(WARNING: Spoilers for The Last of Us Season 1 finale below.)
With The Last of Us Season 1 officially over after delivering dynamite ratings for HBO, showrunner Craig Mazin opened up about adapting the first game for TV and nailing the game’s bleak, yet highly memorable ending.
While the season finale stuck very close to the source material by having Joel gun down a hospital full of Fireflies to prevent them from cutting open Ellie’s brain to look for a Cordyceps cure (and more importantly, lying to her about what went down), Mazin revealed that the series almost tweaked Joel and Ellie’s final moments.
Via GQ UK:
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?’
According to Mazin, the creative team began having a “meta-discussion” about how fans of the game, and viewers who aren’t familiar with the source material, will react to the change. Ultimately, they decided not to mess with success by tinkering with the game’s ending.
“In the end, there’s something very specific about ending on that close-up of Ellie,” Mazin explained. “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. As we’re recording this, we haven’t aired it yet and we don’t know what the reception is going to be. I think people will get angry!”
Good news: Everybody loved it. You did it, guys.
The Last of Us Season 1 is available for streaming on HBO Max.
(Via GQ UK)