Because the last of us made Joel’s flashbacks crazy in episode 6: “It was nice that the spectators could really lose this character”

The last of us Season 2 did not follow the Beat-For-Beat video game, and a big fan of the shift noticed was the way the show managed Joel’s flashbacks. Instead of sucking them all over the season as the game has done, the series leaves them all in a single episode 6 emotionally loaded.

In the original Last of us part II The video games, the flashbacks of Joel and Ellie’s relationship are sprayed through history, giving players a slow drip of the emotional context while they sail on Ellie’s journey.

But on the show, we get all six flashbacks ranging from Joel’s childhood in 1983 to several key moments with Ellie at different ages in a concentrated episode. Second showrunner Neil DruckmannWhich also directed the episode, this was the best move for adaptation. He said:

“In the game, when you live one of those flashbacks that are scattered all over the world, they are not all consolidated in this way – for example, that of the museum, while in the show it lasts a few minutes, in the game, it could be close to an hour if you are exploring every nook and Gringia.

“You are Ellie and you are there with Joel and have many conversations that you could enter that head space. Enter the flow of flow and you are experiencing this thing with the two of them.”

But TV is a different means and Druckmann stressed that the spacing of those moments could actually dilute their emotional fist. He explained:

“I think that if we had to take, let’s say, the scenes we wrote for this episode and has spread them during the season, some things that I think would have a negative effect would happen.

“There is one, I don’t know if they would have landed, because they are relatively short. And two, you may not miss Joel enough if we started spreading them during the episodes.

“We felt like the show, we would have a much greater impact if we had united them and I could see them side by side and feel the deterioration of that relationship.”

That absence is something that the spectators tried from the brutal death of Joel at the hands of Abby in episode 2. The three episodes since they fully moved to the hunt for the revenge of Ellie and Dina through Seattle, leaving the presence of Joel hanging like a ghost.

Druckmann was also aware of the show structure and how easily he could fall into a repetitive rhythm.

“I also had problems that the episodes would turn into a little model. It would be like, ‘Okay, what is Joel’s flashback this week?’ So it was nice that the characters and spectators could really lose this character, and then we arrive in the whole group for the last time.”

It is a narrative bet that seems to have benefited. Episode 6 hits like an intestinal fist because Joel is not only revisited, he is remembered, cried and recoursely. And just like Ellie, we leave each other again.