Can The Last of Us Season 2 Fix The Issues with TLOU2?

[Winter]

Let's be honest the next part of The Last of Us TV series has an uphill battle.

It has to adapt a VERY polarizing story up to and including several a highly controversial scenes, a story that is riddled with pacing issues, base-breaking characters all while adapting the hardest media to adapt there is. I know many fans are just not looking forward to what comes next because they were disappointed in where the story went and many fans have been put off on checking out the next season because of what they've heard from fans of the games.

Even people who like or even love Part 2 admit that they are uncertain on how the series is going to adapt the game given how it's structured. So, can the show pull it off?

Part 1 is a pretty straightforward story, told in a pretty straightforward way and the show didn't do much to change that but the show has one notable disadvantage that the game didn't have to worry about, the show is live-action while the game is animated.

Ellie is the first game is 14 years hold played by 30 years old Ashley Johnson at the time it was released. In Part 2 we jump around between years, often cutting back to Ellie when she was 15, 17 and 19 in the series. This can be done in animation because it's animated so the character can be any age you need them to be at any time so long as the actor can change their vocals to sound the age that is required.

While Bella Ramsey looks young enough to play a 14 year old Ellie that is going to be harder to pull off as the series progresses even if De-aging effects (be it CGI or makeup) are taken into account. Part 2 does not move in a straight line. It jumps around events with the story often moving back in time which includes dream sequences where the characters are younger during said dream.

You can do that in a media like books, comics and animation but live-action has limitations most notably people can not undo the fact that they age. Even with the joke that live-action today is just another form of animation given how often CGI is used most of us can tell when an old actor is playing a young character because of how they move.

If I had to guess I think the show will not adapt the story of Part 2 the same way it did part 1 and if I had to guess this is how they'll go about adapting the story.

First the story will adapt all the flashbacks of Joel and Ellie which will include new scenes and stories that weren't in the original game, fully showing the slow fall of their relationship and ending it where the two talk about rebuilding their relationship or ending it on Joel's death.

After that will be Ellie hunting Abby but this will likely be altered to include Abby's story being told at the same time as Ellie's instead of telling it one after the other like in the game. This way we don't have a cliffhanger where we have to wait for 10 hours to learn what happened in theater like in the game which is honestly one of the biggest missteps of P2.

This gives us more time with Joel and allow Abby to be more fleshed out as Ellie is hunting her instead of waiting 10 hours to get to that point.

... Neil Druckmann is still helping with the show and he has stated that he regrets certain choices he made in P2 (though has also stated that he would not change the story) so I wonder if they will change the story in the show in an attempt to fix these issues.

But what do you think, do you want them to change the story or do you like it as it is and would rather it have little to no changes?