Prepare for more of those clicker sounds bouncing around your brain. After setting HBO viewership records during its premiere in early 2023, zombie apocalypse thriller The Last of Us is headed for a second season in 2025, bringing Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal back as emotionally traumatized psuedo-father-daughter duo Ellie and Joel. And now that the series has multiple Emmy wins under its belt, expect an even splashier season 2.
The HBO adaptation was the media giant’s second largest debut at the time, falling only behind Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon in viewership, and having experienced a 22 percent audience jump from its first episode to its second. Suffice to say folks were and remain invested in the adaptation of the PlayStation series, which itself has sold millions of copies across two games.
Upon HBO’s greenlighting season 2, executive producer and show co-creator Craig Mazin released the following statement: “I’m so grateful to [co-creator and original game developer] Neil Druckmann and HBO for our partnership, and I’m even more grateful to the millions of people who have joined us on this journey. The audience has given us the chance to continue, and as a fan of the characters and world Neil and Naughty Dog created, I couldn’t be more ready to dive back in.”
Throughout its nine episodes, season 1 remained largely faithful to the 2013 game, even re-creating some scenes essentially image for image. But season 2 is more of an enigma, given the source material upon which it’s based: The Last of Us Part II, the sequel set several years after the events of Part I. After bringing the video game’s controversial (and, to be fair, beloved) cliffhanger ending to the screen in the season 1 finale, the showrunners are jumping further into the fray with season 2. Here’s what we know so far.
Jump to:
- What will season 2 of The Last of Us be about?
- How many episodes will there be in season 2?
- How many seasons of The Last of Us will there be in total?
- Who will be in the season 2 cast? Has Bella Ramsey’s role as Ellie been recast?
- When will season 2 of The Last of Us come out?
- Where can I watch the trailer?
What will season 2 of The Last of Us be about?
Mazin made his intentions clear early on: He would adapt Part II, and he’d do it with Ramsey as Ellie. In an interview with ELLE.com in January 2023, he said, “To get to the end of the story in the time that we need to take to get to the proper end would be awesome. If I got to work on a set with Bella Ramsey every day for the rest of my life, I’d be thrilled.”
Ramsey was also eager to return to the role, telling ELLE.com at the time, “There’s no limits for me. They can do as many games as they like, as many series as they like, and I’ll be here, flying back out to Canada.”
But what exactly that means for season 2 is only just now becoming clear. Part II of the video game series takes a multi-year time jump, introducing fans to Ellie at the age of 19. (She was 14 in Part I.) The story follows the now-adult Ellie as she hunts down a stranger known as Abby, and follows her and her faction across the country to the ruined outskirts of Seattle. The game is viscerally violent, even more so than Part I, though that’s not the only potential issue impacting a sophomore season of the HBO series.
What we do know is that the next season won’t be able to cover the entirety of Part II. When asked how the second game would be adapted for TV, Druckman coyly replied to GQ, “It’s more than one season.” He didn’t share more after that. “You have noted correctly that we will not say how many,” Mazin jokingly added. “But more than one is factually correct.”
The Last of Us Part II
Season 2 will indeed “be different” from Part II, Mazin told Entertainment Weekly in a post-season 1 finale interview, “just as this season was different [from the first game]. Sometimes it will be different radically, and sometimes it will be [barely] different at all. But it’s going to be different and it will be its own thing. It won’t be exactly like the game.”
Other questions abound, most of them in the spoiler territory (so I’ll keep my speculating vague). Fans found multiple major plot developments in Part II difficult to watch, and transferring those scenes to the screen will prove a particular challenge for Mazin and Druckmann. There’s also an essential perspective shift that takes place midway through Part II, one that forces the player’s empathy to realign with a different character. Replicating that same impact in a live-action adaptation will be tricky, though not impossible, to perfect.
Rest assured, though: Mazin and Druckmann understand the themes they’re working with. As the latter told Deadline, the second season will be “a continuation of love from the first season, and this is just the dark side of that coin, the pursuit of justice at any cost for the ones you love and the exploration of that.”
How many episodes will there be in season 2?
Mazin and Druckmann revealed, in a 2024 interview with Deadline, that season 2 will consist of seven episodes. A potential third season to follow would be “significantly larger.”
“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, [for season 2], the natural breakpoint felt like it came after seven episodes.”
However, there will be at least one supersized episode in the sophomore season. As Mazin put it, this episode will be “quite big,” if not necessarily “feature length.” Still, he continued, “What we don’t want to do is, say a season of seven episodes where each episode is 90 minutes; part of why we’re doing seven episodes is finding that nice line.”
How many seasons of The Last of Us will there be in total?
Mazin and Druckmann anticipate at least three seasons, but likely four.
“We don’t think that we’re going to be able to tell the story even within two seasons [2 and 3] because we’re taking our time and go down interesting pathways which we did a little bit in season 1, too,” Mazin told Deadline in 2024. “Season 3 will be significantly larger. And indeed, the story may require season 4.”
HBO drama executive Francesca Orsi confirmed as much to Deadline in February 2025, saying, “We don’t have a complete or final plan, but I think it’s looking like four seasons. I wouldn’t want to confirm that, but it’s looking like this season and then two more seasons after this and we’re done.”
Who will be in the season 2 cast? Has Bella Ramsey’s role as Ellie been recast?
On the Happy Sad Confused podcast with Josh Horowitz in February 2023, Ramsey first confirmed that the show would take a time jump between seasons 1 and 2—and that she’d be a part of the production. She shared that she would “be 20, probably” by the time season 2 began production, “and I’ll be playing 19. So yeah, I will be closer to my age.”
In a post-season 1 finale interview with Entertainment Weekly, Mazin batted away any ideas of recasting Ellie, and teased a more mature look for Ramsey. “We know what we’re gonna do in terms of costume and makeup and hair, but more importantly, we also know the spirit and soul of the actor,” he said.
Thus Ramsey and Pascal will indeed return to their roles—but with a few important additions alongside them, including Dopesick actress Kaitlyn Dever as Ellie’s adversary, Abby; Beef’s Young Mazino as her friend Jesse; and Isabela Merced (Transformers: The Last Knight) as Ellie’s romantic interest, Dina.
Dever will take on a particularly important role as Abby, a main character in the Part II game. Mazin and Druckmann have both commented on the fact that Dever’s version of Abby will have some differences from the version in the game, in part due to Dever’s smaller stature, as well as the show’s focus on dialogue. “There’s not as much violent action moment to moment,” Druckmann told Entertainment Weekly in February 2025. “It’s more about the drama. I’m not saying there’s no action here. It’s just, again, different priorities and how you approach it.”
Mazin added that Dever’s Abby will provide “an amazing opportunity here to delve into someone who is perhaps physically more vulnerable than the Abby in the game, but whose spirit is stronger. And then the question is, ‘Where does her formidable nature come from and how does it manifest?’ That’s something that will be explored now and later.”
Other additional castings include Catherine O’Hara in an undisclosed role; Jeffrey Wright as Isaac (whom he played in the video game); Danny Ramirez (Top Gun: Maverick) as Manny; Ariela Barer (How to Blow Up a Pipeline) as Mel; Tati Gabrielle (You) as Nora; and Spencer Lord (Riverdale) as Owen, according to Variety.
Plus, a few talented stunt performers and extras will get the chance to embody clickers once again: Mazin teased during a press conference that “it’s quite possible that there will be a lot more infected later” in season 2. “And perhaps different kinds.”
When will season 2 of The Last of Us come out?
During an HBO and Max presentation on November 2, 2023, HBO CEO Casey Bloys first shared that season 2 would begin production in spring 2024, with plans to premiere in 2025. In December 2024, Warner Bros. Discovery confirmed a spring 2025 release window. Finally, in February 2025, Max announced that season 2 would drop its first episode on April 13 at 9 p.m. ET.
Where can I watch the trailer?
An official season 2 teaser officially arrived on The Last of Us Day, September 26, 2024. The footage shows Joel and Ellie five years after the events of season 1. We also catch glimpses of new characters played by O’Hara, Wright, Dever, Merced, Mazino, and more.
A second teaser landed on Jan. 7, 2025, with Dever as Abby narrating, “It doesn’t matter if you have a code like me. There are just some things everyone agrees are just wrong.”
And an official trailer arrived on March 8, 2025. The trailer opens with Joel and Ellie living an idyllic life behind the walls of their “commune,” or as close to it as you can get post-apocalypse. However, threats are coming from all sides that they have to prepare for and the trailer goes on to show quite a few of them, including an assault on their home. It ends with Ellie’s words to Joel, spoken as condemnation: “You swore.”
This story will be updated.
