When The Last of Us returns to HBO for season 2 in April, it’ll pick up five years after the events of season 1.
In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, its showrunners Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin opened up about how the second season feels different from the first, including the introduction of new a character named Abby.
Little has been said about the character, though she’s described as “a skilled soldier whose black-and-white view of the world is challenged as she seeks vengeance for those she loved” in press material from HBO. Kaitlyn Dever portrays her, and Druckmann says it’s due to her incredible talent.
“The reason we cast Kaitlyn is because she’s an incredible actor. You look at her body of work and the way she throws herself at that stuff… We value performance over anything else,” Druckmann said.
While fans of the video game may notice that Dever’s physique differs from that of Abby’s in the game — the digital character is a towering, muscled woman while Dever’s Abby closely resembles star Bella Ramsey‘s Ellie — Druckmann says that the show has different priorities than the game.
“There’s not as much violent action moment to moment,” he says. “It’s more about the drama. I’m not saying there’s no action here. It’s just, again, different priorities and how you approach it.”
Going further, Druckmann said Dever has “the spirit of the game in her.”
“For every heroic act, there’s someone who suffers on the other side who may see you reasonably as a villain,” Druckmann said. “When you look at Kaitlyn, there’s just something in her eyes where, even no matter what she’s experiencing, you connect. It was important that we found somebody that we could connect to the way we connect to Bella.”
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