The creators of HBO’s The Last of Us TV adaption have revealed that the show’s second season will have a reduced episode count compared to the first season and that the events of The Last of Us Part II will span multiple seasons.
Speaking in an interview with Deadline, co-creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann said that the hotly anticipated second season will only have seven episodes. The previous season consisted of nine episodes and covered the events of the first game.
Mazin explained that they couldn’t tell the story from The Last of Us Part II in a single season, as they did with Part I. For fans who were concerned that seven episodes would be too short to tell the story of the second game, this news should provide some reassurance.
“The story material that we got from Part II of the game is way more than the story material that was in the first game, so part of what we had to do from the start was figure out how to tell that story across seasons. When you do that, you look for natural breakpoints, and as we laid it out, this season, the national breakpoint felt like it came after seven episodes.”
Mazin all but confirmed that the story of Part II will spill across a third and potential fourth season, too: “One thing is absolutely for sure, I don’t see how we could tell the story that remains after Season 2 is complete in one more season,” he said.
Adapting the story of the second game across two seasons makes sense given that they’re working with limited source material. To avoid venturing into new territory, they need to make time between now and the release of the rumoured, but unconfirmed, third The Last of Us game.
“Our show as people know it on HBO is going to cover the material from the second game and then quite a bit of material that is relevant to that story,” Mazin explained.
Druckmann continued: “Our focus is the two games… there’s quite a bit of material there that we’re taking our time with.”
Mazin also said that there will be a “quite big” episode, similar to the Bill and Frank episode from the show’s first season. “There’s an episode that is going to be again closer to — I don’t know if I would say feature length but quite big,” he explained.
The Last of Us Part II picks up years after the events of the first game. It follows Joel and Ellie as they navigate the consequences of the former’s actions when he saved Ellie’s life in exchange for a potential cure for the Cordyceps infection that has destroyed the world.
Season 2 will see Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey return as Joel and Ellie, respectively. New cast members include Kaitlyn Dever as Abby and Isabela Merced as Dina.
The second season is scheduled to air in 2025.
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