Everything The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 1 changed from the game – explained

The Last of Us made its return on HBO with a second season on April 13, 2025. The first episode, titled "Future Days", is a relatively peaceful episode with one suspenseful scene involving an evolved infected person. But, before being introduced to the new status quo, the episode opens with a flashback to five years ago.

This flashback itself is a departure from the source material, i.e., the second game in The Last of Us series, which was released in 2020. This flashback introduced a character and their storyline, the latter of which remained a mystery for a major portion of the game. However, this is not the only change that the first episode of The Last of Us Season 2 made.

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What changes from The Last of Us Season 2, Episode 1 were observed from the game?

Listed below are the changes observed between the second entry of the game series and the first episode of The Last of Us Season 2:

The opening scene with Abby

After a brief flashback to the concluding minutes of the season 1 finale of The Last of Us, i.e., the scene in which Joel lies to Ellie, after which the scene cuts to a group of five young firefly soldiers. They are mourning their fallen comrades, who were killed by Joel, and one of these surviving five soldiers, Abby, swears vengeance. This is different than the game, which opens with Joel confessing to Tommy that he killed the fireflies.

The game and show are set in different decades

The first episode of The Last of Us Season 1 unfolds over a day in the year 2003. After that episode, the next episode reveals a 20-year time jump, i.e., a post-apocalyptic 2023. As the events of the season 2 episode 1 are set after the season 1 finale, the year in the current season is 2029. This is very different from the years in which the game is set, i.e., the future.

While the first season of the show retains the 20-year time jump, the year in which the scenes from the pre-outbreak world take place is different. In the game, we see Joel, Tommy, and Sarah trying to survive the chaos in the year 2013, i.e., the same year the first game was released. Then, the rest of the game is set 20 years later, i.e., 2033. Thus, the events of the second game unfold between 2038 and 2039.

But the change in the years doesn't matter because technology has frozen to 2013 (in game) and 2003 (in the show).

The character that comes up with the dad jokes

We meet Dina, Ellie's love interest, in this episode of The Last of Us. She is skilled in patrolling, much like Ellie, and even possesses a sense of humor, much to the latter's liking. Midway through the episode, she busts out a funny joke that Ellie finds amusing enough to note down later, setting up a moment of intimacy between these two.

This is different from the game in which Joel would make Ellie chuckle every now and then with a pun or a dad joke.

The Cordyceps tendrils in the roots inside the pipes

Early in the episode, we see the people of Jackson trying to repair the old pipes underground. But the pipes are filled with dry roots. While it looked harmless in the beginning, the end of the episode revealed Cordyceps tendrils growing inside these roots. These Cordyceps tendrils will threaten this idyllic commune both from the inside and outside.

This development is different from the game, as the game shows us fungal spores that serve the game well in creating a certain atmosphere. But in the series, we have the Cordyceps network, a more realistic portrayal of fungii found in nature. Having a network, instead of spores present all around, allows the characters to leave their masks behind so we can see their faces, their expressions and emotions.

Gail, the therapist

This HBO series did something that the game never did: have Joel seek the help of a mental health professional. A creation just for the show, Catherine O’Hara plays the role of Gail, a therapist in Jackson who accepts weed as payment from Joel. She encourages Joel to tell the truth, and amidst that, she reveals her dislike for him as he killed her husband, Eugene.

For now, we don't know the reason why Joel killed Eugene. But we will learn the reason in a future episode of The Last of Us season 2 in which Eugene will be played by actor Joe Pantoliano. Showrunner Craig Mazin addressed the idea of therapy in a post-apocalyptic scenario in an interview with GamesRadar+ two weeks ago:

"It was something that we had talked about for season 1 because I kept thinking, who has utility in the apocalypse? Obviously tough guys like Joel do, smugglers, doctors, you would imagine, would be very important. And then I was like… wouldn't everyone need a therapist?

He further went on to explian,

If you've made it through, you have lost family members, you've watched the world fall apart, you are under terrible stress. There are monsters. Yeah, therapy would be an incredibly valuable thing."

The ones mentioned above are some of the changes observed in the first episode of the show's second season. This was addressed by Craig Mazin in a TVLine interview published on April 13, 2025:

“Anything that you see in that episode that you didn’t see in the game is original to the show, and it was just part of the adaptive process that Neil [Druckmann, co-showrunner] and I go through where we’re looking for things to do. Some of the things were maybe things that you did in the game that we transformed a little bit. Another example: Ellie learning to shoot with Tommy, which unfolds differently during gameplay."

Mazin further went on to add:

“That’s part of the fun of adapting a game like that, is that you have so much great material. Now the question is how to best portray it in this medium.”

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New episodes of The Last of Us Season 2 will be released every Sunday until May 25, 2025.