A second chapter of the zombie drama is on the way.
Prepare for more of those clicker sounds bouncing around your brain. After setting HBO viewership records during its premiere in early 2023, zombie apocalypse thriller The Last of Us is headed for a second season, bringing Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal back as emotionally traumatized psuedo-father-daughter duo Ellie and Joel. And now that the series has multiple Emmy nominations under its belt, expect an even splashier season 2.
The HBO adaptation was the media giant’s second largest debut, falling only behind Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon in viewership, and having experienced a 22 percent audience jump from its first episode to its second. (That’s the biggest increase for an HBO original drama in history.) Suffice to say folks were and remain invested in the adaptation of the PlayStation series, which itself has sold millions of copies across two games.
Upon HBO’s greenlighting season 2, executive producer and show co-creator Craig Mazin released the following statement: “I’m so grateful to [co-creator and original game developer] Neil Druckmann and HBO for our partnership, and I’m even more grateful to the millions of people who have joined us on this journey. The audience has given us the chance to continue, and as a fan of the characters and world Neil and Naughty Dog created, I couldn’t be more ready to dive back in.”
Throughout its nine episodes, season 1 remained largely faithful to the 2013 game, even re-creating some scenes essentially image for image. But season 2 is more of an enigma, given the source material upon which it’s based: The Last of Us Part II, the sequel set several years after the events of Part I. After bringing the video game’s controversial (and, to be fair, beloved) cliffhanger ending to the screen in the season 1 finale, the showrunners are jumping into the fray on season 2. Here’s what we know so far.
