Bella Ramsey, pictured above, will revive her role as hardened survivalist Ellie in Season 2 of HBO’s The Last Of Us Photo by Courtesy of HBO

By Samuel Eli Shepherd August 7, 2024

The first trailer for Season 2 of the critically acclaimed post-apocalyptic drama The Last Of Us ends with a close-up of Pedro Pascal as Joel Miller. “I saved her,” he says, his eyes rheumy and guilt-stricken. 

But behind the scenes, a different drama is brewing online about the upcoming season’s storyline and its inspirations in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. No special effects fungus creatures are needed to tell this controversy.

Spoilers ahead for both The Last Of Us Season 1 and the video games The Last Of Us parts I and II. And I mean monstrous spoilers. 

A cordyceps fungus didn’t infect your brain, and you’re still with me? Good.

A revenge tale with real-life roots

The Last Of Us, based on the acclaimed 2013 PlayStation game of the same name, follows smuggler Joel and teenager Ellie across an America in which an infectious fungus has transformed most of humanity into rabid, zombie-esque monsters. Season 1 and Part I of the game ends after Joel saves Ellie from a deadly surgery to harvest her brain for a potential cure.

Early on, Part II takes a controversial turn when Abby, the daughter of a surgeon Joel killed while rescuing Ellie, beats Joel to death in front of Ellie as retribution for her father’s murder. The game then follows an enraged, heartbroken Ellie who aims to find and kill Abby and her friends to avenge her own slain father figure.

When Part II was released in 2020, writer and co-creator Neil Druckmann told The Washington Post that parts of the storyline were inspired by his own childhood growing up in an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank. In particular, he recalled an October 2000 incident in which a crowd in Ramallah lynched two Israel Defense Forces reservists who had accidentally entered the Palestinian Authority-controlled city.

Druckmann remembered “feeling intense hatred for the people that committed the lynching,” he told Sam White of GQ Magazine in 2020, a feeling that he later came to regret. Still, that brief desire for revenge drove him to create a game that tackles “the thirst for retribution” and the endless cycles of vengeance that intense grief can inspire.

The game also features a secondary storyline about two warring militias living in post-apocalyptic Seattle, which Vice journalist Emanuel Maiberg read as loosely analogous to Israel and Palestine. 

In this interpretation, the more powerful Washington Liberation Front serves as a metaphor for militarized Israel, whereas the religiously devout Seraphite cult are stand-ins for Palestinians. It’s a comparison that, while never explicit in the game, has nonetheless drawn accusations of racism and Islamophobia, since the Seraphites in the game are portrayed as simple-minded, religious fanatics. 

Revisiting Part II’s horrors since Oct. 7

On Instagram, just hours after the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attack, Druckmann posted an Israeli flag with the Hebrew caption “Israel Forever.”

A few days later, on X, Druckmann shared a donation to the Israeli charity ZAKA, which has since been criticized for allegedly fabricating evidence in some of its reports about Oct. 7. (Druckmann also donated to the Red Cross-affiliated Middle East Humanitarian Response, and he included both Israeli and Palestinian flags in the post’s text.)

In the comments section of his posts, Druckmann has been accused of being a “Zio,” with some fans threatening to boycott the new season. Others interpreted his display of support for Israel as missing the point of the original game, which preached about the futility of revenge.

It is unclear if any of this criticism will affect Druckmann and Jewish co-runner Craig Mazin’s creative direction in the new season, which is set to be released in 2025, and how closely the HBO adaptation will follow the plot of The Last of Us Part II.

There has already been one notable change from the game, though. Ellie’s love interest Dina, a character of Jewish heritage in the video game, will be played by non-Jewish Peruvian-American actress Isabela Merced in the HBO adaptation. It is also unclear whether the decision to cast a non-Jewish actor had anything to do with the Israel-Gaza war, or even whether Dina will still be portrayed as Jewish in the show.  

Still, if the trailer’s shots of torch-wielding Seraphites and a stealthy, exasperated Ellie are any indication, the new season of The Last Of Us looks to be a faithful adaptation of Part II’s storyline. This could prove controversial for audience members unfamiliar with the game, and who may not be expecting a geopolitical morality tale when they sit down for their Sunday night zombie show.

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