It's the night of the House of the Dragon season 2 finale, and HBO isn't letting all those eyeballs go to waste. It put out a sizzle reel for shows it has coming up this year as well as shows on the way next year. And that included our first look at The Last of Us season 2, featuring the returns of Pedro Pascal as Joel and Bella Ramsey as Ellie, two hardened survivors of the zombie apocalypse. They save that for the end, naturally:
And here's just the footage from The Last of Us, isloated:
I saved her.
— Max (@StreamOnMax) August 5, 2024
A sneak peek of Season 2 of the @HBO Original Series #TheLastOfUs, coming in 2025 to Max. pic.twitter.com/PQljcvlOsx
That opening shot of a nighttime barn dance is pulled straight from Naughty Dog's video game The Last of Us: Part II, which will form the basis for season 2 of the TV show. The show will take multiple seasons to adapt that game, which is far more narratively ambitious than the first.
The teaser is framed as a conversation between Joel and a new character played by comedy legend Catherine O'Hara; we don't know who she's playing exactly, although fans have some ideas. Joel seems tortured by something he did; if you recall, the first season ended with him saving Ellie, who'd become like a daughter to him, from a group of doctors who wanted to perform surgery on her in hopes of curing the zombie plague. The only catch: she would die. Joel couldn't let that happen, so he killed all the doctors, made off with Ellie, and lied to her about what happened when she regained consciousness.
So that's definitely going to blow up in someone's face. In addition to O'Hara, the trailer also shows off Jeffrey Wright as Isaac, the leader of a militia group in Seattle; Wright also voiced this character in the original video game, FYI. Finally, we get a lot of action shots: people have guns, they have torches, and of course, there are zombies who want to eat your face and pure spores into your guts.
Sign me up for all of it! The Last of Us season 2 premieres on HBO and Max sometime in 2025, although we don't have an exact release date yet. I'm going to guess it'll be in the first half of the year.
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