Yesterday, The Last of Us show co-creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann unveiled plenty of new details on Season 2 of the HBO series. The upcoming season will be a bit shorter, having only seven episodes compared to the original season’s nine. However, the creators confirmed Season 3 would be larger, and Season 4 is also practically guaranteed due to the sheer length of the source material (Part II is twice as long as the original game). Here’s what Craig Mazin told Deadline:
The story material that we got from The Last of Us Part II 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.
We don’t think that we’re going to be able to tell the story even within two seasons because we’re taking our time and go down interesting pathways, which we did a little bit in Season 1 too. 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.
Later, Mazin was even more adamant that there would be a Season 4 of The Last of Us show.
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. We just want to put people’s minds at ease that the idea that this season coming up is a little bit shorter than the first one is not because we’re taking less time to tell the stories, it’s because we want to take more time. The story that we’re telling is much bigger than the story of Season 1, there’s just a lot more going on, it’s a lot harder to produce but we want every episode to feel like its own blockbuster to be honest with you.
The Last of Us series was renewed for the second season in January 2023, shortly after the show hit record numbers. It became the second-biggest HBO premiere in a decade following House of the Dragon and registered the largest pilot-to-second-episode growth for HBO.
The second season will add many talented actors to the cast, such as Kaitlyn Dever as Abby, Isabela Merced as Dina, Young Mazino as Jesse, Ariela Barer as Mel, Tati Gabrielle as Nora, Spencer Lord as Owen, Danny Ramirez as Manny and Jeffrey Wright as Isaac.
It is currently slated to premiere in 2025, which, according to a rumor, is also around the time The Last of Us Part II might be released on PC.
