The final episode of American Season 2 Episode 1: TV Shows vs. Games
Blog Andrew Joseph 14 Apr , 2025 0
Our last one came back for the second season, and naturally, this time we saw an adaptation of the second game of the series. However, this show host Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann took a different approach. The first season was largely one-on-one entertainment, with a large portion dedicated to copying the original cutscenes in live action, and the second season seemed to make more changes to the game's story. Events are reorganized, reordered and redefined by adding new characters and story ideas.
This is not to say that the scenes we know and like have been abandoned – far from it. It's just that they may not always be the way you remember them. So we analyze the changes that happened and the same changes from the key moments in the first episode where the first episode reproduced the game and compared them to the original material. You can see two versions in the video above, or read below for our written instructions.
Tommy's Sniper School
As the show has been re-aligned to tell the story in a more linear way, the order in which Tommy teaches Ellie how to shoot on a long distance is now one of the earliest scenes in the U.S. Season 2 Last Season 2. In the game, this is told in flashbacks, which is the second day of Ellie's start on Seattle, which happens on Seattle.
That's not the only change. As can be seen from the thick snow blanket, the time of year is completely different. Ellie and Tommy are lying prone to the winter landscape on the show as they pass through the sunny Wyoming Mountains during the game. But there is a connection; in the game, Tommy mentions that in winter, groups of infected people travel through the area. Since it's winter on the show right now, maybe such a tribe will appear in the next few episodes?
Despite changes in timelines and climate, the fundamentals remain the same. Show Ellie uses the same Springfield Armory M1A rifle as Game Ellie, while Tommy offers advice on how to snipe the Shambling infection. He advises her to compensate her target for distance, which is something you have to do in the game because the bullet drops over a long distance due to gravity.
Ellie and Dina's patrol
The midpoint of the second-largest chief this season saw Ellie and Dina patrol. This is one of the earliest sequences in the game and is copied very carefully. In games and performances, Ellie glitters from the horses, doing her best, Jesse is late. The most important change here is that in the game, Jesse lists everything that must be achieved on the patrol, and in Dina's performance, their goals are explained sarcastically before Jesse can guide them. This helps build the show’s version of Dina, who is braver than her game.
The conflict between Jesse and Dina helps to establish a horseback conversation between two women. The same chat about Dina's breakup with Jesse also happens in the game, but Dina has a gentle attitude towards her ex-boyfriend, discussing that Jesse's parents always go like family. On the show, the couple’s relationship is somewhat overlooked, like something on/off.
Both the program and the game's patrol were interrupted by the discovery of the bloody corpse of animals found – in the game, this is the moose, and in the show, this is the bear. This encourages Ellie and Dina to search for infected people who killed it. The key difference here is that on the show, Ellie and Dina are just two of a larger patrol that don't want to get caught in any unnecessary danger. In the game, Ellie and Dina patrol themselves.
Infection Attack
Ellie and Dina's search of the infected brings them to the same location in the game and show: Greenpeace Market. In both versions, they climbed through the store’s truck, entered through the upstairs windows, and continued their search. From here, the events are different – on the show, the two knocked down a clicker, and Ellie fell on the floor alone. In the game, both Ellie and Dina fall on the collapsed floor, and Dina saves them both from the clicker by shooting a few times.
In the show, it is not a clicker in the main store area, but a stalker, a new, smarter type of infection that doesn't appear until later in the game. Ellie has to face this enemy alone, and the resulting battle has caused the stalker to bite her belly, which doesn't happen in the game. Dina arrived too late to help, but by then Ellie had shot her assaulter. This somewhat echoes the early scenes of the game, with Dina arriving, helping a runner who attacks Ellie outside the supermarket – in that case Dina shoots the infected person to save her partner.
Barn dance
Finally, one of the most famous scenes in Part 2 is the show’s almost perfect recreation, but it reappears in very different periods due to the reordering of the story. Barn Dance is the first time Dina and Ellie Kiss, initially flashbacked, taking place before the final scene of the game, but on the show, it is the final scene of the second premiere of the season.
Although this scene is shown in chronological order, everything else it has is basically the same, even depending on the direction of the music, choreography and camera. The conversation between Ellie, Jesse and Dina is almost the same as the game's original script, including Dina's “I think they should be scared of you.”
The two's dance is interrupted by Seth again, but Joel's reaction to paranoia is even more violent. In the game, Joel only pushes Seth to show his anger, but the event version of the show throws Seth to the floor.
neglect
The final scene of this episode is entertainment about the neglected part of the game's first chapter. We see Abby and Owen climbing up the outcrop overlooking Jackson Town. In the game, Abby and Owen are talking about finding their own goal and being assured of how big it is – “It's a fucking city!” Instead, the show chooses to keep the characters completely silent and establish ominous tensions as they investigate the town where the target lives.
For more information about the last one of us, check out our Spoiler-free Season 2 Review And ours Spoiler reviews for the season premiere. We also asked the creators of the show Is Joel right to save EllieAnd talk to them The horror stalker who appears in this episode.
Matt Purslow is an advanced feature editor for IGN.
