Kaitlyn Dever joins the cast for HBO’s The Last of Us Season 2, stepping into the role of Abby. In the video game, Abby has big muscles, but in the show, she won’t. Showrunners Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin have now explained why they wanted to go this way for the TV show adaptation.
Druckmann told Entertainment Weekly that part of it came down simply to casting. “We would’ve struggled to find someone as good as Kaitlyn to play this role,” he said. He also pointed out how the game and the TV show were never aiming to offer the same kind of experience.
In the game, you play as both Ellie and Abby, and for a video game, it was important that they play differently, Druckmann said. “We needed Ellie to feel smaller and kind of maneuver around, and Abby was meant to play more like Joel in that she’s almost like a brute in the way she can physically manhandle certain things,” he said. In the TV show, though, the team is doing something else.
“That doesn’t play as big of a role in this version of the story because there’s not as much violent action moment to moment. It’s more about the drama. I’m not saying there’s no action here. It’s just, again, different priorities and how you approach it,” he said.
For his part, Mazin said he was excited by the opportunity to present Abby as someone who is “physically more vulnerable” than she was in the game, “but whose spirit is stronger.”
Druckmann went on to assure fans that Dever was the right choice for the role of Abby. “Kaitlyn has the spirit of the game in her,” Druckmann said. “When you look at Kaitlyn, there’s just something in her eyes where, even no matter what she’s experiencing, you connect. It was important that we found somebody that we could connect to the way we connect to Bella.”
Abby not being as muscly in the TV show as the game may not be the only change for Season 2. Mazin has said he expects Season 2 to elicit “furor” from fans of the game, due in part to how the second season will depart from the story of the game. Mazin said, “We don’t operate to either make people happy on social media or avoid making them upset. We just do what we think is right.”
The Last of Us Season 2 debuts this April on HBO and Max.
As for the game series, Druckmann has heavily teased that The Last of Us Part 3 is in the works. Developer Naughty Dog has two single-player games in the works now, including Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet and a second that many believe to be The Last of Us Part 3.
