Highlights
- HBO’s The Last of Us TV show can use cross-cutting to simultaneously follow Ellie, Abby, and Tommy in season 2, showcasing Tommy’s off-screen revenge adventures.
- The ability to show Tommy’s actions before Ellie arrived would enhance the revenge narrative and give him a more prominent role in the story.
- Gabriel Luna’s portrayal of Tommy deserves more screen time in season 2, providing depth to his character and emphasizing the message against eye-for-an-eye punishment.
Tommy’s own road to revenge a few steps ahead of Ellie takes place mostly off-screen in The Last of Us Part II, but HBO’s The Last of Us TV show is in a unique position to use cross-cutting to follow Ellie, Abby, and Tommy simultaneously in season 2. The Last of Us Part II begins with the heartbreaking twist of Joel being brutally killed off in retaliation for his massacre at the Fireflies’ hospital. Just before Ellie sets off on a warpath to exact vengeance against the woman responsible, Tommy embarks on his own vengeful crusade. But since the player of the game is following the story from Ellie’s perspective, they only see the aftermath of Tommy’s rampage. The TV series can actually show what Tommy got up to at all these places before Ellie showed up, which would bolster the themes of the revenge narrative.
The first season of HBO’s The Last of Us was a great adaptation because it took advantage of storytelling techniques that exist in television but not in video games. The first game stays with Joel and Ellie the whole time they’re escaping from a wartorn city with Sam and Henry, but the TV show took the time to flesh out their pursuers and introduced the ruthless militia run by Kathleen. The second season will undoubtedly continue to use this cross-cutting ability to show other perspectives of the story, and one of the most important perspectives to show is Tommy’s.
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The Last Of Us Season 2 Can Show Tommy’s Off-Screen Adventures
The Last of Us season 2 has the opportunity to show Tommy’s off-screen adventures from the game. By the time Ellie is making her way through Seattle, Tommy has already stormed through the city and thinned out the W.L.F.’s foot-soldiers. The TV show has the freedom to show how that happened. It would mean that the show couldn’t adapt a couple of the game’s biggest moments, like the notorious revelation that the sniper tormenting Abby was Tommy all along. But it would be worth sacrificing a couple of shocking twists like that to give Tommy a more prominent role in the story. The focus of The Last of Us Part II is Ellie’s quest for vengeance and how it ultimately destroys her life, but Tommy has just as much of a right to revenge for Joel’s death – if not even more – because he’s his brother, and because he was there when it happened. Ellie was too late to save Joel, but Tommy was there from the beginning and still failed to save him, so the guilt weighs more heavily on him.
Gabriel Luna is a wonderful actor and he’s perfect for the role of Tommy, capturing both the warmth of a family man who invites Joel and Ellie into his community and the grizzled edge of a post-apocalyptic warrior who had to do a lot of regrettable things to survive. Luna deserves to be promoted to the main cast for season 2 of the cinematic Last of Us TV show. As Ellie sets off to find Abby and exact revenge and Abby gets swept up in her own adventure with Lev and Yara, the show should take a little time every week to check in with Tommy’s own pursuit of Abby. It would give Luna a chance to bring even more depth to Tommy’s character, and his grisly actions would add to the story’s message that eye-for-an-eye punishment is never right.
The Best Moments From The Last Of Us TV Show Adapt Unseen Story Events
Some of the greatest moments from the first season of the HBO series explored story events that happened off-screen in the game. The first game opens on the night of the outbreak, but the TV show begins in the morning and follows Sarah through her whole day, going to school and picking up a birthday present for her dad, which makes her death even more devastating. Bill and Frank’s relationship happened off-screen in the game, vaguely hinted at when Joel finds Frank’s suicide note, but the TV show turned it into arguably the best episode of season 1 (and one of the most beautiful episodes of television ever produced). The series showed David putting on the facade of a compassionate leader in front of his followers, so his dark turn in the steakhouse was even creepier.
The nature of TV production means that the series can’t feature as much action as the games. The producers don’t have the time or the budget to put as many infected as there are in the games into the TV show. But it also means that the writers can expand on things that were only mentioned in the games – including Tommy’s crusade to avenge Joel. The Last of Us Part II already gave Tommy a much larger role than he had in the first game, but the second season of the HBO show can expand that role even further. The sequel is really Ellie and Abby’s story, and the TV adaptation should remain focused on contrasting their perspectives, but Tommy deserves third billing.
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