The Last of Us HBO skips one of the game's saddest deaths

If you’d told me that HBO’s The Last of Us was going to cram the events of ‘Seattle Day One’ into a single 53-minute episode a few months ago, I’d have been left a tad dubious.

Ellie and Dina’s first day in Seattle is eventful, to say the least, but I have to give it to showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, they pulled it off.

The Last of Us’ latest episode, ‘Day One’, features all of the key highlights video games fans could hope to see.

There was the iconic ‘Take On Me’ scene, the WLF and Scar encounter at the TV station, the infected subway sequence, plus there was even time to add in some Isaac backstory and allow Ellie and Dina to, uh, get it on?

All in all, it was a brilliant episode, although I am hoping we’ll see Ellie’s rage come to light a tad more as soon as possible.

Naturally, the episode didn’t feature every tiny facet of Ellie and Dina’s day one journey in the game.

The story has to be condensed and the school and Serevena Hotel sequences, for example, don’t add much beyond combat gameplay.

There’s only one key aspect of ‘Day One’ that seems to have been left out, but I’m very glad that’s the case.

There’s plenty in store for Ellie and Dina in the weeks ahead.

Shimmer, Ellie and Dina’s horse unfortunately dies within the space of the game’s ‘day one’.

The duo are travelling through downtown Seattle on Shimmer when they trigger some kind of WLF-made tripwire bomb.

The explosion kills Shimmer, although Ellie and Dina survive (it does bring them face to face with the WLF but they survive that close encounter too).

The scene didn’t take place in the TV show, however, and I’m glad to see Shimmer’s fate retconned.

In HBO’s ‘Day One’, Shimmer was last seen being led into the downtown music store.

I’d love to know if she’s alright though because obviously when Ellie and Dina escaped the TV station via the subway and set up camp in the theatre, that would’ve taken them to a different area of the city from where they left Shimmer.

It wouldn’t exactly make for thrilling TV but I hope offscreen, one of them is able to grab Shimmer and bring her to the theatre.

Otherwise, abandonment might be even worse than her grizzly in-game death.

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