Spoilers ahead for “The Last of Us” Season 2, Episode 1, “Future Days.”

After a two-year wait, “The Last of Us” has finally returned to HBO for the second season of its post-apocalyptic drama, which adapts the critically acclaimed video game, “The Last of Us Part II.” But if you’re a fan of the franchise, you may have noticed something strange: Season 2’s debut episode just casually spoiled one of the game’s biggest twists.

Let’s back up for a second because it’s been a while since we’ve spent any time with Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey). Season 1 and the original video game both ended on the same brutal twist: After an epic cross-country journey, Joel brings Ellie to a medical facility in the remains of Salt Lake City. There, they find a resistance group called the Fireflies, who are working on a cure for the zombie virus that’s decimated the world. They believe that Ellie, who has a rare immunity to the virus, may be the key to developing that cure.

Unfortunately, it turns out that this requires removing a piece of Ellie’s zombie-immune brain — which would kill her in the process. Joel, who lost his own daughter during the initial zombie outbreak and has grown protective of Ellie, decides to save her instead, murdering multiple Firefly doctors as he makes his escape.

Ellie is already unconscious on the operating room table when all of this happens, so she has no memory of her violent rescue. When she wakes up hours later, Joel lies to her, claiming the Fireflies couldn’t come up with a cure at all. In Season 1’s final moment, Ellie turns to Joel and says, “Swear to me that everything you said about the Fireflies is true.” He replies, “I swear.”

“The Last of Us” Season 2 opens with that very same scene, a quick reminder of the horrors that just occurred, but in a surprise move, the story then shifts perspective to reveal a group of surviving Fireflies in the process of burying their dead friends and family. The leader of the group is Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), and while everyone else is visibly in mourning, she’s exhibiting a very different emotion: rage.

“Why would he do this?” she asks no one in particular. The group discusses Joel’s rampage, pointing out that they aren’t even sure what his name is, but Abby shoots back with a spot-on description: “Fifties, grey, beard, 6-foot tall, scar on his right temple, and yeah, they say he’s handsome.”

The Fireflies discuss their next move. Someone suggests heading to Seattle, where a man named Isaac is organizing survivors, but Abby pushes back. They aren’t going anywhere else until they get revenge on Joel. Before the scene can end, Abby makes one more promise: “When we kill him, we kill him slowly.”

It’s a gripping set up for the rest of Season 2, which then jumps forward five years to find Joel and Ellie living with a community of survivors in Jackson, Wyoming. But here’s the thing: In the original game, we don’t find out Abby’s motivation for going after Joel until deep into the story. Instead, she just shows up unannounced in Jackson and tries to kill him. It’s only after many hours of gameplay that players find out why Abby was so mad in the first place.

In “The Last of Us Part II” (the game), this reveal comes as a huge shock.

By that point in the game, Abby has been firmly established as the primary antagonist and a two-dimensional villain, so the revelation that her own grief is what’s driving her quest for vengeance comes as a huge shock. That reveal also gets paired with the game’s smartest twist: Halfway through the story, we abruptly jump perspectives from Ellie to Abby and experience her side of the story, forcing the player to suddenly empathize with a character they’ve come to hate.

So why is HBO giving away this big reveal right at the start? It’s tough to say after watching just the first episode of Season 2, but one possibility is that the show’s creators realize they can’t pull off that same big twist on a TV show. Television isn’t an interactive media, and our perspective isn’t usually limited to just one character like it is in a video game. So recreating the perspective shift of “The Last of Us Part II” in this format might not be practical.

There’s also the question of whether Season 2 of “The Last of Us” will even tell the full story of “Part II.” The showrunners have already hinted that they plan to spread that story out over multiple seasons — while also changing some major details — so the game’s original narrative structure likely needs to change as well to account for the long break between Seasons 2 and 3.

What that means exactly remains to be seen, but hopefully the team behind “The Last of Us” can come up with something equally impressive to replace the big twist they just spoiled in Episode 1.

“The Last of Us” airs on HBO on Sunday nights at 9 p.m. ET. It is also available to stream on Max.