After getting our first look at Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey's Joel and Ellie in The Last Of Us Season 2 a couple of weeks ago, more details are beginning to emerge about the second season of HBO's critically acclaimed videogame adaptation. In an expansive new interview with Deadline, series co-creators Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin have confirmed that the next season of their post-apocalyptic show will run shorter than Season 1, comprising seven episodes compared to the first season's nine. Excitingly however, the showrunners did also tease "a significantly larger" Season 3 on the horizon, with the potential for Joel and Ellie's story to stretch further yet to a fourth season.
Explaining the decision making process behind a shorter second season, Mazin explained it's not a case of there being less narrative ground to cover adapting The Last Of Us Part II, but more. “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 natural breakpoint felt like it came after seven episodes.”
And with the show's second season — which will feature a "big but not feature-length" episode in its run — already set to see the likes of Kaitlyn Dever's Abby, Isabela Merced's Dina, Young Mazino's Jesse, and Catherine O'Hara entering the fungus-based horror series' fray, a third (and possibly fourth) season of TLOU seems almost inevitable to its creators. “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,” teases Mazin. “And indeed, the story may require Season 4.”
In terms of where things are headed after THAT heart-wrenching dramatic finale to The Last Of Us Season 1, Druckmann and Mazin are keeping their cards close to their chest for now, but the duo have affirmed future seasons will follow the games' exploration of unconditional love and revenge. "[Season 2] is a continuation of love from the first season," says Druckmann, "and this is the dark side of that coin, the pursuit of justice at any cost for the ones you love." We don't know if we're emotionally prepared for what lies ahead, but we'll find out when The Last Of Us Season 2 hits our screens in 2025.