As reported by ScreenRant, during a recent chat with Variety, The Last of Us creators Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin confirmed that a popular fungal infection origin fan theory is accurate. HBO's The Last of Us is a new series based on the well-known PlayStation video game of the same title. The television stars Pedro Pascal as Joel Miller, the zombie apocalypse surviving black market smuggler who gets roped into escorting 14-year-old Ellie (played by Bella Ramsey) to a distant headquarters for the Fireflies, a revolutionary group attempting to restore peace to the world. Previously, show creators Druckmann and Mazin promised that the new HBO series would stay faithful to the source material while additionally teasing more than a few significant changes from the video game.
As noted by SR, one notable change to the HBO adaption was revealed during The Last of Us' second episode, which explored the origins of the fungal infection that changed the world. In the show's premiere episode, viewers noticed hints throughout the episode that seemed to indicate where the infection originated. These clues led many to believe that the cordyceps infection started at a flour mill in Jakarta, Indonesia, and was spread through baked goods. Then, in The Last of Us' second episode, there's a flashback to Jakarta, which shows a top mycologist investigating early cases of infection.
When asked why they chose to open the episode with a flashback to Jakarta, Mazin stated, "It started with a conversation that Neil and I were having early on, where I would ask him some of my patented, annoying questions. One of them was "What's going on in the rest of the world?" One of the things that Neil always talks about is how in the game your perspective is really connected completely to either Joel or Ellie, depending on who you're moving with your controller. We don't have that, so then the question is, "What does the rest of the world look like?" Initially, we were going to have much more of an international view of things, but I think where we went was to just talk about where it started, and ground people in the science of it as best we could."
Neil Druckmann Confirmed That There Were "Hints" About the Infection's Origins in the Series Premiere
The Last of Us show creators continued to discuss the series' most recent episode. When asked if viewers would ever get to see the origins of the fungus, Druckmann said, "Everything we saw in the game was from three characters' perspective — [Joel's daughter] Sarah, Joel and Ellie, that's it. Here, we have the ability leave those characters and show some other stuff, but it was always important to never say, "OK, here is patient zero, the exact origin." A lot of it is based on hints. Craig would come to me with his millions of questions, like "How did this thing spread?" We had one hint in the game, in the newspaper you pick up as Sarah, where it implies that there were contaminated products. We talked about: How would this spread? Where would it start? We're revealing more and more from the first episode, where we gave hints of things that would have turned out very different for the Millers had they made those pancakes. Now, we get to see a bit more of how this thing started."
That question led Variety to ask if the fan theory (that the fungus originated in a flour mill in Jakarta and spread through contaminated flour) was indeed correct.
Mazin said, "I think it's pretty explicit."
Druckmann similarly responded, "Yeah, we pretty much said yes."
Mazin continued, "When she talks about where these people worked and what was going on in that factory — yeah, it's pretty clear that's what's going on. We liked the idea of that science, and we try as best we can to make sure that our research all connects. [The mycologist] asks where it happened, and the guy says a flour factory on the west side of the city. We are absolutely talking about — there is the world's largest flour mill in Jakarta — so that's a fine theory and I think people should keep running with it."
The first two episodes of The Last of Us are now available on HBO Max.