Strap In, We Finally Got Our First Look at ‘The Last of Us’ Season 2

The highly-anticipated second season of HBO’s ‘The Last of Us’ is dropping 14 April, 2025, and we’ve been given a new look at the upcoming episodes by way of a brand-new trailer.

The hit TV series is based on the widely popular and critically acclaimed video game of the same name. If you haven’t yet caught the bug, you’ll soon be able to stream both seasons of The Last of Us on HBO’s official streaming service, Max, when it launches in Australia on 31 March. Alternatively, you’ll be able to access Max through a compatible Foxtel subscription.

For now, though, here is everything you need to know about the hit HBO series.

‘The Last of Us’ Season 2 Trailer

The Last of Us follows Joel Miller (played expertly by Pedro Pascal), a damaged man trying to navigate his way through the zombie apocalypse while also holding on to some semblance of humanity. Joel meets Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a young girl who’s supposedly immune to the zombie virus. The two then find themselves on a journey across America, trying to avoid the danger that both humanity and the ‘infected’ present.

Season 2 picks up five years after the events of the first season, and will see Ellie and Joel continue to contend with the encroaching infected horde, as well as the grey morality of the humans left behind. While the new trailer doesn’t tell us much about what will happen in the second season, we do have a pretty good idea: it seems to be following the plot of The Last of Us: Part II, a sequel to the original game that released in 2020.

Without spoiling too much, The Last of Us: Part II starts with Ellie and Joel’s relationship strained by the events of the first season. When Ellies life is turned upside down, she embarks of a new journey: this time, one for revenge.

The sequel was told somewhat non-linearly, with flashbacks interspersed within the narrative to re-contextualise events that had already happened, and it isn’t clear how the TV series will handle this.

The show’s famous depiction of zombies, or ‘infected’ in TLOU parlance, is based on the real-life Cordyceps fungus, which causes increased aggression and agitation in insects such as ants. While real-life Codyceps cannot trigger this kind of behaviour in humans, The Last of Us envisions what it would be like if this was made a reality.

Critical Response

The series premiere on HBO Max was a huge success, with record-breaking viewership and positive reviews. The 4.7 million viewers figure encompasses the on-air premiere on HBO and replays later in the night and streaming on HBO Max. This total is behind only the Game of Thrones spinoff House of the Dragon, which premiered in 2022, and attracted a record-breaking 9.986 million viewers.

The show has received widespread acclaim from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the series currently boasts a glowing “fresh” score of 97 per cent positive reviews. This is the highest ever score for a live-action video game adaptation, and has even eclipsed the second-highest score of any live-action show, which is held by the second season of Netflix’s hit fantasy adaptation The Witcher and registered a score of 95 per cent.

How Many Episodes are in ‘The Last of Us’ Series?

The first season of The Last of Us was nine episodes long, while the second season is confirmed to contain seven episodes. Each episode runs for at least 40 minutes but many cross over the hour mark. For example, episode three of season one clocks in at 1 hour and 20 minutes.

Season 2 Cast

While there are a bunch of returning faces in The Last of Us’ second season, though also quite a few new names involved. Here’s everyone HBO has confirmed to be appearing in the second season:

• Pedro Pascal as Joel
• Bella Ramsey as Ellie
• Gabriel Luna as Tommy
• Rutina Wesley as Maria
• Kaitlyn Denver as Abby
• Isabela Merced as Dina
• Young Mazino as Jesse
• Ariela Barer as Mel
• Tati Gabrielle as Nora
• Spencer Lord as Owen
• Danny Ramirez as Manny
• Jeffrey Wright as Issac
• Catherine O’Hara

Will There be a Season 3?

Evidence seems to be piling up that, yes, there will be a third (and potentially fourth) season of The Last of Us. According to rumours, the storyline of the second game in the series will actually be spread out across two season of the TV show – seasons two and three – meaning that it is likely we’ll see at least one more season of the hit show.

Beyond that, however, it is increasingly likely that the TV series will need to tell its own stories rather than rely on the source material, with The Last of Us: Part 3 unlikely, according to Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann.

Druckmann has previously said that a third game in the series would only manifest if the team came up with a compelling enough story to justify another dive into the fungus-laded world, and, recently, he stated that fans shouldn’t bet on it.

“Don’t bet on there being more of ‘The Last of Us’. This could be it,” he told Variety.

‘The Last of Us’ Season 2 Release Date

The highly-anticipated second season of HBO’s ‘The Last of Us’ is dropping 14 April, 2025, with a new episode out every Monday for seven weeks. HBO is launching its own Max streaming platform to Australia on 31 March, 2025, on which you can watch The Last of Us’ second season.

Alternatively, you can access Max through a compatible Foxtel subscription.