Highlights

  • The Last of Us' future is uncertain due to a lack of new content beyond Part 2 and the cancellation of the online game.
  • The franchise may struggle with its reliance on Joel and Ellie, limiting the introduction of new characters and stories.

It’s great that The Last of Us has received so much newfound success with its live-action HBO adaptation because, since The Last of Us Part 2, there haven’t been many reasons for anyone to get tremendously excited about the franchise’s future otherwise. It wasn’t until recently that a third Last of Us game was even explicitly referenced in any official capacity thanks to the sequel’s behind-the-scenes documentary, and the cancelation of The Last of Us’ online game was a huge hit for the series as that would’ve presumably been a big way for it to thrive beyond the only two installments it’s treated players to thus far.

Therefore, it’s looking fairly dire for The Last of Us’ future and a Part 3 wouldn’t be able to solve every issue it’s compounded up until this point. A Part 3 will be highly anticipated due to the controversial entry it’ll be following and it only seemed natural that Naughty Dog would take that leap with its HBO show and recurring popularity nudging it along. Nonetheless, Neil Druckmann stating that Naughty Dog won’t reductively be the ‘Last of Us’ studio for long implies that there may not be much more for it to give the franchise beyond Ellie’s narrative, which would be disheartening due to its potential single-player avenues.

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The Last of Us is Too Reliant on Joel and Ellie’s Iconography

An argument could be made that The Last of Us wouldn’t be nearly as impactful or profound without Joel and Ellie. However, if this was true, it’d make sense that Naughty Dog should be able to craft new characters with equally touching and empathetic stories as it did with its seminal father-daughter surrogates. Abby should’ve been an exercise in Naughty Dog introducing a new protagonist, for example, but even though her motivations are completely tenable in The Last of Us Part 2 there are still tons of players who despise Abby for killing Joel.

Unfortunately, because The Last of Us has chosen to narrow its rich lore and distill it entirely around Joel and Ellie’s relationship, Naughty Dog won’t ever have an easy time cleaving them from the story and any new protagonists debuted will be met with a harsh comparative criticism that will probably be unfounded and unrealistic. Even if a new protagonist wasn’t introduced by murdering a beloved character, there are undoubtedly players who’d wish they were playing as Ellie, let alone Joel in a prequel game.

The reason why this is most disappointing is because, if Naughty Dog also believes it can’t let go of Joel and Ellie in the genetic makeup of its Last of Us games, there’s no chance that the franchise continues once they’re both written out of it.

The Last of Us is Denying Itself Diverse World-Building

Given how popular and successful The Last of Us is, there’s a low likelihood that Naughty Dog shelves the IP after a third game. The notion of a Part 3 being “one more chapter” infers that the plan would be to call it quits thereafter, though, and a statement that definitive wouldn’t have been made lackadaisically unless Naughty Dog has other surprises in store.

Perhaps this comment was made with regard to there being “one more chapter” in Ellie’s story specifically, while other characters have their own stories for The Last of Us to center on afterward. Otherwise, it’s possible that whatever Naughty Dog’s multiple in-development games are may take precedence and could be drawing its attention toward new IPs fully instead.

Putting distance between it and The Last of Us could be a clever move and yet another intimate story about other characters in the game’s world could be exceptional. Naughty Dog has been brilliant about not shutting the door on future sequels in Part 1 and Part 2, so it’ll be interesting to see how Part 3 concludes and whether or not it shuts the door on other possible characters being followed subsequently.