The Last of Us season 2: HBO is aiming for a 2025 premiere

HBO doesn’t expect to start airing The Last of Us season 2 until sometime in 2025. The start of filming depends on the writers strike

Bella Ramsey, star of the HBO TV series adaptation of the video game The Last of Us (read our review HERE) said a couple months ago that The Last of Us season 2 probably won’t start airing until late 2024 or early 2025. Now HBO Drama Chief Francesca Orsi has confirmed to Deadline that the network is aiming for a 2025 premiere.

While speaking to Deadline about the writers strike and the fact that it’s too early to tell if the strike will impact HBO’s scheduling plans, Orsi said, “We were looking at The Last Of Us for sometime in 2025.” So even if the writers strike hadn’t happened, The Last of Us season 2 would still be well off in the distance.

When the new season does arrive, fans can expect to see more, bigger, and more elaborate creature action in it. Orsi added “there will be a couple of new pieces of casting, which I can’t get into. And of course, there isn’t much that we can go into on The Last of Us, given that (showrunner Craig Mazin) can’t really initiate in any meaningful way from a writing or casting standpoint. But he and (co-showrunner Neil Druckmann) have a good sense of what it is that he’s going to be taking on. We’ll be moving the show from Calgary to Vancouver. All I can say is he’s taking a big swing from both an entertainment standpoint, related to the clickers, but also just the more nuanced, complex character dynamic between our characters, Joel, Ellie and beyond.“

The story of the The Last of Us video game is set years after a fungal plague wiped out much of humanity, transforming most into vicious zombie-like monsters, the story follows Joel, who’s living in a militarized quarantine zone. He has a close relationship with Tess, who operates in the black market of this community. Together, they’ve become known by the local criminal underworld for their ruthlessness. On a mission to reclaim their stolen guns, they run into the leader of the Fireflies, a resistance group, who tasks them with smuggling a young girl named Ellie out of the zone. This mission soon becomes much more than they were prepared for. 

Pedro Pascal plays Joel, who is “tormented by past trauma and failure. He must trek across a pandemic-ravaged America, all the while protecting a girl who represents the last hope of humanity”. He is joined in the cast by Bella Ramsey as Ellie, “a 14-year-old orphan who has never known anything but a ravaged planet and who struggles to balance her instinct for anger and defiance with her need for connection and belonging… as well as the newfound reality that she may be the key to saving the world”; Anna Torv as Tess, “a smuggler and hardened survivor in a post-pandemic world”; Gabriel Luna as Joel’s brother Tommy, “a former soldier who hasn’t lost his sense of idealism and hope for a better world”; Merle Dandridge as Marlene, “the head of the Fireflies, a resistance movement struggling for freedom against an oppressive military regime”; Nico Parker as Joel’s daughter Sarah; Jeffrey Pierce as Perry, “a rebel in a quarantine zone”; Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett as Bill and Frank, “two post-pandemic survivalists living alone in their own isolated town”; and Storm Reid as Ellie’s best friend Riley.

Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson, who did the motion-capture performances for Joel and Ellie in the video game, are also in the cast of the show. Baker plays James, “a senior member of a group of settlers who must fight to keep their community alive in the face of increasingly brutal odds.” Baker also hosts a podcast that serves as a companion to the TV series. Johnson’s character is Anna, “a pregnant woman, alone and on the run, who must give birth under the most terrifying of circumstances.”

The Last of Us is a co-production with Sony Pictures Television, PlayStation Productions, Word Games, The Mighty Mint, and game developer Naughty Dog. Showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann serve as executive producersalongside Carolyn Strauss, Naughty Dog’s Evan Wells, Asad Qizilbash and Carter Swan of PlayStation Productions.

Ramsey had said she didn’t expect The Last of Us season 2 to start filming until late 2023. But now the start date will depend on when the writers strike is resolved.

Are you looking forward to The Last of Us season 2? What do you think of it not airing until sometime in 2025? Let us know by leaving a comment below.