The Last of Us Returns to Prestige Television

April 15, 2025

Looking ahead to HBO’s The Last of Us Season 2

For over a decade, The Last of Us has topped the video game industry’s leaderboards as one of its most iconic and influential franchises. Its mature themes, deeply layered characters, and complex emotional beats have gripped players and teased out more than their fair share of tears. Those unfamiliar with video games experienced the franchise when HBO’s TV adaptation arrived in 2023 to universal acclaim.

Both video game fans and television fans will be thrilled to know that critics have lauded Season 2 as much as they lauded Season 1. The critical response for Season 2 is overwhelmingly positive, at the time of this publication, resulting in a 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a score of 83 on Metacritic. Critics also generally warn that this season will be much more emotionally draining, as players of the second video game can attest. Bella Ramsey, who plays Ellie, even remarked on The Tonight Show that the script for Season 2 made them cry.

Now, with Season 2’s premiere, buzz around the next chapter of Joel and Ellie’s story is sky-high. Set to release across multiple seasons, the adaptation of the franchise’s second game is sure to send ripples through TV audiences the same way it did for players in 2020. For those who have yet to play the games, the questions are as numerous as the parts and crafting materials scattered across a post-apocalyptic landscape. What is Season 2 trying to set up? Where is Season 2 headed? And why do all of my gamer friends look like their dog just died whenever I bring it up? Though plenty of us at Off Base have played the games, we won’t be spoiling anything here, but we’ll give you some things to think about.

Looking Back on Season 1

For those who want a quick recap, Season 1 largely follows the major beats of the first game of the franchise. A fungal outbreak quickly engulfs the world in chaos, infecting much of humanity and subjecting the rest to either military dictatorship or cruel anarchy. Twenty years later, Joel, a gruff and bitter smuggler who lost his teenage daughter during the initial outbreak, encounters a teenage girl named Ellie, who he soon discovers is immune to the fungal infection. Joel and Ellie travel across the country to reach a laboratory that might be able to use Ellie’s immunity to develop a cure. Along the way, they endure the loss of several friends, survive deadly trials, and form a new father-daughter bond with one another.

However, upon reaching the laboratory in the final arc, with Ellie unconscious, Joel discovers that the doctors intend to develop a cure through a surgery that will kill Ellie. Refusing to lose her, Joel instead kills many of the soldiers in the hospital and kills the lead surgeon before escaping with Ellie. Joel later lies to Ellie that there were other immune subjects and that the doctors have stopped looking for a cure. With no real knowledge of the events at the hospital, Ellie eventually confronts Joel and asks him to swear to her that he has told the truth. He swears. She answers with a simple, “okay.”

The journey of Joel and Ellie hit small screens around the world and instantly became a phenomenon. Despite facing a long history of humiliatingly terrible video game adaptations, HBO broke the cycle with the first season of The Last of Us. Not only were mainstream audiences introduced to one of the most powerful stories told in recent memory, they were also shown hard evidence that interactive fiction—in the right hands—could be art. Let’s hope the second season continues this success and proves immune to the pitfalls and traps of its different-titled predecessors.

Now, as we look forward, we are left with some critical questions. Joel chose his newfound daughter over the world. But did his choice send ripples throughout the world that he can’t take back? Meanwhile, how is Ellie wrestling with the loss of the chance to make her painful journey mean something? With how much Joel matters to her, would she make the same choice that he did—to turn against the world in order to save him?

Season 2 may reveal the answers to these questions in ways viewers don’t expect…

What to Expect in Season 2

Season 2 introduces viewers to some important new characters, some of whom appear in Episode 1. Chief among them is Abby, a soldier on a quest for revenge, played by Kaitlyn Dever. Abby played a central role in The Last of Us Part II, so it will be interesting to see how HBO chooses to adapt her character arc for television. Other notable characters include: Dina, Ellie’s love interest, played by Isabela Merced; Jesse, Ellie’s friend and Dina’s ex-boyfriend, played by Young Mazino; and Isaac, leader of a dangerous militia, played by Jeffrey Wright (who also reprises his role from the video game).

These characters will widen the universe of The Last of Us and complicate its web of relationships. Though the first season looked closely at the core relationship between Joel and Ellie, the second season is already showing that the world is so much bigger than two main characters—and that the consequences of their actions are so much more far-reaching than they realize. No matter where the plot goes, The Last of Us will still ultimately be about relationships, between both friends and enemies. If Season 2 is anything like The Last of Us Part II, the story will test not only bonds of love between characters, but the very limits of love itself.

It’ll also be interesting to see how the TV adaptation differs from the game. Some of Season 1’s differences were more minor, like the staging and execution of certain scenes. Others changed the entire thematic direction of the story, notably the episode that shifted Bill and Frank’s relationship from a pessimistic, soul-crushing narrative of loneliness, to an optimistic, powerful declaration of hopefulness. For how emotionally nuanced Season 2 is set to be, we’re eager to see how the show retains the soul of the property while adapting it to the freedoms and limitations of the television medium.