Excitement is building for the second season of The Last Of Us. The HBO show, whose first season aired in January 2023, has already scooped several awards, and this month a flurry of casting announcements has fans licking their lips for season two. The latest of which? Catherine O'Hara (yes, from Schitt's Creek) who will be joining the cast in an "undisclosed role".
The show itself (based on the bestselling video games of the same name) is set in a dystopian future where infected zombies roam America, and law and order has broken down completely.
Despite the dangers lurking outside designated quarantined zones, Joel (Pedro Pascal) agrees to take Ellie (Bella Ramsey) across country on a journey that might be the key to saving all of humanity.
With announcements coming thick and fast about season two, here’s what we know about it: from the cast to the plot.
What will it cover?
Though season one of The Last Of Us covered the entirety of the first game, season two will only cover part of the second game, according to series creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann.
It will start in the same place: after four years, Joel and Ellie have settled in the town of Jackson, Wyoming. However, their lives are uprooted after they are visited by Abby, a young woman on a quest for revenge.
Whatever other differences there might be, the four-ish year time jump from the second game will remain. While Ellie is around 14 in the first game, she’s 18 to 19 in the second. "I'll be 20, probably by the time we shoot that, and I'll be playing 19," Bella Ramsey told the Happy Sad Confused podcast. "So yeah, I will be closer to my age."
Who’s been cast?
Expect to see Ramsey and Pascal reprise their roles as Ellie and Joel, a few years down the line.
They’ll be joined by a host of returning cast members (sadly not including Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett from the first series’ famous third episode): chief among them Gabriel Luna as Tommy, Joel’s brother, and Rutina Wesley as Maria, the leader of Jackson.
This month has also seen a host of exciting casting announcements from HBO:
Catherine O'Hara
Not much has been disclosed about O'Hara's role yet, but she's the first guest star that has been announced on the show. Given that the last ones were Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett, who starred in arguably the last series' best episode, expectations are high...
Kaitlyn Dever
Kaitlyn Dever will be playing Abby: a major new character in the second season. Originally, the 27-year-old Dever had been tapped to play Ellie, but the showrunners eventually chose Ramsey due to her being closer in age to the character in the game. Now, Deever will be playing the famously hench antihero instead.
“Nothing matters more than talent, and we’re thrilled to have an acclaimed performer like Kaitlyn join Pedro, Bella and the rest of our family,” Mazin and Druckmann said in a joint statement. Dever herself has a long career as an actor, appearing in films like Beautiful Boy, Booksmart and Dear Evan Hansen.
Isabela Merced
IT'S OFFICIAL
— The Last of Us News (@TheLastofUsNews) January 11, 2024
Isabela Merced has been cast as Dina in THE LAST OF US Season 2 pic.twitter.com/YBI0NpMrE5
The 22-year-old Merced will be playing the role of Dina, Ellie’s love interest. Merced has been acting since she was 10 – she made her stage debut in a Broadway production of Evita, and since then has gone onto appear in Sicario. She is also set to appear in upcoming film Madame Web.
Young Mazino
Young Mazino says he starts filming Season 2 of ‘THE LAST OF US’ in two weeks.
— Film Updates (@FilmUpdates) January 15, 2024
(Source: https://t.co/DBPnBKfRcc) pic.twitter.com/gUZAetObnU
Korean-American actor Young Mazino will be playing Jesse, a fellow inhabitant of Jackson, and Dina’s ex. Born Christopher Young Kim, he took a stage name because (he explained) there were already too many actors with his surname. Most recently, he played Paul, the younger brother of Steven Yeun’s character Danny, in award-winning Netflix series Beef.
What will it do about ‘that’ plot twist?
Spoilers ahead – For anybody who isn’t aware, Joel is brutally killed at the start of the second game by Abby, the daughter of somebody he killed in the first game’s finale. This sets off Ellie’s journey of revenge, as she proceeds to hunt Abby down, following her all the way to the crumbling ruins of Seattle.
So will Joel die in season two? Quite possibly – it’s such an integral part of Ellie’s arc. "It wouldn't make sense to follow the first game so faithfully only to stray severely from the path," Pascal said during an interview with Esquire. "If that does take place in the show, I don't know that I'm emotionally ready for it.”
That said, showrunner Craig Mazin has hinted that the show isn’t going to be a slavish adaptation of the games. "It's going to be different and it will be its own thing. It won't be exactly like the game,” he told Entertainment Weekly. Here’s hoping.
Release date
The series hasn’t yet begun filming (though it will likely do so later this year), which means our best guess is for a 2025 release date. We’ll keep you posted when we know more.
