The Last of Us EPs Explain Why the Premiere’s Time Jump Differs From the Game’s and Other Season 2 Changes

Warning: This post contains spoilers from The Last of Us‘ Season 2 premiere. Proceed accordingly.

Now that The Last of Us is finally back for Season 2, it’s time again for one of our favorite pastimes: dorking out with the show’s creators about the differences between the HBO series and the video game on which it’s based. And Episode 1 gave us plenty of fodder for discussion. (Read a full recap.)

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After two brief opening scenes, Sunday’s premiere jumped the story ahead five years to show us Joel and Ellie settled in Jackson, Wyo., just like the game does. But HBO’s version of the leap allows us to spend a little bit more time in Jackson before the New Year’s Eve dance, which is where we started with co-showrunner Craig Mazin.

“Anything that you see in that episode that you didn’t see in the game is original to the show, and it was just part of the adaptive process that Neil [Druckmann, co-showrunner] and I go through where we’re looking for things to do,” Mazin says in the video above. “Some of the things were maybe things that you did in the game that we transformed a little bit. Another example: Ellie learning to shoot with Tommy,” which unfolds differently during gameplay.

“That’s part of the fun of adapting a game like that, is that you have so much great material,” he added. “Now the question is how to best portray it in this medium.”

Other topics covered during our chat with Mazin, Druckmann and co-executive producer Halley Gross include:

* What life in Jackson is like for Joel: “He gets to fix things. He gets to build, where from those 20 years, he destroyed and killed and murdered to survive — and to save Ellie,” Druckmann says.

* Isabela Merced’s Dina, who “isn’t just Ellie’s sidekick,” Mazin points out. “She has her own relationship with Joel, which is very different that Ellie’s.”

* How the new season offered a chance to see a softer side of Pedro Pascal’s Joel. “Because he’s so tough, because he is so capable and can withstand so much, it is always interesting then to take somebody like that, remove their armor, take away their weapons, make them vulnerable and find out what’s going on under there,” Mazin says.

Press PLAY on the video above to watch the creative team talk about more game-to-show changes, then hit the comments with your thoughts!

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