HBOThe Last of Us creators Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin believe Abby’s anger in Season 2 Episode 2 results in her doing something that has far-reaching and potentially devastating consequences for her character.
The Last of Us Season 2 has a different structure to the game on which it’s based, especially when it comes to the character of Abby.
In The Last of Us Part 2, gamers didn’t know what was driving Abby to do what she does early in the game. But in the show it’s made clear from the start.
Abby is angry – enraged that Joel killed her father in cold blood. And she wants revenge, but the brutal nature of that vengeance causes Abby to make a mistake that will come back to haunt her. SPOILERS ahead.
How Abby’s anger results in Ellie witnessing Joel’s death
HBOIn Season 2 Episode 2, Abby murders Joel in cold blood. But rather than doing it quickly with a bullet to the head, she tortures him by shooting Joel in the leg, punching and kicking him, and beating him with a golf club that she then snaps in two and thrusts into his neck.
That delay gives time for Ellie to arrive on the scene and see what unfolds, which then drives her own thirst for vengeance throughout the rest of the season.
“It’s important to note here that Abby could’ve shot Joel and it would have been over,” says game/series creator Neil Druckmann on the official Last of Us podcast. “But that wouldn’t have been enough for her. Because she felt all this intense pain for all these years.
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“Somehow, and I think we all do this to some degree, when someone wrongs us, when someone cuts us off on the highway, we have to make the other person pay, as much, if not more so.”
HBOThen – referencing the inciting incident of Season 2 – series co-creator Craig Mazin adds: “It’s a great point. If she just shoots him and they leave, Ellie gets there too late. She never knows who did it.”
But Abby doesn’t, meaning Ellie does arrive in time, and that delay puts both women on a collision course that has dire consequences, and drives the Season 2 narrative from that moment on.
For more on The Last of Us, read about Dina’s fate in the games, and learn more about Eugene’s importance in Season 2. Plus, here’s how a story change might affect Episode 3.