The Last of Us HBO Series Creator Teases How Season 2 Will Explore One Major Element

The Last of Us HBO series has become a major hit, and has exposed a bigger worldwide audience to the deep, dark, and riveting story that made the game series so iconic – and equally controversial. Right now, audiences are stuck on the question of whether or not Joel (Pedro Pascal) made the right (or even moral) decision to save Ellie's (Bella Ramsey) life at the cost of saving the rest of humanity from the hellish Cordyceps infection and its nightmarish monsters. Meanwhile, the creators of The Last of Us TV series are already thinking to the even bigger challenge that lies ahead in Season 2. 

With the events of the first game having been entirely covered in Season 1, The Last of Us Season 2 (and Season 3) will have to tackle the exponentially bigger, darker, more complex and violent story of the second game. During the recap for The Last of Us Episode 9, the show's official podcast welcomed The Last of Us HBO series showrunner Craig Mazin, game co-creator and show writer Neil Druckmann, and Ashley Johnson, the actress who played the video game version of Ellie and cameoed as Ellie's mom in the show's finale. 

During the discussion, Ashley Johnson touched on one thing from the TV show she never got to experience while acting in the games: namely, the detail about the Cordyceps infected operating as one fungal hive-mind organism. During The Last of Us Episode 2, we witnessed firsthand how the infected got signaled by one fallen member near Joel, Ellie, and Tess, summoning an entire horde to come rushing their way in a mob. Johnson hit the nail on the head for many gaming fans when she said that she hopes this hive-mind element of the infected gets adapted into The Last of Us Part 3. That's when Craig Mazin revealed that it will indeed be an element that gets focused on in Season 2: 

"And that is something that I will say... I think that we will explore further in the next season. The first time around we were learning so much about how to create the Infected and how to televise them in a way that was exciting and didn't seem goofy or weird or artificial. And I think we figured out that. And I think this next season, the interconnectivity of them and the risk of stepping on the wrong thing, that stuff is going to be brought forward more for sure."

In a way, Mazin is also addressing the very question we asked about the show: Did The Last of Us have ENOUGH Infected in Season 1, and is it something that needs improvement in Season 2? 

The Last of Us is now streaming on HBO Max.