The Last Of Us season 2 will be shorter than season 1, somehow
The show's second season, beginning its adaptation of The Last Of Us Part II, will be 7 episodes in length, down from 9
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A couple of months back—around the time that casting notices made it clear that Craig Mazin’s TV adaptation of The Last Of Us was really going there, in terms of adapting ultra-brutal, best-selling video game The Last Of Us Part II with its second season—we penned an essay trying to grapple with what a TV version of that particular game might look like, and how it would function. This was no small question, largely for reasons that constitute pretty massive spoilers, both for the games, and for any even-halfway faithful adaptation of it.
One guess we never would have ventured, meanwhile, was “By making fewer episodes for the show’s second season than the first.” The Last Of Us Part II is, after all, a much bigger game than the original, so the idea that the show’s next set of episodes would be trimmed—down to 7 episodes, say—never crossed our minds. But that’s exactly what Mazin (working with collaborator Neil Druckmann, creative director for the game franchise) is doing, per Deadline, confirming that the new season, which will debut in 2025, will be shorter than the nine-episode first.
Of course, those seven new episodes won’t cover all of The Last Of Us Part II; in fact, Mazin’s not sure they’ll be able to fit the entire game into two seasons, suggesting the show might run to a fourth to pack it all in. “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. We feel like it’s almost assuredly going to be the case,” Mazin said, “That — as long as people keep watching and we can keep making more television — Season 3 will be significantly larger. And indeed, the story may require Season 4.”
The Last Of Us show was a critical and commercial success, gaining especial praise for its largely standalone third episode, “Long, Long Time”—and its adaptation of the first game’s tragic, emotionally complicated ending. Meanwhile, we’re still not sure how the show will end up handling what is, essentially, the inciting incident of the second game—there’s no way, to our mind, that they can hold off on it for a whole season of TV, because neither the show, nor the game, works without it—but it’s also a huge, aggressive swing. We’ll know more when The Last Of Us returns to HBO in 2025.
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I loved S1 but [SPOILER]foolishly Googled a character’s name — just the name — and was immediately met with a major spoiler in the preview text of the very first search result that so bummed me out I’m not sure I want to watch it.
It’s been hilarious watching all the still bitter fans struggling to convince themselves that the show’s future seasons won’t be adapting the second game at all, some even insisting that the casting announcement for Abby was fake to throw us off. Keep chugging that copium, guys.
Why, it’s unprecedented!
In other words, the ending will never get the ending, we will probably get season 3, and then hbo will part it out for cash, remove it from streaming, and not renew for the final season, ala westworld.
Westworld was a very expensive show that completely lost its audience. HBO has been green-lighting final seasons of expensive low rated shows for decades and nearly all their prestige dramas have reached a planned series finale.Westworld is the exception because both quality and ratings took a dive at the same time the showrunners wanted to expand the world beyond the park with lots of expensive location shooting and brand new sets and CGI mechas and stuff.
If Last of Us starts to suck and people aren’t watching, it won’t finish, because that’s how TV works. But it doesn’t seem to be a new normal for HBO. Most of the good stuff has been allowed to end.
Most of the good stuff has been allowed to end. Totally, they just renewed Hacks! Since The Last of Us games have a definitive ending, (as of now), I can’t see HBO canceling it before they reach that, but of course, we’ll see.
Enough with shrinkflation! It’s bad enough they short-sheeted my Charmin.
*Spoilers*Assuming the third season is also 7, I actually think 14 total episodes is a pretty perfect amount to adapt the second game. It allows for breathing room but also doesn’t stretch things out. My guess is the big inciting incident happens around the midpoint of season 2 (betting on ep.3), with the following episodes dedicated to Ellie’s time in Seattle. Then the first half of season 3 is all Abby, Lev, and the WLF v. Seraphites, before circling back around to Ellie and finishing up with Santa Barbara in maybe the last two. I think that works perfectly! It even allows for some flights of fancy and standalone episodes that they’re clearly interested in to flesh out the world.
Bit nervous about that. Really loved the first season but felt like the ending was really rushed. Seemed like it was a carefully paced show that suddenly sped up to get to an admittedly really well done final setpiece.
They already knew that the game was going to be in at least 2 seasons, so they probably planned out what the season 2 finale would be – it’s likely a *big* event to tide over viewers (most of whom haven’t played the game) as they waited for the next season to start. They originally thought they would have 9 episodes of material to get there, but they probably realized they only needed/had 7 episodes.
It’s ALL part of the Great Contraction.