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The more changes this series has made, the more engaging it has become.
Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for The Last of Us Episode 3 and mild spoilers for The Last of Us Part I.Over the course of the last several weeks since The Last of Us began airing, it has carved out a narrative path that has increasingly distinguished itself from the original game. While it follows much of the same general narrative structure, from the very start all the way to the most recent episode there has been a sense that writer Craig Mazin is most interested in the small moments that hadn’t been fully explored until now. There are plenty of familiarities in the overarching themes, but the way this has all been executed has been about prioritizing patience as it wanders off to find its own pockets of poetry. This has paid off in a litany of unexpected ways as it moves beyond merely just recreating what we already know into something that is far deeper and more profound precisely because of how fresh it all feels.
Whenever you set out to adapt an already beloved narrative, there will be a whole heaping of pressure to capture the magic of what drew players to the story in the first place. However, when making the leap to the medium of television with all the potential to be found there, it would be a missed opportunity to not take the story in different directions. There are plenty of chances to explore narrative territory that was either not covered before or only briefly hinted at. In diving headfirst into this potential, what Mazin and company are demonstrating in spectacular fashion is that this is an adaptation that isn’t solely tied to what has already come before. It may ruffle the feathers of those looking for something that isn’t going to rock the boat too much, but there is nothing like sitting down to watch a show with the knowledge that there is freedom to be found in how it all plays out. Rather than narrowing in on the familiarity of something we’ve already seen, it has opened up doors to new thematic ground at nearly every opportunity. While this can be a perilous undertaking, it can also be a rewarding one.
What the series has most recalled was another recent HBO adaptation, Station Eleven, in how it has made what are often radical changes to the source material. For all who may decry these alterations, the game itself will always be there for you to revisit with its original narrative untouched. So why wouldn’t you make some changes? Rather than just being a boring repeat of what has already been said by the game, a show can become something that is more like a conversation that speaks back to and expands upon the original work. It can become something that is reflective in a way that starts to cut into something deeper. Without going into spoilers, the third episode with Bill and Frank is a testament to how successful this can be. It can stand alone in the emotional exploration it undertakes when it is willing to remove almost all that tethers it to the story we would have expected. Rather than being able to know exactly what every emotional beat is before it happens, this series has managed to find something moving and melancholic whereas other such adaptations have felt mundane.
Adaptation Is An Art Form That Rewards Boldness
For all the many sequences that are brought to life as a flex of creating near-exact shot-for-shot recreations, which can be intriguing in a basic sense, the moments that transcend the trappings of this are the most interesting. Anyone could go about just creating re-staged cinematics from the games with actors and call it a day. This could uncover some thrills of recognition, but it would quickly lead to diminishing returns if all the experience had to offer was about copying. What is more compelling is to create an emotional resonance that takes full advantage of the freedom of this specific visual form. Some of this can come from not having to worry about the particulars of finding a ladder or traversing an obstacle that makes a game a game, which have doomed atrocious past video game adaptations that are best forgotten, but it also goes beyond that as well.
For all the ways that so-called “prestige television” can have its own familiar patterns and rules that you begin to recognize if you’ve seen enough of them, there is also much that can be shaped into something magnificent. Both in terms of the more grounded reality of the characters in some of the tense action sequences and the emotional underpinning of it all, Mazin’s take on The Last of Us is a different beast that has the potential to be one of the best such adaptations of recent memory if it is able to stay this course. The moments that remain most clunky come from it hewing too closely to the game and, conversely, the ones that feel the most natural are where it goes its own way.
When this all comes together, it is a show that is defined less by its roots than it is by an admirable willingness to take chances and devote time to elements that it can truly call its own. In doing so, it distinguishes itself from the game as a unique experience rather than just a recreation. This is what makes the series such a standout as it is not about just imitation. Rather, it is about molding the existing narrative clay into a new work of art. It ensures that it delves deeper in ways that are both unexpected and effective. Even as we know where all of this is going to end up, the journey that it is taking to get there offers something distinct in its own devastating disposition. Rather than having us get caught up in seeing how closely it can follow something we’ve already seen in a way that reduces the story to a checklist, the series is taking a multitude of bigger swings that are hitting home and making it more than just mere mimicry. The more it continues to lean into this in the road ahead, the better the series will be.
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