The Last of Us.
Photo: Liane Hentscher/HBO
“I am your cool, slutty daddy,” The Last of Us star Pedro Pascal famously said on the red carpet for HBO’s latest blockbuster series, based on the postapocalyptic video game. Weeks later, the network renewed The Last of Us for a second season. Is there a correlation between Pascal thirst and a renewal? Maybe so! The first season, which aired its harrowing finale last March, was largely a faithful adaptation of the original game, with a few notable exceptions, and ended in the same spot as the game. But HBO is like a hungry zombie wanting more, more, more! The show’s co-creators, Craig Mazin (Chernobyl) and Neil Druckmann (co-president of Naughty Dog, the video-game development company behind TLOU), haven’t been super-forthcoming with details about Joel (Pascal) and Ellie’s (Bella Ramsey) televisual fates in the months following its official renewal. Still, it seems like high time we compiled everything we do know about the upcoming second season, and you won’t even have to threaten us with a switchblade to get the info.
Even with all the cool, slutty daddy thirst, record viewership may be the main reason. Episode one has surpassed 22 million viewers domestically, up nearly five times from its January 2023 premiere audience. The second episode did even better by about a million viewers, tallying an audience of 5.7 million across HBO Max and linear telecast platforms, a 22 percent jump. It was the largest week-two audience growth for any HBO Original drama series in the history of the network. The critical darling tells the story of smuggler Joel (Pascal) who must deliver an important child (played by Bella Ramsey, not Grogu) across America after a fungal outbreak created a horde of cannibalistic zombie-esque people-creatures. Gabriel Luna, Anna Torv, Nico Parker, Murray Bartlett, Nick Offerman, Melanie Lynskey, and Storm Reid also star.
Kaitlyn Dever of Booksmart fame joins the series as one of several prominent new characters, Deadline reported on January 9. She plays Abby, a soldier seeking vengeance on those who harmed her loved ones. “Our casting process for season two has been identical to season one: We look for world-class actors who embody the souls of the characters in the source material,” said Mazin and Druckmann in a statement. On January 10, Variety confirmed Young Mazino of Beef and SZA music-video fame will play Jesse, “a pillar of his community who puts everyone else’s needs before his own, sometimes at terrible cost.” “Young is one of those rare actors who is immediately undeniable the moment you see him,” the co-creators said. They’re talking about his face card.
Another round of casting announcements dropped on March 1. Per Variety, Top Gun’s Danny Ramirez will be taking on another military role and star as Manny, a loyal soldier whose “sunny outlook belies the pain of old wounds and a fear that he will fail his friends when they need him most.” Ariela Barer will play a young doctor named Mel whose commitment to saving lives is challenged by “the realities of war and tribalism,” Tati Gabrielle will play a military medic named Nora struggling with past “sins,” and Spencer Lord will play a “gentle soul” named Owen who is “trapped in a warrior’s body, condemned to fight an enemy he refuses to hate.” Truly, none of these characters can catch a break.
Yes and no. The Last of Us: Part II is an even more expansive game than the first, so the story of the second game will be split over multiple seasons. How many? There’s no way to know. When pressed on how many seasons the game adaptation will take, Mazin and Druckmann went cold. “You have noted correctly that we will not say how many,” Mazin told GQ. “But more than one is factually correct.” The second game (SPOILER ALERT) largely takes place four years after the original game, which gives quite a bit of leeway if Mazin and Druckmann want to build that story out. Plus fans of the game know something seismic happens relatively early on in the second game’s plot — the kind of thing that feels like a season ender, rather than a season opener. At this point, it seems like the only thing we know is what we don’t know.
From a bird’s-eye view, Mazin and Druckmann seem pretty happy with the first season of the show and ready to give another installment along those same lines. “Our goal remains exactly what it was for the first season, which is to deliver a show that makes fans happy,” Mazin said to GQ. Still, the creators acknowledged some things season two could do to improve on the first. The biggest has to do not with plot but with setting. Some, including Stephen King, have noted that Joel and Ellie’s cross-country road trip doesn’t really feel … cross-country at times. That’s partially due to the fact that the entire first season was filmed in Canada. “My goal is to do better next season, now that we’ve learned some lessons,” Mazin said in a press conference, according to TV Line. “Every now and then [in season one] you get a little bit of an ‘Oh, it’s Canada,’ when we don’t want it to be Canada.”
Oh, you’re so impatient. Players of the game were forced to wait seven full years between the first and second installments to learn the fates of Joel and Ellie, but it seems unlikely that TV watchers will have to wait anywhere near that long. The GQ interviewer references audiences needing to wait “two years” to find out the fate of the main characters, which neither creator disputes. Just for context, season one began filming in July 2021 and arrived on HBO last January. If they replicate that timeline, we can expect season two in fall 2024 at the earliest. Still, Druckmann noted to GQ that, with this season, “I find that the process is easier.” So maybe they’ll speed it up a little? The Hollywood Reporter has reported that the show is preparing to begin production in the spring, with a likely 2025 premiere. As long as nobody has to wait seven years again, we’ll take what we can get.
This post has been updated.
