Last Updated on Jul 14, 2025 @ 14:13:53 PM.
The Last of Us Season 2 perfectly mirrored how the source material was received by fans when it originally released. While the showrunners may have recreated a few scenes from the game, it ultimately fell flat, and the gaming community couldn’t be more upset about how the show fell from grace after a stellar first season.
It didn’t take long for fans to showcase their creativity and even one-up the live-action adaptation in more than one way. Perhaps the showrunners should consider taking notes before working on the third season, focused on Kaitlyn Dever’s Abby Anderson.
The Last of Us Fan Showed the Live-Action Team How It Should Be Done
The hype surrounding the second season of The Last of Us has quickly died down, especially after how most episodes felt rushed and overall flat. The episodes may have been longer than the first season, but some fans can’t help but notice that the show hardly captured the essence of the source material. Most combat encounters were trimmed once again and were nowhere near the level of the original game.
After being let down by HBO, one cosplayer and actress managed to do better than a high-budget production with limited resources. It is a testament to how well the gaming community knows this franchise better than the showrunners and to their creativity.
The Last of Us scene captured by actress @victoriaskat is so incredible and arguably better than the actual show🚀 pic.twitter.com/nMmCYtbURr
— Rino (@RinoTheBouncer) July 12, 2025
The clip only lasts 40 seconds, and it felt more like The Last of Us Part 2 than the official show, which speaks volumes about how this clip resonated with fans. Naughty Dog spent years working on the game, which felt like a live-action project to a certain extent. Some fans are in agreement that Victoria Kat did a better job than the HBO adaptation.
Yup. Amazing. Id love to see a show made exactly like that.
— OrVnO (@OrVnO1) July 12, 2025
Other fans share the same sentiment about this fan-made project.
“Arguably” it IS better than the show
— Adog (@Adog00YouTube) July 12, 2025
There is no denying that the show did some things right, but fans will always remember the negative parts first and foremost.
HBO’s The Last of Us Was Never Meant To Be a Perfect Adaptation, but Fans Deserved Better
While the live-action adaptation of The Last of Us was never promised to be a straight one-for-one adaptation of the games, fans felt like the HBO team could have done better. One of the more controversial changes made by Craig Mazin is how Ellie executed both Owen and Mel in the aquarium during her three-day campaign in Seattle.
Mazin made compromises that better suited Ramsey on the scene, but this garnered a lot of traction. It is one of the many creative changes that felt like the showrunners had to do for convenience, rather than telling the story. Most of the set pieces looked like they were pulled out of the game, but they are nowhere near what Kat had at her disposal.
Perhaps HBO and Naughty Dog will be thinking carefully about how to proceed, especially after Neil Druckmann left the project to focus on future projects like Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.
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Rouvin Josef Quirimit is a Content Writer, an avid gamer (on his PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch), and film enthusiast. He was fortunate to grow up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe and was enamored by the storytelling of a shared universe full of heart and spectacle. His love for movies led him to great single-player games and he intends to cover major franchises for years to come!
