Key Takeaways
- Season 2 of HBO’s The Last Of Us will need at least 3 seasons to cover all content from the second game.
- The second season is confirmed to have 7 episodes, but future seasons may be required up to complete the storyline.
- Druckman and Mazin will not extend show beyond source material, but there is potential for the show to continue if a Part 3.
Showrunners Neil Druckman and Craig Mazin teased in an interview with Deadline that season two of the hit HBO adaptation of The Last Of Us won’t be enough to cover everything in the second game. In fact, it may even take until season four to cover the entire story.
HBO’s The Last Of Us was the first mainstream success of a video game adaptation into prestige TV. The first season, which was also helmed by the game’s director Neil Druckman and Craig Mazin of Chernobyl fame, was nominated for 24 Emmys and took home eight. A second season was greenlit after only the first two episodes of season one aired and is now in full production. While the first season covered all the events of the first game, fans who have played the second game were concerned that the length and scope of that game would be too much to fit into a single season. Now, Druckman and Mazin have chimed in to agree that is indeed the case.
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Part 2 will take at least two seasons, maybe three
A long journey
HBO
Season two is confirmed to be only seven episodes long, one shorter than the first season, which prompted the showrunners to comment on the future of the show. “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,” Mazin said. “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.”
Getting more specific, Mazin later stated “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.” The only thing the two were definitive on in this interview was the stance on not extending the show beyond the source material. As of the time of this writing, The Last Of Us Part 2 is the last entry in the series, but there are rumors that a Part 3 is in early development at Naughty Dog. Should that game be released by the time the show catches up to that point in the story, we may end up getting more seasons of the show as well.
The Last Of Us Season 2 has no release date but will stream exclusively on HBO Max.
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