The Last of Us Season 2 didn’t adapt two of the original game’s nastiest deaths, and the creators had a good reason.
That’s not to say the TV show pulled its punches: in Episode 2, we saw Joel brutally beaten to death, and there wasn’t a shortage of grim imagery in the rest of the season.
However, Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann showed mercy to two characters: Ellie’s horse Shimmer, who gets caught by a landmine and shot in the head in The Last of Us Part 2, and Alice, a WLF dog stabbed by Ellie when she arrives at the aquarium.
Alice didn’t appear at all in Season 2, and while it’s unclear if she’ll show up for fetch in Season 3, don’t expect anything bad to happen to her.
Why The Last of Us Season 2 didn’t kill Alice the dog
Bear in mind, Mazin created HBO’s Chernobyl, a series with an episode that revolves around dogs being executed to prevent the spread of radiation.
“I think you get like one dog murdering episode a lifetime,” Mazin told Polygon.
“There are two cardinal rules in Hollywood, one, don’t spend your own money, two, don’t kill a dog.”
On a more serious note, Mazin explained that killing a dog in a live-action series has a much bigger impact on the viewer, and given how violent and upsetting the Season 2 finale is already, he and Druckmann agreed it’d be too much to see Ellie murder a dog.
“Plus, because it’s live action, the nature of violence becomes much more, well, graphic,” Mazin said.
“It’s more graphic because… it’s not like there’s an animation between you and it, [and] it’s very disturbing.”
In another conversation with Comic Book, Mazin said: “It’s just feeling now like we’re tormenting the audience [and] almost getting pornographic, so you don’t want to feel exploitative, you don’t want to feel like you’ve crossed some line, so you make some choices.”
Druckmann added: “In our conversation, we’re like, ‘This [is] probably one too many.”
Find out what we know about The Last of Us Season 3, see what else is coming out this year with our 2025 TV show calendar, and check out our list of the best TV shows of all time.
