“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 post-apocalyptic 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! After a harrowing finale in March 2023, 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, from the dates to the new teaser trailer, and you won’t even have to threaten us with a switchblade to get the info.
What does The Last of US season two look like?
The season-two teaser is a crescendo of spooky. At first, it’s like, “Joel is in a nice town, and he’s working through his trauma with a kindly Catherine O’Hara.†“You can’t heal something unless you’re brave enough to say it out loud,†O’Hara says. Then the show reminds you why people watched its first season behind their fingers. For players of the game, there’s a guitar motif that should move at least a few people to tears immediately. For everybody else, get ready: A new season is coming — when you’re not screaming in horror, you’ll be holding back tears. That’s how this show goes.
Why did The Last of Us get renewed?
Even with all the 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. Season one was largely a faithful adaptation of the original game, with a few notable exceptions, and ended in the same spot as the game.
Who has been added to the cast?
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.
Is season two of The Last of Us going to take on the second game?
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.
What have the creators teased about the season?
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.â€
When is The Last of Us season two coming out?
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 TV watchers won’t have to wait anywhere near that long. A new teaser confirmed that the next season is coming in “2025,†though it didn’t get any more specific than that. We’d have to guess that HBO’s hoping to get the season out by the end of spring so that the show can be eligible for more Emmy nominations, though. Our guitar-string-calloused fingers are crossed.