Why They Changed Abby In ‘The Last Of Us’ Season 2

The White Lotus is over, replaced by another of HBO’s Emmy-nominated prestige series, The Last of Us. It’s the rare video game adaptation that has received loads of critical and audience acclaim, though that has been a growing trend between Amazon’s Fallout and a lot of Netflix animated productions.

Fans of the game have either enjoyed the series so far, nitpicked a number of differences between them, or both. You can do both. But one thing that has come up already is how the show has handled Abby in two different ways. One appearance-wise, the other story-wise.

Mini-Abby – Game Abby is well, huge. She’s a weightlifter, a powerhouse with large muscles that were a signature of her appearance in the game. Kaitlyn Dever is really the opposite, just 5’2 (which is still an inch taller than Bella Ramsey) but nowhere near being a powerlifter and the show did not demand she gain 40 pounds of muscle for the role.

This has been addressed since Dever was cast a while back. First of all, Neil Druckmann said that finding an actress Abby’s size, plus a similar age, would have been extremely difficult and severely narrowed the pool of actors to choose from. But mainly, Abby’s size was about a gameplay different in the TLOU Part 2, not something that was the single key to her character:

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“In the game, you have to play both characters [Ellie and Abby] and we need them to play differently,” Druckmann said. “We needed Ellie to feel smaller and kind of maneuver around, and Abby was meant to play more like Joel in that she’s almost like a brute in the way she can physically manhandle certain things. That doesn’t play as big of a role in this version of the story because there’s not as much violent action moment to moment. It’s more about the drama. I’m not saying there’s no action here. It’s just, again, different priorities and how you approach it.”

Dever is of course an amazing actress (go watch Unbelievable, Dopesick and most recent, Apple Cider Vinegar on Netflix) so that took priority over Abby’s size. I think she does look like her to some extent (sort of a cross between game Ellie and Abby, honestly), and she’s going to do a great job, I imagine.

Abby’s Motivations – Last night, players saw that the show was saying right away that Abby was a Firefly and was angry at Joel for all his murders at the hospital, decimating the entire organization. We don’t know precisely why Abby is so furious compared to the others, but this is a lot more information than you get in the game.

Abby just shows up and you don’t really know who she is or why she does what she does in relation to Ellie, Joel and the rest of the community. That backstory unfolds as we play as her over the course of the game.

Neil Druckmann explained why this was in a Washington Post interview. Once again, it’s a game/show issue in terms of structure. If they followed the game exactly, we wouldn’t know Abby’s motivations at all for this entire season, given that its only half the second game, and fans would be waiting the better part of two years to know what’s going on with her.

Additionally, games are a narrative “shortcut” because you can play 20 hours in a week or so to get to Abby’s story, but if they kept it the same, again, it would be months or even years. That likely would not work, so we at least know some of her motivations from the start.

I get it, I think these are good decisions, even if they depart from the games. Though certainly some superfans disagree.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.