Posted in: HBO, Max, Preview, TV | Tagged: HBO, max, season 2, the last of us

The Last of Us Season 2 Star Confirms Filming Start, New Cast Addition

Isabela Merced confirmed starting filming on The Last of Us Season 2, praising Craig Mazin & Kaitlyn Dever & teasing a new cast addition.

If you've been following our updates over the past month, then you know that the second season of Craig Mazin & Neil Druckmann's Pedro Pascal (Joel) & Bella Ramsey (Bella)-starring The Last of Us has been making some headlines with news on both sides of the camera. From a casting standpoint, we learned that Pascal & Ramsey would be joined by Kaitlyn Dever (No One Will Save You, Last Man Standing) as Abby, Beef star Young Mazino as Jesse, and Isabela Merced (Madame Web, Maya and the Three) as Dina, and Emmy Award-winner & SCTV Legend Catherine O'Hara (Schitt's Creek) in an undisclosed role. Now, Merced is offering some updates during a red-carpet event for her upcoming film Madame Webb. In the clip below, Merced reveals that she's finished her first day of filming – while dropping huge praise on Dever as well as teasing that a friend of hers who she considers to be a "future superstar" has joined the cast (though she can't say who it is, obviously). Finally, Merced drops the word "genius" when it comes to how Mazin was able to find a way to bring "Part 2" of the video game to live-action series life – and she's speaking as someone who knocked out the game over a weekend.

Behind the camera, Mazin and Druckmann will be joined by Peter Hoar (S01E03: "Long, Long Time") are Mark Mylod (HBO's Succession), Nina Lopez-Corrado (HBO's Perry Mason), Stephen Williams (HBO's Watchmen) and Kate Herron (Loki). Now, here's a look at that clip from the red carpet for Madame Web, where Mercad discusses Season 2:

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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