The Last of Us boss expects some “furor” over second season

The first season of HBO’s zombie drama The Last of Us was a huge hit. The ratings were fantastic, and the series just nabbed 24 Emmy nominations, so clearly the wider Hollywood community enjoyed it as well.

The Last of Us is, by far, the most critically acclaimed adaptation of a video game yet made. The second season will adapt The Last of Us Part II, which came out for the PlayStation 4 in 2020. And that could get tricky, because when Part II came out, there was a large faction of the fandom who were extremely displeased with the twists and turns, to the point where they sent death threats to lead developer Neil Druckmann, who is now working with Craig Mazin to produce the HBO show.

We won’t spoil those twists and turns here, but if people react to the show like they reacted to the game, the internet could be on fire for a while. Mazin is going into it with eyes wide open. “I’m never gonna say there are things that are gonna happen in the show that happened in the game. You never know what we’re gonna do,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “But I will say that it is the adventure, the journey is the point. There are things that will shock people, things that were in the game, things that were not in the game, and that’s okay. As long as they’re purposeful, they’re not there to just simply shock. We are not interested in creating social media fear. We just want to tell the story the way we think it should be told.”

Bella Ramsey was “the exact right person to cast” as Ellie in The Last of Us

“Will there be furor?” Mazin asked. “Yeah, probably. I mean, there usually is, starting even with casting.”

Mazin is referring there to some of the backlash Bella Ramsey received after she was cast as Ellie (she now has an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series, FYI). Why were people mad at first? Who knows? It’s the internet; you could tweet that the sky is blue and have someone threatening to kill you and your family.

“We knew they were the exact right person to cast and they had to go through quite a few months of people being awful on social media until they saw what we saw,” Mazin said of Ramsey. “That, to me, is the point. We don’t operate to either make people happy on social media or avoid making them upset. We just do what we think is right, and we hope that people come along for the ride and enjoy it.”

Work on The Last of Us season 2 won’t happen until the actors and writers strikes are resolved

For season 2, Mazin plans to adapt the second game the same way he adapted the first. “It is ultimately the only process I really know and understand as somebody that writes things and directs and produces. So I don’t really have much of a choice, but it is nice to know that at least this first go around, doing it the way I do it worked,” he said.

"I have great partners. We are all very humble with each other. Objections are always carefully considered. Nobody in our group operates out of ego or being defensive. We just try to make things better all the time, and we take care of each other. I think as long as we keep doing that, and we have more incredible source material to work with, we’re gonna continue to adapt the way we do, which is to surprise people that have played the game. But also, I don’t think anybody who has played the game is gonna watch a second season and go, ‘Wait, what is this?’"

All that said, Mazin won’t be working on The Last of Us season 2 for a while, nor will anyone else. Hollywood writers have been on strike for months, and today, the actors have joined them. So until the studios reach a fair deal with the actors and writers, we’re in limbo. “I can’t wait to get back to work,” Mazin said. “But unfortunately I have to wait.”

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