Video game adaptations usually suck and frustrate both nerds and reviewers: they badly misinterpret the spirit of the game, disappointing fans and failing to resonate with viewers. But HBO’s The Last of Us is now in a class of its own, transcending game-adaptation failure to create an entirely new art form. When Oliver O’Toole said about Martin McDonagh’s The Burial of Krishna (1992): ‘All it does is lift another notch the already impressive status of theatre as the most universally expressive form of human communication’ he could have been referring to the relationship between video gaming and TV. Game-to-screen translations are the biggest hive-mind/conversion challenge in entertainment but, executed properly, they could be the artform of the future. The Last of Us is not just a perfect rendering of the game but a story that transcends its source material with resonance.
With the storytelling skill of its showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann splitting the difference between Mazin’s haunting ‘Chernobyl’ miniseries and Druckmann’s expertise as the co-creator of the original game franchise, it seems as though the TV show could not have been more thoughtfully adapted.
As fans await the beginning of production for season two, they are once again thrust into a familiar position: the start of production signals the beginning of rehearsals, and rehearsals signal that the next part of Joel and Ellie’s new journey will soon be unveiled. Although this part of the wait is long, it’s also filled with speculation about which key characters from the sequel will make their entrances.
The season promises to continue the story that made its characters’ lives some of the most emotionally raw in popular culture, while at the same time solidifying The Last of Us as stardust – a living, breathing blueprint for the future of video game adaptations. With only a few weeks left until its release, The Last of Us season 2 stands as an example of what adaptations might look like in the future, if more of them had the vision and the heart to narrow the divide between interactive and passive storytelling, and even fuse the two together into something truly magnificent.
Who’s coming back for The Last of Us season 2?
Series stars Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey (who played Joel and Ellie, respectively) will be back, as will Gabriel Luna – reprising his role as Joel’s brother Tommy. The other members of the cast who might be returning aren’t yet confirmed, but it’s likely there will be at least a few.
Who’s joining the cast in The Last of Us season 2?
To date, we know of at least three new cast members who are joining the show for season two, and the most notable will be the well-known actor Kaitlyn Dever, who will play Abby Anderson, one of the main characters from The Last of Us Part II. Abby is a co-lead from the sequel, and she’s one of the most polarising characters in the game thanks to story events that transpire there. Abby holds a murderous grudge against Joel, and she gives Ellie plenty of ammunition to hate her in return. The official casting breakdown for Abby describes her as ‘a trained soldier with a hardblack-and-white view of the world … [and] driven to seek vengeance for the people she loved.
Contrary to her age advantage, Dever was also in the running to play Ellie before she was ‘too old’ for the part. Before she made her exciting entrance into prime-time TV on FX’s Justified as country girl Loretta McCready in season 2 – and her brief return appearances throughout the rest of the show’s run – and a handful of guest parts on Tim Allen’s sitcom Last Man Standing, her first credited role was in 2011’s The Odd Life of Timothy Green. Dever has also had leading roles in films such as Booksmart (2019) and Rosaline (2022), and will soon make her big impact in Hulu’s No One Will Save You, a sci-fi horror film that earned four stars from The New York Times.
Isabela Merced has been cast as Dina, Ellie’s romantic interest – and here a former child actor makes for an almost too-good match: Merced was the star of Nickelodeon’s 100 Things to Do Before High School series, and she’s already had a teen detective series of her own, on Disney+. Since then, she’s quickly graduated into tougher stories, starring in the action film Sweet Girl (2021), which she headlined, as well as in Transformers: The Last Knight, Instant Family, Sicario: Day of the Soldado and Madame Web.
Merced provided the voice of Dora the Explorer’s ponderous friend Kate in Dora and Friends: Into the City! before Dora and the Lost City of Gold (2019). Her next film will be Alien: Romulus (2022).
Beef S1. Co-star Young Mazino will play Dina’s ex-boyfriend Jesse: ‘a pillar of the community who puts everyone else’s needs before his own at terrible cost’ Prior to Beef, Mazino’s most prominent part was as Paul in Moffat’s Emmy-winning HBO gangster epic, Our Flag Means Death (2022). A Feeling of Responsibility certainly brought Mazino prominent attention since it was his first starring role – he had had a flashy part in an off-Broadway musical; recently, he mostly did guest-starring roles in New Amsterdam (NBC/2018-), Blue Bloods (CBS/2010-) and Prodigal Son (Fox/2019-21); and, of course, his role as Dina’s ex-boyfriend in Beef.
On 2 February, Entertainment Weekly ran a story titled ‘Exclusive: Schitt’s Creek and Home Alone’s Catherine O’Hara Joins The Last of Us Season 2 Cast’. On her visit to Andy Cohen’s late-night talk show What What Happens Live, the actress explained how she came to the role by saying that her son works as a set dresser on the show. The Bravo host got O’Hara to spill that she has been in talks to ‘join the cast’, which was then confirmed by HBO.
They don’t yet know what part she’ll be playing, but I can assure you, the show’s better with her in it.
In Variety, another member of season 2’s cast has been revealed, too. Jeffrey Wright will play Isaac, described as ‘wary and gravely powerful’, a founder of the militia group who ‘sought freedom only to find himself drawn into an inexorable war against an enemy far more resourceful than he ever could have imagined’. Wright plays Isaac in The Last of Us Part IIand is the second member of the show’s cast to reprise a character from the games. Merle Dandridge (pictured below) made a return for the first season of The Last of Us as Marlene, a character she also voiced in the games.
Will The Last of Us season 2 cover events of the second game?
Unsurprisingly, the second season will be based more directly on The Last of Us Part II, though there will be more seasons planned for those stories, so the needle will point more towards the core of Part II’s long narrative. In March 2023, Druckmann explained to GQ that ‘some of the stuff I’m most excited for [of Part II] is the changes we’ve discussed and seeing the story coming to life again. It’s like seeing this other version of the story in another game, meaning I think it leans into those feelings you had from the game, really heavily, in a new way.
Just this year, however, Mazin told Gizmodo: ‘I think there’s more story left that we haven’t told that would be more than a season of television, so assuming we can continue to make it, we would keep on going more than just another season, but this isn’t a show that’s going to be seven seasons.
If Naughty Dog does make The Last of Us Part III, this series ought to adapt that game too If sales of The Last of Us Part II are reason enough for The Last of Us Part III, that game makes it a no-brainer. Yet four years after the first sequel was released, there’s still no word on a follow-up game.
How many episodes will be in The Last of Us season 2?
How many episodes will be in The Last of Us season 2?
Deadline is reporting that The Last of Us season 2 will be shorter in length than the first season of the series. Showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann decided to make seven episodes in season 2 instead of 10 as they’d always planned. The third season (if there is one) will potentially be much ‘significantly larger’.
‘We were starting with way more story material than was in the first season, that’s right, whereas the stuff in Part II of the game is so much more than the story material that was in the first game, so part of what we had to do right from the beginning was trying to figure out how we’re going to tell that story over seasons,’ Mazin said. ‘And when you do that, you look for natural breakpoints, and that’s the point where, as we were laying it out, as we’re looking at this, the national breakpoint feels like it comes at the end of seven episodes for us.’
Although Mazin and Druckmann both seem doubtful that they’d get through all of The Last of Us Part II in two seasons – a fourth season possibly needed to wrap up that story.
‘We don’t think that we’re capable of telling the story even in two seasons [2 and 3] because we’re taking our time and go down interesting pathways which we did a little bit in season 1 too,’ Mazin continued. ‘We feel like it’s almost assuredly going to be the case that — as long as people keep watching and we can keep making more television — season 3 will be significantly larger. And indeed the story may require season 4.’
When will The Last of Us season 2 begin filming?
Shooting is currently underway in British Columbia and Vancouver. In January, the Vancouver restaurant Zarak posted a picture of Ramsey, Mazino and Merced with Last of Us executive producers Mazin and Jacqueline Lesko, next to two of their own employees.
At the Emmys the other night, Pedro Pascal was in a sling on his arm due to a shoulder injury, and it certainly looks like he did the combine harvester at some point. (He was not in fact photographed at the Emmys while wearing the sling, which is perhaps why he has been snipped and cropped out of the photo above.) Nor did his injury cause production on season two, which runs through 9 September, to grind to a halt; Pascal’s scenes were apparently filmed some weeks ago, though completely bogus claims to that effect have since been made by HBO.
Who is directing The Last of Us season 2?
Mazin and Druckmann are back to direct episodes again this season, as are season 1’s director Peter Hoar. Deadlineannounced that the new directors this season include Mark Mylod, fresh off his Emmy win for HBO’s Succession, as well as two other veteran HBO directors, Nina Lopez-Corrado (Perry Mason) and Stephen Williams (Watchmen). Meanwhile, episode direction will be wrapped up by the director who helmed episodes of Marvel’s Loki series, Kate Herron.
When will The Last of Us season 2 premiere?
The release date for season 2 of The Last of Us on HBO is March or April 2025. We don’t know for sure when season 2 will premiere, but according to the insider Daniel Richtman, we will learn in March or April 2025. Since it was him who said that Pascal had completed production on his scenes, readers may want to maintain some skepticism.
HBO releases The Last of Us season 2 teaser trailer
I saved her.
A preview of Season 2 of the HBO original series #TheLastOfUs, debuting in 2025 for Max. pic.twitter.com/PQljcvlOsx
— Max (@StreamOnMax) August 5, 2024
Following the season 2 finale of the hit show House of the Dragon on 4 August 2024, HBO aired a ‘coming soon’ look at the network’s upcoming television slate. The Last of Us season 2 was the sole show featured in the clip’s last 25 seconds, and HBO gifted fans a quick behind-the-scenes glimpse at the new episodes. For about 10 seconds, the clip provides a first look at Dever’s Abby, Merced’s Dina, and Wright’s Isaac.
You can now hear the two characters in the teaser, both O’Hara’s and Joel’s. ‘What did you do to her?’ O’Hara says, after Joel denies he smashed Ramsey’s Ellie’s arm. ‘I saved her,’ Joel mutters.
