THE LAST OF US Showrunner Confirms Recent Episode Will Change How the Series Ends
The latest episode of The Last of Us just dropped a major emotional bombshell, and according to co-creator Neil Druckmann, it’s a storytelling decision that’s going to shift the course of the show’s ending.
Titled “The Price,” the episode of Season 2 brought a key flashback scene from The Last of Us Part II, Joel and Ellie’s heartbreaking reconciliation on the porch, much earlier than expected.
In the game, that moment doesn’t land until the final act. Here, it’s placed just before Ellie confronts Nora, and just before the finale. It’s a creative choice that recontextualizes everything.
Speaking with Variety, Druckmann explained the reasoning behind the move:
“When we were making the game, I knew that scene should exist. I didn’t know where it goes. That was true for all the flashbacks. Even pretty late in production of the game, we were moving those flashbacks around.
“That felt too long, especially because this season focuses so much on Ellie’s journey and this emotional truth of what did she know? What didn’t she know?”
The delay between seasons was also key factor, too. Druckmann explained:
“To wait additional years until Season 3 will come out - or maybe even Season 4, it depends where all the events land and how many seasons we have — I was easily convinced by Craig that that would be too long.”
So does that mean the show is now charting a different course from the game’s ending? Druckmann confirmed.
“That’s right.”
In a separate interview, Druckmann further clarified why they chose to confine all of Joel’s flashbacks to a single episode.
“You might not be missing Joel enough. We felt like for the show, we would get a lot more impact if we brought them all together and you could see them side by side and feel the deterioration of that relationship.
“I also had concerns that the episodes would turn into a bit of a template. It’d be like, ‘Okay, what’s the Joel flashback this week?’”
It’s a strategic and emotional recalibration, and it’s setting up a different kind of journey for Ellie. In the show, she’s not racking up a kill count the same way she does in the game. That’s intentional.
“In the game, it was important to me for Ellie to get into this really dark headspace and be unable to kind of get out of it for a while, because... you have to commit a lot more violence than you do in the show.
“Whereas in the game, by the time she gets to Nora, she would have already killed a bunch of people, including some of the people responsible for Joel’s death, really, in the show, the first one is Nora.
“So, she’s on this journey, and I don’t know if she really understands what this journey means, until this point now, when she gets to Nora and this is a moment where she’s trying to be like Joel.”
While fans may think they know where it’s all going, the showrunners are clearly not afraid to remix the roadmap of how they are going to get to the end.