We all remember PS Vita girl from The Last of Us Part 2, right? She’s a part of the W.L.F. and has the unfortunate job of being on duty while Ellie is creeping around the hospital. But instead of keeping watch, she spends her night playing Hotline Miami on PS Vita with her poor, stab-able neck fully exposed. She runs into Ellie and…it ends for her how it ends for everyone else when they meet Ellie: drowning in her own blood.
This character, Whitney Sato (I looked it up, don’t worry, she wasn’t some huge name), became something of a meme when The Last of Us Part 2 first released because of her love for the gone-but-not-forgotten PlayStation handheld.
Now that The Last of Us season two is airing on HBO, I’m hoping the PS Vita girl gets her own Long, Long Time.
The Choice Of Long, Long Time
Okay, I don’t actually want that.
Long, Long Time was the best episode of The Last of Us season one. It took a relatively standard romp through an abandoned town from the early hours of the first game and adapted it into a touching love story told over the course of two decades. What’s more, it established Bill and Frank as more central characters to the themes of The Last of Us when, in the game, Bill was just a loveable hardass, and Frank doesn’t even make an appearance.
An appearance where he’s alive, that is.
The show took the opportunity with Long, Long Time to actually adapt the source material for television instead of just remaking it shot-for-shot (something the later episodes are very guilty of). I’m hoping that, with season two of the show, HBO takes bigger risks and makes more episodes like this one.
PS Vita girl is an example of one of many expendable side characters from The Last of Us Part 2 that were given humanity thanks to how fans reacted to her brief interactions with Ellie and Abby. I honestly don’t think she should get her own episode of the show devoted entirely to setting up her love for Hotline Miami only to be stabbed in the throat the second Ellie shows up, but I do think it can be something more.
Adapt, Change, Make It Interesting
What I’m truly hoping for with season two is for the adaptation to make bolder choices than the first season ever did. Long, Long Time, as well as the first episode‘When You’re Lost In The Darkness’, did an excellent job at taking big swings to adapt the elements of the game without recreating its moments one-to-one, whereas many scenes in the later episodes tried to follow the script of the game a little too closely.
After watching the first episode of season two, it seemsHBO is more interested in diverting from the beaten path walked by The Last of Us Part 2 while still hitting the larger story beats, even though there were some blatant shot-for-shot moments like with the dance scene between Ellie and Dina. Based on what we were shown in the “coming later this season” trailer that played at the end of the first episode, there are going to be plenty more changes coming.
Give me more of that, please. Give me Long, Long Time. Give me PS Vita girl.