After killing Joel in Jackson, Abby returns to Seattle where she serves as a soldier for the Washington Liberation Front (WLF), a militia locked in brutal conflict with a religious cult called the Seraphites.12 Her storyline takes a dramatic turn when her ex-boyfriend Owen goes missing while investigating Seraphite activity, prompting Abby to search for him against WLF leader Isaac Dixon's suspicions of desertion.13 During her search, Abby is captured by Seraphites but rescued by two outcast siblings, Yara and Lev, forming an unexpected bond that ultimately leads her to question her WLF allegiance.32

The Seattle storyline explores Abby's complex journey as she navigates between warring factions, tends to Yara's severe arm injury, and helps Lev confront his past at the Seraphite settlement.12 Her path eventually leads to a violent confrontation with Ellie at the theater, where she kills Jesse and severely wounds Tommy before sparing Ellie and pregnant Dina at Lev's insistence.14 Season 2's finale sets up this storyline with a cliffhanger that rewinds to "Seattle Day One" from Abby's perspective, suggesting that Season 3 will fully explore these events that run parallel to Ellie's journey through the same three days in Seattle.45

Shifting the protagonist perspective from Ellie to Abby represents one of the most controversial narrative decisions in gaming history, which the HBO series appears ready to embrace fully in Season 3. This perspective shift serves multiple storytelling purposes: it provides contrasting viewpoints that enhance themes of moral ambiguity, reveals different motivations behind characters' actions, and builds dramatic tension by exposing secrets characters hide from each other.12 The transition will likely be handled through clear structural markers—either chapter breaks between episodes or visual cues within episodes—to help viewers adjust to seeing the world through Abby's eyes rather than Ellie's.34

The technique of focusing on "the character with the most to lose" in each segment of the story makes Abby a compelling choice for Season 3's protagonist.3 By centering on Abby's perspective during the Seattle storyline, viewers will experience the complex emotional journey of a character they may initially despise, challenging audience loyalties and expectations. This narrative strategy mirrors the game's controversial but powerful choice to force players to confront their assumptions about heroes and villains in a post-apocalyptic world where moral certainty has collapsed.56

The HBO series closely mirrors the video game's innovative narrative structure, which employs parallel storytelling to challenge viewers' moral judgments. In The Last of Us Part II, the story unfolds across three days in Seattle from both Ellie and Abby's perspectives, with a dramatic midpoint reversal in the theater confrontation scene that shifts player control from Ellie to Abby.12 This structure forces players to experience the consequences of Ellie's actions through the eyes of her enemy, creating a powerful emotional dissonance that the show appears poised to recreate.

The adaptation will likely maintain the game's three-act structure while incorporating its distinctive flashback technique to develop character motivations. Just as the game used flashbacks to reveal Abby's connection to the Firefly hospital and her relationship with her father (the surgeon Joel killed), Season 3 will need these retrospective glimpses to humanize a character viewers may initially despise.34 This structural approach serves the thematic exploration of cyclical violence—particularly evident in the game's Israeli-Palestinian conflict parallels—where neither side emerges morally unscathed, a complexity that makes the protagonist shift both challenging and profound.5