The Last of Us’ cast and crew have shed some insight into where the show will go during its third season.
Please note, there will be major spoilers for The Last of Us season two finale below.
Earlier today, The Last of Us’ second season wrapped. It ended with a cliffhanger, showing Kaitlyn Dever’s Abby shooting Jesse dead, before she points her gun at Ellie. She fires again, and the screen cuts to black. We are then transported back to “Seattle: Day One”, but this time we are not seeing events through the eyes of Ellie. This time, we are with Abby, who walks out into the massive football stadium the WLF have made their base camp.
Speaking about season two’s finale during a press conference held earlier this month, showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann said they don’t currently know how much viewers can expect to see Ellie, Dina, Tommy and Jesse during the show’s third season. However, even if these characters aren’t on screen as much as they were during season two, their presence will still be felt.
“Even if I thought I knew now exactly how it was going to go, I’m experienced enough to know that two weeks from now we may have a different idea of how it should go,” Mazin said (thanks, Variety). “All I can say is we haven’t seen the last of Kaitlyn Dever and we haven’t seen the last of Bella Ramsey, and we haven’t seen the last of Isabela Merced, and we haven’t seen the last of a lot of people who are currently dead in the story.”
Meanwhile, Mazin affirmed The Last of Us season three will provide more clarity to some of the events that were playing off in the background of season two, including the WLF’s war with the Seraphites.
“Those questions are correct and will be answered,” Mazin noted. “How did that war start? Why? How did the Seraphites start? Who is [their] prophet? What happened to her? What does Isaac want? What’s happening at the end of Episode 7? What is this explosion? All of it will become clear.”
Now, don’t get your hopes up here, but during this same conference Druckman didn’t rule out Pedro Pascal making a return as Joel via flashbacks. In season one, we saw Anna Torv’s Tess pop up again, despite her character being killed off earlier in the show. Meanwhile, season two featured an episode made up almost entirely of flashbacks, which included the introduction of Joel’s father, a character not seen in the games.
“I wouldn’t have guessed we would have a short story about Joel’s dad before we wrote the season, so there you go,” Druckmann said of that scene, adding: “You can’t predict these things.”
In a separate interview with the publication, Ramsey added they “most likely” expect their presence in the show to be smaller than in previous seasons when series three rolls around.
“I haven’t seen any scripts, but yes, I do expect that,” Ramsey said. “I think that I’m going to be there, but not a whole bunch. We’ve had conversations about that. I sort of have a rough idea of what it’s going to be, but I can’t tell you.”
For more on the show, you can check out my discussion feature: The Last of Us season two wraps with episode seven, but was it a satisfying finale?