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

The Last of Us Season 3 Update; Mazin Discusses Druckmann's Departure

HBO's The Last of Us' Craig Mazin updates Season 3, and discusses Neil Druckmann's departure and expanding the narrative beyond games.

With the departure of Naughty Dog's Neil Druckmann and Part II co-writer Halley Gross, co-creator Craig Mazin is the sole writer for season three of The Last of Us, which will focus on the second half of Part II and Abby Anderson's (Kaitlyn Dever) story as the primary focus. The Emmy-award winner spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about being a part of a string of video game-to-live-action on-screen adaptations that have become a success, where he's at creatively with season three, and if there will be any changes in the process, and if he pays attention to any online reaction.

The Last of Us: Craig Mazin on Forging on Season Three Without Neil Druckmann and More

As far as the success of the HBO show as part of a wave of video game adaptations, "Yeah. I think that in the wake of 'The Last of Us,' a ton of video game projects got greenlit. [Prime Video's] 'Fallout' was already happening, and that was fantastic in its first season, and I'm really looking forward to the second season," Mazin said. "There's just this incredible wave coming. Like anything, when people first said, 'Hey, let's start adapting books into movies or television shows,' some of them are going to be great, some of them will stumble. But the idea that the industry has woken up to how rich some of that storytelling is and how wonderful it is to adapt is fantastic."

When it comes to where he's at creatively on season three, "This is kind of my favorite time. It's very quiet. It's just sitting here with my wonderful ergonomic keyboard and clacking away. The pages are happening, and I get to be a monk for a while, which I love, and I just write. It's the purest form of what I do," Mazin said. "And then in just a couple of months or so, that happy time will start to be less quiet because we begin a very long prep period while I'm still writing, and then we begin to shoot while I'm still writing. In seasons one and two, I finished writing about six weeks before we started shooting the last episode. I don't necessarily recommend this method other than to say this works for me, but it is insane."

Whether Druckmann's absence is felt creatively, "I don't think it is, in the sense that I was pretty much a monk just writing in a room by myself for most of the time, regardless. And I've gotten so much out of talking with them over the course of seasons one and two," Mazin said. "When we made season two, we really were thinking about what comes after because you can't really tell half of that story without thinking about what the whole story should be. So we really did get that work in. Neil's always had a full-time job running Naughty Dog, so it's always been me up in Canada [where the production is], and, ultimately, things are pretty much going to proceed as usual."

When asked about the online discourse like The Last of Us subreddit, "I don't look at them, so I don't know," Mazin said. "Problem solved! I don't go on Reddit. I mean, I'm always playing video games; I'm playing 'The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered' right now. Sometimes I'll go on Reddit when I'm like, 'What is the best bow for an archer build?' That's about as much Redditing as I do."

For more, including his most challenging scenes to shoot, scenes that weren't in the games, what he's learned from Chernobyl, if he'll return to comedy, and more, you can check out the entire interview. Both seasons of The Last of Us, which also stars Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey, Gabriel Luna, and Rutina Wesley, are on HBO Max.

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