The Last of Us is HBO’s most recent hit series, which is gathering increasing attention with each passing week. As more viewers tune in to watch Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) journey on through a land populated by Cordyceps-infected individuals, it becomes increasingly harder to ignore the small mysteries that the show is keeping.
Three episodes in, there are still a few unanswered questions regarding Joel’s past, and one of them is about Sarah’s mother. In episode one, viewers are introduced to the family dynamic of Joel, Sarah, and Tommy (Gabriel Luna), and lovely though it might be, it’s hard to miss the unexplained absence of Sarah’s mom. Neither Joel nor Sarah ever mentions her in the episode, which leads viewers to powder over what might’ve happened to her. Has she died, or is she alive and simply not in the picture? Were Joel and her ever together to begin with? If so, why aren’t they now? While there’s no telling if the show will ever provide an answer to these questions, luckily, we can rely on the video game for some additional details.
Although the identity of Sarah’s mother is never revealed in the game, we know that she and Joel were married for a period of time, but there’s no saying for how long. As confirmed by Neil Druckmann — creative director of the game — in a Reddit thread, “she left Joel after Sarah was born,” and was not someone the protagonist looked up to enough to keep mementos of. Unfortunately, this is the extent of Joel’s backstory with Sarah’s mother in the game, but there’s no way of knowing if the TV adaptation will change things up.
The HBO series has already taken some creative liberties with The Last of Us‘ story, so it wouldn’t be outside of the realm of possibility for the show to explore its characters more in-depth. In episode three, the audience already got a taste of what great things this show can accomplish by making bold changes to storylines, and putting characters’ full potential to good use.
Hopefully, the same treatment Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett) got, will be given to Sarah’s mother. Granted, this character doesn’t seem to be nearly as important to the story, but it would still be nice to get a better understanding of Joel’s backstory, no matter how reluctant he seems to share it with others.
New The Last of Us episodes will continue dropping every Sunday, on HBO and HBO Max.
