Abby's 10 Best Scenes In The Last Of Us We Can't Wait To See In HBO's Season 2

Summary Kaitlyn Dever needs to embody Abby’s complex character, tackling intense scenes with true grit and depth in The Last of Us season 2.

Abby's narrative transformation from despised villain to empathetic hero showcases the game's brilliance.

Abby's key moments, from saving lives to facing her fears, make her a captivating character worth rooting for.

Warning! This article contains spoilers for The Last of Us Part II.

Kaitlyn Dever has been cast to play Abby in The Last of Us season 2, and it’ll be a joy to see her recreate the character’s best scenes from The Last of Us Part II. The game’s best narrative trick is making the player hate Abby early in the story, after seeing the horrific way she kills Joel, then slowly forcing them to empathize with her when they play as her. But the game could use gameplay to actively endear the audience to Abby and put them in her shoes, which is a liberty the TV show won’t have.

When The Last of Us Part II was released, Abby quickly became one of the most controversial characters in the history of gaming. The majority of gamers could empathize with Abby’s side after seeing what Joel took from her, but a vocal minority refused to see Abby as anything more than a cold-blooded murderer. The average TV viewer is a lot more emotionally stable than the average gamer, so hopefully that won’t be an issue with the TV show, because Abby is a great character with a lot of great moments, and anyone who blindly hates her is missing out.

Related 10 Abby Characteristics Kaitlyn Dever Must Capture In The Last Of Us Season 2 Kaitlyn Dever is a great choice to play Abby in The Last of Us season 2, but she's a very complex character with a lot of dimensions to capture.

10 Escaping The Woods With Lev & Yara

As she heads through Martyr’s Gate on her way to see Owen at the aquarium, Abby is captured by Seraphites and knocked unconscious. When she comes to, it’s the middle of the night and she’s being dragged out into the woods to be hanged. Luckily, at the last second, she’s saved when runaway Seraphite Lev arrives to save his sister Yara and Yara insists that he cut Abby loose, too. Surrounded by darkness and armed with nothing but a hammer and true grit, Abby fends off a horde of stalkers.

This is one of the most intense sections of the game, as The Last of Us veers into Resident Evil territory. It’s a key moment, because it’s when Abby meets Lev and Yara and reluctantly takes them under her wing. It also shows just how much of a badass Abby is as she fights off the ravenous infected with her bare hands.

9 Saving A Zebra With Her Dad

After Abby confronts Ellie and Tommy at the theater, The Last of Us Part II flashes back to just before the end of the first game. Just before Owen arrives with the news that the immune girl Marlene promised has arrived at the hospital, Abby and her dad Jerry go through the park in search of a pregnant zebra that Jerry wants to help out. They find that the zebra has already given birth, but it’s gotten stuck in a barb-wire trap, so they cut it loose and watch it return to its baby.

This flashback is key to showing just how close Abby was with her dad – and what a great guy her dad was – explaining why Abby was so hellbent on avenging him. Since the TV show doesn’t have gameplay to put the audience in Abby’s shoes, it needs to work overtime to make her sympathetic. The zebra scene will go a long way towards achieving that.

8 Flirting With Owen

Before she meets Lev and Yara and dedicates herself to protecting them, the most important person in Abby’s life is the one that got away: Owen. Abby and Owen’s love story is truly tragic: they always loved each other, but Abby’s grief complicated their relationship, and now that she’s ready to be with him, he has a new girlfriend, who he’s gotten pregnant. Whenever Abby and Owen are in each other’s company, they relentlessly mock each other in a flirtatious way.

Laura Bailey and Patrick Fugit nailed that flirtatious dynamic in the game. They shared instant on-screen chemistry and made Abby and Owen’s love for each other feel completely real and authentic. Dever and her co-star Spencer Lord will need to recreate that dynamic and recapture those feelings in The Last of Us season 2.

7 Helping Lev With His Gas Mask

While they head through the ruins of Seattle to pick up life-saving surgical equipment at the hospital, Abby and Lev have to cut through a hotel that’s been completely overrun by infected. Before going into a room full of spores, Abby finds a gas mask for Lev and helps him secure it to his face. Over the course of her three days in Seattle, Abby becomes a protective big sister to Lev.

It’s reminiscent of Joel’s father-daughter relationship with Ellie in the first game, and that parallel is crucial to making an empathetic connection with Abby’s character. It’ll be tough for the TV show to recreate this scene, because HBO’s adaptation has gotten rid of spores. But season 2 could either bring in the spores or come up with a new reason why Abby and Lev need gas masks.

6 "If It Was Me... I'd Want You To Do The Surgery."

During its flashback to the end of the first game, The Last of Us Part II shows a scene that was missing: the revelation that creating a cure will kill Ellie. By the time Marlene gives this information to Joel, she’s already made peace with it. But Part II’s flashback shows that it wasn’t an easy decision for Marlene to sacrifice this kid she’s known since she was born. It took a lot of convincing from Jerry.

There’s a really poignant moment when Marlene asks Jerry what he would do if Abby was the immune one who had to die to create a cure. Jerry can’t give Marlene an answer, because he knows, deep down, that he wouldn’t let his daughter die. But Abby overhears the conversation and tells her dad, “I’d want you to do the surgery.”

5 Crossing The Sky Bridge With Lev

Before Mel can amputate Yara’s arm, Abby and Lev have to get across Seattle and collect some surgical supplies from the Wolves’ hospital. In order to get there before it’s too late, Lev shows Abby a shortcut that the Seraphites use: a rickety, winding, threadbare bridge balanced precariously between two foggy skyscrapers, hundreds of feet in the air. Since Abby’s first appearance, the game had leaned heavily into her debilitating fear of heights, and this sequence was a great payoff to that build-up.

The TV show can use Vertigo’s dolly-zoom effect to show Abby’s acrophobia kicking in. As breathtaking as this scene is, it’s also one of The Last of Us Part II’s funniest scenes, as Abby’s terror is hilariously contrasted with Lev’s calmness. When Lev chooses this moment to ask about the awkward tension between Abby and Owen, Abby quips back with one of her best lines: “Oh my God, Lev, now!?”

4 Sparing Ellie & Dina's Lives At The Theater

After a brutal boss battle at the theater, Abby is pummeling Ellie and gets ambushed by Ellie’s girlfriend, Dina. As Abby knocks Dina unconscious and prepares to slit her throat, Ellie begs her to stop and tells her Dina is pregnant. Since Ellie killed Abby’s pregnant friend Mel (albeit unknowingly), Abby is determined to exact eye-for-an-eye punishment. But just when Abby is about to ruthlessly kill Dina, she’s stopped by Lev, who watches her in shock.

Abby almost makes the same mistake she made when she killed Joel, but this time, she has an angel on her shoulder encouraging her to do the right thing. Inspired by Lev’s inherent goodness, Abby spares Dina and Ellie’s lives. Bailey plays this scene so subtly yet so powerfully in the game; it’ll be interesting to see what Dever does with it.

3 Riding Through The Battlefield With Lev

The action-packed climax of the Seattle portion of the game sees Abby and Lev trying to escape from the Seraphites’ island during the W.L.F.’s invasion. Literally everyone on this island wants to kill them and they have to get through Haven – the village that’s on fire and full of people beating each other to death – to get a boat from the docks. So, they steal a horse and ride right through the battlefield, with other riders shooting at them and soldiers chucking Molotov cocktails their way.

This will be a really tricky sequence to pull off in a TV show, but it’s such a brilliantly intense set-piece and such a mind-blowing spectacle that it’ll be worth the effort. Symbolically, it shows Abby and Lev going through Hell to get off the island. It’s what Abby and Lev’s entire epic adventure has been building towards.

2 Killing The Rat King

Abby’s most badass feat is taking down the Rat King. While she searches for surgical supplies in the “Ground Zero” section of the hospital, Abby is attacked by an anomalous infected variant made up of a bunch of clickers, stalkers, and a bloater all fused together. She’s relentlessly chased through a couple of hallways, hacks at it with an axe, and ends up trapped in a basement with it. Against all odds, by staying on the move and using all the firepower at her disposal, Abby manages to slay the Rat King.

This boss fight serves more of a gameplay function than a story function, so the TV producers might decide to skip it. But that would be a huge wasted opportunity, because the Rat King fight is a perfect blend of horror and action, and one of the most exhilarating set-pieces in the whole franchise. Plus, it showcases what a badass Abby is, which will help make the TV audience root for her.

1 "YOU'RE My People!"

Arguably Abby’s greatest moment in The Last of Us Part II is when she stands up to Isaac and his W.L.F. goons and puts her own life on the line to protect Lev. After Isaac is shot by Yara and the W.L.F. goons all turn their attention to filling her with lead, Abby takes the opportunity to get Lev to safety behind a couple of barricaded doors. Before they continue, a traumatized Lev tells Abby, “Those were your f***ing people...” and Abby snaps back, “You’re my people!”

This line perfectly encapsulates how much Lev has come to mean to Abby. She loves him like a brother and will turn on her own community to keep him safe. The Last of Us season 1 kept the first game’s best quotes verbatim, and season 2 needs to do the same with Part II’s most powerful lines. “You’re my people!” is one of those lines that needs to make it into the TV adaptation intact.