The Last of Us showrunner Craig Mazin said they considered a number of possibilities before deciding to end the season 2 finale on a rather dramatic cliffhanger.
Warning: spoilers for The Last of Us season 2 finale below!
“We were open to a different ending. We talked about it a lot. We considered everything,” Mazin said during a press conference attended by GamesRadar+. “You know, of course, you want to plan. Maybe we should just interlace the stories. Maybe we should just go back and forth. Maybe we should try this, maybe try that, and then in the end, I just remember saying, ‘Isn’t this part of the genetics of how this story functions? It’s just part of the genetics.'”
The Last of Us season 2 ends on a cliffhanger that is, unsurprisingly, different from The Last of Us Part 2 video game. In the finale, Abby and Ellie have their first confrontation in Seattle, Abby shoots Ellie – and the scene ends there. In the game, Ellie gets back up and the scene continues on. In the episode, the scene cuts to Abby waking up in WLF headquarters on Seattle: Day One. This signifies that that The Last of Us season 3 will begin with and focus on Abby, showing the audience what she did during the three days that Ellie and Dina were hunting her down and killing her friends one by one.
Mazin said ending the season this way was a risk, and this is definitely because the scene implies that Ellie has been killed by Abby (even though those of us who have played Part 2 know that this is not the case).
“Now, what it means is we have to take risks as a television show, and HBO [has] to back us taking risks,” Mazin continued. “But then again, we just did kill Pedro Pascal like they’re they understand that this show is going to be a different show every season, which is a sort of a tricky thing to do when you’re a hit show. You keep asking people like, ‘I know you love this, we’re taking it away and giving you this now,’ and then, ‘Oh, well, you know what? We actually really like this. Oh, that’s nice.’ Now we’re giving you this, because that’s how the story works, right?”
The Last of Us season 2 is streaming now on HBO in the US, and on Sky and NOW in the UK. For more, check out our lists of the best HBO Max shows and the best HBO Max movies to stream right now.