It seems that fans of the HBO series “The Last of Us” will be in for a treat with the upcoming second season. Based on the video game of the same name, showrunner Craig Mazin (“Chernobyl”) often popped by Naughty Dog’s headquarters to brainstorm storylines with creator Neil Druckmann. The result is the show and second game developing in tandem with each other.

“We’d be talking about Game 2, and in fact there’s a lot of changes — sometimes small adjustments, sometimes bigger — that we’re making in anticipation of adapting Game 2,” Druckmann tells Entertainment Weekly. “So even before Game 2 was out, we were deep in conversations about where the characters are going and ultimately what we’re trying, thematically, to say with this whole story.”
The Hard Road To “The Last of Us Part II”
Much of this development happened during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, which was bad enough. The pandemic eventually caused the release date for “The Last of Us Part II” to be pushed back. Then, of course, some of it got leaked online, spoiling major plot points. The out-of-context leaks and people in lockdown with too much time on their hands lead to horrible early reactions to the game. Some creators and actors involved with the game’s development and the HBO series even received death threats. (We get being passionate about fandoms but nothing is worth taking someone’s life over.)
“Some of that stuff was borderline traumatic,” explains Druckmann. “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.”
Thankfully, none of these threats came to fruition, and “The Last of Us Part II” hit shelves with no blood-shed.

“The Last of Us” Season 2
Druckmann and Mazin are now gearing up for the 7-episode second season, which will adapt “The Last of Us Part II.” It will see the return of stars Pedro Pascal as Joel, Bella Ramsey as Ellie, and Jeffrey Wright as Isaac.
“Tens of millions of people liked it week after week after week, and that’s a number that’s hard to get our minds around,” Mazin said about the first season. “We are accountable to them and we think our job is to continue to do what we did, which is to challenge people and to delight them, surprise them, and make them feel and provoke thought within them.”
“We don’t react to the fear of the audience, meaning our own fear of how they might react to it,” he adds. “We keep asking, ‘What’s the best choice for this story, for these characters?’ And that’s the choice we make.”
The production is being very cautious with plot details at this time. But we do know, season 2 will take place five years after the events of the first season. After Joel and Ellie have battled their way through a post-apocalyptic America, they settle in Jackson, Wyoming. Joining a commune run by Joel’s sister-in-law Maria (Rutina Wesley), who now has a child with his brother, Tommy (Gabriel Luna).
Alongside Joel, it seems like Ellie is finally going to get to be a normal teenager. She even starts to crush on Dina (Isabela Merced), the ex of her friend, Jesse (Young Mazino). However, this doesn’t erase the trauma she and Joel endured to survive the last season.
New & Old Chracters
Soon the commune brings in Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) who is described as “a skilled soldier whose black-and-white view of the world is challenged as she seeks vengeance for those she loved,” by HBO. It’s believed that Abby is the same character in the “The Last of Us” trailer wearing a Firefly pendant. “There’s very little that gets into our show because of an accident,” Druckmann coyly states.
In the game, Ellie and Abby’s stories are so closely connected that it’s almost impossible to give details about them without spoilers. Dever even read for Ellie early into the development process, when Screen Gems planned on adapting the IP as a movie. But her presence stuck with Druckmann. “We just remained in touch,” he says. “I believe Craig had the idea of using Kaitlyn for Abby when we talked about season 2. The reason we cast Kaitlyn is because she’s an incredible actor. You look at her body of work and the way she throws herself at that stuff… We value performance over anything else.”
Fresh faces among the cast also include Owen (Spencer Lord), Abby’s closest friend; Mel (Ariela Barer), a doctor and Owen’s girlfriend; Nora (Tati Gabrielle), a military medic; and Manny (Danny Ramirez), a loyal soldier. Catherine O’Hara (“Beetlejuice”) has also been cast as an unknown character who is not seen in the game

Where Season 2 Differs
Like most adaptations, season 2 of “The Last of Us” will not just be a shot-for-shot remake of the video game. One of these divergences will be with Abby’s appearance since Dever’s build is much more like Ramsey’s. Whereas in the game, Abby is a tall and muscular woman.
Druckmann is already sensing blood in the water with this change and is trying to get ahead of criticism by offering a few thoughts. Mainly, the show has to prioritize the story being told above everything else. In the game, her physique allows her to “physically manhandle certain things,” like Joel does. However, in the show that wouldn’t be such an important element.
New Territory
“There’s not as much violent action moment to moment,” he explains. “It’s more about the drama. I’m not saying there’s no action here. It’s just, again, different priorities and how you approach it.” “Kaitlyn has the spirit of the game in her,” he adds. “What I always loved about the idea was that you are going to continually be challenged as you were in season 1. When you try to pick a hero, it’s tough because we’re human beings, we’re not heroes. For every heroic act, there’s someone who suffers on the other side who may see you reasonably as a villain. When you look at Kaitlyn, there’s just something in her eyes where, even no matter what she’s experiencing, you connect. It was important that we found somebody that we could connect to the way we connect to Bella.”
“I personally think that there is an amazing opportunity here to delve into someone who is perhaps physically more vulnerable than the Abby in the game, but whose spirit is stronger,” Mazin chimes in. “And then the question is, ‘Where does her formidable nature come from and how does it manifest?’ That’s something that will be explored now and later.”

Season 3
Of course, fans are already hyped to find out if there will be more of “The Last of Us.” At this time, HBO has not greenlit a third season, but Mazin and Druckmann have already been in talks about it. “I think it’s pretty likely that our story will extend past a season 3,” Mazin says. “How far past? I can’t say. And that’s not to say that there are not other stories that could be told, but this story is the one that Neil and I are telling.”
“We have a plan,” adds Druckmann. “We know what we need to do going forward, but we couldn’t tell you right now exactly how many episodes or how many seasons it would take to get there.”
Mazin and Druckmann have already discussed breaking “Part II” of the video game into several seasons. When mapping things out they split the entire narrative of “Part II” into pieces to figure out what stories could be told/expanded upon. Fitting such a dense narrative into 7 episodes isn’t feasible, but that’s not to say season 2 will be light either.
“Each episode is like a meal,” Mazin points out. “You can have a light dinner or you can go to a 12-course French restaurant. We have seven episodes. They are high-calorie, dense episodes. If you consider action and drama and scope to be the things that create an epic nature, each one of these episodes packs quite a wallop. You will not be bored.”

Deleted Content
To complicate the story more, the show will be incorporating deleted material from the game. Some of which was only seen by the public for the first time in the remastered edition of “Part II.” Druckmann says the material is “pretty brutal, but I’m very excited for people to see it.”
“There is a pretty prominent character that is talked a lot about in the game, similar to what we did with Frank [Murray Bartlett] in season 1, that is in this season,” he teases. “There’s a very, very cool casting that I hope we can talk about soon.”
“A big part of the theme of the second game is about perspective, how someone’s hero could be someone else’s villain and vice versa. It’s weird to talk about a story where its structure could be a spoiler,” Druckmann continues. “I don’t even know if it’s worth mentioning where we landed because I think that’s part of the fun for people familiar with the game to see how we approached that challenge in the show. I will just say that we gave it a lot of thought and tried different things. There are some deviations of where we place things.”
Season 2 of “The Last of Us” is expected to hit HBO and MAX sometime in April 205. We’ll keep you posted on updates about the project as they become available.