The Last Of Us Just Proved Why Its Spore Retcon Was A Smart Move
The series may have completely changed the Infected in Season 1, but Season 2 makes it all worth it.
The Last of Us has always valued its source material, adapting full scenes beat-for-beat, and even bringing actors from the original games. But that doesn’t mean the showrunners, original game creative director Neil Druckmann and Chernobyl’s Craig Mazin, are afraid to veer away from the saga fans grew to love.
One of the first signs that not everything would be the same is when it was revealed in Episode 2 of the first season that Infected don’t release spores like in the game. Instead, they sported tendrils, used to communicate over vast distances and seen when Tess gets bitten in Season 1 Episode 2. The reason for the replacement was such a mystery, but in Season 2 it all makes sense — the removal of spores was all leading up to a giant reveal.
Warning! Spoilers ahead for The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 5.
Spores in The Last of Us game weren’t really a threat since characters had gas masks.
In The Last of Us game, spores aren’t that big of a deal: at this point in the apocalypse, everyone carries around a gas mask that protects you from the airborne particles. Therefore, their removal from the series didn’t change much. In fact, it just made more room in the narrative for the tendrils, which added a new terrifying element to the Infected and how they work.
But in the Season 2 trailer, we got a glimpse of Ellie surrounded by spores in the air — with no gas mask, of course, because she’s immune. So what was the motivation in the story to bring back the spores? Fans of the The Last of Us Part II knew exactly what scene this was. In the game, when Ellie reaches Seattle she tracks Abby’s sidekick Nora to the Seattle hospital. Nora runs away into the lower levels of the hospital, and the two end up in a basement full of spores, which is how Nora discovers Ellie is immune before she is tortured and murdered.
Ellie encounters spore-expelling Infected in The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 5.
In the game, the basement isn’t just yet another room full of spores: it’s a groundbreaking discovery in how the Infected evolve. In the Season 2 Episode 5 cold open, we see a flashback where Hanrahan, the WLF commander we saw at the beginning of Episode 4, is talking to one of her soldiers, asking why she shot some of her own men. The soldier explains how they explored the hospital and encountered spores. “It’s in the air,” she says.
By not establishing spores in Season 1, their appearance in Season 2 isn’t just another encounter, it’s a fundamental change to how the characters need to survive, much like the “stalker” Infected phase in previous episodes. It may not be completely faithful to the game, but it creates a great TV-watching experience for the fans who never played the game. Spores may have been missed, but this scene made their absence completely worth it.
