Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Last of Us season 2, episode 2, and The Last of Us Part II.
When Abby swore revenge against Joel, and she didn’t just promise to kill him; she promised to kill him slowly. In episode 2, “Through the Valley,” she made good on that promise by beating Joel to death with a golf club.
This sequence is very faithful to the game, right down to the golf club being a putter. The TV show made a few key changes to the sequence. In the game, Joel is on patrol with Tommy when he first encounters Abby, not Dina. In the game, Joel cuts off Abby before she can begin her rehearsed speech explaining her motivation for revenge. But the scene maintains the most important aspects of Joel’s death: the shock factor, the gruesomeness, and the emotional devastation. This plot point was massively divisive when the game was released five years ago.
Joel's Death Early In The Game Was A Major Point Of Criticism Surrounding The Last Of Us Part 2 Game
Joel & Ellie Were The Heart Of The First Game
The fact that Joel is killed so gruesomely and so early in the story was a major point of contention for gamers. In the game, the build-up to Joel’s death plays out differently than in the show. In the TV show, from the second Abby is introduced, she makes it clear that she’s a surviving Firefly, she’s mourning her loss, and she’s singularly focused on exacting revenge for Joel’s death. So, when Joel saves her from a horde of infected and she lures him back to the chalet where she’s staying, the audience knows exactly what she’s going to do.
In the game, players have no idea who Abby is. She’s introduced at the chalet, where it’s revealed that she and her friends have come to Jackson. It’s not until she gets Joel back to the chalet and shoots him in the leg that the audience realizes she knows who he is. But still, all we know is that Abby is one of the many enemies that Joel has made over the years. The game doesn’t reveal that she’s an ex-Firefly avenging her father’s death until halfway through the story.
Some players went along for the ride and allowed the story to unfold, but a vocal minority was furious.
Joel’s death is shocking in the TV show, but it was an even bigger surprise in the game. Since Joel and Ellie’s burgeoning friendship had been the heart of the first game, a lot of players were expecting the sequel to be more of the same, capitalizing on the duo’s popularity. But by killing off Joel so early, Naughty Dog made it clear that this wouldn’t be the story that those fans were expecting. Some players went along for the ride and allowed the story to unfold, but a vocal minority was furious.
Abby's Character Garnered A Lot Of Hatred Due To Her Role In The Last Of Us Part 2
It Wasn't Just Because She Killed Joel
The character of Abby was met with widespread hatred for her role in The Last of Us Part II. It wasn’t just because she killed Joel in such horrific and unceremonious fashion; it was also because the game makes Abby the playable character for half of its runtime, forcing the audience into her perspective. It showed Abby’s side of the story and highlighted her similarities to both Joel and Ellie. This was a revolutionary storytelling technique to make the player empathize with their enemy and realize that there is no such thing as heroes and villains.
The Last of Us airs new episodes on HBO and Max every Sunday.
But some players just couldn’t get over their initial hatred of Abby. They couldn’t connect with her as a human being because they couldn’t see her as anything more than Joel’s killer. Abby’s voice actor, Laura Bailey, received vicious online harassment and death threats following the game’s release. Bailey also noted that she received plenty of positive messages praising the character and her performance, and she was publicly ed by her co-star Ashley Johnson, the TV show’s co-creator Craig Mazin, and Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn. But some of the negative messages were unconscionable.
There was an undeniably misogynistic bent to The Last of Us Part II’s Abby controversy, with a lot of the backlash to Abby’s character focused on her muscular build.
In the behind-the-scenes documentary Grounded II: Making the Last of Us Part II, Bailey explains in harrowing detail that some of the death threats targeted her newborn son and some of the messages were so disturbing that she had to them on to police to make sure she wasn’t in any real danger. There was an undeniably misogynistic bent to The Last of Us Part II’s Abby controversy, with a lot of the backlash to Abby’s character focused on her muscular build.
The Controversy Surrounding Lev In The Last Of Us Part 2 Explained
There Was Some Backlash From The Trans Community Over The Game's Constant Deadnaming Of Its Trans Character
There was also some controversy around The Last of Us Part II’s transgender character, Lev, who hasn’t been introduced in the TV show yet. Criticism focused on the problematic issue of trans stories being played as tragedies; it leans heavily on his gender identity and the suffering he went through because of it.
The game was also criticized for the villains’ recurring use of Lev’s deadname to taunt him. There was some criticism that the character was created by cisgender writers, although he was voiced and motion-captured by trans actor Ian Alexander.
The Last Of Us Part 2's Review Bombing & What The Game's Creators Have Said About The Controversies
The Game Received Universal Acclaim From Critics, But Polarized Players
When it was released in 2020, The Last of Us Part II was review-bombed on Metacritic. It received universal acclaim from professional critics and won more than 320 Game of the Year awards, but the response from players was much more polarized. Metacritic’s average rating from official reviews of The Last of Us Part II climbed to a near-perfect 95, but the score dipped as low as 3.4 out of a possible 10. This reaction was compared to the vitriolic response to Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
Its dedicated subreddit, r/TheLastOfUs2, quickly became a forum for people who despise the game. Its s are still regularly posting hateful comments about the game five years after it was released. The games’ creator, Neil Druckmann, has said that he “wanted people to hate [Abby] immensely” and feel like they wanted to “do horrible things to her,” because that’s what made the perspective switch and the humanization of Abby so effective. So, it wasn’t all that surprising that some of The Last of Us’ players got left behind after being intentionally driven to feel such intense hatred.
The Last Of Us
- Release Date
- January 15, 2023
- Network
- HBO
- Showrunner
- Craig Mazin
Cast
Joel Miller
Ellie Williams
WHERE TO WATCH
- Directors
- Craig Mazin, Peter Hoar, Jeremy Webb, Ali Abbasi, Mark Mylod, Stephen Williams, Jasmila Žbanić, Liza Johnson, Nina Lopez-Corrado
- Writers
- Neil Druckmann, Craig Mazin
- Franchise(s)
- The Last of Us
- Creator(s)
- Craig Mazin, Neil Druckmann
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