The Last Of Us Has Been Edited By HBO Due To Fan Demand
After going viral on Twitter for showing the camera crew in a shot of The Last of Us, HBO has edited the mistakes out with CGI.
HBO sneakily edited a mistake they made on an episode of The Last of Us, and they did it because of the fans. Like any production, the infectious post-apocalyptic adventure drama is bound to make a mistake (or two) during filming, and, unfortunately for the production team on The Last of Us, keen-eyed fans spotted the two slip-ups in Episode 6, “Kin.” After going viral on Twitter for the errors, HBO secretly edited the episode to fix the issues without saying a word.
Twitter account @NaughtyNDC, which follows news surrounding the Naughty Dog games that The Last of Us is based on, noticed the unacknowledged fix and shared their observations on the social media platform. Prior to fixing, “Kin” had shown a wide shot of the series’ two protagonists, Joel and Ellie, walking across a snowy bridge with crew members and filming equipment visible to the left of the frame.
The second blunder came from a scene between Ellie and her horse Shimmer. In the scene, an animal handler’s glove could be clearly seen on the horse’s bridle. Screenshots shared by @NaughtyNDC of the updated episode showed that “Kin” no longer featured the two errors that fans had spotted previously.
For fans sitting at home, it can seem a bit bewildering that the producers and editors of The Last of Us would let clearly visible gaffes like this get by without fixing them before release. But the truth is, little mistakes like this happen all the time on production sets without anyone noticing until the episode airs for millions of viewers (we all remember the Game of Thrones coffee cup incident, right?)
In fact, this isn’t the first change The Last of Us has had to make in order to make the show better for the fans. Series co-creator and showrunner Craig Mazin told Variety that the opening installment for the series was originally supposed to be two episodes until HBO and HBO Max head of content Casey Bloys told him to merge the two parts together. According to Bloys, he had a gut instinct that having the two episodes merged into one would make for some great television and that putting the ending of the second episode in Episode 1 would motivate people to keep watching.
Apparently, Bloys’ hunch was correct because The Last of Us has gone on to become one of the most popular shows on television, even beating the viewership of the popular Game of Thrones spin-off House of the Dragon.
Co-creators of The Last of Us, Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, have admitted that they aren’t afraid of making more changes in order to tell a good story. While the television series has stayed faithful to the game that it is based on, the show’s creators have developed a few key differences in the plot. One of these differences includes placing a greater emphasis on Joel’s mental health issues than what was reflected in the video game.
Mazin and Druckmann described how Joel’s panic attacks are an integral part of his character since they explain the trauma he is currently processing as well as the motivation he has to keep himself and Ellie alive.
It will be interesting to see what other changes The Last of Us makes as the show continues to develop. The Last of Us airs on HBO and HBO Max, with new episodes released weekly on Sundays.
