The Last of Us ‘ eagerly anticipated second season — retracing the footsteps of the video game’s designers before it — gave fans a moment they’d long feared and flipped the script on what show audiences would be watching moving forward. Spoiler alert: The second episode of season two — in which Pedro Pascal’s Joel is brutally murdered as Bella Ramsey’s Ellie has to watch — sparks a new trajectory for Ramsey’s character as co-creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann dive deeper into the connection and trauma that drives her.

Craig Mazin talks often about adapting the story and grounding it as close to the real world, with real people, as possible. The Last of Us characters aren’t invincible; everything doesn’t always work out. “It’s important to give a character like Ellie that feelin

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