Posted in: HBO, TV | Tagged: the last of us

The Last of Us Creators on Season 2 Deaths, Season 3 Challenges

HBO's The Last of Us creators Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin discuss navigating the end of Season 2 and tease what we can expect in Season 3.

There was a lot to unpack in The Last of Us season two finale, and as fans of the games are already familiar with its narrative structure, there's a lot more to come in season three. As we've seen throughout the series, particularly season two, one of the typical themes of the apocalyptic series is flashbacks, the most recent example was the return of Pedro Pascal's Joel Miller in the penultimate episode "The Price" when viewers finally discover what led to Ellie's (Bella Ramsey) estrangement with Joel as the two slowly repaired their already fractured relationship. Creators Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin shed light on what's to come. The following contains major spoilers.

The Last of Us Creators Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin on How Much Season Two Questions Will Be Answered in Season Three

At the end of "Convergence," we finally get a reunion between Ellie and Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), the latter finds the Jackson, Wyoming crew's hideout at an abandoned Seattle theater. She got the drop on Tommy (Gabriel Luna), holding him at gunpoint. As Ellie and Jesse (Young Mazino) investigate the ruckus, Jesse gets killed with a headshot from Abby, and Ellie is put into a difficult situation, pleading with Abby to let Tommy go while explaining she knows why she killed Joel and the fact that she's immune to the Cordyceps plague. As Abby points the guns and fires, the screen goes black and the narrative shifts to her on "Day One."

Before Abby got the drop on the crew, Ellie went to the Seattle Aquarium to look for Abby, only to find Owen (Spencer Lord) and a pregnant Mel (Ariela Barer), and got the drop on them. As the two try to talk their way out of Ellie's interrogation, Owen draws his gun on the table and Ellie shoots him with her gun with bullet piercing Owen, fatally wounding him, which also strikes Mel in the neck. As her life is fleeting, she tries to calmly instruct Ellie how to deliver a C-section, given her late-term pregnancy, but Ellie's flustered nature makes it too late as Mel dies, and presumably, her baby too, due to her inaction.

Mazin teased that there's plenty more to come. "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," he told 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."

Duckmann added, "Whether you will see them on screen or not, their presence will be there throughout." As far as how much Ramsey is going to be involved, it seems to track given how much time is split between Ellie and Abby in Part II, and Dever's character was barely involved. "I haven't seen any scripts, but yes, I do expect that," they told Variety. "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."

Mazin said season three will explore what was established in season two, like "How did that [WLF-Seraphite] 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." For more, including Druckmann dangling possible narratives not explored in the games like Joel and Tommy's time between the start of the series through the 20 years of the outbreak before Joel met Ellie, navigating Ellie and Abby's season-closing confrontation, the narrative changes of Ellie and Owen/Mel from the game, Ellie's near-death experience at the hands of the Seraphites, and more, you can check out the full interview. Both seasons of The Last of Us are available on HBO Max.

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