Bella Ramsey had to make their acoustic A-Ha cover “worse” in ‘The Last Of Us’

Spoilers ahead for ‘The Last Of Us’ season two.

Bella Ramsey had to make their acoustic cover of A-Ha‘s ‘Take On Me’ “worse” in The Last Of Us TV series than the version in the video game, according to co-star Isabela Merced.

READ MORE: Here’s every song on ‘The Last Of Us’ season 2 soundtrack

In the latest episode of the HBO series, Ellie (Ramsey) and Dina (Merced) are en route to Seattle when they find an abandoned record store that’s still fully stocked with Bob Marley and Tears For Fears vinyl and Pearl Jam posters.

Ellie heads upstairs and finds an acoustic guitar which she then proceeds to play the 1985 hit single on.

Speaking about the scene, Merced told The Hollywood Reporter: “It was really emotional. That was my favourite scene from the video game. When I was walking around on the set, it was so beautiful. They literally built this music shop inside of the stage. And Bella was actually beautifully playing and singing.

“They told Bella to do it the way that they would, except worse, so it sounded more like a regular person picking up a guitar, and not like this talented individual that just emits beauty in all directions. So Bella had to kind of tone it down a little bit. Even then I was still mesmerised and emotional.” You can judge for yourself which is the better version below.

Bella Ramsey did phenomenal doing Take On Me #TheLastofUs pic.twitter.com/9dFhw5uLSF

— DomTheBomb (@DomTheBombYT) May 5, 2025

It comes after fans of the show said they were fed up with gamers “ruining” the show with their negativity.

The first season of The Last Of Us took heavy inspiration from the original video game while season two is based on The Last Of Us Part 2.

Because of this, HBO had more time to flesh out the backstory of characters such as Isaac Dixon (who was introduced in the most recent episode) and have made changes to the story. For example, the show introduced a three-month gap between the death of Pedro Pascal’s Joel and Ellie’s (Ramsey) revenge mission to Seattle.

Mazin and The Last Of Us co-creator Neil Druckmann also recently said they weren’t bothered about casting actors who looked exactly like their game counterparts.

Meanwhile, Kaitlyn Dever previously spoke about the backlash she received playing Abby, while Ramsey has admitted that they were “fixated” on looking video game accurate ahead of season two.

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