The Last of Us co-creator reveals an unused storyline from the games that made it into the show

HBO’s new big hit The Last of Us is one of the most successful shows on the television network to date. The fourth episode will be arriving later on today, and fans are really excited about continuing the beautiful and somewhat morbid post-apocalyptic journey. However, every adaptation, no matter how accurate, always leaves some details to one’s imagination. The Last of Us did quite the opposite; the show gave the creators the opportunity to explore a storyline initially omitted from the game.

The show’s co-creator Neil Druckmann told Variety that he and fellow showrunner Craig Mazin were really excited to go into more detail into the story of Ellie’s mom in the HBO series, a detail that was largely kept hidden in Naughty Dog’s 2013 game. “The one that shows up very late in the season is Ellie’s mom,” Druckmann said. “I had written a short story after we had shipped the game already. It was supposed to be an animated short, but it fell apart and didn’t come to be.”

He continued, “There was a moment where we almost made it as DLC, but it fell apart. In our conversations, I brought it up to Craig and he was immediately excited by it, or as he would say ‘activated.’ We brought it to life in the most beautiful, poetic way, which is Ashley Johnson playing Ellie’s mom and she was the original actor for Ellie.”

Are you excited to learn more about Ellie’s mom in The Last of Us? Tell us in the comments below!

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