Warning: Spoilers for The Last of Us to follow.
After returning to its regular schedule following the fifth episode’s wonky release date, The Last of Us has come out swinging hard once again, with the sixth episode, “Kin,” proving to be one of the most emotionally-charged entries in a series that has already been responsible for an unprecedented amount of tears, and promises to elicit many more between now and the final episode.
It’s hard to single out a creative liberty of the HBO Max adaptation that hasn’t paid off spectacularly; even small changes like the source of Joel’s deep wound make for an episodic reimagining that’s primed to continue exceeding the sum of its parts.
And while we likely won’t see the payoff of one such liberty until the second season makes an appearance, one change from the original game could send one Tommy Miller off on a completely different course than some may have expected.
During the events of “Kin,” when Joel and Tommy finally get to have a private, brother-to-brother conversation, Tommy reveals that Maria, his wife and the head honcho of the Jackson settlement, is pregnant. This may have caught veteran Last of Us fans off guard, given that such a development wasn’t in the game.
For those of you familiar with The Last of Us Part II, which the announced second season will adapt, you may know that Tommy becomes a tad gung-ho, so to speak; an impulse that may be absent in the show if his incoming fatherhood results in a conscious drive for self-preservation. And, well, let’s just say that, especially with the performance he’s giving now, Pedro Pascal might not be sharing the spotlight quite as much as we may have expected come the second season.
The Last of Us is available to stream on HBO Max, with new episodes releasing every Sunday until the season’s conclusion on March 12. A second season has been announced.
