The Last of Us
Photo: HBO
“I am your cool, slutty daddy,” The Last of Us star Pedro Pascal famously said on the red carpet for HBO’s latest blockbuster series, based on the post-apocalyptic video game. Weeks later, the network renewed The Last of Us for a second season. Is there a correlation between Pascal thirst and a renewal? Maybe so! After a harrowing finale in March 2023, HBO is like a hungry zombie wanting more, more, more! The show’s co-creators, Craig Mazin (Chernobyl) and Neil Druckmann (co-president of Naughty Dog, the video-game development company behind TLOU), finally shared a full trailer featuring Joel (Pascal) and Ellie’s (Bella Ramsey) televisual fates for the second season of The Last of Us, reminding us that it is in fact a show about scary monsters and even scarier people. Since it’s been a minute since the first season, we compiled everything we do know about the upcoming season, from the release date to the newest cast members, and you won’t even have to threaten us with a switchblade to get the info.
The season-two trailer shows off Ellie’s new look: eyebrows with a slit, a tattoo, and some arm candy. She’s dancing with another gal in the saloon, look how much she’s grown up! However, cute, coming of age milestones quickly come to an end as we’re reminded of the scary clickers that lurk outside of the walls. “By the time the sun comes up tomorrow, there’s a very good chance you’ll be dead,” Jeffrey Wright, who’ll be reprising his role as Isaac Dixon, growls to a tortured prisoner. For players of the game, there’s a guitar motif that should move at least a few people to tears immediately. For everybody else, get ready: A new season is coming — when you’re not screaming in horror, you’ll be holding back tears. That’s how this show goes.
The most recent casting additions came on March 5, 2025, and it included the beloved clock twink of The Gilded Age fame, a.k.a. Ben Ahlers, per Variety. HBO loves clock twink <3. He’ll be playing Burton, one of the three characters not in the game. He’s in company with Hettienne Park (Hannibal), playing Elise Park, and Alanna Ubach (Legally Blonde), playing Hanrahan.
Joe Pantoliano (The Sopranos) is playing weed farmer Eugene, whose role will be significantly increased. Talking about Eugene, Druckmann told Variety on March 5 that “the way this character comes in really gets to the heart of Joel and Ellie and their relationship.” Also brought in from the games are Wyoming bar owner Seth, who will be played by Robert John Burke (Gossip Girl), and Ellie’s ex Kat, who will be played by Noah Lamanna (Star Trek: Strange New Worlds).
Kaitlyn Dever of Booksmart fame joins the series as one of several prominent new characters, Deadline reported on January 9, 2024. She’s playing Abby, a main character from the second TLOU game, a soldier seeking vengeance on those who harmed her loved ones. On the topic of Dever’s casting, though she is less muscular than the Abby in the game, Druckmann told Variety that “Kaitlyn Dever wanted to work with us; we wanted to work with her. It’s not worth passing it up to continue a search that might never bear fruit to find someone that matches the physicality.”
On January 10, Variety confirmed Young Mazino of Beef and SZA music-video fame will play Jesse, “a pillar of his community who puts everyone else’s needs before his own, sometimes at terrible cost.” “Young is one of those rare actors who is immediately undeniable the moment you see him,” the co-creators said. They’re talking about his face card.
Another round of casting announcements dropped on March 1, 2024. Per Variety, Top Gun’s Danny Ramirez will be taking on another military role and star as Manny, a loyal soldier whose “sunny outlook belies the pain of old wounds and a fear that he will fail his friends when they need him most.” Ariela Barer will play a young doctor named Mel whose commitment to saving lives is challenged by “the realities of war and tribalism,” Tati Gabrielle will play a military medic named Nora struggling with past “sins,” and Spencer Lord will play a “gentle soul” named Owen who is “trapped in a warrior’s body, condemned to fight an enemy he refuses to hate.” Truly, none of these characters can catch a break.
Yes and no. The Last of Us: Part II is an even more expansive game than the first, so the story of the second game will be split over multiple seasons. How many? There’s no way to know. When pressed on how many seasons the game adaptation will take, Mazin and Druckmann went cold. “You have noted correctly that we will not say how many,” Mazin told GQ. “But more than one is factually correct.” The second game (SPOILER ALERT) largely takes place four years after the original game, which gives quite a bit of leeway if Mazin and Druckmann want to build that story out. Plus fans of the game know something seismic happens relatively early on in the second game’s plot — the kind of thing that feels like a season ender, rather than a season opener. At this point, it seems like the only thing we know is what we don’t know.
From a bird’s-eye view, Mazin and Druckmann seem pretty happy with the first season of the show and ready to give another installment along those same lines. “Our goal remains exactly what it was for the first season, which is to deliver a show that makes fans happy,” Mazin said to GQ. Still, the creators acknowledged some things season two could do to improve on the first. The biggest has to do not with plot but with setting. Some, including Stephen King, have noted that Joel and Ellie’s cross-country road trip doesn’t really feel … cross-country at times. That’s partially due to the fact that the entire first season was filmed in Canada. “My goal is to do better next season, now that we’ve learned some lessons,” Mazin said in a press conference, according to TV Line. “Every now and then [in season one] you get a little bit of an ‘Oh, it’s Canada,’ when we don’t want it to be Canada.”
Oh, you’re so impatient. Players of the game were forced to wait seven full years between the first and second installments to learn the fates of Joel and Ellie, but TV watchers won’t have to wait anywhere near that long. Max has dropped character posters and a release date. The Last of Us season 2 begins April 13, which means the show can be eligible for more Emmy nominations. Our guitar-string-calloused fingers are crossed.
