Co-creators Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin said that The Last of Us Season 2 alone will not cover the full events of the 2013 video game’s sequel.
After closing out its acclaimed debut season on March 12, HBO’s post-apocalyptic world of The Last of Us is hoping to return for more than just the second season that the premium network has already greenlit.
Season 1 of the show was based on the 2013 video game of the same name, and the plot of both stories concluded similarly. The main story of the first game had an approximate runtime of about 15 hours — meanwhile, 2020 sequel The Last of Us: Part II is closer to 24 hours. That had fans wondering about the length and the pacing of Season 2 of the show.
They now have an answer.
“No. No way,” co-creators of the HBO adaption Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin told GQ, in response to a question about whether The Last of Us Season 2 will encompass the full plot of The Last of Us Part II. “It’s more than one season,” Druckmann said.
With the second game being much longer than the original, the pair did not go into how many seasons it could cover. Let the speculation ring!
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“Some of the stuff I’m excited for [in Part II] are the changes we’ve discussed and seeing the story come to life again in this other version. And I think it’s exciting because it leans into those feelings you had from the game really heavily, in a new way,” Druckmann told GQ. The creator of the game has also said in the past that both of the games in the world of The Last of Us are centered around love. Without spoiling anything, another main theme of the second game is the cycle of revenge.
It is unclear when The Last of Us could return to HBO. Season 1 began filming in July 2021, with the premiere episode airing on Jan. 15, 2023. With that in mind, the show could return in late 2024, but a 2025 return appears more likely.
In the meantime, fans of the TV hit now have plenty of time to get caught up on the award-winning source material for the very first time (or embark on yet another replay).
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