Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, who made The Last of Us, recently said that the first episode was originally two separate episodes. The new horror show on HBO is based on the 2013 PlayStation 3 game with the same name that got good reviews.
Pedro Pascal plays Joel Miller, a tough survivor who has to take Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a 14-year-old orphan, across the post-apocalyptic United States to a group of radical revolutionaries called the Fireflies. Now that they know Ellie is immune to the fungal infection that has spread around the world, the group of idealists thinks Ellie may hold the key that could save the world.
Mazin and Druckmann say on HBO’s The Last of Us Podcast that the first episode of The Last of Us was cut down from two episodes to one.
Druckmann says that the first episode was supposed to end when Joel threw an infected child into a burn pit, 20 years after the time jump. But because story feedback from the show’s producers was so important, episodes 1 and 2 were combined to get people interested in Joel and Ellie’s relationship. Here’s what Mazin and Druckmann had to say about it:
Druckmann: If we want to talk about things we got wrong, episode one used to be episode one, and episode two used to be episode two. It used to end with “20 Years Later,” where the kid is seen and Joel throws him into a fire. That was the end. That was the first episode.
Mazin: Well, HBO, if I’m right, this is where you want good network partners, right? I always think that the best people in charge of a network are there to represent the audience in an honest way. This is what they are good at. They shouldn’t be writing things for us.
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They are supposed to tell us how they feel, and we are supposed to believe them. And in this case, our spies there, Casey Bloys and Francesca Orsi, said that Episode One might not make them want to come back. The Last of Us is about Joel and Ellie throughout the whole season and story.
If we only see a little bit of her at the end of episode one, if we don’t bring them together if we don’t understand their journey, and if the episode ends with a kid dying, then another kid dying, and then the credits, people may not want to come back. They cared about it because they like the show. If they don’t want to come back, it would hurt all of our hearts.
Druckmann: Looking back, the feedback makes a lot of sense. We had a version where Ellie looked out the window at the end, and you could see that she had changed. Oh, you’re like, “Huh, this is strange.” But we haven’t given you a reason to care about this kid yet. We care about his kid because we know where this journey is going and how important this kid is.
When I was working on the game, this was always how people tested me. I’d ask, “What’s the thing that starts it all?” And they’d say, “Well, of course, when Sarah dies.” Nope. It happens when Joel meets Ellie. That’s what makes a big difference in his life. And I’m like, “We never made it to that point. We need to reach that point. That’s where this trip starts.” So, looking back, that feedback makes perfect sense, and the episode is much better because of it.
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Why The Changed Ep. 1 is Better?
The relationship between Joel and Ellie is the most important part of The Last of Us’s story. If the characters don’t meet each other in the first episode, viewers miss out on an important plot point. Druckmann said that the main event of the first The Last of Us video game wasn’t when Joel’s daughter died, but when Joel and Ellie finally met. The rest of the story starts when their lives are changed forever. The Last of Us wouldn’t exist if Joel hadn’t met Ellie.
The first 45 minutes of The Last of Us episode 1 were mostly about Sarah (Nico Parker), how much she loved her father, and how much her father loved her. Sarah’s death was violent and traumatic. This event is buried deep in Joel’s mind and affects how his character acts afterward.
Joel changes when he throws a dead, infected child into a fire when another worker couldn’t do it emotionally. While Joel is long gone, the woman seems to have kept some of her humanity. Even though ending the episode there would have made sense in terms of the episode’s theme, the episode still needed to get to Ellie for it to work as a story.
When the show ends with Joel and Tess (Anna Torv) sneaking Ellie out of the quarantine zone, the audience is hooked and wants to see more. The finale of the episode hints at the severity of Joel’s PTSD as he nearly kills a guy, Ellie’s immunity to the fungal infection, Tommy’s absence, and a future narrative involving Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Richard Bartlett), who send an encoded warning of impending peril to Joel’s empty apartment.
The Last of Us will keep going on Sunday, so people can start to see how Joel and Ellie’s characters interact with each other.
