---
title: 'What The Last Of Us Actually Changed'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=AcBVlsholwA'
video_id: 'AcBVlsholwA'
date: 2026-06-30
duration_sec: 945
---

# What The Last Of Us Actually Changed

> Source: [What The Last Of Us Actually Changed](https://youtube.com/watch?v=AcBVlsholwA)

## Summary

This video analyzes HBO's adaptation of the video game The Last of Us, questioning whether it was necessary given the game's already cinematic nature. It explains that the show differentiates itself by turning the game's subtext into explicit text, especially around themes like climate change and queer representation.

### Key Points

- **The central question of adaptation** [0:00] — Fans asked 'do we need this' about HBO's The Last of Us, and the showrunners grappled with that same question throughout production.
- **Game's cinematic nature** [0:27] — The Last of Us was already a linear narrative experience, as close to a film as a game could be, with no player choice in the story outcome.
- **Subverting player expectations** [1:18] — The game created a moment where players expect a choice but are denied it, making Joel killing the doctor a linear, unavoidable event.
- **Naughty Dog's cinematic approach** [2:31] — Conversations in the game use performance capture and emphasize subtle emotions, unlike other games with dialogue trees.
- **Challenge of adaptation** [3:19] — The game's best scenes are already so effective that simply repeating them would be thoughtless; the adaptation must add something new.
- **Climate change as explicit theme** [4:36] — The show opens with an interview explaining how a fungal pandemic could worsen due to global warming, making the subtext of the game about climate change into text.
- **From subtext to text** [6:29] — The show justifies its existence by explicitly stating themes that the game left ambiguous, providing answers to questions fans had.
- **Explicit Joel and Tess relationship** [8:11] — The show confirms a romantic relationship between Joel and Tess, which was only hinted at in the game.
- **Communism made explicit in Jackson** [8:33] — In the show, characters openly state that their town operates on collective ownership, directly calling out the communism that was subtext in the game.
- **David's character made worse** [9:23] — The show removes ambiguity about David's threat, explicitly portraying him as a pedophile, going beyond the game's implication.
- **Bill and Frank's queer love story** [10:01] — The show devotes an entire episode to Bill and Frank's relationship, turning the game's hidden subtext into a central, positive narrative.
- **Overall adaptation strategy** [12:36] — Raising subtext to text is the main way the show establishes its own identity, but it results in the story having little subtext of its own.

## Transcript

do we need this that question hangs
around HBO's adaptation of the hit video
game The Last of Us like a noose there
was a tendency among a fair portion of
fans of the game to roll their eyes at
every new bit of news about this
adaptation because of that question and
grappling with that question seems to be
one of the main things the showrunners
themselves were preoccupied by do we
need this obviously obviously not right
so then why do this okay yeah Fair The
Last of Us was a game that was already
as close to a movie or a television show
as a video game could possibly be it's a
linear narrative experience and a pretty
much linear gameplay experience too it
was technically a video game but in
contrast to the rest of the industry it
was not one sold on the appeal of the
player getting to shape the narrative I
suppose you have the choice over
precisely how or maybe if you murder
each group of enemies as you progress
through the game but the corridors
themselves Lead You inevitably from
point A to point B you will watch all
the same cutscenes listen to this same
banter see the same ending as anyone
else who plays the game it actually kind
of melted people's brains at the time
because of just how much it went against
the grain of what so many other major
video game Publishers were doing in
2013. in an era where so many other
games let you do a Choose Your Own
Adventure pick blue for boring pick red
for psychopath style gameplay this
sequence at the end of The Last of Us
was legitimately surprising and that it
uses all of the conventions of those
kinds of games and leads up to a moment
where you expect to have a choice only
to not have a choice Joel kills the
Doctor Joel always kills the doctor it's
a linear experience and not for nothing
a good one so why do this
the motivation for adapting a story or
at least the most like pure motivation
for adapting a story is that you think
the story will benefit from the shift in
mediums to explore parts of the story
that the original just couldn't an audio
visual medium provides storytellers new
ways to enhance a story told previously
as a book or as a comic book music can
create a different emotional reaction to
a scene and bringing something that was
only previously in the realm of
imagination into real life can be
extremely satisfying but the last of us
was already in an audio visual media and
it used that Medium to its fullest or
rather it used it in a way that ape the
conventions of film the composition of
its shots the editing the music its
motion capture performances all of it
working in tandem to create a
well-crafted experience that kind of
feels like
well it kind of feels like a Prestige
HBO drama Naughty Dog Games stand up
from the rest of the video game industry
for this reason when two characters have
a conversation in a naughty dog game
it's either happening in gameplay or
it's a performance captured cutscene
that emphasizes the subtleties of each
character's emotions they never just
have two characters cycle through four
or five generic animations while the
player chooses from four or five
dialogue options that's not a criticism
of games that do that but an observation
that those games want you to feel like
you're interacting with the story while
The Last of Us wants you to feel like
you're watching a story The Last of Us
did all of this extremely well pretty
much better than any other video game it
created dozens and dozens of really
effective moments between characters
that have stuck in my mind for a decade
you're not my daughter
and I sure as hell ain't your dad
so if you're adapting a story like this
you're in an extremely tough spot
because you don't just want to
thoughtlessly Echo something like this
and yet the scenes are so good on their
own your story would be less good if you
didn't include them right you're right
you're not my daughter
I'm not sure as hell ain't your dad oh
my God they shot it from a different
angle
which means that any adaptation of The
Last of Us is destined to instantly be
cut up by the internet into shot by shot
comparisons The Last of Us season one
side-by-side scene comparison The Last
of Us episode 1 TV show versus game
comparison The Last of Us episode 2 TV
show vs game comparison episode three
four five six seven eight nine TV show
versus game comparison so why do this
and more importantly how and more
importantly why for a moment I just want
to set aside the obvious answer to this
which is money The Last of Us is an
extremely recognizable IP and any
adaptation of it good or bad was bound
to make HBO a tidy profit but that
doesn't really answer why these specific
creatives would want to be involved with
this Craig Mason the showrunner for The
Last of Us was fresh off a huge success
with Chernobyl a show that won or was
nominated for all of the awards he could
presumably have been part of whatever he
wanted to make he chose this so why
fungal infection of this kind is a real
but not in humans true true fungi cannot
survive if its host's internal
temperature is over 94 degrees and
currently there are no reasons for fungi
to evolve to be able to withstand higher
temperatures but what if that were to
change what if
for instance the world were to get
slightly warmer unlike the game the TV
show opens with a lengthy interview
scene between a TV show host and a pair
of doctors which in my mind immediately
seeks to answer the question at the top
of this video in the scene one of the
doctors outlines how a fungal pandemic
could be orders of magnitude worse than
a viral pandemic he explains how the
fungi could burrow into people's brains
and turn them into puppets handling a
bunch of the World building for the rest
of the show but he also reframes the
central Catalyst of the Apocalypse from
what it was in the game tying it
directly to climate change that Craig
Mason would do this is not that
surprising when you compare this to what
he did in Chernobyl the guest that show
is about telling a story around the
Chernobyl nuclear disaster but it's not
just about that it's about climate
change hot take guys Chernobyl had
climate change themes institutions
repeatedly ignored the warnings of an
environmental disaster because of their
own political agendas and then in the
midst of the crisis attempted to
continuously downplay how bad things
could get but nuclear radiation doesn't
care about International politics or
what's happening inside the Kremlin so
you know can we please deal with this
thing before it kills us all in The Last
of Us video game there was no
explanation for the apocalypse it was
just something that happened but I think
you can make a compelling case about the
original Last of Us that while it is
never explicitly stated to be about
climate change that it was subtextually
about climate change it's a game where
most of the settings are Urban
environments that have been reclaimed by
Nature where the main enemies are a kind
of fungi and where the central themes
are all about pitting individual needs
against what is good for society as a
whole a theme that has some extra
resonance when seen through the lens of
climate change in the show a guy just
says it what if the world was to get
slightly warmer he just tweeted it out
and it's in this way this method like
not just the scene but this way of doing
things that the show justifies its own
existence if it can't tell the story of
The Last of Us better than the last of
us already did then it can at least tell
the story more explicitly it can make
the subtext text I want to make a
distinction here for the kind of subtext
and talking about I'm not talking about
what we could call conversational
subtext so in many a well-written scene
in both versions of The Last of Us two
characters are talking to one another
and because they are human beings and
not robots when they say things they
don't always say everything they mean so
Time Heals all wounds I guess
Jules puppy dog eyes fill in the blanks
of what his words imply the text is it
wasn't time that healed his trauma the
subtext was that it was meeting and
bonding with Ellie that healed his
trauma both versions of the story have
moments like this which are very good
because both versions are very good so
when I say HBO is The Last of Us turns
the subtext of Sony's The Last of Us
into text I don't mean everyone starts
saying what they mean literally I'm
talking more about the themes and plot
points that the game originally left
ambiguous cordyceps mutated
someone that got into the food supply
probably a basic ingredient like flour
sugar example number one Joel and Tess
now if you're a freak like me when
you're playing the original game there
are probably a bunch of times during
scenes with Joel and Tess when you
thought to yourself they [ __ ] come on
make this easy for me
canonically the answer is probably
probably like probably not definitely
but but when you watch the show one of
the first times you see them together is
they're together
in the original game there was something
ambiguous that players wondered about
and now in order to give this new
version of the show some kind of
identity that is different from the game
but which doesn't outright contradict
the game the show gives a solid textual
answer to that thing that was previously
ambiguous example number two communism
hey isn't it kind of funny that in the
post-apocalypse the healthiest most
productive most just and safe place in
the entire game is kind of a
narco-communist like Tommy and his Pals
over here are communists aren't they and
isn't it you know doubly funny that we
put this location in Jackson Wyoming the
state with the heaviest Republican lien
in the country 20 years of Apocalypse
turned all these Macho conservative
Cowboys into Macau bakunan well uh in
the show everyone pitches in we rotate
patrols food prep repairs hunting
harvesting everything you see in our
town
greenhouses livestock all shared
Collective ownership
so uh communism
ah I didn't like that it is that
literally this is the commune we're
communists
example three David is well even worse
than than the game says okay so in the
game Joel gets injured and the player
gets to play as Ellie for a little bit
where she Encounters this guy David who
manages to gain Ellie's trust before she
learns that he and his gang are a bunch
of cannibals who are going to eat her
but there are a couple of moments in the
game that make you feel like David is
even worse than a cannibal like this
moment when he tries to regain Ellie's
trust and they hold hands or in the
final fight scene which can be read as
merely David attempting to murder her or
is he trying to
you know the fighting is a part I like
the most there's no fear in love oh okay
so he's just full-on pedophile okay got
it
example four Bill and Frank now I take
the master stroke of the series is how
they handle its queer representation in
the game Joel and Ellie meet one of
Joel's old friends a complete [ __ ]
named Bill Bill lives in almost total
isolation and has protected himself from
the outside world with a series of booby
traps in his level of the game the three
of them work together to make it to the
other side of town so that they can
acquire a car battery bill has exactly
one friend named Frank who lives on that
side of town but they find that he has
hanged himself when they get there for
many players it's pretty easy to miss
the fact that bill is a gay man because
that fact exists mostly in the subtext
of how Bill reacts to Frank's death
which could imply a romantic connection
between the two of them but can also
very easily be read by a straight
audience as just a man mourning his
friend
he was my partner but Bill squaredness
also exists as non-mandatory content in
Frank's house the player might find a
note from Frank to bill which expresses
Frank's growing resentment towards bills
stuck in his Way's Behavior again the
player needs to read between the lines
here to understand that this is a queer
relationship
I'm sure your friend will be missing
this tonight
the only tangible piece of evidence of
Phil's homosexuality is when Joel and
Ellie are driving to Pittsburgh and
Ellie starts looking at a magazine she
got from Bill's house which is a male
porn magazine in each case it does
require the player to think about what
they're seeing in order to come to the
conclusion that bill is gay now this is
all a bit
problematic the fact alone that Bill's
queerness is hidden to this degree is
worth criticizing and it was like in a
game which again was almost entirely
linear the one important character
detail that's consigned to optional
content or blinking you'll miss its
story beats being the pieces of evidence
that lets you know that there's a queer
relationship going on here at all is not
exactly what you'd call good queer
representation it's the kind of
representation that is slipped in so
that it's not noticed by most
heterosexual audiences because that way
the game avoids a reactionary backlash I
guess but come on is that really
something to worry about oh yeah I guess
so now arguably this moment of queer
representation is better than nothing
but the showrunner is wisely understood
that they had to do more than this in
the adaptation so in the third episode
of the show they raised the queer
subtext to queer text it's the biggest
narrative departure from the game by far
the writer's craft an entire episode
that is almost completely separate from
Joel and Ellie's Journey telling a
positive impactful story worry about
Bill and Frank falling in love with one
another it's a very good episode but
it's also a little irritating that in
order for them to tell a good queer Love
Story it seems it has to be entirely
sequestered away from the rest of the
narrative so what are we to make of all
these decisions in the case of the bill
and Frank episode the show adds so much
more to the story than anyone expected
that it sort of ceases to be an
adaptation of The Last of Us and more of
a standalone one-hour movie that happens
to cross over with the last of us with
that exception though the general
strategy of raising the subtext up to
the level of the text is pretty much the
only way that this adaptation is able to
establish its own identity separate from
the game but are these really ideal
changes I sometimes vote while watching
the show that I was less watching HBO's
Last of Us than I was reading Craig
Mason's PhD level thesis on the Last of
Us The Last of Us climate change and the
decay of American Community The Last of
Us querying the post post-apocalypse the
last of subtexts oh wait that's mine in
calling out all of the sub text of the
original story though HBO is The Last of
Us doesn't have much subtext of its own
all of its Mysteries are thoroughly
explained all of its character
relationships explicitly detailed and I
don't know it's it's fine or whatever
but like do we need this
one of the things I love about the last
of us is its unique World building all
these interesting fungal creatures in a
world with different factions it's just
a well-realized post-apocalyptic story
for me World building is one of the most
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[Music]
thank you
[Music]
laughs