The Last Of Us Season 2 Trailer Suggests A Major Change To The Game's Timeline

Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Last of Us Part II.

The Last of Us season 2 trailer opens with Ellie attending the barn dance at Jackson, suggesting that one of the game’s final flashbacks will be bumped up to the beginning in the TV adaptation. The first season of The Last of Us was very faithful to the game. It made a few alterations along the way to smooth the transition to a new medium and take advantage of TV’s ability to show different characters’ perspectives. But it followed all the major story beats of the first game, from the devastating opening death to the hospital massacre.

So, it would stand to reason that season 2 would remain faithful to the second game. But The Last of Us Part II is a bigger, more ambitious, and far less linear narrative than its predecessor, so it’ll be a lot tougher to translate to television. HBO’s recently released teaser for The Last of Us season 2, featured at the end of a 2024-2025 preview of upcoming Max content, suggests that the TV show is making a major change to the game’s story timeline. One of the game’s last flashbacks might appear much earlier in the TV show.

The Last Of Us Season 2 Teaser Shows Ellie At The Jackson Dance

It's uncanny just how accurately the TV crew has recreated this image

The trailer for The Last of Us season 2 opens with a shot taken directly from the game (it’s kind of uncanny just how accurately the TV team has recreated the image). The shot shows Ellie standing on the sidelines while most of the other Jackson residents are gleefully dancing on the dancefloor. It’s fitting that it should kick off season 2’s trailer, because the same image kicked off the trailer for the game. Although it’s chronologically one of the first scenes in the story, the Jackson dance scene doesn’t actually appear until near the end of the game.

After Joel has been killed, Ellie has relentlessly pursued revenge for three days in Seattle, the same three days have been shown from Abby’s perspective, and Ellie has settled down on a farm with Dina and J.J., the game finally reveals what happened on that fateful night in Jackson. But the dance had already been discussed much earlier in the game. After the four-year time jump, when Jesse picks up Ellie on the morning after the dance, he explains what happened: Dina kissed Ellie, Seth called her a homophobic slur, Joel confronted Seth, and Ellie got angry at Joel.

The Last Of Us Season 2 Might Be Moving The Jackson Dance Up To The Beginning

This scene could be taking its rightful chronological place

The Jackson dance has been teased in both the first-look image of Pedro Pascal and the initial teaser trailer for The Last of Us season 2, so that scene is definitely in there. Season 2 is confirmed to only cover the first part of the game, with the rest being covered in season 3 (and maybe even spilling into season 4), so the inclusion of the Jackson dance in this season suggests the TV show might move that scene up to its chronological place at the beginning. This will make it clearer that Joel and Ellie’s relationship has soured.

According to Neil Druckmann’s director’s commentary on The Last of Us Part II Remastered, the Jackson dance was originally supposed to appear at the beginning of the game in its chronological place. It was a late decision to bump it to the end as a flashback. While the scene works great where it is in the game, the TV show is a chance to do things a little differently, so Druckmann has gone back to that original concept.

Why The Last Of Us Part II Didn't Show The Jackson Dance Until Near The End

The Jackson dance flashback provides key context at a crucial juncture

In the game, the showdown at the Jackson dance isn’t shown until Ellie is settled down on the farm with Dina and J.J. She’s still struggling to move on from Joel’s death, especially since she failed to bring his killer to justice, and she’s reminiscing about the final night of his life. After Joel stepped in to confront Seth, Ellie got angry at him and told him, “I don’t need your f***ing help, Joel.” Dejected, Joel left. Ellie feels guilty about how she treated Joel on that night, but it also makes sense why she did.

When Jesse first tells this story, the player is just as confused as him as to why Ellie was angry at Joel. But after all the context provided by the bulk of the story, when the game finally goes back to show what happened at the dance, it all clicks into place. Ellie is mad at Joel for making a decision for her and taking away her agency. Joel’s decision to stand up to Seth for Ellie reminds Ellie of his decision to pull her out of the Fireflies’ hospital before they could make a cure from her infected brain.

How Showing The Jackson Dance In Chronological Order Could Affect The Last Of Us Season 2's Story

Moving up the Jackson dance won't change much – but there's one flashback that needs to stay where it is

It won’t affect the story too much to show the Jackson dance in chronological order. It’s not spoiling anything, since the events of the dance are recapped by Jesse in the “Waking Up” chapter at the beginning of the game. Jesse just gives bullet points of what happened, but showing the scene allows the audience to feel it: the beauty of Ellie and Dina’s first kiss, Seth’s appalling bigotry, Ellie’s shocking animosity towards Joel. In flashback form, this scene offers the audience a chance to see Jesse again after his untimely death, but it’ll still work at the beginning.

The one flashback that the TV show has to save until the very end is right after the dance when Ellie goes to see Joel on his porch. This is a beautiful scene that will touch audiences wherever it’s placed, but it’ll lose a lot of its impact if it’s taken from the very end and placed at the beginning. In the final scene, this flashback recontextualizes the entire story. Ellie tells Joel that she’s willing to try to forgive him, showing that they patched things up just in time for his death.

All throughout the game, it seemed as though Ellie’s hatred of Abby was about something else, and this flashback confirms it. Ellie doesn’t just want revenge because Abby killed her father figure; she wants revenge because Abby robbed her of the chance to rebuild her relationship with Joel, make up for lost time, and fully forgive him for what he did. The Last of Us needs to save this scene for the very end of its multi-season adaptation of Part II, because it’s an unbelievably powerful note to end on.