Following an explosive first season that impressed longtime video game fans and franchise newcomers alike, The Last of Us will return in April this year with a second season that promises to up the danger and excitement.
While video game adaptations have long heralded fan disappointment and commercial failure, The Last of Us garnered (a rather unexpected) success through its emotionally charged storytelling lens, spectacular zombie special effects, and gripping action scenes. Not every episode was a hit with viewers, but after its nine-episode run, the HBO series cemented itself as a pop cultural TV icon, both as a well-received video game adaptation and a standalone zombie apocalypse thriller. You can find all of The Path’s coverage of The Last of Us here.
Full disclosure: as someone who has never played the original video games, I don’t know how the story will unfold, so this analysis will be based on my experience as a rookie Last of Us fan.
With the release of a brand-new teaser, the hype surrounding the long-awaited second season is at an all time high. The teaser opens with the distressing sound of alarms blaring, as an unknown young woman (Kaitlyn Dever) cautiously makes her way down a dark hallway, gun in hand. Could this unspecified location be the hospital where Joel (Pedro Pascal) rescued (or, depending on how you see it, stole away) an unconscious Ellie (Bella Ramsey) from the Fireflies, killing everyone in sight before escaping? A voiceover, spoken by Dever, follows:
“It doesn’t matter if you have a code like me. There are just some things, everyone agrees are just… wrong.”
The teaser itself is short, flashing about 20 seconds of scenes from Season 2 in rapid-fire succession before cutting to the title card, illuminated by a red flare. Although it’s not much information to go off of, especially when you don’t know the overall context from the games, there are a few key images.
We see Joel’s brother, Tommy (Gabriel Luna), rushing to defend against what looks like a siege on his commune in Wyoming. There is a brief glimpse of a glinting sickle, someone on fire, what looks like an Infected crawling out of a car. We see Ellie frantically running away from something (or someone), then a shot of her slow dancing with another woman (Isabela Merced). Two people flee on horseback through snow-covered mountains. Infected hands grab desperately at a window, tinted in red lighting. A solemn Joel stares ahead as a single tear streams down his weathered cheek. Ellie screams. Tommy lovingly touches his forehead to his wife Maria’s (Rutina Wesley), blood dripping from his brow. An explosion. Dozens (hundreds?) of Infected slamming themselves into a wall.
What does it all mean? Most of the scenes in the teaser are too quick to really understand what is going on, but the overall tone is certainly foreboding. Who is Dever’s character, and how is she connected to Joel’s massacre of the Fireflies? What fate awaits Joel, Ellie, Tommy, and Maria? I can’t help but have a sickening feeling that some very beloved characters are going to meet some very bad ends.
The Infected may terrorize the humans remaining in the world of The Last of Us, but Season 1 showed us time and time again that sometimes, the behaviors and actions of people are far more horrifying than any teeth-gnashing zombie. The fungi-covered Infected undeniably sent a chill down every viewer’s spine, but so did the ruthless actions of Kathleen (Melanie Lynskey) and the creepy, cannibalistic preacher David (Scott Shepherd). Even Joel, the hero of our story, showed an increasingly gray moral compass as he fought to survive and protect Ellie.
Following the Firefly bloodbath at the hospital in the Season 1 finale, will Ellie ever learn the truth of what happened? Will Joel face justice for his slaughter of the rebels, and for his lies? Peace and happiness are rare and short-lived in the Last of Us world, and based on the teaser, there doesn’t seem to be much of it at all in Season 2.
The Last of Us Season 2 will be released on Max in April 2025.
Photos are property of HBO.
Interested in diving deeper into The Last of Us? Satisfy your urge for merch and source material by checking out our TLOU Top Picks!
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