The Last of Us Star Kaitlyn Dever on Seeing Another Side to Abby

Posted in: HBO, TV | Tagged: the last of us

The Last of Us Star Kaitlyn Dever on Seeing Another Side to Abby

The Last of Us star Kaitlyn Dever on filming Abby's dream sequence, the importance of showing another side to Abby, and more.

Published Thu, 24 Apr 2025 07:37:07 -0500
by Tom Chang
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To say there was a weight on Kaitlyn Dever's shoulders would be an understatement. How can you not when playing Abby, one of the most polarizing characters in pop culture in The Last of Us, but she's also in a unique spot. She serves dual roles as co-protagonist and antagonist opposite Bella Ramsey's Ellie. No doubt, if season two plays out like the games, the two won't likely share any new scenes anytime soon for the remainder of the season. The first layer coming off of Dever's shoulders is the obvious controversial second episode, "Through the Valley," that sees Abby finally taking her revenge after five years on the original series lead, Joel Miller (Pedro Pascal), killing him in front of Ellie. The actress spoke to Entertainment Weekly about finally getting to "talk about it," the episode's opening that sees her confronting her doppelganger in a dream, a scene not in 2020's Part II, that relives her trauma following Joel's massacre of the Fireflies to save Ellie in the Salt Lake City hospital to close season one.

The Last of Us Star Kaitlyn Dever on Building Abby's Depth Early

"It's like, I can talk about it, I can't talk about it, but now I can talk about it, which is great news," Dever said of Abby getting revenge on Joel for killing her father, the doctor who was set to perform fatal surgery on Ellie. "I can relax a little." At the beginning of the episode, Abby was making her way to her father as her younger counterpart, who was leaning against the wall, warned her not to go inside the surgical room before older Abby proceeded, "I had laryngitis, too, when I did that scene. So it was so intense," Dever recalls. "But, yeah, it was a really sad scene. It broke my heart to have to shoot that."

The Booksmart (2019) and Unbelievable star revealed she performed her younger counterpart's scene before her current incarnation, working the logistics with creator Craig Mazin. "As an audience member, getting to see this side of her is really important and really profound. That allows you to literally step inside Abby's brain. It just encapsulates everything that she's feeling for that scene that comes after," she said. "She so badly wants her old life back. She so badly wants the situation to not be what it is. That was the most important thing to me in playing that scene… is just wanting to make it all stop. I almost think that some part of her, too, thinks that she could have done something about it, or there's some survivor's guilt there. I think that's really, really powerful."

Mazin and franchise creator Neil Druckmann's narrative changes to Abby early in season two reflect that Part II doesn't address much of the character's backstory until players are far deeper into her campaign, as the game alternates between her and Ellie throughout. In hindsight, it might have been a mistake since, to progress, players had to take control of Abby when they were at their most apprehensive. "You play as Abby, so you immediately form an empathic connection with her," Druckmann said at an event in March before the season two premiere. "If we were to stick to a very similar timeline [as the game], viewers would have to wait a very, very long time to get that context. It would probably get spoiled between seasons, and we didn't want that."

That's how the idea of Abby's dream came about, "Dreams are a recurring thing," Druckmann told EW. "This was a nice evolution of that idea of seeing how it's eating away at her." For more on Dever's comments and how she distinguishes younger and current Abby, her initial reaction to Abby's ultimate confrontation with Joel, and what else we can expect, you can check out the full interview. The Last of Us airs Sundays on HBO and is available to stream on Max.

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