"You don't get to rush this."

Comparing The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 2 "Through the Valley" to The Last of Us Part 2

Heyyyy… How y’all doin’?

IT happened.

The show changed A LOT.

As mentioned in my last write up, I will be writing primarily about the changes made between the show and the game while avoiding too much mention of future events to ensure spoilers are kept to a minimum. Any explicit discussion about the future of the story will be clearly labeled and saved until the end. Not much point in a lengthy preamble, is there? Let’s get into the episode and how it differs from its source material.

Fair warning: This will probably be a long one.

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Episode 2 drops us into a hallway we know well. While this specific dream sequence is new, the use of this mechanic is essential to Abby’s character throughout the game. Abby operates in ways that are very reminiscent of Joel, the two both presenting a cold, hard front to most people that ensures their inner vulnerabilities are rarely exposed. A majority of our understanding of characters comes from the dialogue they have with their companions during playable sequences. It takes a long time for Abby to start to open up to her companions during her sequences so her nightmares in Saint Mary’s hospital operate as that window into her inner thoughts, providing insight into her relationship with grief and guilt that the player wouldn’t otherwise know. It’s a pleasant surprise to see this concept introduced so early as it’s something we don’t start seeing in the game until the halfway point. Typically, her nightmares are a repetitive series of walks down that hallway and into the room on the other side of the door, environmental changes the key to understanding her changing view of this specific memory. Having a direct conversation with her younger self is possibly one of the more rewarding changes made in the episode. Not only does it offer a more direct statement about her relationship with this past trauma, it also illustrates to us the difference in this past version of Abby vs her current iteration. In the game, that difference is made abundantly clear through the use of Abby’s muscular build, but since the show has (foolishly) omitted this detail about Abby, this is the next best thing. Dever does an excellent job of conveying the shift in Abby’s personality, her young self carrying a vulnerability that is noticeably gone in her older self. There’s also a clear indication here that while she is reliving the moment in Salt Lake City over and over again, she doesn’t want to confront the trauma head on. She urges her younger self to stay away, to avoid the pain that awaits through the door, her pleas intermingled with her younger self’s muffled sobs that are forthcoming. I’ll come back to it later on but there’s a line in this exchange that stuck out quite sharply to me: “His brains are on the floor.”

The order of events in this episode is a little out of sync with the game. As stated previously, the game opens with Joel’s admission to Tommy that he killed the Fireflies to save Ellie. Joel meets with Ellie briefly. Then we jump into the future were Ellie is awakened by Jesse (as seen in this episode). After this first sequence as Ellie in Jackson, then we have the moment in the lodge where Abby jolts awake from an unseen nightmare. Players don’t know her name, who she’s with, that she’s a former firefly, why she’s on screen. The shift here is the byproduct of the first episode opening with the scene in the makeshift graveyard. In the show, we know what Abby is after, which means a lot of the subsequent dialogue can be changed from the game. When Abby wakes up in TLOU2, the only other person awake is Owen (at this point in the subtitles he’s only referred to as “man” while Abby is referred to as “woman”). They converse briefly, conveying a certain degree of intimacy with each other, before Owen tells Abby he wants to show her something. A brief sequence follows where they navigate through the snow. This is part of the first two hours of the game, which operates as setup and as a tutorial so we learn the controls for how to crawl, navigate tight spaces, jump, etc. Through this sequence, Abby and Owen’s conversation reveals details about them: their names, their relationship to one another, Abby’s fear of heights, and that they’re outside of Jackson, hoping to find “him”.

This reveal is the first sign of trouble in the game, the first instant where a foreboding sense of unease begins to take hold of the player. The name of their target is never explicitly stated (this carries a very interesting weight to it that I won’t discuss for a possibly a long while), but as a player, we’re quick to assume they’re looking for Joel due to something he did either in the previous game or before the game’s events. Owen points out a lookout in the distance that he saw a patrol head to. He thinks the rest of their group will want to turn back after they realize how established Jackson is, which is why he showed Abby first on her own, hoping they can figure out what to do. Abby expresses an inability to rely on Owen, which he counters with a statement that becomes a defining remark of the story, “I want what you want. But not at any cost”. There’s something else about this conversation that is noticeably excluded from the show to the point where I’m a little unsure if it will be included at all. I think it will be, it’d be an alarming thing to omit, but who knows… So I won’t mention it for now just in case. The exchange ends with Abby so upset with Owen that he walks back to the lodge and she decides to forge ahead on her own towards the lit up lookout in the distance. We encounter the first hints of a horde of infected through the proceeding playable sequence while also learning how to stealthily kill infected in a very similar fashion to how you would if you were playing as Joel. There are countless moments within Abby’s playable sequences that remind us of Joel, which is an important comparison that the show, so far, seems to be avoiding. The sequence ends with Abby finding horse tracks in the building blizzard before the game cuts back to a playable sequence as Ellie.

In the show, after Abby awakens, the rest of the group is present for this initial conversation with Owen about the size of Jackson and what comes next. There’s a shift here that feels pretty noticeable. In the game, Owen and Abby, while part of a larger group, often have their own asides and sense of togetherness that keeps them partially separated from the rest of their team. The show touches on this a little bit, but having Abby have to defend their presence in Jackson to the entire group at once adds a different feel to the group dynamic. It feels much more like Abby is on her own rather than supported by Owen. The group knows Abby is heading out rather than her disappearing in a moment of frustration. Owen expresses blatantly that he intends to convince Abby that they need to go back to Seattle, once again establishing a noticeable wedge between Abby and Owen that isn’t really there in the game. It’s also worth mentioning that in the game the Salt Lake Crew has three additional members: Nick, Leah, and Jordan. Nick and Leah are exclusively background characters with no dialogue but Jordan does hold a little more significance in future scenes.

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Jesse waking up Ellie plays almost exactly like it does in the game. I do think this version of the scene feels a little more stilted than in the game, presumably because of how much more information we know in the show at this point compared to the game. As mentioned before, this is essentially the true opening to the game so the entire feel of the dialogue is different. We don’t know who Dina is, just that Ellie kissed her and she used to date Jesse. We haven’t seen the Winter Dance scene so we don’t know what exactly happened between Ellie and Seth and Joel the night before, just that something happened that ended in Ellie angry with Joel. Ellie doesn’t have an impassioned declaration that she and Joel have worked things out and that she wants to go on patrol with him. Instead, when Maria tries to ask Ellie about what’s going on between the two of them, Ellie responds with a terse “we’re fine”, that sounds exactly like the opposite of that. I’m not a fan of how Ellie expresses this point in the show, it feels a little heavy handed in my opinion, particularly because Ellie has always held her relationship with Joel close to the chest rather than talking about it openly with people.

Another thing of note in the game is that stalkers are an already well established form of infected (they’re considered the secondary stage between a runner and a clicker) so the town isn’t worried about them. The potential threat of a horde of infected nearby is briefly mentioned as a possibility but the threat carries a lot less weight. Game Jackson is so well established that there is a significant perimeter around the town where infected aren’t present. There is no town wide emergency preparedness meeting. The inclusion of these details are interesting, especially in helping further establish Tommy’s role within the community. In the game, his position feels much more passive. Maria is the one running Jackson, seemingly exclusively, rather than a council of individuals working together to guide the group. The responsibility Tommy carries in this episode in particular will carry a lot more significance in the future I think.

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One of the biggest things to note change wise is that in the game, Joel and Tommy are out on patrol together, not Dina and Joel. In the game, Jesse and his patrol partner are meant to relieve the brothers while Ellie and Dina are partnered up for patrol by Jesse (chillest ex boyfriend in the world and wingman of the century). Keeping Tommy in Jackson shows how embedded he is in leading the town, his focus directed towards the community at large rather than the game’s sharper distinction that he’s with Joel first before anyone else. That change feels especially poignant after the previous episode which involves Joel and Maria’s debate about the value of individualism vs collectivism. Joel’s constant insistence that individual care trumps collectivist care is something that comes up again and again and this new episode shows just how damning that choice can be in this world. In relation to that, there is no horde of infected attacking Jackson in the game. Abby is still chased by a horde until she’s led to Joel and Tommy, but this group of infected never gets even remotely close to Jackson. It’s an interesting addition and one I actually find quite confrontational as a game player. I don’t want to watch Tommy kill infected, I want to get back to Joel and Ellie as quickly as possible. But this desire to focus on the individual rather than the group made me think a lot about those ideas of individualism vs collectivism. This is inherently a personal story, but the actions of the individual character’s have wide impact and it is important to sit with the larger group from time to time rather than sticking exclusively with just Ellie and Joel so that we can reckon with those impacts fully. So I ultimately like that confrontation, it’s a nice challenge from the show, maybe particularly as someone who knows the game so intimately.

Keeping Tommy in Jackson also means there’s the possibility for an added sense of guilt that we don’t see with his character in the game. Could Tommy have saved Joel if he’d been on patrol with him or if he’d gone out to look for Joel when he learned his brother couldn’t be reached via radio? In the game, since he’s there, we know the answer is a definitive no, but now we might get to see the character(s) grapple with that question directly.

Ellie and Dina’s time on patrol offers a lot of insight into their dynamic. As I mentioned in the last episode, there’s a greater sense of flirting tension between the two of them that is obviously completely gone from this episode. They clear the supermarket of infected before the blizzard falls upon them and leads to them waiting out the storm in a nearby library. The most significant moment during this time in the library comes after the two find Eugene’s hidden weed farm located in the library’s lower level. Ellie and Dina smoke a joint before their conversation turns to their kiss from the night before. The scene ends with the two having sex. While not technically essential, I’m disappointed that this moment isn’t included in the show. The game’s inclusion of sex has always felt refreshing to me and adds extra layers to its characters’ relationships. It’s not that Ellie and Dina are incapable of showing how much they care for each other without this scene, but I do think it keeps their dynamic in a slightly more juvenile place. In addition, after having sex, Ellie reveals to Dina that she is immune to the infected, something Dina doesn’t believe but that shows VERY clearly how much Ellie trusts Dina. We can tell from visual details and dialogue that Ellie and Dina have known each other for years, but it’s not until they share this intimate moment together that Ellie feels safe enough to reveal her secret to Dina. The lack of this moment is quite jarring and while it might come up in a different way in the future, I miss the intensity and vulnerability of it in this episode.

Also in their dialogue during patrol, we learn that Dina used to go on patrols with Eugene before he died (Jesse holds this role in the show). Now that the show has more explicitly revealed that Eugene was bit and Joel had to kill him, I think it’s appropriate to point out how different his character is here compared to the game. In the game, Eugene dies of “old age” (technically a stroke). He was a former Firefly who specifically served with Tommy. In a note, we learn that he was previously married with a young child but he abandoned his family to join the Fireflies and there is no other mention of his family so it’s clear they never reunited after he left the group. Ellie expresses a desire to go out like Eugene since he dies of natural causes despite the fact the characteristic Dina uses the most to describe Eugene is “lonely”. This favoring of isolation is something that comes up a lot through Ellie’s dialogue throughout the game and is especially interesting given her younger self’s admission to Sam in the first game that her greatest fear is ending up alone.

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Phew, a lot already discussed and we haven’t even gotten to The Moment. But I think it’s time.

Joel Miller is dead. He was violently murdered. This is the moment that led to thousands of people quitting the game. It’s why you see a lot of people online saying TLOU2 is one of the worst games of all time. It’s an extremely bold move to kill off such an iconic, complex character. I also think it’s the only way things could have gone for Joel after what he did. There’s so much tragedy and righteousness and other very heavy feelings surrounding this loss and having to grapple with the reality of all those sensations is one of my favorite things about the game. I’m looking forward to seeing how this moment and its after effects manifest in the show going forward.

While I appreciate the show’s attempt at recreating this moment in a new way, I will say… I am ultimately disappointed by the changes here. Watching this scene play out certainly got my heart racing, but it didn’t leave me shattered like the game’s depiction did (and still does, even after dozens of playthroughs). If you haven’t seen the game’s version of this moment, I highly recommend watching the scene so you can feel the difference yourself.

As Joel and Tommy enter the lodge where the Salt Lake Crew are camped out, there’s a sharp divide between the player and the Miller brothers. As a player, there’s this overwhelming sense of impending doom that begins to permeate through the scene. We felt a glimmer of it in Abby, Joel, and Tommy’s meeting. Tommy introduces himself and Joel to Abby and there’s an expression that crosses Abby’s face that essentially confirms Joel is who she’s looking for. Then, in the lodge, the player knows Joel and Tommy are outnumbered and surrounded. However, the brothers enter with a distinct sense of ease. They don’t feel threatened, even though they are curious about this group of individuals who are “just passing through”.

Key to this exchange in the game is that Joel introduces himself to the group by name. The entire room shifts in recognition and anticipation, a slow pan revealing each unknown enemy eyeing Joel. Joel cautiously states, “y’all act like you’ve heard of us or something” before the camera whips to the left, revealing Abby who was previously out of frame. She holds a shotgun, which she aims and fires at Joel’s knee after replying, “that’s cause they have”. The moment is abrupt, violent, and nauseating. Tommy screams in horror and attempts to fight back before he’s violently knocked unconscious. In the show, even this initial setup is exceptionally different.

Joel is so focused on Jackson burning in the distance that he’s hardly looking at any of the group. He’s ordering them around, demanding they help save the town. Dina is being cared for by Mel for frostbite. Abby is the one to introduce Joel by name to the rest of the group, cluing them in on what’s happening. I’m not a huge fan of this change. Part of the tragedy of Joel’s death in the game lies in how much of the moment is because of his own trusting attitude. Abby was going to kill Joel one way or another once she led him back to the lodge, but the game’s insistence that he essentially seals his own fate feels a lot more significant than Abby’s introduction in the show. The way the group knocks Dina out via medication is also strikingly more tame and a little frustrating. It once again shows a much more significant divide between Abby’s group and herself in that she’s the only one causing harm to people whereas in the game the group as a whole are active participants in this process.

Knocking out Dina before shooting Joel also feels strange, depriving us of a moment where she could properly attempt to fight back. Dina’s pseudo-daughter relationship with Joel is very sweet and having her here for this moment instead of Tommy ensures her investment in what comes next is more personal to her. I like that change. What I don’t like is how much more fragile and easily dominated she feels in this moment because of the show’s decision to avoid spilling her blood. The vulnerability here feels less rewarding to take in.

Abby speaks with Joel for a long time after shooting him, which also left me frustrated. I think it’s fair for the audience to know with certainty that these are former Fireflies. However, revealing explicitly that Joel killed Abby’s father here is quite surprising. We don’t know just how personal things are for Abby until the halfway point in the game and that reveal is one of the most impactful cut scenes in the entire playthrough, specifically because before then, the player has always assumed Abby only killed Joel because he deprived the world of a cure. The loss of a cure is the last thing on Abby’s mind in her quest for revenge, but the reveal of that coming so much later on leaves the player stunned in a way that the show has effectively taken away. That lack of clarity adds a lot more anguish to Joel’s death as well. The player doesn’t know for sure why this is happening and quite frankly neither does Joel and that makes it all the scarier. Where previously I was a fan of some of the mystery being set aside to ensure show watchers have a fair playing field, I think stripping these moments of all their mystery really dilutes the weight of future scenes that were used to provide deeper understanding in the game.

Another noticeable difference between the game and the show is where inside the lodge Joel’s death occurs. In the show, it happens on the main floor of the building, right in front of floor to ceiling windows. The scene is so bright, endless light shining through. In the game, this moment happens in the bottom level of the building and is plunged in near darkness. As Ellie, we enter the lodge through the upper level and have to descend further and further down into the home in what feels like a journey into hell itself. The pained cries of Joel guide the player down to where he is rather than Abby’s angry yells leading Show Ellie up to the main room. This descent down changed into a progression upwards deprives the moment of a lot of its emotion, claustrophobia, and visual appeal. On the other hand, it is interesting to have this moment happen in the light given the Fireflies mantra, “If you’re lost in the darkness, look for the light” which once offered a sense of hope and now propels us into such a painful loss. Ultimately, I think this sort of change is mostly inconsequential, but I’m still a little let down by it because it does contribute to a larger shift in the feel of the scene.

Bella Ramsey conveys Ellie’s panic in the moments directly after taking in the sight of Joel very well. They are great and deserve all the praise they are receiving. So does Dever through this entire sequence, I was really impressed by the way she conveys Abby’s rage and internal anguish. A small but tragic change that I like is that in the show, Joel seemingly attempts to get up because of Ellie’s pleas. In the game, at that point, Joel is so far gone he can barely move his fingers. When Ellie enters the room Joel is being tortured in, we also get the most significant moment with the game exclusive character known as Jordan. He’s the one Ellie cuts with her knife, she slashes his face wide open. He kicks her repeatedly in the stomach in retaliation and after Joel is killed, he kicks her in the head, knocking her unconscious. All of this is minimized or removed entirely. Manny is seemingly a blend of his game character and Jordan in this moment for the show, which makes sense.

In the first season of the show, whenever Joel had a moment of anxiety, the sound of ringing would begin and overpower almost any other sound. I loved this detail, specifically because it was something utilized in TLOU2 to convey Ellie’s own bouts of anxiety and I liked that this would be a similarity between the two characters down the line. In the game, after Joel is killed, all we hear is this ringing and Ellie’s muffled vows of vengeance. I was surprised the show didn’t lean into this auditory detail much at all, especially after they used it so much in the first season. I missed its presence, even though the show does try to replicate its sensation with a silent approach.

The final blow Abby imparts on Joel is also very different between the game and the show and the change feels very intentional. Stabbing someone is inherently more intimate due to the need for close proximity. However, in the context of this scene, I think it also feels, somehow, less violent despite it being shown fully on screen. In the game, Abby hasn’t broken the golf club she uses and so for the killing blow, she brings the club down on Joel’s head one last time. While we don’t see a full on shot of this final moment, Joel’s brains are visible afterwards, covering the club and the floor. We hear the crack as his skull caves in. The change here is more narratively intentional as well in my opinion, calling us back to the exchange Abby has with herself in her nightmare. In an effort to deter her younger self from entering the room, Abby states, “His brains are on the floor”. Personally, I think she stabs Joel instead of bashing his head in because she doesn’t want to recreate the image of her father’s dead body. It’s clear from her nightmare that she can’t look at that image head on. I think if she had left Joel with his brains on the floor, while a direct “eye for an eye” approach, it would have dropped her into the moment she found her father’s body. The image haunts her and so she avoids it, not just in her nightmares, but in her waking moments as well.

Ellie embracing Joel’s body after the Salt Lake Crew has departed is an interesting addition as well. It once again adds a lot more explicit tenderness to their relationship compared to the game. While the game doesn’t show anything remotely like this, concept art for the game does imply that this more tangible expression of grief was something they wanted to explore and I think it’s neat to see it actualized in the show.

Here is the concept art that the final minutes of episode 2 is recreating:

Another really powerful addition to the show in its final moments is that we get a cover of “Through the Valley” sung by Ashley Johnson, the voice actor and mo-cap performer for Ellie in the game. Johnson as Ellie sings this song in the very first trailer that was ever released for TLOU2. It’s one of my favorite video game trailers of all time. (Now that it’s no longer a spoiler, I recommend watching it if you haven’t played the games)

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Wow. Okay. I think I’m done with all my little comparisons. Ultimately, I think this is still a solid episode, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as the first episode of the season. However, the 30 minute documentary Making The Last of Us begins with Mazin and Druckmann stating that the entire point of this show is to offer this story specifically to people who have never/will never play the game. At the end of the day, I have the game, which I think in many ways is a near perfect experience, and the show, while exciting to witness, isn’t for me in the ways it is for people who haven’t played the games before. I think this episode confirmed that for me more than any other episode. I’m at peace with it (but I also will continue to compare the differences between the two extensively lol).

I have a lot of questions about how the rest of this season will unfold. I think the next episode will be surprisingly quiet and slow. I think we’ll have a lot of intentional time spent mourning Joel’s loss and dealing with the aftermath of his death and the horde attack on Jackson. I’m looking forward to these moments and seeing how they are conveyed in comparison to the game.

Thanks so much for reading if you did, would love to hear what you thought of the episode overall if you care to share. Until next time!!! :)