We need to talk about Abby. The sort-of antagonist in The Last of Us Part II first stirred up controversy when the game originally debuted in 2020. Abby faces off against our protagonists Joel and Ellie in a world beset by zombies and carved into warring factions of survivors. Leading up to the release of the TV series’ second season on April 13, various critiques are again circulating online, and they may be hard to make sense of if you haven’t played the game or followed the chatter around it.
Let’s get this out of the way first: Some gamers hate Abby, and The Last of Us II as a whole, for bigoted reasons. A toxic subset of fans objected to the sequel before it was even released: Teasers and leaks from the game confirmed that Ellie is gay (a plot line touched on in the first game), that the main antagonist Abby was a woman who defied the female body types typically seen in video games, and that there would be a trans character in the game. All those character traits remain pretty radical for AAA games.
Then there were complaints about Abby actually based on story and character. On a basic level, players would also navigate the game in Part II not as Joel, the primary playable character in the first entry, but as Ellie and Abby. That alone was a big change since a lot of players had grown emotionally attached to Joel. It’s difficult to explain the challenge with forcing players to play as (and, implicitly, empathize with) Abby without spoiling the plot of the game.
But people felt so passionately about Abby that the actor who voiced and provided a motion-capture performance of Abby for the game dealt with significant harassment and death threats directed not only at her but at her infant son. As Season 2 of the HBO adaptation approaches, here’s everything you need to know about the controversy around Abby. Spoilers for The Last of Us Part II—both the game and TV show—ahead.
