Posted in: HBO, TV | Tagged: the last of us

The Last of Us Editor on Moments Cut from S02 Infected Horde Raid

The Last of Us editor reveals the process of working on season two's tone-setting episode "Through the Valley" and the horde-infected raid.

The Last of Us season two had a complicated setup. Ellie Williams' (Bella Ramsey) journey to avenge her adopted father figure, Joel Miller (Pedro Pascal), after he was viciously murdered at the hands of Abby Anderson (Kaitlyn Dever). Getting there was a pretty involved process with Timothy A. Good, who's worked on the majority of the Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann-created series, tasked to edit the first two episodes of season two, "Future Days" and "Through the Valley." Speaking to Variety, Good broke down the event that allowed Abby and company to spring her trap on Joel and Dina (Isabela Merced), when Abby fell during an avalanche after scouting Joel's town of Jackson, Wyoming, rousing the dormant infected horde buried in the snow that would not only chase her, but also an attempt to raid the inhabited colony.

The Last of Us Editor Timothy A. Good on Season 2, Episode 2 Infected Horde Raid at Jackson

Good had to not only balance Abby's initial bad luck, to stumble upon the unassuming Joel on horseback literally, but he also had to deal with the chaos of Jackson's defense among several characters. "We looked at it and realized that there are certain things that are peripheral to the main spine of the action, and where we need to move the Horde from coming towards us to going to the other side," he said.

The first cut scene that Good revealed was a townsperson sacrificing himself with a homemade net bomb, "Killing so many infected early lowered the stakes for the rest of the characters," he explained. There were other flamethrower scenes beyond Gabriel Luna's Tommy, who took down the hulking bloater, doing everything he could to slow it down and minimize its carnage. "Every single cut has to propel the next piece of action," he continued. "Each section of that was about compressing to the point where we could apply maximum pressure to the characters of Tommy and Maria (Rutina Wesley) because ultimately, those were the two characters that mattered in the battle sequence. We got it down to 11 minutes because it lives on its own. If it were any longer, it would be too much. We didn't need to tell any more of that story than is actually there."

You can check out the full interview for more, including Good's process of having five different edits of Abby killing Joel and Ellie's just-as-visceral reaction. Both seasons of The Last of Us are available to stream on HBO Max.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!