With just three more episodes to go, it seems safe to say that HBO's The Last of Us may just be one of the greatest video game adaptations of all time, paving the way for future live-action game conversions. But while one of the best elements of HBO's The Last of Us is its close commitment to the source material, it isn't afraid of making changes that better suit the medium it's in and better suit the story it's trying to tell.
The Last of Us is widely considered to have one of the best narratives in all of gaming, but it certainly isn't perfect, and there's plenty of room for improvement. HBO's The Last of Us knows this all too well, and through some subtle changes and additions, it's building a more realistic and larger-scale version of the game's iconic story. The latest episode, titled "Kin," made one such small tweak to the source material, and it's definitely to the show's benefit.
HBO's The Last of Us Made a Smart Move By Changing Joel's Injury
The latest episode of HBO's The Last of Us picks up three months after the Henry and Sam incident, and opens with Joel and Ellie being told not to cross a river of death. Of course, Joel and Ellie do so anyway, and thankfully the group that finds them belongs to the new-world settlement of Jackson, where Joel's brother Tommy lives. After a heartfelt reunion, Joel asks Tommy to take Ellie to the Fireflies, and after a few arguments where Joel finally expresses his vulnerable side, Joel gives Ellie the choice of who she'd rather go with. Unsurprisingly, it takes her just a millisecond to decide.
Joel and Ellie then head to Colorado University, where the Fireflies were last spotted. Upon arriving at the university, they find it abandoned, with only a pack of monkeys hanging around the laboratories. Just as the duo discovers evidence that the Fireflies have probably moved to Salt Lake City, a group of looters appears. While trying to get on the horse they came on, the two are spotted by a looter, and he and Joel proceed to have a fistfight. While Joel manages to take down the looter, he soon realizes that he's been stabbed by the broken handle of a baseball bat. The episode ends with a wounded Joel falling off the horse and a distraught Ellie telling him to get up.
For those that have played The Last of Us, they know that Joel does end up making it through this injury, but HBO's live-action version makes a subtle but key change here that makes a whole lot of sense. In the game, Joel is wounded during the university sequence by falling from a balcony, and getting a metal bar impaled through his side. Joel then proceeds to lift himself off the bar and walk outside, all the while shooting looters as they try to attack him and Ellie. Players are then expected to believe that Joel not only survives this horrific injury and the subsequent journey outside the campus, but also manages to ward off any infections that might grow from the wound and the icy conditions he's in.
While Joel's injury in The Last of Us show is still pretty bad, with the wound bleeding profusely so much so that Joel passes out, the nature of the wound makes his upcoming recovery seem a lot more believable. This change in Joel's injury may not have resulted from a bombastic action set piece like in the games, but it trades that for realism, which is a key element of The Last of Us show. There's a lot less leeway for suspension of disbelief in a live-action TV show, making this change a pretty smart one.
The Last of Us airs Sunday nights at 9:00 PM EST on HBO. Episodes are streaming on HBO Max.