The Last of Us: all the news about the video game franchise turned TV series

With season 2 of HBO’s The Last of Us in the books, and with no The Last of Us Part III coming in the immediate future, Naughty Dog has come up with an interesting way to funnel all the attention from the show into the game. The studio has released a new, free patch for The Last of Us Part II Remastered that lets you play the game in chronological order. The mode takes Abby and Ellie’s stories and interleaves them in chronological order rather than the nonlinear story of the original version of the game, which used timeskips and flashbacks.

In addition to Chronological Mode, the patch also includes new achievements and skins to use in Part II Remastered’s roguelike game mode No Return. Now you can dress up Joel and his brother Tommy like Naughty Dog’s other pair of visually indistinct, emotionally constipated brothers; Nathan and Sam Drake. Naughty Dog does still recommend that first timers play TLOU Part II normally before tackling Chronological Mode but that, “the team’s hard work has paid off with a fascinating new way to enjoy this chapter.”

Chronological Mode will give players a new reason to pick up the game while awaiting the next season of the show which will dive into events from Abby’s perspective. Season 3 though, will proceed without Neil Druckmann as co-lead. Druckmann, co-director of both The Last of Us games and creative director at Naughty Dog, recently announced that he’s taking a break from the show to focus efforts on the studio’s games including the recently announced, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.

Neil Druckmann, co-creator of The Last of Us video game and co-showrunner on the HBO adaptation, will be stepping away from the television series moving forward. In a statement, Druckmann — who is also studio head at The Last of Us developer Naughty Dog — said the decision was made to focus on the studio’s upcoming games.

“With work completed on season 2 and before any meaningful work starts on season 3, now is the time to transition my complete focus to Naughty Dog and its future projects, including writing and directing our exciting next game, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, along with my responsibilities as studio head and head of creative,” Druckmann wrote.

When fans nervously tuned in to watch HBO’s adaptation of one of their favorite video games, there was one familiar presence that immediately calmed their nerves: the mournful guitar of Gustavo Santaolalla. As certain story beats changed and beloved polygonal faces were replaced with new actors, the beating heart of The Last of Us — its mesmerizing, tension-ridden score — survived the transition to TV intact.

“[Series creator] Neil Druckmann has said that my music is part of the DNA of The Last of Us,“ Santaolalla says. “I think the fact that we kept the sonic fabric — that we didn’t do an orchestral score for the series — has been instrumental in keeping those fans of the games fans of the series, too.”

The Last of Us just wrapped up its second season, and the finale ends in a way that sets up a major change for the show. It’s one that reflects a similar shift in perspective that fans of the game it’s adapting will remember well: one designed to make viewers see the story in a whole new way.

This story contains spoilers for the first two seasons of The Last of Us, as well as both games.

If you’ve played both The Last of Us games and are watching along with the show, there’s a pretty strong chance you’ve been waiting to see how the HBO series approaches a very particular moment — and wondering if that moment has been changed at all for TV. Well, it didn’t take too long to find out.

The second episode of season 2 just aired, and The Last of Us’ creators made sure to rip the bandage right off. And not only did they not tone things down, they somehow made things even more intense, while also using the moment as a chance to further expand this post-apocalyptic world.

Joel is a troubled guy. Throughout the first Last of Us game (and subsequent TV adaptation on HBO, where he’s played by Pedro Pascal), he sees and does a lot of things he’d rather forget. He certainly doesn’t seem to want to talk about them much. Which is why it’s nice to see that, in the show’s second season, he’s finally seeing a therapist named Gail.

Unlike most of the show’s cast, Gail (played by Catherine O’Hara) isn’t based on a character from the games but instead is a new creation specifically for the HBO series. And although she makes her debut in season 2, co-creator Craig Mazin says that introducing a therapist was actually something he wanted to do early on.

In The Last of Us Part II, it takes a long time before players understand just who Abby is. A new character introduced as both an antagonist and protagonist, Abby is locked in a violent game of revenge with Ellie, but her reasoning and history don’t become clear until around midway through the game, when players actually take control of her as a character.

When the team behind the HBO adaptation of The Last of Us started thinking about introducing her for the show’s second season, they realized they didn’t have that same amount of time.

Just ahead of the second season of The Last of Us on HBO, Sony is making it a little easier for newcomers to get the full game experience. The company just announced The Last of Us Complete for the PS5, which is exactly what it sounds like: a collection feature The Last of Us Part I and Part II, alongside extra features like the roguelike mode and “lost levels” collection.

Of course, you can already buy the PS5 enhanced versions of both games, but the new collection should provide a simple entry point to those just coming to the series after watching the show. That’s almost certainly why the complete collection is coming out now; season 2 of the HBO series premieres on April 13th.

The Last of Us’ second season hasn’t even debuted yet, but Warner Bros. Discovery renewed the show for a third season. The company hasn’t shared details about when the third season may air or how many episodes it might be.

The second season’s first episode debuts on Sunday on HBO and Max. Season 2 is only 7 episodes long, a bit shorter than season 1’s 9-episode run, but it won’t cover all of The Last of Us Part II, as co-creator Craig Mazin explained in an interview last year.

The first season of HBO’s The Last of Us wasn’t just one of the most impressive video game adaptations to date, it was also one of the most faithful. The show did a remarkable job of replicating the characters, locations, and moments of the game, to the point that it felt like it was just skipping straight to the cutscenes at times. Still, season 1 displayed flashes of its own storytelling, with episodes like “Long Long Time,” which expanded the post-apocalyptic world’s scope beyond the main story of Ellie and Joel. This helped the series feel both authentic to and distinct from its source material. Season 2 takes things a step further — it neatly follows a more complicated story, while also spending more time fleshing out the setting beyond its lead characters.

_{This piece contains light spoilers for The Last of Us show and games.}

Warner Bros. Discovery just released a new trailer for the second season of The Last of Us, offering an action-packed view of the fraught world Joel Miller (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) are facing.

Things look bleak for both of them, and the show’s fungal-based zombies don’t seem to have become any less dangerous. The trailer’s centerpiece is a snowy human settlement that, at one point, is assaulted by a zombie horde. There are lots of explosions and at one point, a monstrous zombie being blasted by a flamethrower. There are also brief clips of characters fleeing in the woods and an ominous close-up of a sickle just before a shot of someone being hanged.

HBO has narrowed down exactly when the second season of The Last of Us will debut. Today the network announced that season 2 will kick off on April 13th on both HBO and Max; previously we only knew it would appear some time in April. It’s been a long time coming, as the show’s debut season wrapped up back in 2023.

Season 2 will follow the second game in the series — or at least part of it. Previously, co-creator Craig Mazin explained that the story of The Last of Us Part II will take multiple seasons to cover completely, and as a result season 2 will be a little shorter than the first, with a total of seven episodes. The new season takes place five years later, and will introduce a handful of new cast members, most notably Kaitlyn Dever as Abby and Isabela Merced as Dina, both of whom play a pivotal role in the second game.

Warner Bros. Discovery has debuted an official teaser trailer for the second season of The Last of Us, and it looks like it’s going to be a rough one for Joel and Ellie — which, if you’ve played The Last of Us Part II, should be no surprise.

“After five years of peace following the events of the first season, Joel and Ellie’s collective past catches up to them, drawing them into conflict with each other and a world even more dangerous and unpredictable than the one they left behind,” according to Warner Bros. Discovery’s official logline for the season.

The first season of HBO’s The Last of Us covered the first game in the series, but it looks like season 2 will need a little more time to explore the sequel. In an interview with Deadline, co-creator Craig Mazin explained that the story of The Last of Us Part II will take at least two, and possibly three, seasons to fully cover. And as a result, the show’s second season will be a few episodes shorter than the first.

“The story material that we got from Part II of the game is way more than the story material that was in the first game, so part of what we had to do from the start was figure out how to tell that story across seasons,” Mazin explained. “When you do that, you look for natural breakpoints, and as we laid it out, this season, the natural breakpoint felt like it came after seven episodes.” (Season 1 clocked in at nine episodes, for comparison.)

Yeah, I know, it seems way too early for a remaster of The Last of Us Part II. The game originally launched on the PS4 in 2020 and has already received an update for those playing on the PS5. It’s not like Ellie, Joel, and Abby need much of an update for modern audiences. But while the slightly enhanced graphics — which include native 4K support and improved frame rates — are nice, they’re not really the reason to play The Last of Us Part II Remastered. Instead, it’s all of the other stuff that turns this into an excellent special edition of the game.

Some of the additions are relatively small. There’s a guitar mode where you can, well, play guitar as much as you want. Using the PlayStation controller’s touchpad to swipe guitar strings was one of the highlights of the original release, and it’s nice to be able to mess around with it freely. I’m sure we’ll see some very cool videos of people rocking out soon. You can also unlock outfits to wear while playing the main game, which is silly but fun. I’m 10 hours deep into a New Game Plus run, and Ellie has been wearing a Death Stranding T-shirt the entire time (even though that game couldn’t exist in TLOU’s timeline).