There’s more mushroom madness on the way from HBO, with season 2 of The Last of Us continuing the story of Ellie and Joel after the apocalyptic adventure’s freshman series. Whereas season 1 was based on Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us video game, it took some creative liberties with the source material. It’s much of the same as showrunner Craig Mazin and Game Director Neil Druckmann tackle The Last of Us Part II, but with it, there’s already some controversy.
While season 2 opens shortly after Joel (Pedro Pascal) butchered a whole hospital of Fireflies in the season 1 finale, we don’t quite pick up where things left off. Although the opening scene neatly sets Kaitlyn Dever’s Abby on a mission of vengeance against Joel, like in the games, things soon get a five-year time jump as we return to the safe haven community of Jackson. Although Part II featured a similar time jump, the live-action adaptation’s changed timeline has led to confusion.
April 13's “Future Days” is named after the Pearl Jam song of the same name, and although the track isn’t heard, the fact that one of the season 2 trailers features the track hints that it’ll appear in a later episode. For those who’ve played Part II, they’ll know "Future Days" is an important part of the story, thematically representing Joel and Ellie’s relationship and the former’s fear that he could lose her. Given how "Future Days" lets the typically stoic Joel show Ellie his true feelings, it’s become synonymous with The Last of Us Part II. Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder even performed it at The Game Awards in 2020.
In real life, “Future Days” was released as part of 2013’s “Lightning Bolt” album and was written by Vedder when he lost a friend in an accident. Although the lyrics are open to interpretation, it’s thought that’s why they make mentions to things that “may die, but in us they live on.”
The song was released shortly after the first game, but by the time we got to Part II’s release in 2020, it was inserted into the sequel as an integral part. The problem is, Mazin and Druckmann moved Outbreak Day from 2013 in the games to 2003 in the show. This made sense as it lined up the 20-year time jump that starts Joel and Ellie’s story, coinciding with season 1’s release in 2023.
Unfortunately, with the world falling apart in 2003, it means Pearl Jam would’ve never been able to release “Future Days” a decade later.
Even though this potential problem hasn’t gone unnoticed by those ever-vigilant The Last of Us fans, Mazin doesn’t sound like he’s going to be losing any sleep over it. Speaking on the show’s official podcast after episode 1, the showrunner explained, "Neil and I had, you know, a solid conversation and arrived at the following conclusion: we didn’t give a sh*t because it is an important song to the story."
Like in Part II, Mazin expanded, "Thematically, it’s incredibly important because Joel is trying to figure out what his future is with Ellie, and Ellie is trying to figure out what her future is as herself, not as someone’s kid. And where they’re heading into the future, which we accelerate them into five years later, they have arrived at Future Days. It is, in fact, the past that is the anchor that is still holding them back."
Druckmann previously teased that "Future Days" could be used in season 2, telling Kinda Funny (via Winter is Coming), "I could tell you we haven’t made a decision. We have talked about it for those exact reasons that you mentioned, that now it makes no sense for Joel to know that song. Now we could say, 'Okay, it’s a parallel dimension and the song came out earlier.' There’s ways, but that feels a little bit like a cheat."
Back then, there were plenty of calls on Reddit just to use "Future Days" anyway. One fan said, "I think it’s easiest to just suspend belief and have him play the song. They don’t really need to explain it," while another added, "Change nothing, say nothing, except have a cameo of Eddie Vedder playing guitar in the background in Jackson." Someone even joked that maybe Vedder survived the Infected and found a new home in Jackson, where he carried on making music.
It seems that a vocal minority is forgetting that we’re watching a piece of fiction. Others have been complaining about Ramsey’s portrayal of Ellie and how she looks "too young," but in terms of age, she was the same age (19) as her video game counterpart when filming season 2. Continuity errors are also nothing new to The Last of Us, with many laughing off its own Starbucks x Game of Thrones moment when an aerial shot in episode 6 clearly featured the show’s crew to the side.
HBO spends a lot of money to try and avoid this kind of mistake, and even went to the effort of removing the offending crew members from the later HBO Max versions. Ultimately, Mazin is right that it doesn’t change things in the grand scheme of things, and like background shots of the Salt Lake LDS Temple being clad in scaffolding or numerous buildings existing that weren’t there in 2003, is anyone other than those looking for a reason to complain really keeping track?