There are no shortage of reasons why The Last of Us season 2 has proven controversial, but many of those criticisms have a common root: the script. As dissatisfied fans tell it, the protagonist of the show is an immature and incompetent interpretation of Ellie, the character portrayed in the Naughty Dog games. There’s one moment in the show in particular that was so emblematic of that tonal discrepancy, fans turned it into a meme. And now, showrunner Craig Mazin has given some insight as to how he and his collaborator Neil Druckmann arrived at the oft-ridiculed dialogue.
In early episodes of season 2, Dina, Ellie’s love interest and companion during her journey to seek revenge, is shown repeatedly throwing up. At first, it seems as if Dina is having a human reaction to witnessing gory carnage that could twist anyone’s stomach. Later, it becomes clear that Dina is pregnant with the baby of a former lover, Jesse.
Dina reveals this piece of information after the duo pass through a pharmacy, where she picks up a bunch of expired pregnancy tests that all turn out positive. Ellie is bewildered at the news, but quickly adapts to the idea. “So we’re all having a baby,” Ellie says with a buoyant expression. Dina meets her gaze with a lighthearted smile that diffuses the weight of the news. Ellie then takes a deep breath and exclaims, “I’m going to be a dad!”
The scene unfolds much differently in the games. Dina shares the state of her pregnancy while crying. She doesn’t seem enthused about the pregnancy at all. If anything, she seems anxious. Ellie responds incredulously, which matches the show, but the scene never exhales that initial tension. In the games, rather than instantly warming up to the idea, Ellie becomes angry. She asks Dina how long she knew she was pregnant. An exasperated Dina responds by saying that she suspected it but wasn’t sure, and she didn’t want to say anything to avoid becoming a burden. Ellie throws it back in Dina’s face by responding, “Well you’re a burden now, aren’t you?”
Though the show’s depiction of that moment matches the more jovial tone of Ellie and Dina’s relationship in its world, the two scenes couldn’t be any more different. Ellie isn’t excited about the prospect of parenthood in the games, which later informs the player’s understanding of why Ellie leaves her family life behind in pursuit of Abby once more.
Previously, the HBO showrunners said that they didn’t feel that they needed to have total fidelity to the games. Rather, the writers were preoccupied with maximizing the strengths of their perspective mediums. In a clip shared by Sky Ireland on TikTok, Craig Mazin gave further insight as to how he arrived at the dialogue in the show.
“Bella and I were talking about that episode, I like to run things past them all the time,” Mazin recalls. “And I was like — this just popped into my head. I don’t know why, it just felt right. It’s not an expression of gender as much as state of mind.”
Mazin then suggests that when he makes alterations like these to the script, he gauges the reactions from the actors. It is not enough for the actor to be amenable to the changes — the performer has to seem excited, Mazin says. An emphatic reaction tells Mazin that his adjustments are on the right track. And apparently, Bella was excited about the change.
”The joy that just burbles out of Bella when they say, ‘I’m going to be a dad,‘ it’s wonderful,“ Mazin says.
Unfortunately, the line did not land with fans, who ultimately turned into a meme. To wit, when I typed “ellie im going to be a dad” into Google, it auto-completed to add “meme” at the end. The top results are all Photoshops of the line read where Bella’s face has been distorted to capture the absurdity of the scene.
Mazin’s breakdown, which makes the dialogue change almost seem like a random idea, tells me that the jokes around the dad line just got more fuel added to the fire.