Warning! This article contains spoilers for The Last of Us Part II.

The Last of Us Part II is a really bleak, soul-crushing story, so the second season of HBO’s The Last of Us TV adaptation will need to adapt the game’s lightest moments to offset the darkness. The Last of Us Part II sees Ellie embarking on a grisly quest to exact revenge for Joel’s murder. As she marches through Seattle on a warpath, Ellie’s humanity is gradually chipped away. Meanwhile, Joel’s killer, Abby, tries to claw her humanity back as she takes two kids under her wing in the hope of alleviating her guilt and achieving some form of redemption.

On the whole, The Last of Us Part II is one of the darkest games ever made. It has its player massacre both sides of a gruesome civil war while the unlucky NPCs scream in pain and cry out each other’s names. Director Neil Druckmann expertly used lighter moments, like a snowball fight and a birthday flashback with Joel and Ellie, to break up this darkness. In the TV show, Druckmann and his co-showrunner Craig Mazin need to include as many of these lighter moments as possible to avoid letting The Last of Us season 2 get too dark.

10 Joel Plays “Future Days” For Ellie

The Promise Kept

The Last of Us Part II opens with Joel confessing to Tommy that he slaughtered the Fireflies at the hospital to prevent them from killing Ellie to create a cure. During his confession, he cleans up a guitar he found in a garage, since he promised to teach Ellie how to play. Upon their return to Jackson, Joel pays Ellie a visit, shows her the guitar ahead of their lessons, and plays a touching rendition of Pearl Jam’s “Future Days” for her.

This heartwarming scene is the calm before the storm. There’s been a lot of speculation about whether the TV show can use “Future Days,” since the song came out in 2013 and the TV show pushed the Cordyceps outbreak back to 2003. But it’s such a perfect song choice thematically – “If I ever were to lose you / I’d surely lose myself” – that they might as well just use it anyway.

9 Ellie & Dina’s Snowball Fight

A Playful Prelude

Just before heading out on their fateful patrol at the beginning of the game, Ellie and Dina get into a snowball fight with some kids at a snow-covered playground in Jackson. This scene primarily exists as a spirited way to show players how to pick up throwable objects and throw them at enemies, but it’s a really fun sequence. This is the first time the audience meets Dina, and it’s a great way to introduce her character, because it shows her playfulness and immaturity, two qualities that she and Ellie have in common.

Once Ellie and Dina head out on patrol, their story takes a series of really dark twists and turns. So, before getting into all that, the TV show should offer a moment of levity by adapting the snowball fight sequence. It instantly demonstrates Ellie and Dina’s chemistry.

8 Owen Takes Abby To The Aquarium For The First Time

Abby and Owen’s Romantic Past

After Abby arrives at the F.O.B. and hears that Owen has gone A.W.O.L., she gazes out at the Ferris wheel where she’s sure he’s hiding. Then, The Last of Us Part II flashes back a few years to when Owen first took her there. They jump off the Ferris wheel, swim through a hidden passageway, and explore the aquarium.

For video game players, this section mainly serves to establish the aquarium location. It gives players a chance to look around and get their bearings. But it should still make it into the TV show, because it serves an important character function, too. It further develops Abby and Owen’s relationship by filling in their romantic history. This scene reveals the tragic underpinning of their romance: they always loved each other, but Abby’s grief over losing her father complicated their relationship.

7 Ellie & Dina Get High At Eugene’s Library Hideout

Ellie and Dina’s Intimate Moment

After getting caught in a blizzard on their patrol, Ellie and Dina take shelter in a library and find that Eugene, a former Firefly who used to do the same patrol with Dina, has set up a secret hideout in the back. When they turn on the generator, they discover that he also had a weed farm in the basement. They find a jar full of well-preserved joints and decide to smoke one as they lay low for the night.

This is the moment that Ellie and Dina finally face their feelings for each other after brushing them off all day. It’s one of the most beautifully romantic scenes in the game. This sequence provides a much-needed break from the darkness and violence of The Last of Us before Ellie rides off to find Joel and ends up walking into a life-altering trauma.

6 Abby & Owen’s Archery Contest

Abby’s Break from the Tension

Abby’s second aquarium flashback sees her visiting Owen around Christmastime. The primary function of this sequence is to show how Abby tracked down Joel. She tells Owen that she’s got a lead – Joel’s brother lives in Jackson – and every other member of the Salt Lake crew is onboard with her plan to travel down there and make him pay. But before Abby tells Owen about this new intel, she spots a leaderboard with scores for Owen and Mel.

Owen has filled the aquarium with targets and he and Mel have both done a timed challenge to see how many they can hit with a toy bow and arrow. While Owen is hesitant to put Abby on the leaderboard (because Mel will know she was there), Abby is eager to take the challenge. This moment of levity is refreshing between the horrors of Abby being captured by the Seraphites and Lev and Yara helping her escape their clutches.

5 Ellie Plays “Take On Me” For Dina

Ellie and Dina’s Serenade is a Great Musical Interlude

While Ellie and Dina ride through downtown Seattle in search of gasoline for the generator that’ll open a checkpoint gate, there’s a missable moment in an abandoned music store. In this music store, Ellie finds a guitar. She starts to play “Future Days,” but she’s still reluctant to talk about Joel, so she quickly changes her tune when Dina walks in. Instead, she plays an acoustic version of a-ha’s “Take on Me,” which she previously played for Dina at a campfire.

This moment has been criticized for being too saccharin, but it’s a touching scene that further develops Ellie and Dina’s romance. Their love story is one of the sweetest parts of the game – at least until Ellie’s desire for vengeance fully consumes her – and “Take on Me” is one of their most romantic moments together. It’s also the first on-screen confirmation that Joel fulfilled his promise to teach Ellie how to play guitar.

4 Tommy Teaches Ellie To Use A Sniper Rifle

Foreshadowing and Bonding

Before Joel and Ellie stake out a hotel and nearly suffer gruesome deaths at the hands of a bloater, the chapter “Finding Strings” opens with Tommy teaching Ellie how to use his sniper rifle. Along a woodland trail, they pick off some stragglers devouring the corpse of a dead animal and hanging around a ski lift on a nearby mountain. Tommy gives Ellie advice as she figures out the scope and the kickback, and he’s impressed by how quickly she picks it up.

This scene slyly foreshadows the shocking revelation that Tommy is the sniper tormenting Abby at the marina, but it also highlights Ellie and Tommy’s relationship. After briefly meeting in the first game, Ellie and Tommy have gotten very close in the years since. Just as Joel embraced Ellie as his daughter, Tommy has embraced her as his niece.

3 Abby Gets A Toy Shark For Lev

A Moment of Kindness

As Yara recovers from her amputation, she asks Abby to help her find something to lift Lev’s spirits. They go down to the aquarium’s gift shop and have a look around. After dismissing a t-shirt and a snow globe, Abby finds the perfect gift: a little toy shark. Despite being scared of the ocean, Lev loves sharks. But when Abby and Yara go to give the shark to Lev, they find him fleeing the aquarium in a stolen boat.

This kicks off Abby’s grim “Day 3” action on the Seraphites’ island, where she has to endure and survive the W.L.F.’s assault. Picking out a present to give Lev is another great calm-before-the-storm sequence. In between taking down the Rat King and going headfirst into an active warzone, this random act of kindness is a welcome change of pace.

2 Ellie & J.J. Sit On The Tractor

Finding Peace in Chaos

After Abby confronts Ellie at the theater and narrowly spares her life – along with that of Dina and Tommy – a time jump reveals where Ellie and Dina ended up. Upon returning to Jackson, they followed through on their dream to get a farmhouse outside town where they could raise sheep (and their newborn son, J.J.). Before too long, Ellie’s unquenchable thirst for revenge drags her back into the chaos of the outside world.

But just before that, she takes J.J. out to the tractor to pick up his favorite stuffed animal. Before going back inside, they sit on the tractor and take in the gorgeous view. Not only is this a beautiful image; it’s a moving character moment as Ellie talks to J.J. and seems, albeit briefly, to have finally found some semblance of peace.

1 Joel’s Birthday Gift For Ellie

Joel’s Heartwarming Gesture

Easily the most heartwarming chapter of The Last of Us Part II is “The Birthday Gift,” set three years before the main action, in which Joel gives Ellie the best birthday present she could possibly hope for. He takes her to a dilapidated science museum full of life-size dinosaur models. When they go upstairs to the aerospace section and get into a space capsule, Joel gives her the greatest gift of all: an audio recording of a space launch taken from inside the cockpit.

As Ellie puts on a space helmet, shuts her eyes, and listens to the recording, she gets to experience what it would be like to achieve her dream of going to space. Since Joel’s worst mistake was Abby’s motivation for killing him, the sequel primarily revolves around that. “The Birthday Gift” is a timely reminder of Joel’s best qualities: he’s a loving dad who just wanted to see a smile on Ellie’s face. It’ll be an absolute delight to see Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey play this scene in The Last of Us season 2.