I’ve gone on this journey with, that I care so much about, is choosing to lie about something so huge.’ And Ellie… like her b******t detector is the best,” she adds.
“She knows he’s lying. She feels it. She doesn’t know the extent of it. But somethings off. So it’s like it’s not choosing to believe the lie, or it’s just like, ‘Okay, the rest of our relationship is gonna be a little different.”
SPOILERS FOR THE FINAL EPISODE AND PART 1 AHEAD!
The TV show ends in exactly the same way as Part 1, but there were plans to change it slightly. Series co-creator and writer Craig Mazin spoke to GQ about the show.
“The change was really more something that Ali Abbasi, our director, had been playing around with. He had this thought of just playing out this slightly longer, sadder version where Ellie says, ‘okay’, and then she turns and walks away. And Joel looks after her. We see the two of them walking, not really together but apart, down towards Jackson. It lingers and then fades. There was something beautiful about it,”
“Everybody was like ‘what do we do?’ And there was that meta-discussion of, are the people that played the game going to be more annoyed that they didn’t get it just the way it’s supposed to be, or are they gonna be more annoyed that they only got what they had before? And then how will everybody else feel?” continues Mazin.
“In the end, there’s something very specific about ending on that close-up of Ellie. Not knowing what comes next. Not knowing what she does. Does she walk away from him, does she walk with him, how does she feel? That moment gets suspended permanently.”
And Finally… my flatmate owes me ten quid, because I bet him the Giraffe in the final episode was real rather than CGI. Neil Druckman appeared on the Kinda Funny podcast and explained that rather bring the Giraffe in to a studio, they went to Calgary Zoo, set up a blue screen and filmed the scene on location.
