the series, run by the game’s creator Neil Druckmann alongside TV veteran Craig Mazin (“Chernobyl”), has made some necessary changes. By that, I mean that it’s tough to adapt a video game where you play as main characters Joel, Abby, and Ellie, played in the show respectively by Pedro Pascal, Kaitlyn Dever, and Bella Ramsey, and keep it exactly the same. One small change happens in “Through the Valley,” an episode with a huge moment — Joel’s death at Abby’s hands, witnessed in full by a screaming Ellie — which is that, in the game, Joel’s brother Tommy is present. (Tommy is played by Gabriel Luna in the show.) Instead, Joel meets Abby while on patrol with another emerging surrogate daughter, Dina, portrayed in the series by Isabela Merced.
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So why did Mazin decide to make this change? In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, he said that he wanted to highlight the burgeoning relationship between Dina and Joel, who share a sweet scene in the season 2 premiere “Future Days” (there’s a noticeable divide between Ellie and Joel, and Dina is, apparently stepping into the void left by Ellie). This also, incidentally, frees Tommy up to fight in the assault on the Jackson stronghold, which is attacked by infected cordyceps zombies (a sequence that is unique to the show).
“Early on, we talked a lot about clarifying, or at least demonstrating, how much Dina cared about Joel,” Mazin told Nick Romano, who was on set during the episode’s production. “Dina did care deeply about Joel. To put Dina in that spot and to make her a front-row participant in this murder, it connects us more to her. Her choice to stay by Ellie’s side through thick and thin from this point forward is motivated just as much by her loss as it is by her friendship with Ellie.”
