The team behind The Last of Us had their work cut out for them as they returned for season two – with major points from the game to hit, new characters to build upon, and effectively a whole new world, five years on from the initial show.

But in a series where no one is safe, even in a compound safe haven, fans know that devastating blood is set to spill in the upcoming episodes.

With a tricky balance of creating their own world while balancing a story already so beloved by fans, the writing team had no easy feat of bringing justice to the Last of Us franchise – thankfully they had Halley Gross on hand, who worked on the game, as a writer and co-executive producer to bring the balance.

Speaking ahead of season two, Halley talks about Ellie and Joel’s unbreakable bond, what’s to come in the new series, and what fans of both the show and the game should prepare for.

I was brought in originally to co-write The Last of Us Part II game with Neil many moons ago now— maybe eight or nine years. I got promoted to narrative lead on the project, and then the guys brought me in for season two of the show to help work on the show.

It’s been really rad to use my Hollywood brain and my video-game brain. Very rarely do they get to work together, so this is really exciting for me.

I had just finished working on season one of [HBO’s] Westworld and got an email from my screenwriting agent saying, ‘Hey, would you have any interest working in games? There’s a super top-secret project: The Last of Us Part II. Would you be willing to meet on it?’

I literally had a [video-game] controller in my hand at that moment. I was playing Skyrim. I was like, ‘Absolutely, f**k yeah, I would love to.’ The way I view working in Hollywood is:

Every job you take should be an opportunity to learn something.

I grew up loving games, so this was such an exciting opportunity to work with some of the best people in the industry in narrative storytelling, games and get to learn how they’re made from the ground up.

The gaming industry is far less structured than Hollywood and every game studio handles it differently. But the way we did it at Naughty Dog was, for the first six months, we broke the game like we would a series of television—took all the major beats and broke them down into levels and sections. So if you were looking at the wall [in the writers room], you could easily imagine you were looking at a series of television.

After six months, we started bringing in designers and artists to build out the outline with integrating mechanics into it. Then it becomes a very different thing. But your cinematics in games – which are the non-playable parts – still function as scenes. We wrote them in final draft and shot them on the stages, like any Marvel movie you might see where the actors are fully in motion-capture and doing that. And for moments that are in-game, that’s where things get pretty different: We’re doing it with V.O. actors, and a lot of it in Excel.

So the experience was bouncing between the kind of writing I already knew and understood from Hollywood, but then learning how to be a support to the in-game experience too. It’s a really different muscle and, in a way, more resembles playwriting because you’re with a character in a continuous space and relying on environmental storytelling on invoking conversation between two characters.

So much of Ellie’s journey in this season is about her being stuck in the past and stuck in the pain of not only the loss that she experiences, but the disintegration of a relationship that was really meaningful for her. And her PTSD will keep her trapped there. Dina represents this possibility for the future; that, if she can get healthy or at the least even in the present, there’s so much reward there. There’s this thing tugging at her that she wants so deeply. And so by giving her this hope, we’re also elucidating how loud this pain is for her, how loud this loss is for her.

They’re both getting to experience what family is for, not the first time, but for the first time in a very, very long time. It doesn’t necessarily have to be defined as father-daughter,but I think for Joel it deeply is, because in Ellie he has this opportunity to fulfil this relationship that was taken from him by this epidemic; by this crisis.

But for Ellie, it’s her rock and it’s her family; it’s this sense of absolute love as she’s growing up in a world where you can never rely on somebody, but she has this person she can rely on. Define it how you will, but what they’re both reaching toward and desperate for is the stability that family can provide in a world that is completely unstable. Love is not about making somebody who you want them to be. Love is about accepting them for who they are, right? And that is one of the journeys that Ellie goes on personally with Joel and the decisions that he’s made.

We also see it in episode six where suddenly Joel realizes he has a teenager he can’t control in his house and is he going to be the father he wishes he had.

Yes, I think it also speaks to Joel’s blindness, right? Like he sees her as his daughter, but he’s not seeing necessarily every facet of her truth.

But when she allows him to, he gets an opportunity to grow and be the man he wants to be. He’s trying to break the cycle as much as he can.

That’s an interesting question. I think they are going to feel a level of disappointment in the people they love.

So much of this narrative has always been about tribalism and othering, and hopefully what you’ll feel is coming to love somebody who’s so different than you, but you can understand the decisions they’ve made, even if they break your heart.

There was something oddly comforting about the fact that they were itinerant in season one; now, with having a home and community, it feels as if there’s much more to lose.

Absolutely right. Again, a theme of the show is love, and in the first season – and the first game – you’re seeing people who have nothing to lose, willing to risk it all. Here, there is this incredible sense of family and how far you’re willing to go to protect them and how devastating the loss of family is.

There’s the question: Is it better to be alone in a world this dangerous, this hostile? Or is the love that can absolutely devastate you worth its potential to elevate you?