New The Last of Us Season 2 Trailer Hints at Violence, Monsters, and Tragedy

The consequences of Joel's actions reveal themselves in The Last of Us' brand new season 2 trailer.

Released during The Last of Us' SXSW panel, the trailer features a look at not only the life Joel and Ellie have built in Jackson since season 1's finale, but additional conflict between The Last of Us Part II's rival factions the Washington Liberation Front and Seraphites in Seattle. In between these scenes, the trailer featured several throwbacks to its video game source material like Joel and Ellie's flashback museum trip, Abby and her allies traveling through the snow, and Ellie and her girlfriend Dina dancing and escaping a horde of Infected in an abandoned train station. Additionally, new scenes were teased that didn't appear in the game, such as Joel observing Ellie's tattoo covering up her bite marks, WLF leader Isaac confronting a prisoner, and Joel's brother Tommy battling a Bloater with a flamethrower.

In a recent interview, co-showrunner and game director Neil Druckmann confirmed that season 2 will not shy away from depicting Part II's controversial storyline, which infamously resulted in Druckmann and voice actor Laura Bailey receiving death threats from gamers after story details were leaked ahead of the game's 2020 release.

"Some of that stuff was borderline traumatic," the Naughty Dog Studio Head and Head of Creative recalled in a prior interview. "It happened in the beginning of COVID. So there were a lot of very negative things all happening at once. You can't help but think about it now. It's one of those stories that will forever be stuck with me. But our brand is that we pander to no one. We do what's best for the story and whatever happens, happens. There's a very particular story we wanted to tell and we stuck to our guns."

Despite the online backlash, The Last of Us Part II became a Game of the Year-winning critical and commercial success, replacing The Witcher III: Wild Hunt as the most-awarded video game until FromSoftware's Elden Ring beat its record years later. The game's story follows Ellie as she and Dina venture to Seattle in pursuit of Abby, only to get caught up in the middle of the WLF and Seraphites' turf war over control of the town. While Abby's arms are notably buff in the game, Druckmann and Craig Mazin felt that actor Kaitlyn Dever -- who originally auditioned for the part of Ellie -- didn't need to bulk up as much given the show's focus on character drama compared to "violent action moment to moment."

Other castings are more overt nods to the game like Jeffrey Wright reprising his role from Part II as Isaac, mirroring season 1's casting of original Last of Us voice actor Meryl Dandridge as Marlene.

The Last of Us Will Get a Third Season

Part II's story will reportedly be split into multiple seasons, with production on season 3 expected to begin later this summer. However, when asked whether a third Last of Us game will ever be made, Druckmann confessed its development is unlikely, with Naughty Dog instead working on the sci-fi action game Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.

The Last of Us season 2 premiered on April 13 on HBO and Max.