Thorn posted...
Ending it on the "you wouldn't really do that" cliffhanger of Abby shooting Ellie and then having the last shot be a perspective flip to Abby rewinding back to Day 1. ...idk, I feel for most non-gamers the show built up Joel and Ellie and now Joel is dead, Ellie is a cliffhanger, and you're flipping over to their "murderer"... probably two years down the line? Feels like that will cause an audience drop off even if I can understand what they're going for and why.
I can confirm there will probably be one less non-gamer watching season 3. My mum hates the decoy protagonist trope, where the character set up as the main character dies early on. She dropped Game of Thrones after season 1 because of this, and it took years before she gave that show another chance. It took a fair bit of convincing from me to get her to carry on with The Last Of Us after episode 2, and then they do it again at the end of the season!
She did enjoy the season overall, though we both preferred season 1. She felt like it didn't carry on the story of season 1 very much, with what Joel did in the hospital being the only thing from season 1 that remains relevant in season 2, and started a new story following on from how the first one ended instead. She also complained that there weren't enough zombies, in favour of going the cliched "Humans are the Real Monsters" route (They must have blown most of the zombie budget on episode 2 with that big war sequence, and the massive horde of zombies hiding under the snow). I think that season 1 benefited from telling a complete story with a satisfying conclusion because it adapted the whole of the first game. Season 2 doesn't have that completed arc in the same way, there are plenty of plot threads, but not much has been resolved as of yet.
As for me, I would probably watch season 3 if it were the last one, but if season 3 is just season 2 again from Abby's perspective, and season 4 will still be adapting The Last Of Us 2, I'm not so sure. Is there any chance that season 3 finishes adapting The Last Of Us 2, and season 4 continues past that to end the story instead of making The Last Of Us 3 as a game? If HBO wait for Naughty Dog to make a game first, that's going to take years, especially with Intergalactic Heretic Prophet or whatever it's called (rubbish title btw) coming first, and Bella Ramsey might be too old to play Ellie by then.