Spoiler Alert: Possible spoilers for The Last of Us Season 2 followEven one week later, it still doesn’t seem real (at least if you’ve already played the video game, in which case, hopefully you’ve had ample time to recover).Joel is gone, andThe Last of Uswill never be the same. Sunday’s newest episode, “Something’s Got a Hold On Me”, follows on the heels of both Joel’s murder and the infected attack on the Jackson hideout. After a three-month time jump, Ellie is every bit as vengeful as ever, and thanks to help from Dina, who knows the identities of Abby and her gang, she intends to follow them to Seattle and kill them.
Like much of Season 2, the episode makes some significant expansions upon the game’s story,showing how the town’s population is split between sending hunters to track down the Washington Liberation Front (or WLF), and potentially leaving Jackson unguardedas the town continues to rebuild. Most of these changes enhance the story and add greater weight to Ellie’s decision to head out on her own, but one of the deviations was unnecessary.
The Last Of Us
‘The Last of Us’ Makes a Big Change to Tommy
In the video gameThe Last of Us Part II,Joel’s brother Tommyis arguably every bit as hellbent on revenge as Ellie, if not more so. While he’s initially skeptical about leaving Jackson unguarded, especially when he knows so little about the WLF attackers,he quickly decides that avenging his brother is worth the potential risk and heads to Seattle alone to hunt them down.
In fact, he actually sets outbeforeEllie and Dina do— when they arrive in Seattle in the game, their main lead in tracking Abby and her team comes from the trail of carnage Tommy has left in his wake. A later level, depicting the events in Seattle from Abby’s perspective, forces the player to survive an attack by a deadly sniper, revealing only minutes later that the perpetrator was in fact Tommy.
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For a character who had previously been built up as something of a moral compass for Joel, it’s shocking and heartbreaking to see Tommy slowlylose himself in his desire for revenge.Without spoiling the video game’s final arc too much, it’s clear that his bloodlust still isn’t satiated even months later and continues to have a deadly ripple effect on the rest of the ensemble.
In contrast,Episode 3 continues to paint Tommy as the closest thing the show has to a pure hero. He explicitly tries to talk Ellie out of acting recklessly, urges her to accept whatever decision their town council makes, and even expresses concerns about her well-being to Gail. As such, if the series still wants Tommy to play a similar role to the one he did in the bulk of the game, something big will have to happen soon.
‘The Last of Us’ Changes Tommy in Unnecessary Ways
Already, the TV incarnation ofThe Last of Ushas made plenty of alterationsto the source material, almost all of them understandable, and many even justifiable. Yet we can’t help but feel that these changes to Tommy are unnecessary, and while it’s not out of the question that they could bear fruit down the road,it can’t help but feel like some potentially juicy drama is being sacrificed here.
Perhaps most crucially, the story itself doesn’t change in any other meaningful ways, as the bulk of the episode still revolves around Ellie refusing the guidance she’s being given in favor of revenge. If all the most important plot beats remained intact, why didn’t this? It’s especially head-scratching because Tommy has more reason than anyone outside of Ellie to want revenge against the people who killed his brother. The show hasn’t previously shied away from how vicious Tommy can be when it comes to protecting his loved ones, even though he’s still generally kindhearted.
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In all fairness,Gabriel Luna has done such a wonderful jobin the role since the beginning, andit’s certainly possible that Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann decided that bloodlust clashed too heavily with his overall performance. Once again, Luna beautifully sells Tommy’s internal conflict, and he’s completely believable in illustrating the newfound protectiveness he feels towards Ellie and his growing concern about her. If anything, it’s a testament to Luna that we’re a bit disappointed at the changes to Tommy that the new episode seems to hint at.
If Tommy isn’t also embarking on the same path of revenge as Ellie, it’s hard to imagine his character having much else to do. Of course,it’s certainly possible that Tommy could change his mind and head for Seattle to Ellie, meaning the bulk of his character arc won’t change too drastically. But at least at the moment, it feels like an unnecessary alteration, and more importantly, a wasted chance to give one of the show’s more underrated performers some juicy material.The Last of Usis streaming onMax, with new episodes every Sunday.
