(Image courtesy of HBO) Season two of “The Last of Us” has fans excited.
Aaron Preziosi
Connector Editor
“The Last of Us” fans rejoice: The post-apocalyptic drama based on the eponymous video game series has been approved for a second season. HBO released a new trailer for season two on Sept. 26, mirroring the day of the cordyceps outbreak in the original game. The trailer suggests that the second season will adapt the events of the second game, “The Last of Us: Part II.”
In an interview with Variety, showrunner Craig Mazin and series creator Neil Druckmann confirmed that the second season will feature more action and diverge from the source material to tell a more meaningful story. They also addressed some of the problems fans had with the first season, with Mazin stating “Ultimately, we generally stressed the power of relationships and trying to find significance within moments of action, there may be less action than some people wanted because we couldn’t necessarily find significance for quite a bit of it, or [there was] concern that it would be repetitive.”
Like the first video game, season one of “The Last of Us” ends with protagonist Joel, played by Pedro Pascal, fighting his way through a hospital in order to save his surrogate daughter Ellie, played by Bella Ramsey. However, he lies to Ellie about what happened which sets up a lot of tension for the upcoming second season. When asked about adapting the second game for the new season, Mazin commented “Part of the adaptation process is trying to figure out how to take source material that was built around gameplay, and port it over to a medium that is passive, a lot of the gameplay is centered on [non-playable characters] that you have to get around, avoid, stealth kill or just confront head on.” In the same Variety interview, Druckmann added that actions scenes that didn’t move characters and only provided spectacle, it was an “easy cut”.
Fans also expressed doubts about how the second season will depict Ellie. In the original video games, Ellie was 14 in “Part I”, and 19 in “Part II”. Among these doubts, fans are also skeptical regarding both faithfulness and changes to the source material. In the same interview, Mazin had this to say: “All I can say to people is I have so much anxiety myself, about doing a good job on this. Just know, I am also very anxious. If you’re anxious about something, I’m probably anxious about it, which means we’re talking about it and thinking about it. We will present things, but it will be different, just as this season was different. Sometimes it will be different radically, and sometimes it will be barely different at all, but it’s going to be different. It will be its own thing. It won’t be exactly like the game. It will be the show that Neil and I want to make.”
As of writing, the series has yet to receive an exact release date but is scheduled to release on HBO Max sometime in 2025, consisting of seven episodes. More news will surely follow, so invested viewers should keep their eyes open for more information.
