The zombies are way more disgusting in the second season of The Last of Us

The second season of The Last of Us kicks off in just a couple weeks, and the hype is sky-high. People loved the first season of this zombie apocalypse drama, and the second season will adapt one of the most popular, controversial video games of the last decade: The Last of Us Part II.

Why exactly was The Last of Us Part II controversial? If you don't know already, you probably will by the end of the season 2 premiere. That'll be then. For now, El País got to visit the set of The Last of Us during filming for season 2, and they have some very interesting things to report when it comes to the variety of undead creatures that Joel and Ellie will be facing down.

In The Last of Us, people are turned into zombies by a fungus. In the first season, the fungus crept along the ground. In the second, it can also spread through spores in the air, which is how it is in the games. According to Paul Spateri, the head of makeup and prosthetics for the show, the zombies have undergone and "evolution" for season 2. “They’re much more talented," he said. "They self-mutilate with themselves by tearing their skin, pulling their lips off. There’s super masochistic self-harm involved.”

Hey, that sounds gross. An actor who has played seven different zombies over the course of the show, identified only as Kelsey, detailed the differences between playing the different types of Cordyceps monsters. “Stalkers are tough because they’re quadruped. We’re on all fours a lot, crawling, which is immensely difficult,” Kelsey said. “Clickers are more fun when they grow; they have stalks, and your whole face is covered with eyepieces, so you can’t see."

A stalker is a zombie who's been living with the cordyceps fungus for weeks of months; people look (and behave) less and less human the longer the fungus is in their system. Clickers are in a yet more advanced stage, their faces entirely swallowed by the fungus. And you better hope you don't meet a bloater.

A storm's coming. #TheLastOfUs pic.twitter.com/aTxGuCY3DQ
— HBO (@HBO) March 21, 2025

The infected are very dangerous, but Kelsey reminds us that they're human underneath all that, or at least, they used to be. “We connect better when we do more human things, and then they ask, ‘What is it about that character that makes them so interesting?’” she said.

That said, even if they retain a bit of humanity, these are still monsters who want to kill you at the end of the day. “There’s a limit to what you can do," Spateri laughed. "These guys are fantastic, but we can’t dig deep into them either.”