A prequel to The Last of Us starring Ellie’s mother was in the works before being shelved

The first season of The Last of Us on HBO recently came to a close with its ninth and final episode, one that began with a flashback of Ellie’s mother, Anna, at the moment of the daughter’s birth and mother’s death. It’s a story that fans of the game have been distantly aware of for years, but one that has never been directly told in the two games, barely mentioning that she is a friend of Marlene’s.

However, if things had been a bit different, he would have had a more physical role in the games. Speaking to Kinda Funny recently, Naughty Dog co-chairman and The Last of Us director-writer Neil Druckmann revealed that the studio was planning a prequel. from The Last of Us at one point he would have focused on Anna and developed the story.

Interestingly, Druckmann says that the game was supposed to be developed by an outside studio to which it had been pitched by Kinda Funny’s Greg Miller, and although that studio, which has remained unnamed, and Naughty Dog were in talks about the project “for quite some time”, the project eventually ended up falling apart and being shelved.

“There was a much more complete version of this story that went further back in time that was going to be made into a video game. Not by Naughty Dog, by a different game studio that Greg Miller introduced me to. And we had talked to them for quite some time about doing this, and then it just fell apart, it didn’t quite work. But there is another reality in which there is an Anna video game.

Whether that’s an idea Naughty Dog will decide to return to at some point in the future remains to be seen, but there’s no question that it’s certainly an idea fans of the franchise would love to hear more about.