Before the first season of The Last of Us on HBO had even come to a close, the dread started to build. As one of the many people who played The Last of Us Part 2 back in June 2020, I knew all too well what was hurtling down the barrel. Joel’s violent murder at the hands of avenging angel Abby was burned into my memory – a moment of such gut-punch impact that the idea of having to sit through it all over again in remixed live-action was about as appealing as french-kissing a clicker.
Of course, there was a sense of car-crash curiosity to it all. How would co-showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann handle Part 2's incendiary instigating event? Though largely faithful to the game it adapted, the first season of the show was lauded for several major deviations from the source material. In adapting The Last of Us Part 2, might Mazin and Druckmann do something similarly drastic with Joel's death?
