Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Last of Us Part II.The recently released teaser trailer for The last of us Season 2 has a few exciting sequences that are practically shot-for-shot recreations of iconic moments from the video game. The last of us Season 2 will begin to tackle the massively non-linear narrative of The Last of Us Part IIAnd based on the scenes shown in the trailer, it’s going to be a pretty faithful adaptation. All the theories about season 2 padding the story with filler have been invalidated by a trailer full of scenes ripped straight from the game.
There are many moments in The last of us Season 2 trailers that are not in the game and were created just for the show. Kaitlyn Dever’s Abby appears to be grieving at her dad’s grave, suggesting the series will explore more of her grieving process. There is a massive horde of infected – or possibly even hostile survivors – seen heading towards Jackson, which is a drastic deviation from the game. But there are some scenes taken directly from the game, like Eli and Dina’s supermarket patrol and Joel and Eli’s heartbreaking scene on the porch.
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Joel gives Ali her guitar
The Last of Us Season 2 adapts the touching opening scene of Part II
Early on in the trailer for The last of us Season 2, Joel is seen picking up a guitar with a familiar mole emblem on the neck and giving it to Ellie. The opening scene of The Last of Us Part II Sees Joel picking up a guitar to give to Ellie, then dropping it off at her little guest house in his backyard so he can teach her how to play, just like he promised in the first game.
The game’s four-year time jump skips over all of their guitar lessons to a 19-year-old Eli as a master guitarist, but some of the clips in the trailer suggest that a couple of those lessons will be shown on the Screen. The use of Pearl Jam’s “Future Days” on the trailer’s soundtrack also suggests the show will feature the same song that Joel played for Ellie in the game. Although the song was released long after the TV show’s new release date, it’s so thematically perfect to symbolize their relationship—and it’s so key to the game—that hopefully they’ll just use it anyway.
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Eli and Dina’s supermarket patrol
Ellie & Dina’s early bonding moments will be in the TV show
Ellie’s first action sequence in the game sees her heading out on patrol with her love interest Dina played by Isabela Merced in the TV show. After signing up for the lookout, they look for a supermarket full of infected, and get caught in a blizzard and have to take care of themselves in a library. The last of us Season 2 trailer confirms that the TV show is adapting this stretch of the story. Ali and Dina are seen riding through the blizzard, and Ali is seen ominously approached by an infected in the supermarket.
The supermarket setting has already been confirmed to be in the TV show, as a supermarket set up as Greenplace Market was spotted on location and the first-look image of Ali saw Bella Ramsey in a supermarket, gun in hand. But it was unclear if the TV show was just borrowing the setting or adapting the entire sequence. Now that a full trailer has arrived, it seems the series is copying the entire supermarket scene, infected encounter and all. However, to save time, it can skip the trip to the library and have Eli and Dina stock up at the supermarket.
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Joel and Tommy save Abby from a horde
The Last of Us Season 2 will set the scene in the same tragic way
About halfway through the trailer, when Abby is sneaking past a chain-link fence, a horde of infected bears descend on the fence. The fence breaks and Abby is pinned under it. As Abby tries to crawl through, an infected passes the fence and attacks her. Just before it can bite you, a gun comes into frame to shoot it in the head. This is a close-up shot-for-shot remake of one of the game’s most intense sequences. As Abby is chased by the horde, she is saved at the last second by Joel and Tommy.
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This makes The Last of Us Part IIThe most heartbreaking scene – Joel’s brutal murder – even more heartbreaking. If Joel and Tommy had just let Abby die, they would have been fine. But Joel sees his own daughter in his father, and his protective net kicks in. Little does he know, the woman he just saved has been seeking revenge against him for four years, and she plans to kill him in the most brutal way possible. Can imagine. This sets up the shocking reveal brilliantly, so it’s a good sign that the TV adaptation is keeping it in.
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Ali plays “Take Me On” for Dina
One of the most heartwarming moments of the game made the TV adaptation
In one of the most heartfelt scenes in the game, Eli plays a beautiful acoustic cover of A-Ha’s “Take On Me” for Dina. When Eli and Dinah first arrive at the Seattle QZ and search the downtown area for the gasoline they need to open a checkpoint gate, there is an abandoned music store to check out. Here, Ali finds an intact guitar and plays the same song she played for Dinah at a campfire when they were still denying their feelings for each other. It is the first confirmation players get that Joel has successfully taught Eli how to play guitar.
Since it requires the player to go off-course and explore the open-world environment, this sequence is easy to miss in the video game. But TV viewers won’t miss it, because the showrunners put this scene front and center in season 2. It’s framed the same way it’s framed in the game, with Dina sitting on the floor, looking up at her girlfriend with deep Affection, and gorgeous soft light pours in from a large single-pane window behind Ellie. The scene is perfect in the game, so it makes sense that the TV producers wouldn’t change a thing.
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Isaac tortures a Seraphim
The torture scene looks even more brutal in the TV show
Early in Abby’s section of the game, she stops by the FOB for a meeting with Isaac, the ruthless leader of the WLF, and he is introduced in the most horrifying way imaginable: coldly torturing a naked, bloodied Seraphite. The season 2 trailer shows this scene in all its disturbing glory. Jeffrey Wright is reprising his role as Isaac from the video game, and he looks to be just as intimidating in live action.
Abby is not shown in this brief snippet of the scene, so the torture footage may have been repurposed as part of Isaac’s backstory.
Set leaks showing scenes from all three of Ellie’s Seattle days and none of Abby’s days seemed to suggest that the TV show would follow a similar structure to the game, with season 2 showing Ellie’s entire story and Abby being saved for season 3 . But Isaac’s haunting torture scene takes place during Abby’s Day 1 adventures, so season 2 will at least cover the early scenes of Abby’s storyline. Abby is not shown in this brief snippet of the scene, so the torture footage may have been repurposed as part of Isaac’s backstory.
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Ali and Dinah are stuck in a subway station full of infected
The last of us season 2 seems to have a lot more infected than season 1
After Eli and Dina collect Polaroid photos of Abby and the rest of the Salt Lake crew from the TV station, the WLF’s troops chase them into an underground tunnel, and they end up trapped in a collapsed subway station full of infected. Here, they are introduced to a whole new type of infected: shamblers. In the season 2 trailer, Eli and Dina are seen running through a subway station and Infected are seen swarming a train car. It even has the same ominous red lighting that makes the sequence so terrifying in the game.
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Between the supermarket encounter, the horde that attacks Abby, and the terrifying subway sequence, The last of us Season 2 seems to be all-in on rectifying the complaints that season 1 didn’t have enough infected action. Co-showrunner Craig Mazin already promised that season 2 would have more infected and the trailer confirms that he kept that promise. The subway sequence culminates in Ali’s immunity being revealed to Dina when her gas mask breaks, but since the TV series left with spores, it will have to come up with a different way to reveal Ali’s immunity.
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Ali talks to Joel on his porch
The Last of Us season 2 may be lifting up the porch scene from the ending
Perhaps the most interesting, The last of us Season 2 trailer teases the scene in which Eli comes to talk to Joel on his porch. In the game, this scene does not appear until the end. After Ali’s entire journey is over, and she has lost everything in the desperate pursuit of revenge, she remembers her last conversation with Joel. She told him that she didn’t think she could forgive him for pulling her out of the firehouse hospital and costing humanity a cure, but she would like to try.
This scene recontextualizes the entire story that just played out. Ali was so desperate to avenge Joel because she never got closure. She began to improve with him, but she never made up for all the lost time. The last of us Season 2 is not covering the whole of Part IISo the TV show could move this scene up to the middle of the story. The trailer doesn’t show any of their actual conversation—it just shows Joel playing guitar on his porch and Eli approaching—so season 2 might not show the whole scene.