The second season of HBO’s highly-acclaimed The Last Of Us is set to go into production in early 2024.
The Last Of Us remains one of the biggest TV hits of 2023. Craig Mazin’s show was a huge success, both critically and commercially, and was quickly renewed for a second season. The HBO-produced series was based on Naughty Dog’s video game of the same name in which a smuggler, Joel (played by Pedro Pascal in the show and Troy Baker in the game) is tasked with taking a young girl, Ellie (Bella Ramsey on TV, Ashley Johnson in game) across the country which has been ravaged by a fungus-based virus that turns people into zombie-like creatures.
The 2013 video game spawned a sequel in 2020, The Last of Us Part II which was also critically acclaimed, but, for spoiler-y reasons, caused controversy among fans. Mazin has previously said that adapting the second game, which is much more sprawling in nature, would take more than one season.
The Last Of Us season 2 has been delayed by the writers and actors’ strike, but HBO boss Casey Bloys announced that the season would go into production in early 2024, as reported by Variety. Neil Druckmann, president of Naughty Dog and producer on the show, assured fans in September that the creative team were ready to roll once the strikes were over.
“We’ve outlined all of season 2 and we’re ready to go as soon as the strike ends,” Druckmann told Entertainment Weekly. Bloys seems confident the strike is coming to an end if they’re announcing the series is going into production in a couple months.
With production starting in early 2024, The Last Of Us season 2 would show up on our screens in 2025 earliest. Patience is a virtue and all that. The show was also missing from HBO’s 2024 slate, confirming we won’t be seeing it next year.
Pascal and Ramsey are returning to their roles as Joel and Ellie. HBO hasn’t announced an actress for the role of Abby, who acts as the main antagonist in The Last Of Us Part II, but fans are theorising Florence Pugh or Shannon Berry could land the coveted role.
The show received a total of 24 Emmy nominations and it has widely been regarded as one of the best video game adaptations ever made. We would be inclined to agree. We’ll keep you posted for more The Last Of Us news.
