Last of Us Season 2: Tommy Might Make A Different Decision Than He Did In The Game

The Last of Us Season 2 stays faithful to the game but also makes changes, a theme from Season 1.
Tommy being a father may affect his decision-making and his pursuit of revenge.
Tommy’s actions in the game caused damage to relationships, which could impact his decisions in the show.

The Last of Us Season 2 premiere was very faithful to the spirit of the games, yet made some slight changes. This was also a recurring theme in Season 1, and should be expected from the showrunners by now. Season 1 also made some quite drastic changes to the source material, which is risky when creating video game adaptations. But in the case of The Last of Us, this paid off very well and fans loved the changes. At this point, they will likely have more faith and trust in HBO to create new artistic choices that enhance the source material rather than misrepresent it.

One seemingly small change in Episode 1 that could have larger implications was the decision to make Tommy a father. In The Last of Us game series, Tommy is married to his wife Maria. They govern Jackson together, but they do not have any children. In Episode 1 of Season 2, Tommy and Maria’s child, Benjamin, only appears in one scene, where Joel is teaching him how to read a map (one of the scenes shown in the trailer). But from this scene it is clear that Tommy is a nurturing and loving father. When he returns from hunting, Benjamin runs up to hug him. Despite Tommy being a fairly level-headed character in the games, he makes some reckless and dangerous decisions in The Last of Us Part 2. In the show, perhaps he would approach these differently, knowing he has a young child waiting for him at home.

RelatedNew footage from The Last of Us Season 2 petrifies fans as it teases one of its most heartbreaking scenes.

Tommy’s Decision In The Game

After Joel and Tommy are captured by Abby and her WLF friends, Tommy is knocked unconscious and Joel is brutally murdered in front of him, while Tommy can’t do anything to save his brother. Tommy then sits down with Ellie to tell her they have to stay put in Jackson and that Maria won’t allow them to leave for Seattle and exact revenge, because they would be up against an entire militia by themselves. Shortly afterward, Tommy ignores his own advice and leaves for Seattle by himself, leaving Maria a note where he states he can’t live with what’s happened.

It’s because of Tommy’s reckless decision that Maria allows Ellie and Dina to leave for Seattle under the guise of bringing her husband home. Of course, when Ellie and Dina arrive in Seattle, they get side-tracked with revenge themselves. They do eventually find Tommy, after taking out most of Abby’s friends and decide to head home together. At this point in the story, Tommy seems fairly content with the justice delivered, despite still not finding Abby. He even jokes about getting Maria some jewelry as an apology present. However, it’s at this point that Abby finds them. She shoots Jessie in the face, killing him instantly, and then shoots Tommy in the head, seemingly killing him.

It’s later revealed that Tommy somehow survived this wound, but his face is disfigured, and his mental state seems to be deteriorating. He is now even more hellbent on revenge, and when Ellie refuses to help him exact it, he shouts at her and storms out. It’s clear that, as a result of his injuries and grief, he’s dedicated himself to vengeance and lost a part of himself in doing so. In this same scene, Tommy also announces that he and Maria are taking some time apart. He doesn’t say why, but it’s presumed that it’s because Maria couldn’t cope with seeing her husband destroy himself over revenge.

How Being A Father Will Affect Tommy’s Decision-Making

Tommy made the dangerous decision to go alone against the WLF with his wife waiting for him at home, so it’s not like he didn’t have people who cared and worried about him in the game. It just wasn’t enough to stop him. But being a parent changes people’s perspectives. They have someone dependent on them, and somebody they want to see grow and mature. Despite Tommy’s combat and survival expertise, he must have known that going against the WLF alone could have resulted in his death. That’s probably why he tried to stop Ellie from joining him, as he doubted they would both make the trip home.

The Season 2 premiere establishes that Tommy is still a risk-taker despite now being a responsible father. When Ellie and Dina are reporting their findings of a new, intelligent, kind of infected to the council, Ellie questions Tommy, saying: “You’re telling me if it was you and Joel, you wouldn’t have gone in?” Tommy answers: “That ain’t the same.” This shows that he and Joel casually break protocol on their patrol duties like it’s suggested they do in the game. Tommy still has some of that rule-breaker personality about him, but perhaps not to the same extent as a result of fatherhood. Tommy and Joel are also experienced infected killers, so their breaking protocol isn’t the same risk as it would be for anyone else.

Tommy’s decision in the game also caused a lot of damage to his relationship, resulting in him and Maria taking time apart. If the same thing happens in the TV show, it’s likely that Maria would also take their son away from Tommy, so that Benjamin doesn’t have to see his father lose himself to his anger and grief. Perhaps the possibility of losing access to his son will cause Tommy to reconsider his quest for revenge.

As of now, there have been no sightings of Tommy in Seattle shown in any of the show’s trailers. This isn’t a huge surprise, because even in the game the player doesn’t get to see Tommy until Day 3, but this does support the theory that perhaps he stayed home this time. But if Tommy does decide to go to Seattle, it’s also possible that after surviving a bullet to the head, he will take that as a sign that his family need him alive and present, and will let go of his anger more easily than he did in The Last of Us games.