The debut season of The Last of Us was the surprise breakout hit of 2023. Well, maybe not a surprise for the millions who got hooked on the acclaimed 2013 video game on which it was based and, in 2020, its bigger Part II, which is the foundation of the second season and possible future chapters.
But it wasn’t just gamers in the viewer numbers who made it HBO’s biggest show since Game of Thrones. Nor was it those voting in the 2023 Emmy Awards, where its 24 nominations were second only to the final season of Succession.
A drama about surviving a zombie apocalypse after a fungal pandemic turns those infected into undead carnivorous plant people, The Last of Us did for live-action video-game screen adaptations what Barbie did for doll-based films.
The first series didn’t stray far from the characters, scenarios or ever-present tension in the original game. And if it felt cinematic, that’s because game developer and co-creator of the show Neil Druckmann said the title had been influenced by movies such as The Unforgiven and No Country for Old Men as well as another Cormac McCarthy-based story, The Road.
Much of the first season followed the surrogate father-daughter duo of Joel and Ellie, played by Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey, as they travelled across a United States that’s been rendered a wasteland by the outbreak and populated by survivalist factions and cults. This includes one led, in a memorable villain turn, by Melanie Lynskey.
It was revealed early in the first season that Ellie was immune to the infection, so her body might hold the secrets to a cure. In the first season finale, she and Joel were grabbed by a group called the Fireflies. Their medical team’s plan to dissect Ellie in a surgery she wouldn’t survive was thwarted by Joel, who rescued her unconscious from the operating table, taking her back to a fortified free community in the Wyoming wilderness.
It’s there, four or five years later, where season two – and game two – begins. Players of the game will know some pivotal events are looming in the seven episodes.
The forthcoming twist in the story wasn’t the only element to provoke a backlash among some gamers when Part II was released. So, too, did the second instalment’s greater use of LGBTQI+ characters. Fans of the first season, especially those who were touched by episode three and its story of gay survivalist couple Bill and Frank – played by an Emmy-winning Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett – possibly won’t find the second season’s diversity efforts as much of a problem as the gamer bros.
Through all the zombie and militia mayhem, the first season had a theme of protecting the ones we love – whether it was the paternal care of Joel to Ellie, or Bill’s for the terminally ill Frank. According to creators and cast at a recent press event, one of season two’s main themes is vengeance and how retribution escalates.
A new character on the revenge trail is Abby, who was one of two playable characters in the second game. She is portrayed in the new series by Kaitlyn Dever, fresh from her lead role in Australian Netflix wellness-influencer drama Apple Cider Vinegar.
Dever had been in line to play the young Ellie when, in the 2010s, the first game was being originally developed as a movie.
Unlike the game, Abby and her motivations are introduced in the show in the first episode. That was necessary, says Druckmann. “In the game, you play as Abby, so you immediately form an empathic connection with her, because you’re surviving as her, you’re running through the snow, you’re fighting Infected. And we can withhold certain things and make it a mystery that will be revealed later in the story. We couldn’t do that in the show because you’re not playing as her.”
Dever says she’s a long-time fan of the game, which she used to play with her father.
“It was like a real bonding moment for me and my dad playing it together. And to have it come back around 10-plus years later … it felt surreal because it really felt things that are meant to be in your life will happen if they’re supposed to. It just felt right. Abby felt right.”
Also joining the cast is Catherine O’Hara (Schitt’s Creek, The Studio) who stars as Joel’s therapist in the Wyoming community. Another new addition – but not to players of the game – is Jeffrey Wright (Westworld, American Fiction). He plays Isaac, the leader of militia group the Washington Liberation Front, based in the Pacific Northwest. Wright also voiced the character in The Last of Us Part II game.
A third series hasn’t yet been announced. But given that season two of the show will be seven episodes compared with the nine of the first and the second game was substantially longer, it appears we haven’t seen the last of The Last of Us just yet.
The Last of Us, Sky HBO, Mondays from April 14, 8.30pm; Max on Neon, Mondays from April 14, 1pm.
