This April, HBO will debut the second season of The Last of Us, its adaptation of Naughty Dog's popular video game series. The first season was a sensation when it aired in 2023. This second season will adapt the second game in the series, The Last of Us Part II, which was a huge hit that was also hugely controversial. The show has a lot to prove in season 2.
To get the hype train rolling, HBO has released a bunch of new images. Let's start with Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a plucky survivor of the zombie apocalypse who grows into a capable fighter in the second game. Here she is stalking through the ruins of civilization. Beware zombies:
The second season will introduce a number of new characters that fans of the games will already be familiar with. Here's Ellie with her love interest Dina (Isabela Merced)
And here she is with her friend Jesse (Young Mazino):
The first season of The Last of Us, like the first game, was built around the surrogate father-daughter relationship between Ellie and Joel (Pedro Pascal). Together, they trekked across the zombie-ridden remains of the United States and eventually settled in the comparative quiet of Jackson, Wyoming, where civilization has started to make a comeback. Obviously Joel will return in season 2. He looks like he has something on his mind:
Also returning is Joel's brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna), who also lives in Jackson:
Tommy is married to Maria (Rutina Wesley), a local leader in Jackson. They may be in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, but they still have a growing family:
Easily the most important new character to be introduced in season 2 is Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), whom Entertainment Weekly describes as "a skilled soldier on the hunt to avenge those she loves." I don't want to go into spoilers in this article, so I'll just leave it at that. She'll travel to Jackson along with her friend Owen (Spencer Lord), Owen's girlfriend Mel (Ariela Barer), military medic Nora (Tati Gabrielle), and fellow soldier Manny (Danny Ramirez):
The Last of Us bosses promise that fans "will not be bored" with season 2
The second season of The Last of Us will have only seven episodes, down from nine in season 1. But co-showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann assured Entertainment Weekly that it's all part of the master plan. “Each episode is like a meal. You can have a light dinner or you can go to a 12-course French restaurant,” Mazin said. “We have seven episodes. They are high-calorie, dense episodes. If you consider action and drama and scope to be the things that create an epic nature, each one of these episodes packs quite a wallop. You will not be bored.”
This second season will incorporate deleted material from the original game, some of which was debuted in the remasterd edition of The Last of Us Part II and some of which wasn't. Druckmann teases that some of is “pretty brutal, but I'm very excited for people to see it.” He also teases that the show will expand upon a certain character, but doesn't say which one. "There is a pretty prominent character that is talked a lot about in the game, similar to what we did with Frank in season 1, that is in this season. There's a very, very cool casting that I hope we can talk about soon."
Without giving much away, the second game has two main playable characters; you play as one for a big chunk of the game before switching to the other. Fans are curious about how the TV show will handle that. Druckmann didn't give away specifics, but obviously he and Mazin have thought about it. “A big part of the theme of the second game is about perspective, how someone's hero could be someone else's villain and vice versa. It's weird to talk about a story where its structure could be a spoiler,” Druckmann said. “I don't even know if it's worth mentioning where we landed because I think that's part of the fun for people familiar with the game to see how we approached that challenge in the show. I will just say that we gave it a lot of thought and tried different things. There are some deviations of where we place things."
Mazin also added his two cents about the structure:, "We certainly are going to mess around with time the way it was in the source material, but as Neil said, we messed around in ways that we felt were appropriate for the show," he said. "When I say 'messed around,' I mean scientifically determined in a narrative way what we thought would be most impactful."
The Last of Us is "pretty likely" to go beyond season 3
The first season of The Last of Us covered the whole of the first game, but Part II is too big to be stuffed into one season. We'll at least get a third season (which is supposed to be "significantly larger" than the second). And the showrunners sound like they have plans beyond that. “I think it's pretty likely that our story will extend past a season 3,” Mazin said. “How far past? I can't say. And that's not to say that there are not other stories that could be told, but this story is the one that Neil and I are telling.”
“We have a plan,” Druckmann added. “We know what we need to do going forward, but we couldn't tell you right now exactly how many episodes or how many seasons it would take to get there.”
HBO hasn't revealed an exact premiere date for The Last of Us season 2 yet, but we're betting on Sunday, April 13. And this show is just one of the huge projects headlined by Pedro Pascal coming out this year:
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