Already want to know what the future holds for HBO’s The Last of Us? You’ve come to the right place.
In The Last of Us, you’ll meet smuggler Joel (Pedro Pascal) and his cargo: a foul-mouthed 14-year-old named Ellie (Bella Ramsey) who may be the key to saving the world from the deadly Cordyceps fungus. If you’re a fan of the game, you may be wondering how much of the original game this nine-episode season will be covering. Should we be bracing ourselves for a cliffhanger? Where would be a good stopping point for the story?
Luckily, The Last of Us creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann have provided a concrete answer: Season 1 of The Last of Us will cover the entire events of the first game.
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In an interview with Gizmodo, Mazin said, “The first season is the events of the first game — and you can tell, if you have played the game, from watching the marketing materials that we’re also covering the events of the Left Behind [downloadable content].” The inclusion of Left Behind means we’ll be seeing key elements of Ellie’s backstory during the season as well.
However, just because the season is portraying the entire arc of the first game doesn’t mean you should expect the HBO adaptation to be exactly the same. Obviously, we don’t get any gameplay in the TV series, although that doesn’t stop the show from paying tribute to the game’s best mechanics. Remaking TLoU in a different medium allows Mazin and Druckmann to expand on characters and events we don’t necessarily see in the game. We learn more about entities like the Federal Disaster Response Agency (FEDRA), witness more of the start of the Cordyceps outbreak, and get more fleshed-out backstories for characters like Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett).
Will The Last of Us Season 2 cover all of The Last of Us Part II?
Credit: Courtesy of HBO
With the knowledge that Season 1 will cover all of the first Last of Us game, the next logical question is, “Can the same be said of a potential Season 2 and The Last of Us Part II?”
In the same interview with Gizmodo, Mazin addressed that question as well: “I think that the amount of story that remains that we have not covered would be more than a season of television. So assuming we can keep going forward, the idea would be to do more than just one more season.” In theory, that means both a hypothetical Season 2 and Season 3 of The Last of Us would tackle The Last of Us Part II.
And if the show reaches the end of the games, what next? Will Mazin invent more story without source material to go off of, like Game of Thrones or The Handmaid’s Tale?
Absolutely not. “I am not interested in going beyond the existing source material. As a viewer, I have no problem watching shows that just keep going and going and going. No problem. But as a writer, I don’t want to be in the position of spinning plates to just spool out season after season of stuff,” Mazin told Gizmodo. “To me, it’s important that things are purposeful, and if they’re purposeful, that means they have endings.”
The Last of Us airs every Sunday at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max.
