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Youre just seeing the version that succeeded.
But it just felt a little dry.
It felt like there was a more interesting way to dramatize it, and even insert some humor.
I dont know that weneededextra information.
Even before Joel is born.
It just took a perfect storm for it to jump from insects to people.
With the game, we had pretty much a singular perspective: Joel and Ellie.
Were always in the United States and seeing things through these characters eyes.
With the show, we made a conscious choice to leave their perspective.
When this outbreak happened, how did it start?
Where did it start?
How do we make that an interesting vignette?
To see an expert in her field and see the terror in her eyes.
For her to say a bomb is the only chance we have.
Often, in the real world, we look to experts.
And when the experts panic, thats when we get really scared.
Therewasa Tess backstory we almost did for the second episode.
That got pretty far.
But it always felt appropriate to end her journey in episode two.
Theyre only violent if youre fighting back or running away.
And we wanted it to be beautiful.
Weve tried to do that across the board.
The skies are clearing up because theres no smog.
Its beauty mixed with sadness, death, fear, and panic.
In the game, that sequence is about Joel learning to trust Ellie a little more.
Its also showing a counterpoint:Thisis what could happen if you prioritize survival over everything else.
It was a cautionary tale.
And the way the show was evolving was not so action-driven.
The Infected would becomelessthreatening, not more.
So we started to think about the drama that would benefit this version of the story most.
Theres an opportunity here.
What if it became the opposite?
That was our a-ha moment.
In the game, Bill never bought into that argument, and the fight became bitter and resentful.
Our what-if was: What if hedidchange?
What if Frank convinced him there was a better way of living?
I started thinking about the knock-on effect.
Okay, so Bills not alive.
Well, Bill doesnt show up anywhere else in the story, so that doesnt matter.
In the game, Joel and Ellie square off against numerous antagonistic factions without learning much about them.
The game has this mechanic what we call environmental storytelling in games that we couldnt do in the show.
Just by looking around you could see there was a fight and a resistance that fought back.
So we started thinking: Who would be their leader?
Why would they rise up?
We became very intrigued with humanizing some of these villains and seeing what makes them tick.
Co-creator Craig Mazin had the idea to cast Melanie Lynskey.
She has resolve in a way that very few people do in this show.
We were debating whether to do a Bloater whether that would be too much.
But we wanted to show that this infection doesnt stop.
It keeps evolving, keeps becoming more dangerous.
We added the Bloater later.
This setting, while briefly glimpsed, is never elaborated upon in the series.
I dont know if we ever considered an episode about Ish.
You cant do it all, so you have to pick and choose.
But we have a lot of ideas for the next season for stuff like this.
In the first game, Joel and Ellie never actually enter the Jackson community.
In the show, we geta portraitof what a thriving community looks like in the post-apocalypse.
If you look at the artbook for the first game, theres a lot of art of Jackson.
It felt like a straight-up win for the show to go into Jackson.
Or, if you finish this quest successfully, theres a place to return to.
It was important to show it instead of just talking about it.
And there are a lot of Easter eggs and callbacks to the second game.
Which our fans figured out in five seconds.
In the show, Joel is stabbed by a broken baseball bat.
That is one of my favorite sequences from the first game.
Youve been playing as Joel, upgrading his skills and weapons, becoming this really capable murderer.
And he falls on this rebar and gets injured so badly that we startremovingmechanics.
Each kill in the show has a lot of weight, more so than the game.
If all of a sudden wed donethatsequence, it would have felt like too much.
Tonally wed suddenly have been on a different show.
We had fleshed out a whole intro where we saw David in the outbreak.
We were interested in his reaction to the outbreak and the chaos that ensues.
Where everybody else panicked, he seemed excited, almost like this was the moment hed been waiting for.
But ultimately, it felt like we wanted to stay more present tense.
In the game, you only get David when Ellies around.
Hes an interesting character because he puts on different masks depending on whos in front of him.
We wanted to show how he leads, and how hes so charismatic that people follow him.
All he has to do is give James a look andJames just looks at the ground.
You understand their dynamic immediately.
With the other kids, he can be loving and supporting or threatening and scary.
We went back and forth on the Joel torture sequence.
There was a version where we didnt have that.
So we added it back in.
What she needs him for is to rescue her emotionally.
To be a dad.
This story had so many permutations of how it almost came to life.
By placing the cold open here, you get to see thatMarlene and Anna really carefor each other.
Then we put them at odds with each other.
Every time I think a story is dead and never coming back, it finds a way.
In the finale, Joel reveals that he attempted suicide the day after Sarah died.
There is an optional conversation in the game that players can miss.
What Joel doesnt know is that shes repeating Rileys language.
So we took this exchange and fleshed it out.
Craig had the idea that hed have this scar that we could talk about very early in the season.
And so these two characters are carrying these secrets.
It symbolizes that all the cards are on the table.
They fully trust each other and are fully being honest with each other.
Until theyre not,at the very, very end.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
