New footage for The Last of Us Season 2 has dropped, and viewers are already anxiously seated. The teaser, which was released as part of Max’s sizzle reel for both new and upcoming shows, offered the first official look at Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) as well as Joel (Pedro Pascal) defending his actions in Season 1, brief looks at other characters, and Ellie (Bella Ramsay) being as badass as ever. Some longtime fans may not be ready to relive what happened to a certain character in the upcoming second season, but this heartwrenching scene may coming later than fans expect.

While Season 2 of The Last of Us is currently slated to be shorter than the first, there is still a lot from the game to adapt. With its time jumps and changing point-of-view structure, it would be a bit jarring to see the entirety of the game’s story be condensed. However, that may not be the case, as the teaser footage for Season 2 revealed a certain scene that appears much later in the game. Instead of a back-and-forth between Ellie’s and Abby’s POVs, the series’ timeline could be more linear.

‘The Last of Us Part II’s Timeline Is More Jumbled

The events that take place in The Last of Us Part II don’t happen in any linear order. The sequel starts off with Joel and Ellie settling into Jackson in the wake of Joel’s violent rescue effort, which resulted in him killing multiple Fireflies in order to save Ellie’s life. After Ellie is gifted a guitar, the story jumps ahead by five years. Ellie is nineteen at this point, and the current timeline picks up the morning after a dance held in Jackson’s church hall. Players don’t get much context other than the fact that Ellie and Dana (Isabela Merced) shared a kiss there, but as the story continues, the game reveals that Ellie and Joel’s relationship is strained for some reason. At this point, The Last of Us Part II jumps between Ellie’s and Abby’s points of view as their stories progress. The game spends a significant amount of time with Ellie before switching to Abby’s POV, leading towards a traumatic event for both characters.

Not only does the game hop POVs, but the game reveals how Abby is connected to Joel and why his relationship with Ellie is so rocky through various flashbacks. As she and Joel live their lives in Jackson over the course of those five years, Ellie gets the sense that he has been lying to her about her immunity. Joel finally comes clean at some point before the Jackson dance, and as a result, their father-daughter bond hasn’t been the same since. For Abby, players discover that she was a member of the Fireflies and was there at the hospital when Joel went on his murder spree to rescue Ellie. More heartbreakingly, one of the doctors preparing to operate on Ellie, before he was killed by Joel, was Abby’s father. Since then, she has been on a path of revenge to track Joel down and murder him. This becomes the biggest turning point in the game. Abby succeeds in killing Joel right in front of Ellie, forcing the players to understand both characters’ grief and literally put themselves in their shoes as their POVs switch and Ellie takes the same path of revenge Abby embarked on.

‘The Last of Us’ Season 2 Could Be Making Big Changes

There’s only so much that this new teaser footage is hinting at for The Last of Us Season 2, although it’s great to see Pascal and Ramsey reprising their roles as Joel and Ellie, respectively. What parts of the game will be adapted and how is still a source of speculation. One of the first scenes briefly shown at the beginning of the footage is the back of Ellie’s head as she surveys the Jackson dance. Interestingly, this specific scene is already being teased early for fans, considering that it occurs later in the game as a flashback. This could mean that the Jackson dance scene is happening earlier in Season 2. Plus, as the teaser hints toward, other characters like Isaac (Jeffrey Wright) seem to be getting introduced into the show much earlier than they are in the game. This could mean that Season 2 will portray more of Abby’s life with her father as Fireflies and even how they first became part of the group. Abby’s relationship with her ex, Owen, could also be fleshed out more as time progresses before his new girlfriend Mel comes into the picture.

If the Jackson dance plays out more linearly in the second season, then there may not be any time jumps from past to present for both Ellie and Abby. The story told in the game could happen chronologically in the show, allowing viewers to see the downfall of Joel and Ellie’s relationship leading up to Abby’s introduction and how she ties into the rest of the story. Either way, the show will have to revisit that portion of Abby’s past and how she stumbled upon the aftermath of Joel’s rescue of Ellie. If that’s the case, and Isaac is also being revealed early, then viewers might be seeing other story elements early on too. The show could introduce the characters of Yara and Lev, as well as the group they belong to known as the Seraphites, before Abby even meets them in-game. On the Jackson side of things, Jesse’s (Young Mazino) and Dana’s on-and-off relationship could also be explored more before Ellie falls for Dana.

How Could These Timeline Changes Affect ‘The Last of Us’ Season 2?

If the timeline for The Last of Us‘s second season is more chronological than random, it would mean a major shakeup from the game’s structure in translating the story over to live-action. Viewers may not follow Ellie’s and Abby’s POVs simultaneously if the second season only focuses on the events that happen leading up to their first encounter. If that’s the case, how much of the second game will the new season actually cover?With seven planned episodes, that’s definitely not enough to cover the entirety of Part II — but it seems that the creators behind the show have already considered that possibility.

In an interview with Deadline, however, showrunners and directors Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin teased the possibility of three to four seasons in total for The Last of Us. If there were to be a third season, then it would be “significantly larger” than Season 2. “One thing is absolutely for sure, I don’t see how we could tell the story that remains after Season 2 is complete in one more season,” said Mazin. If The Last of Us Part 2‘s story is spread throughout multiple seasons, like Mazin is teasing, then this would be a great opportunity for the creators to flesh out a proper backstory for the Seraphites. Spanning the second game into multiple seasons would be the best way to include the majority of its story elements while introducing some original ideas or expanding on the limited perspective the game offers.

None of this confirms or denies other seasons outside The Last of Us Season 2, nor does it confirm a linear timeline in seven episodes. Still, this direction would make the most sense for the show. How else could Druckmann and Mazin fit The Last of Us Part II‘s story into one season as smoothly as they did for the first one? There’s so much going on that it would be impossible to tell the entirety of the second game over seven hour-long installments. A chronological adaptation of the game would make the most sense given the amount of narrative to tackle, but either way, come 2025, fans will need a deluxe box of tissues close at hand.