Why casting Caitlin Dever as Abby would give us a completely different season 2 of The Last of Us. -The Last of Us (HBO Max)
The speculation is finally over. As many of us have come to expect over the past few weeks and months, The Last of Us Season 2 has landed Caitlin Dever in one of the biggest roles. Abby plays a huge role in the second game, set in the post-apocalyptic future of Naughty Dog, and so getting this casting right was always going to be important.
Did HBO? Well, I’m going to go ahead and say yes. Anyone with eyes can see that the game’s Abby is very different from Dever, which seems strange at first glance considering how similar Joel and Ellie are from the video game and series. But even if HBO couldn’t be bothered to find a muscular woman to play the comedy well, the company could have found a different kind of gold in Dever.
Before I get into why I think this is a great casting choice, I’ll lay out a little Spoiler alert Last for Us: Part II, if you haven’t played it yet or seen the main plot points of the game. OK, are you ready? I believe that while Caitlin Dever doesn’t yet look like she has the power to swing a golf club through a man’s skull, there is a brilliant piece of meta lore going on with the role of Abby.
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In case you didn’t know, Dever originally applied for the role of Ellie. This was before The Last of Us became the HBO series it is today, but it still seems interesting that it was brought back today. This is all the more interesting because we can tell that Dever looks like Eli in the games.
In The Last of Us: Part II, Ally and Abby are often physically attached to each other. Abby is a badass, able to take down runners with nothing but her fists and easily intimidate everyone around her just by standing up and backbending. Ellie, on the other hand, had to fight and struggle at every turn. She’s meaner, more aggressive and has always had to be smarter in the way she fights. These physical differences seem to diminish as the game progresses, and we see similarities between our two protagonists in The Last of Us: Part II. With Caitlin Dever as Abby, not only will we be able to see the similarities in the two’s revenge stories, but from minute one we’ll be able to connect Eli and Abby through their similarities. Somewhat like a “We’re not so different, you and me.” situation, but instead of waiting until the end to fully understand it, we get to see it develop and understand all the similarities between the two much sooner.
All of this is assuming that Dever doesn’t try to put on about 30 pounds of muscle the way he should. I’m sure she could if she wanted to, but I think it would be more interesting if she didn’t. One of the criticisms of the first season was that, while it lived up to fan expectations, it was – episode 3 aside – a similar recreation of the game’s story. Which means if you’ve played The Last of Us, you’ve already seen the series. The fact that Dever is a different type of AB will change things. Fans of the series and the games will be thrown into the unknown, as those who have played The Last of Us: Part II will be able to guess what will happen, likely changing how these events unfold.
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Thanks to television, it will also be easier to switch to Abby’s point of view. We can go from one to the other in a single episode, as Ally tracks him down and Abby goes on her own journey. This is less an issue about Dever’s casting and more about how I think a second season could improve the perception of Abby. From the audience’s perspective, she’ll become a villain as soon as the results of her golf lessons show, but if we’re going to try to build some sympathy for Abby over the course of Seasons 2 and 3, we’re going to have to spend a little more. Spend time with her in the beginning instead of using her point of view to pull the rug out from under us in the middle of the story.
The role of dewar can also help us in this regard. Once again, when we see Abby in the game, her body is just like the end-level boss. He’s a powerhouse and even though Dever practices a lot, he’ll be hard to replicate, which is a good thing. She offers some differentiation and hopefully gives us a chance to make Abby less of the two-dimensional character she appears at the beginning of The Last of Us: Part II and the character she becomes throughout the journey the game takes us on.
do you agree How do you think Abby should be treated in The Last of Us Season 2? Keep us in touch!
