How That Huge Scene in ‘The Last of Us’ Went Down in the Video Game

This story contains spoilers for The Last of Us season 2, episode 2.

Be careful who you meet out there, folks—you never know who’s out to kill you. That’s the harsh lesson we learned in The Last of Us this Sunday night. Episode 2, “Through the Valley,” claimed the life of a certain major character. But how did this scene go down in the original video games? And why did the creative team behind the HBO series make changes in the first place?

As expected, season 2 of HBO’s The Last of Us is hewing closely to the story of The Last of Us Part II, which released on PlayStation consoles in 2020. Set approximately five years after the first game, The Last of Us Part II sees Ellie and Joel living together (however estranged) in Jackson, Wyoming. In both the game and the HBO show, Ellie (played in the series by Bella Ramsey) correctly suspects that Joel (Pedro Pascal) is lying to her about how and why he “rescued” her and what actually went down at the Firefly-occupied hospital. Joel refuses to tell her the truth, believing he did it to protect her at the cost of the world’s continued apocalyptic misery.

Unfortunately, Ellie will never reconcile with Joel, nor hear the truth from his mouth, because “Through the Valley” ends with Joel’s horrific murder by vengeful ex-Fireflies, a scene that happens quite early on in The Last of Us Part II. (It’s practically the inciting incident that kicks off its story of revenge.)

While both the games and the TV show have striking similarities with regard to how Joel’s death went down, there are some stark differences too. Here’s how Joel’s death happened in the show and how it originally went down in The Last of Us Part II.

I bet Ellie wishes the fungus monsters took care of Abby in this moment.

A Quick Recap of Joel’s Death in the TV Show…

As fans have just seen, Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) and her group of ex-Fireflies, now the Washington Liberation Front (WLF), are closing in on Jackson, hoping to find Joel and kill him for murdering Abby’s father at the hospital. They get their chance when a horde of infected awaken and successfully breach Jackson’s walls, although Tommy (Gabriel Luna) manages to hold them off with the help of all of Jackson.

Ellie, who has gone on patrol with Jesse (Young Mazino), is stranded far outside town due to the harsh weather. While Ellie and Jesse hole up in an abandoned 7-Eleven-turned-DIY-weed-farm, Joel rushes out to find Ellie only to rescue Abby from infected. When Abby tricks Joel and Dina (Isabela Merced) into bringing her back to camp, that’s when they seize their chance and kill a vulnerable Joel. Ellie arrives a few minutes too late and is helpless to watch as Abby kills Joel before her eyes.

How Joel’s Death Happened in the Game

Joel (played by Troy Baker) and Tommy (Jeffrey Pierce) are out on patrol when they meet Abby (Laura Bailey) and rescue her from rabid infected. Due to the harsh snowfall, Abby gets the Jackson men to bring her back to her group’s hideout for shelter. Barely five minutes pass before Abby shoots Joel in the leg and the others knock Tommy out cold.

From there, the scene plays out in similar fashion to the TV show: Ellie arrives and tries to rescue Joel, only to be outmuscled and see him killed right in front of her. One minor difference is that Abby pierces Joel’s neck in the show (yikes!), while in the game, Abby’s killing blow is one last swing of her golf club to Joel’s skull. Both are really brutal ways to go.

Why All the Changes for the HBO Series?

We’ve yet to hear from showrunner Craig Mazin and game creator Neil Druckmann about the changes. But we caught up with Gabriel Luna, who plays Tommy, and grilled him all about Joel’s death that Tommy is no longer present to witness.

Luna tells Esquire that plans to change the scene from the game were in talks during the making of season 1. Luna proposed that it wouldn’t make too much sense for Tommy to be so trusting of complete strangers, given his personality and military background. “The truth is, back when we were doing the first season, I talked to [showrunner] Craig [Mazin] and [game creator] Neil [Druckmann] about it,” Luna told us.

“Would Tommy be that careless to reveal Joel’s identity? As a seasoned veteran, somebody who had to protect this city and keep it safe, would he be so trusting of strangers? And then to walk into this ambush and be knocked out for that moment, unable to use any of his strength and skills to protect his brother, it always pinged in my mind—I wouldn’t say false, but I don’t know if Tommy would have been that trusting to walk into that trap.”

When Mazin heard Luna’s thoughts, he took time to rewrite the story and later shared the new version with him. “He sent me this Bible-long text about where Tommy is and what he’s doing instead. And it floored me,” Luna said. “I was so excited. I’m getting goosebumps now thinking about it.”

For more, check out our full interview with Luna.