Neil Druckmann drops a couple of tidbits about The Last Of Us season 3, and does not offer much hope of The Last Of Us 3.
If you’re a fan of the HBO drama series The Last Of Us, you probably already know that the show’s second season is inbound and will arrive on our screens in April. A third season has already been confirmed, and series co-creator Neil Druckmann has been chatting to Variety about the prospect of topping the events of the soon-to-launch second season.
Although it hasn’t been confirmed, should the series roughly follow the same story as the videogames, we’re expecting season three to mark the show’s end. Considering that Druckmann will be keen to ensure that The Last Of Us continues to meet the high bar of quality set by that first series, he tells the outlet that he’s already feeling some pressure.
“It’s getting harder to make because every episode gets big,” says Druckmann.”You don’t want to wait four years for a 17-episode finish, or whatever it is…I’ve been feeling scared lately about like, ‘oh, yeah, I have to start thinking about season 3.’ I remember having this feeling when we were finishing Season 1, where I was like, how the fuck are we going to top this?’ Now, of course, I’m like, ‘How the fuck are we going to top this?’”
For fans of the games, the focus this time around will very much be on just how closely the show’s second season follows the events of the game. The Last Of Us Part II proved to be divisive when it released in 2020, with many hailing it as a masterpiece while some fans rejected it completely for a series of narrative decisions that would split the fanbase and stir up some interesting (and sometimes ugly) debate online.
We don’t yet know what Druckmann and his fellow collaborator Craig Mazin will do with the TV show’s second season, but Druckmann did offer this: “I love the changes that we’ve made. It’s a different version of that story, but its DNA is in there. Maybe more than excited, I’m really curious what their reaction will be.”
Speaking of the game series, for fans hoping that a third game might be in the works, Druckmann had little to offer in the way of hope. When the prospect of a third game was raised by the outlet, Druckmann sighed and said: “I was waiting for this question. I guess the only thing I would say is don’t bet on there being more of Last Of Us. This could be it.”
One one hand, perhaps that’s not a bad thing. The existing two games sit as significant works in the medium, telling a memorable story about cycles of violence and revenge that can sit proudly among anything TV or cinema has given us and ending in a note-perfect fashion. But still, that calibre of storytelling is still all too rare in videogames, so the thought that we won’t get anymore isn’t an entirely comfortable one, either.
We’ll bring you more on The Last Of Us as we hear it.
