There was almost a Last of Us prequel game about Ellie's mom

Naughty Dog co-president Neil Druckmann has revealed that a Last of Us prequel starring Ellie’s mother was briefly in development.

As a heads up: there will be brief spoilers for Episode 9 of HBO’s The Last of Us, which aired on Sunday. So consider this a spoiler warning!

During an interview with Kinda Funny, Druckmann discussed the episode’s opening, which features Ellie’s mother, Anna. It’s a brief scene that was initially going to be a prequel game to The Last of Us Part 1.

“There was a much more full version of this story that went further back in time that was going to be made into a video game,” Druckmann said. “[It] wasn’t going to be made by Naughty Dog, but by a different studio.”

Druckmann continues by saying that the project fell through early on, so HBO was free to use some of those story ideas in the show. A clever way to utilize abandoned material, isn’t it?

Interestingly enough, in the series, Anna was played by Ashley Johnson – the actress that plays Ellie in The Last Of Us Part 1 and The Last Of Us Part 2. Longtime fans went wild when Johnson came on screen for obvious reasons.

The Last of Us is more popular than ever these days. Episode 9 of the HBO show saw record-breaking viewership, and Naughty Dog is already working on a multiplayer spinoff.

Written by Kyle Campbell on behalf of GLHF.