‘You don’t have to watch it if you hate it that much’

Key Points

• Bella Ramsey says they tried to “steer clear” of the fan criticism of The Last of Us season 2.

• The Emmy nominee’s message to the loudest of dissenters? “You don’t have to watch it if you hate it that much.”

• The actor, Emmy-nominated for Lead Actress in a Drama, also comments on the changes to Ellie from the game to the show.

The audience reaction to The Last of Us season 1 versus season 2 couldn’t be more different. Viewers got behind the HBO drama in a big way for that freshman debut, bringing fans of Pedro Pascal and players of the original video games together in a united front. Sophomore year, however, was more polarizing.

Ratings held up, though gamers didn’t all love the changes made to the source material’s story. Ellie became less of a relentless rageaholic in the aftermath of Joel’s death; the core events of 2020’s The Last of Us Part II were reworked; and some scenes were left out, while new ones were engineered.

Still, the tweaks didn’t stop the drama from remaining an Emmys juggernaut, earning 16 nominations, including for performances by Pascal (Joel), Bella Ramsey (Ellie), Kaitlyn Dever (Abby), Joe Pantoliano (Eugene), Catherine O’Hara (Gail), and Jeffrey Wright (Isaac).

In a new interview for Entertainment Weekly’s Awardist podcast, Ramsey comments on the criticisms to host Gerrad Hall.

“I tried to steer clear as much as I could, to be honest, because there’s nothing that I can do about it anyway,” Ramsey, who is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, says. “I mean, the show is out. There’s nothing that can be changed or altered. So I’m like, there’s not really any point in reading or looking at anything. People are, of course, entitled to their opinions, but it doesn’t affect the show. It doesn’t affect how the show continues or anything in any way…. They’re very separate things to me.”

To the loudest of those critics, Ramsey says, “You don’t have to watch it if you hate it that much. The game exists. Like, you can just play the game again. You don’t have to watch it, but if you do wanna watch it, then I hope you enjoy it.”

Season 2 showed the consequences of Joel’s actions in the season 1 finale, when he slaughtered a hospital filled with members of the Fireflies rebel group to save Ellie, even though doing so would kill the world’s chances of developing a vaccine to the monster-spawning cordyceps plague.

A woman named Abby, the daughter of the surgeon Joel gunned down, tracks him down years later with a group of former Fireflies and bludgeons him to death with a golf club before Ellie’s eyes. Ellie then sets out on a revenge mission to Seattle with her girlfriend, Dina (Isabela Merced).

In terms of the depiction of Ellie on the show versus the Part II game, Ramsey says details such as Ellie’s excitement over being a dad to Dina’s baby weren’t “deep or thought out too much.”

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“Stuff like that, I think Craig just threw in,” they add, referring to showrunner Craig Mazin. “In the dynamic of her and Dina, she definitely sees herself as more of, I guess, stereotypically the guy, I suppose,” Ramsey continues. “And so the idea that she would be the dad was just a funny one that was in there. But, yeah, I think there’s those specific deviations from the game sometimes. They’re really thought about and really detailed, and sometimes it’s just for the fun of it.”

Listen to Ramsey’s full interview with EW’s The Awardist podcast. All episodes of The Last of Us season 2 are available to stream on HBO Max.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly