Within the penultimate episode of The Final of Us season 2, flashbacks reveal how Joel and Ellie’s relationship broke down (you may learn our full recap of “The Value” right here). We additionally noticed the second they reconciled, a scene gamers do not witness till the top of The Final of Us Half II.
The Final of Us co-creator Neil Druckmann directed this newest instalment of the HBO collection, and whereas sure moments from the sport had been faithfully tailored, others went by some fairly large adjustments.
Chief amongst them was studying this quickly that, shortly earlier than he was killed by Abby, Joel managed to make issues proper with Ellie. It is nonetheless a gut-punch of a second, albeit one which arrived within the story a lot prior to anticipated.
Speaking to Variety (by way of (*2*)), Druckmann was requested about taking the ultimate scene from the sport—the dialog between Joel and Ellie on the porch—and bringing it ahead to the penultimate episode.
“Once we had been making the sport, I knew that scene ought to exist. I didn’t know the place it goes. That was true for all of the flashbacks. Even fairly late in manufacturing of the sport, we had been transferring these flashbacks round,” he defined. “That felt too lengthy, particularly as a result of this season focuses a lot on Ellie’s journey and this emotional fact of what did she know? What didn’t she know?”
“To attend extra years till Season 3 will come out — or possibly even Season 4, it relies upon the place all of the occasions land and what number of seasons we have now — I used to be simply satisfied by Craig that that might be too lengthy.”
Requested if that is modified how the collection will finish, Druckmann confirmed, “That is proper.”
In a separate dialog with Deadline, the author mentioned the flashbacks had been confined to 1 episode as a result of by stretching them out by the course of the season, “You won’t be lacking Joel sufficient.”
He added, “We felt like for the present, we’d get much more affect if we introduced all of them collectively and you would see them facet by facet and really feel the deterioration of that relationship. I additionally had issues that the episodes would flip right into a little bit of a template. It’d be like, “Okay, what’s the Joel flashback this week?'”
Druckmann additionally acknowledged that Ellie’s journey is now taking part in out very in a different way from The Final of Us Half II. “Within the sport, it was vital to me for Ellie to get into this actually darkish headspace and be unable to type of get out of it for some time, as a result of…you need to commit much more violence than you do within the present.”
“Whereas within the sport, by the point she will get to Nora, she would have already killed a bunch of individuals, together with a number of the individuals liable for Joel’s loss of life, actually, within the present, the primary one is Nora,” he defined. “So, she’s on this journey, and I don’t know if she actually understands what this journey means, till this level now, when she will get to Nora and this can be a second the place she’s making an attempt to be like Joel.”
HBO has additionally shared a promo for subsequent Sunday’s The Final of Us season 2 finale. In that, we see issues intensify in Seattle as Ellie comes face-to-face with the Scars and takes one step nearer to monitoring down Abby. You may watch the sneak peek under.