The Last of Us’ Kaitlyn Dever has to play Abby across two time periods in the show’s chronology. Dever made her first appearance as the former Firefly in the season 2 premiere, where she had to navigate between the tough and vengeful present of the character and the innocent burgeoning Firefly in flashbacks.

Dever’s Abby is raw and vengeful and difficult to empathize with; as such, the creators of the series envision the dream sequence of her watching her past self discover her father’s corpse. Both Dever and the showrunners noted how important this scene is, and how difficult it was playing two versions of the same character.

The plot of The Last of Us season 2 closely follows the story of the second game, which, as fans of the series are now aware, leads to Joel’s death at the hands of Abby. In filming this scene, the actress already had a strong understanding of its impact due to Devers’ then-recent loss of her mother. In the game, players have intense ire towards Abby for her actions, but the showrunners wanted some sympathy and understanding due to the different direction they would be taking the narrative.

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Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann noted that they wanted viewers to empathise with Abby. This was why they changed Joel’s death to include a monologue by Dever as well as including flashbacks and dream sequences of discovering her father’s corpse. Knowing that viewers don’t benefit from forming a connection to Abby through player perspective, they decided to utilise sequences showing past-Abby to bridge that emotional gap with viewers.

Dever described the moments as the audience getting to “step inside Abby’s brain” and witness the events from her past in her present, showing “here’s some survivor’s guilt there.” This allowed the actor and the showrunners to build on her climactic scene with Pedro Pascal. The actress went on to explain that, whilst the role is the same, the age and experience of past vs. present Abby made her feel like she was playing separate roles. “Those two people are so different…Talking about old Abby versus younger Abby, it is five years between those two people and they are different people.The training she had done when she was with the Fireflies versus five years later was all different. But, emotionally, she’s been through hell. And I wanted to make sure that was shown.”

The Last of Us season 2 is streaming now on HBO Max.

Source: Entertainment Weekly