The first season of the series The Last of Us ended with an emotionally devastating ending that remains remarkably true to the original game that wowed fans years ago. Despite all the changes Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin have made to the game to improve and expand it for TV, this ending has remained almost untouched, and for good reason. When it came to the infamous hospital scene, the pivotal moment when Joel (Pedro Pascal) makes his disastrous decision, Mazin couldn't resist making one small edit. Attentive listeners could hear a specific track from the game when Joel picks up Ellie (Bella Ramsey), which served as a sad backdrop for his assault on the Cicadas in the series.
For The Last of Us managed to keep the composer Gustavo Sataolallu, who brought back to the game his viscous, melancholic music that raised the tone of the original game. It also gave Druckmann and Mazin the opportunity to work with him on rearranging, creating new compositions, and identifying ways to improve on the original soundtrack. In the game, Joel's massacre of the fireflies takes place mostly in silence, leaving room for gameplay while players absorb the terrifying context of Joel's actions. However, once he takes Ellie out of the room, the track ends at a moment that is devastating both in terms of how it dooms humanity and how it will permanently tarnish Joel.
At a virtual press conference last week, Mazin talked about crafting the track in such a way as to highlight the duality between love for Joel and contempt for his heinous deeds. He said:
«We had one option that we used, I think, to great effect during Joel's attack sequence in the hospital. We took completely different music that was meant for what happens immediately after that in the game - when he picks up Ellie and walks with her to the exit - and put it under that sequence. In the game, this sequence is basically gameplay. But here it is a beautiful, sad, mournful composition based on cello. It allowed us to feel almost heartbroken at what Joel does, what he breaks within himself, and how he betrays what he probably knows Ellie wouldn't want him to do. You are rooting for him, and at the same time you are so sad for him. That's Gustavo's genius - sometimes you just take a piece from here and put it under this and it makes magic«.
Mazin figured out how to force the ending The Last of Us work on television
This small change is another indication of how Mazin understood the task when he came to help adapt The Last of Us for the new environment. The scene makes full use of Santaolalla's composition, starting with Joel taking down the first two fireflies. She stands out even more when his shots become muffled during the fight in the hospital. Unlike the game, it only stops after Joel enters Ellie's room, kills the doctor, and takes her away.
At the same conference, Druckmann expressed his full confidence in Mazin when it came to the powerful ending due to how well he handled the source material. The Chernobyl creative captivated Druckmann with many of its changes, such as changing the ending of Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett) for the better. Even if Mazin had the idea to change this masterpiece ending, Druckmann would have listened to his explanations:
«If Craig had come in and said, "Hey, I was thinking about that other ending," I'm sure I'd tense up a bit at first and just hear the pitch. But our process would be: "OK". let's discuss this. We could go back to the whole season and say, "We were potentially working on this other ending?" And we thought about it, and often the answer was, "Yeah, it doesn't quite work," or "It changes too much," or "Now it's changed too much." And then we went back and undo, Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+Z, until we got back to where we were, and then continued«.
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