LogInNow who could've seen that coming? Everyone.
From the very moment HBO announced it was developing a second season of its adaptation of Naughty Dog's The Last of Us game series, one question immediately came to mind for many of those familiar with the source material: how would the showrunners handle that scene from the sequel?
Sadly, even though this was one of those rare instances where straying from the original might have actually helped, HBO ultimately chose to stick closely to the game's events, and now, much like the original, it's learning the hard way that despite Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey's presence, The Last of Us is no Game of Thrones, and can't get away with the unceremonious killing of the first season's de facto protagonist.
HBO
The scene in question, in case you've been living under a rock and somehow missed all things The Last of Us, is the infamous Joel-gets-beaten-to-death-with-a-golf-club sequence from the second game, a questionable, to put it as mildly as I can, narrative choice that back in the day sparked one of the biggest backlashes in gaming history.
Barring a few minor changes, the show's depiction of Joel getting a-man-chooses'd turned out nearly identical to the original, allowing many TV fans to step into the gamers' shoes and experience the genius of Neil Druckmann's writing firsthand, and needless to say, the general reaction was pretty much what you'd expect.
Following the premiere of Through the Valley, the second season's second episode featuring Joel's demise, the show's ratings plummeted immediately, now sitting at 49% on Rotten Tomatoes and 4.1 on Metacritic, down 19% and 2.2 points respectively compared to the first season. Those numbers mirror the scores of the original game and its sequel almost to a tee – 9.2 vs. 5.8 on Metacritic – proving that gamers and TV fans aren't too different after all, and both, for some inexplicable reason, don't take too kindly to some random character bludgeoning a beloved protagonist to death.
"But those are just reviews from the unwashed masses, everyone knows the entertainment industry only cares about critic scores and viewership numbers," some might argue. Well, things aren't looking too good for HBO's The Last of Us on that front either (the number of viewers, that is, of course critics liked the second season).
According to Programming Insider, the first episode attracted 938,000 viewers in the US, but the second episode saw only 643,000 – a 31.5% drop in viewership. The third episode showed a slight improvement, with 768,000 viewers, but it's still 170K lower than the season premiere.
And what are your thoughts on HBO's The Last of Us season 2 and the game as a whole? What was your reaction when you witnessed or learned about Joel's death? Tell us in the comments!
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