What’s going on with season two of HBO’s highly acclaimed, much-anticipated “The Last Of Us,” pandemic-zombie series that made an even bigger star out of Pedro Pascal? The series aired in January of 2023 and might have been ready for a return in 2024, but last year’s writers’ and actors’ strikes scuttled that plan. Currently, “The Last Of Us” is expected to return sometime in 2025, and in a new Deadline interview, showrunners and directors Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann have shared some new details.
READ MORE: ‘The Last Of Us’ Review: Pedro Pascal Shines In A Heartbreaking Tale Of Post-Apocalyptic Survival & Protecting Those You Love
For one, in order to get a season to audiences faster than usual, season two is going to be shorter than season one, with seven episodes in total, instead of the nine that comprised the inaugural season.
Mazin and Druckmann said season three will be “significantly larger” and possibly bigger in scope, and a season four might be on the way too. As well, at least one of the Season 2 episodes will be “quite big” in length.
“The story material that we got from Part II of the game is way more than the story material that was in the first game, so part of what we had to do from the start was figure out how to tell that story across seasons,” Mazin explained about why season two will be a little bit truncated. “When you do that, you look for natural breakpoints, and as we laid it out, this season, the national breakpoint felt like it came after seven episodes.”
While it sounds like they originally envisioned the series at three seasons, both showrunners suggest it might be impossible to tell their story in just three seasons.
“We don’t think that we’re going to be able to tell the story even within two seasons [2 and 3] because we’re taking our time and going down interesting pathways, which we did a little bit in Season One too,” Mazin said. “We feel like it’s almost assuredly going to be the case that — as long as people keep watching and we can keep making more television — Season three will be significantly larger. And indeed, the story may require Season four.”
Later in the interview, Mazin echoed the same idea: they may simply need four seasons to tell it all.
“One thing is absolutely for sure: I don’t see how we could tell the story that remains after Season Two is complete in one more season,” he said.
Sure sounds like that’s a four-season show unless the ratings somehow dip, which sounds nearly impossible given all the acclaim for season one.
As for where it all goes, at the end of season one (spoilers!), Joel (Pascal), hired to smuggle teenage girl Ellie (Ramsey) out of a quarantine zone, makes a heartbreaking choice. Her DNA could cure the entire planet, but it would mean her death in the process. Selfishly, he murders all the doctors about to operate on her, the idea of losing what has become a kind of de facto daughter to him too much to bear. Druckmann said this new season is a continued examination of doing horrible things in the name of people you love.
“It’s a continuation of love from the first season [between Pascal and Ramsey in the fatherly sense], and this is just the dark side of that coin, the pursuit of justice at any cost for the ones you love and the exploration of that,” Druckmann said of Season two.
Season two directors include Mark Mylod (“Succession”) along with Nina Lopez-Corrado (“Perry Mason”), Stephen Williams (“Watchmen”) and Kate Herron (“Loki”).
“The Last Of Us” is set in a post-apocalyptic landscape. The series is set twenty years into a pandemic caused by a mass fungal infection, which causes its hosts to transform into zombie-like creatures and collapse society. Season one starred Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey. Season two will include characters from the video games that audiences love, played by Kaitlyn Dever, Isabela Merced, Danny Ramirez, Catherine O’Hara, Jeffrey Wright, Young Mazino, Ariela Barer, and Tati Gabrielle.