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The Last of Us S02: "Big Themes, Big Action;" Bloys Read 5 Scripts

Casey Bloys, Chairman and CEO of HBO and Max Content, has read 5 scripts from The Last of Us Season 2 - and he had some thoughts to share.

Whatever your feelings might be towards Casey Bloys, Chairman and CEO of HBO and Max Content, there's one thing about him that we appreciate – and that makes our lives a lot easier. Bloys is a talker – especially on an Emmys night when HBO & Max saw 11 series walk away with a total of 31 statuettes. That brings us to the second season of Craig Mazin & Neil Druckmann's Pedro Pascal (Joel) & Bella Ramsey (Bella)-starring The Last of Us. Of course, the award-winning show hasn't been lacking when it comes to making headlines.

Previously, we learned that Kaitlyn Dever (No One Will Save You, Last Man Standing) had been tapped for the key role of skilled soldier Abby. In addition, Beef star Young Mazino had been tapped for the role of Jesse, and Isabela Merced (Madame Web, Maya and the Three) was set as Dina. And then we had that minor scare involving Pascal's shoulder injury before Pascal confirmed that it wouldn't impact filming.

Now, we get to turn our attention to the season's scripts ahead of its February filming start – with Bloys revealing that he's read five of them. "It's great. It is bigger, gets into questions of retribution and revenge, it follows the video game but has big themes, big action. [Creators] Craig [Mazin], Neil [Druckmann] and the team are doing a spectacular job," Bloys shared with Deadline Hollywood, offering a spoiler-free assessment of what he knows about the season so far.

The Last of Us: Craig Mazin on Season 2 & Beyond

In an interview with Variety from Summer 2023, Mazin discussed how a 2025 debut for the second season was still workable (depending on when the then-ongoing SAG-AFTRA & WGA strikes would end), confirmed that Season 3 will happen (as long as the viewers keep watching), and addressed the possibility of familiar faces returning in flashbacks (and why they have no plans to mess with that "beautiful" episode).

"The Last of Us" Could Still Make Its 2025 Delivery Date – For Now: "We had a little more flexibility, I think, than normally just because we had to wait a little bit longer any way to line up production with the weather. A lot of what we do is outside, and so we had a schedule that weirdly hasn't been immediately impacted. But we're getting pretty close; we can't keep our original start dates forever, obviously. If these strikes go much longer, we inevitably will have to push, and that hurts us, and it hurts the audience, and it hurts HBO. We all, everybody wants to get back to work; I think everybody that's actually doing the work, including the network people who are with us on the ground, I think everybody just wants to get this solved. So fingers crossed."

"The Last of Us" Season 3 Will Happen As Long As Viewers Keep Watching: "It's going to be more than one season. There's more story, so this show will not end with Season 2 unless people don't watch it, and we'll get canceled. Barring that, we will be doing some things exactly the way they were in the game. We're going to do other things that are in the game, and we're gonna do some things that are in the game, but we're gonna do them differently in our own method. No matter if you have played the game or not. You will be surprised as the season unfolds. We have some interesting twists and turns."

Could Melanie Lynskey, Storm Reid & Others Return via Flashbacks? "There's always a chance for everything. With us, you never know, and we obviously don't confine ourselves by timelines. People who are dead sometimes reappear, and sometimes we meet people that we didn't even know, and then we find out that they are somebody."

Mazin on Why There Won't Be Another Bill (Nick Offerman) & Frank (Murray Bartlett) Episode: "What you won't see is, for instance, another very special episode with Bill and Frank; we aren't going to milk it. When we do something that we think is beautiful, we let it be as it is and find other beautiful things to do."

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