The Last of Us Season 2 didn’t need Abby to be buff for one key reason

Abby isn’t quite as buff in HBO’s upcoming rendition of The Last of Us Part 2 but there’s a key reason why. Season 2 of the live-action series alters the character’s appearance somewhat as there’s nowhere near as much fighting as in the second game.

Two years on from the first season setting records and winning awards, HBO’s The Last of Us is now just weeks away from Season 2. Set to debut in April 2025, the seven-episode outing takes place five years after the events of Season 1 and introduces a number of new characters fans of the games will be all too familiar with.

Chief among the new arrivals is Abby. Fear not, we won’t spoil specifics of her character arc here, but from a surface-level glance at her in-game model, anyone can see clear as day she’s quite the tank.

Bulking up and putting on muscle is a crucial part of her journey in the post-apocalyptic world she inhabits, at least, that’s how it was made to seem in The Last of Us Part 2. When it comes to the HBO adaptation, that’s not quite the case, as showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann have now explained why Kaitlyn Dever didn’t need to get ‘jacked’ for the role.

Why isn’t Abby buff in HBO’s The Last of Us Season 2? Showrunners explain

“We value performance over anything else,” Druckmann told Entertainment Weekly in a February 3, 2025 interview.

“We need someone to really capture the essence of those characters… We don’t value as much, ‘Do they look exactly like the character with their eyebrows or their nose or their body?’ Whatever it is.”

Dever, best known for her work in the likes of Dopesick, Dear Evan Hansen, and Last Man Standing, doesn’t exactly share the same build as Abby’s in-game counterpart. But that wasn’t the top consideration when casting her for the role, as Druckmann explained.

“We would’ve struggled to find someone as good as Kaitlyn to play this role,”

The main reason, Druckmann argued, is due to the difference in mediums. In the video game version of the story, players assume control of Abby and, as it’s a game, there’s a lot of over-the-top action and violent combat. She needed to feel distinct from the smaller, more nimble Ellie, so having her be a “brute” is what the devs settled on.

Now for the live-action rendition, this factor “doesn’t play as big of a role because there’s not as much violent action moment to moment,” he explained. “It’s more about the drama.”

“I personally think that there is an amazing opportunity here to delve into someone who is perhaps physically more vulnerable than the Abby in the game, but whose spirit is stronger,” Mazin added.

Whether this translates for the HBO adaptation remains to be seen, but we’ll find out soon enough as Season 2 of The Last of Us premieres in April.