The Last of Usthe adaptation of Naughty Dog’s hit game, is continuing to garner acclaim. The second episode, broadcast in America on Sunday evening (it arrived here on Monday in the original version with Italian subtitles on Sky Atlantic and NOW), also got excellent reviews. Peter Pascal e Bella Ramseywhich we had already enjoyed in Game of Thrones, they fit perfectly into Joel and Ellie’s shoes. From episode to episode we are appreciating more and more the work done by Neil Druckman e Craig Mazin to adapt the story of the video game to the television medium. The two creators of the HBO series they have also been able to introduce numerous changes because the series was able to involve even those who had never played the Naughty Dog video game. In this regard precisely in the second episode of The Last of Us the two creators of the show had considered adding a flashback to the story of Tess, the character played by Anna Torv (which some will remember for the sci-fi series Fringe), but they eventually changed their minds.
Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann had come up with a particularly dramatic story for Tess’s past.
In the video game we are not shown much of this character: Joel’s partner and ally, she learned – just like him – to survive by dedicating herself to smuggling and has been tempered by the hard life she leads in the Boston ZQ. If in Joel’s case we know very well what happened to him before the epidemic broke out, Tess’s past, on the other hand, was shrouded in mystery. Nel podcast The Last of Us from the HBO Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann they revealed that they had originally thought about insert in the second episode of The Last of Us a sad flashback dedicated to the story of the woman and her family. After writing it, Craig Mazin however he realized it didn’t work with the story of the series and scrapped the scene. Here’s what they told in the podcast:
Mazin:We wrote it, but we never shot it. It was a bit of a backstory for Tess, and the fact that Tess had a son. She had a husband and she had a son, and they were infected and she had to kill them. She killed her husband, but couldn’t bring herself to kill her son. She couldn’t do it…she locked him in the basement, where she was supposedly still a clicker.
Druckmann: “We thought of a cold opening in which the camera focuses on this door and you only hear this hammering coming from this basement, and then we stopped. And then, Tess would tell the story of how she failed to kill her son. As Craig said, it wasn’t good. But it was fun thinking about it“.
