Why Abby Wants To Kill Joel In The Last Of Us Season 2

Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Last of Us season 2, episode 2, and The Last of Us Part II.

When she’s first introduced in The Last of Us’ season 2 premiere, Kaitlyn Dever’s Abby announces that she wants to kill Joel, but it’s unclear exactly why she wants him dead. The Last of Us season 2, episode 1, “Future Days,” picks up five years after the events of season 1. But before the five-year time jump, the premiere episode takes a brief look at the aftermath of Joel’s actions in the season 1 finale. In a field near the hospital in Salt Lake City, Abby and the other surviving Fireflies bury their dead following Joel’s massacre.

The premiere episode ended with Abby and her friends finally arriving in Jackson. In The Last of Us season 2, episode 2, “Through the Valley,” they’re resting at a chalet, where they’re plotting their next move against Joel. Owen and the others are ready to turn back and give up, because Jackson is far too big and armed to infiltrate, but then fate hands them Joel on a silver platter. Abby gets Joel back to the chalet, shoots him in the leg with a shotgun, and reveals the deeply personal reason she wants to kill him.

Joel Killed Abby's Father In The Last Of Us Season 1

Abby's Father, Jerry Anderson, Was The Surgeon Who Wanted To Kill Ellie

Abby wants to kill Joel to avenge her father, Jerry. At the end of The Last of Us season 1, Joel finally got Ellie to the Fireflies. They confirmed that they could, indeed, turn Ellie’s immunity into a cure — but the operation would kill her. By that point, Joel had come to love Ellie like his own daughter, and since he already lost his own daughter, there was no way he was going to let that happen again. So, Joel went on a rampage and massacred every Firefly in the hospital.

When he got to the operating room, the surgeon that was about to cut a cure out of Ellie’s brain tried to stop him, so Joel killed him. That surgeon’s name was Jerry Anderson and his daughter, Abby, was distraught over his untimely death. She spent the next four years (five years in the TV show) singularly focused on finding Joel and exacting revenge. After learning that Joel’s ex-Firefly brother Tommy was last seen at a settlement in Jackson, Abby and her friends made the excursion to Wyoming to finally complete this quest for vengeance.

Was Abby Around During The Last Of Us Season 1?

Abby Didn't Appear On-Screen, But She Was At The Hospital

Abby didn’t actually appear on-screen in The Last of Us season 1 (although a background character with a ponytail was theorized to be Abby), but she was around at the hospital. Flashbacks in The Last of Us Part II reveal that, when Joel and Ellie arrived at St. Mary’s Hospital, Abby and Jerry were in a nearby park, helping a zebra who escaped from the same zoo as the giraffes that Joel and Ellie saw. Owen came out to retrieve Jerry, telling him that the immune girl had been found and that her immunity seemed to be legit.

Jerry went back to the hospital, talked it over with Marlene, and made the difficult decision to take one life in order to save millions of others. Another recurring flashback in The Last of Us Part II reveals that Abby was armed and ready for action during Joel’s massacre, but she was too late to save her dad. She came down the hallway to the operating room and found him dead while Joel was escaping with Ellie. Based on The Last of Us season 2’s trailers, it looks like we’ll be getting this flashback in the TV show, too.

How Abby Kills Joel In The Last Of Us Season 2 & How It Compares To The Game

The TV Show Makes Some Key Changes To This Scene

There are a lot of similarities between Joel’s death in The Last of Us season 2 and his death in the video game. But, as always, the TV show also makes a few key changes in translating it to a new medium. The biggest difference is that, in the game, Joel is on patrol with Tommy, not Dina. Other than that, it plays out more or less the same. Joel saves Abby from a horde of infected, Abby lures him to the chalet where she’s staying with her friends, and she surprises him with a shotgun blast to the leg.

In both cases, Joel is stoic and resolute in accepting his fate. He knows he’s been living on borrowed time ever since the Firefly massacre, and he’s been waiting for this moment. In each version of the story, he has a badass one-liner to this effect. In the game, he tells Abby, “Why don’t you say whatever speech you got rehearsed and get this over with?” In the TV show, midway through that speech, an exasperated Joel says, “Shut the f**k up and do it already.”

In the game, the first strike of the golf club is to the side of Joel’s head, but in the TV show, Abby takes a few swings at the gunshot wound on Joel’s leg first. In both versions, Ellie arrives while Abby is torturing Joel, and right after the final death blow, she swears revenge. But the TV show managed to make his death even more gruesome. In the game, Abby delivers the death blow to Joel’s skull, which is mercifully left out of focus. In the TV show, she jams one half of the broken putter into his neck.

In the game, Joel has no idea who Abby is; all he knows is that she’s one of the many enemies he’s made over the years. But in the TV show, he figures out she’s a Firefly, and she doesn’t attack until he confirms he was in Salt Lake City. In the game, Abby spares Tommy’s life because Owen argues that if they kill him, they’ll be no better than Joel. But in the TV show, she only spares Dina’s life on the condition that Joel tells the truth about killing the Fireflies.

In the TV show, Abby reveals that the unarmed surgeon Joel killed was her father. In the game, this information isn’t revealed until a flashback much later. In the game, after Joel is killed, Abby’s friends knock Ellie unconscious. But in the TV show, when they leave the chalet, she’s still conscious, and she crawls over to Joel’s body to pull the club out of his neck and lie with him. This little extra moment makes the scene even sadder than it is in the game.

Why Abby Killing Joel Was So Controversial In The Last Of Us Part 2

Some Players Were Not Happy That Joel Died

When The Last of Us Part II was released, the scene of Abby killing Joel sparked widespread outrage and controversy from a vocal minority of players. After the first game had focused on Joel and Ellie’s relationship, a lot of players expected the second game to be more of the same. But by killing off Joel — especially so brutally and so early in the game — the developers, Naughty Dog, caught audiences by surprise and made it clear that this wouldn’t be the story those fans were expecting. A lot of players went along for the ride, but some were furious.

During the game’s marketing campaign, there was a lot of speculation that Joel would die. So, to preserve that surprise, Naughty Dog released a trailer with a fake scene featuring Joel to throw people off. This ultimately bolstered the outrage, because audiences who weren’t happy with Joel’s death felt like they’d been cheated. There was also an undeniably misogynistic bent to the controversy; if Joel had been killed by a man, the response probably wouldn’t have been quite as vitriolic. Abby’s voice actor Laura Bailey was horribly harassed online and even received death threats over a fictional character’s actions.

Hopefully, the backlash to Joel’s death in The Last of Us season 2 won’t be quite as vicious as it was with the game. The TV show made the deliberate choice to reveal who Abby is and what her motivations are upfront, so the audience can at least see where she’s coming from. The response should be a bit more well-balanced this time.