{"id":76688,"date":"2026-04-27T11:58:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T15:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/?p=76688"},"modified":"2026-04-27T12:36:30","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T16:36:30","slug":"the-last-of-us-2s-big-death-was-controversial-at-naughty-dog-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/?p=76688","title":{"rendered":"The Last Of Us 2’s Big Death Was Controversial At Naughty Dog, Too"},"content":{"rendered":"

A former Naughty Dog developer who worked on the first The Last of Us and its sequel has discussed the controversial decision to kill off a major character in The Last of Us: Part II.<\/p>\n

Major spoilers for The Last of Us: Part II and the franchise in general follow below.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Heather Cerlan, an environment and texture artist for both The Last of Us games, said on Kiwi Talkz<\/a> that the studio was “pretty split” on the decision to kill off Joel. “It was controversially internally, too,” she said.<\/p>\n

Joel’s death leaked before The Last of Us: Part II was released, creating much hullabaloo online, as fans passionately weighed in on the shocking death of one of the franchise’s core characters.<\/p>\n

Joel is killed by Abby in The Last of Us: Part II. Abby hunts him down and murders him with a golf club to get revenge for Joel’s massacre in the first game, including him gunning down Abby’s father.<\/p>\n

The death was shocking in the 2020 game, and it was recreated in similarly brutal fashion on HBO’s TV series in the Season 2 episode “Through the Valley.” For the TV show, however, fans who played the game or knew<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A former Naughty Dog developer who worked on the first The Last of Us and its sequel has discussed the controversial decision to kill off a major character in The Last of Us: Part II. Major spoilers for The Last of Us: Part II and the franchise in general follow below. Heather Cerlan, an environment…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":76690,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-external","brand-gamespot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76688"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76688"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76691,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76688\/revisions\/76691"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/76690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}