Unfortunately, we won't get as much Joel and Ellie as we want...
The Last of Us co-creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann have officially announced how many episodes the second season of their hit HBO series (which is based off the video game series of the same name) will have, and the news is already leaving fans wanting more.
Mazin and Druckmann have announced that while season one had nine episodes, season 2 will only have seven. The season will also be released in 2025.
However, it's not all bad news, as the two say that season 3 of the show will be "significantly larger."
The Last of Us focuses on queer teenager Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Joel (Pedro Pascal), the middle-aged man who helps her make her way across a post-apocalyptic America plagued by fungus-controlled zombies. It's based on the video game of the same name. The first season followed the events of the first game, and the second season will show part of the plot of the second game.
"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 said. "When you do that, you look for natural breakpoints, and as we laid it out, this season, the national breakpoint felt like it came after seven episodes."
"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," Mazin added. "We feel like it’s almost assuredly going to be the case 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."
"We just want to put people’s minds at ease that the idea that this season coming up is a little bit shorter than the first one is not because we’re taking less time to tell the stories, it’s because we want to take more time," he continued. "The story that we’re telling is much bigger than the story of Season 1, there’s just a lot more going on, it’s a lot harder to produce but we want every episode to feel like its own blockbuster to be honest with you."
The two creators also teased that not all of season 2's episodes would be the standard length.
"And certainly in Season 2, there's an episode that is going to be again closer to – I don't know if I would say a feature length, but quite big," Mazin said. "I like generally hitting about an hour, it's a great length, I love working in that format. What we don't want to do is, say a season of seven episodes where each episode is 90 minutes; part of why we're doing seven episodes is finding that nice line."
Season 2 of the show will feature new actors like Kaitlyn Dever as Abby, Isabela Merced as Dina, Young Mazino as Jesse, Ariela Barer as Mel, and more.
Season 1 of The Last of Us is streaming on Max.