Ahead of House Of The Dragon Season 2's heart-stopping finale last night, American streamer Max teased that there be more than dragons headed our way with a tantalising trailer for the service's upcoming 2024-2025 HBO and Max originals. But whilst the teaser offers exciting blink-and-you'll-miss-it glimpses of Game Of Thrones spin-off A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms, Pennywise prequel series IT: Welcome To Derry, Bene Gesserit beginnings show Dune: Prophecy, and the third series of The White Lotus, the real star attraction is indubitably The Last Of Us Season 2. Now sure, we may only get 20 seconds of footage from HBO's post-apocalyptic video game adaptation here, but with new cast, new characters, and high emotion, it's some 20 seconds! Check out the trailer for Max's upcoming slate below (and track to 1:16 for Pedro Pascal and co specifically):
"Did you hurt her? What did you do?" Catherine O'Hara's S2 newcomer (and probable therapist/counsellor) asks Joel (Pedro Pascal) in this new The Last Of Us teaser, almost definitely referring to Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and *SPOILER WARNING* the brutal measures Joel took to get her back from the Fireflies at the end of the first series. Cue a smash-cut montage not of what we know has been done, but of what — and who — is coming is Season 2. Among the new cohort we get first looks at in-character here are Kaitlyn Dever as The Last Of Us Part II's co-protagonist Abby, Isabela Merced as Ellie's love interest Dina, and Gabriel Luna as Joel's brother Tommy. We also see what looks like cultists the Seraphites, Ellie getting handy with the gun we saw in the show's recent first-look images, and the return of the nightmarish Clickers, promising Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann are fully committing to getting stuck into the second game's story with the new series. All that and there's still time for a single tear to roll down Joel's cheek as he answers O'Hara's question: "I saved her," he says. Oh, Joel...
We still don't have a set release date as of yet for The Last Of Us Season 2, beyond the promise that it's locked in for a 2025 premiere. We do however know that whilst the second season is set to run a little shorter than the first, with seven episodes as opposed to nine, "a significantly larger" Season 3 is in the pipeline from Mazin and Druckmann, with tentative plans for more seasons beyond that. With a cast this strong and a story this good, we'd be happy for our post-apocalyptic Americana road trip to never end. We guess we'll just have to wait and see what Future Days have in store for now.