Culture

Everything We Know About ‘The Last Of Us’ Season 2

by Charles Rushforth  17 February 2023

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You’ve always gotta know where your next meal is coming from, so let’s discuss all things The Last of Us Season 2: when the next season is due to be released, which actors are starring, and what we can expect from HBO’s hit show from here. 

HBO’s hallmark mushroom zombie show — aptly described by @listenupnerds as ‘The Walking Dead for people who like Wordle’ — has been largely acclaimed as the best video game adaptation of all time. With Pedro Pascal in the blood-stained boots of gruff survivalist Joel and Bella Ramsey as the chirpy teenager Bella, the show has been lauded for successfully bringing the seminal Playstation game to life.

Finding ways to breathe new life into the game’s side characters has been one of the show’s biggest achievements — giving seasoned comic actors Bill Offerman and Murray Bartlett space to shine in their own standout episode as star-crossed lovers Bill and Frank might have been the greatest feats of the adaptations. The show’s even surprised us with new characters, like Yellowjackets lead Melanie Lynskey as a calculating resistance leader.

With the show steamrolling towards its grand finale in a few weeks, speculation about what we can expect from the next series of The Last of Us is rife. Let’s separate the facts from the fluff.

Is A Second Season Of ‘The Last Of Us’ Happening?

Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey sitting at a dilapidated restaurant counter

You better believe it! Just a couple of episodes into the show’s debut season, HBO made it official that the next chapter of The Last of Us is underway, with an announcement on January 27 that “the journey continues”. (Thank God.)

In all honesty, it probably wasn’t a tough call for HBO to green light Season 2 of The Last of Us considering the overwhelming critical acclaim the series had already amassed on aggregate websites like IMBD and Rotten Tomatoes. The show will continue with the same writing team at its core, Craig Mazin — director of HBO breakout hit Chernobyl — and the original creative director of the PlayStation series, Neil Druckmann.

Will The Original Cast Return In ‘The Last Of Us’ Season 2?

While the first season of The Last Of Us snuggly fits the narrative of the first PlayStation game across its nine episodes, there’s no telling how the second season will approach the second half of the game’s plot, the critically acclaimed The Last Of Us Part II. 

There’s been no official confirmation that either Pedro Pascal or Bella Ramsey will return for the next series, but unless they are both allergic to money or Mazin decides he wants to seriously deviate from the source material, we can pretty safely say that both will likely reprise their roles as Joel and Bella in the next season.

But what about the time jump in the second game, you ask? Is there a chance Pedro Pascal or Bella Ramsey be recast by older actors to accommodate the shift? Well, if a recent Twitter post from Ramsey is anything to go by, Ellie as we know her and love her isn’t going to change in the next season.

Is The Second Season Of ‘The Last Of Us’ Controversial?

Fans of the The Last Of Us Part II will remember that the second game launched with its fair share of controversy. While much of it was unwarranted anger about the prominence of LGBTQI+ characters across the narrative, critics were uneasy about how the game handled themes of revenge and redemption, placing unwitting players in the front seat of Ellie’s morally ambiguous quest for retribution no matter the cost.

Given how central the game’s narrative has been to the television series so far, Mazin and Druckmann are definitely going to have their hands full adapting the troubling themes from The Last Of Us Part II into the next season of the tv show. Hopefully, it can balance meaningful representation while remedying the exorbitant violence that has been directed at its Black characters.

Can We Expect A ‘The Last Of Us’ Spin-Off Series?

Just like the multitude of zombie spin-off shows that arose from AMC’s successful adaption of The Walking Dead, the overwhelming success of the The Last of Us could potentially open the source material up to an entire cinematic universe. But it seems Mazin isn’t interested in beating a dead horse, telling Collider that he’s more focused on seeing the original narrative reach a fitting and meaningful conclusion.

“Oh, yeah, it’s finite. I don’t have much narrative interest in writing a show that is designed to perpetually continue until the network finally puts it out of its misery somewhere. I write to endings. Endings are everything to me,” Mazin says.