The Last of Us season 2 isn’t repeating the same mistakes as the first season

It’s important to start with the fact that there’s only so much you can say about The Last of Us season 2. After all, its reputation precedes itself: The Last of Us Part 2, at the time of its release in mid-2020, became a bit of a lightning rod for every opinion one could have on the games’ story of ruthless love and revenge, the state of games and the narratives they impose, and some far less salient criticisms about identity politics.

There is also literally only so much I can say, with HBO spoiler embargoes asking critics to avoid mentioning which are the big pivotal episodes, any major deaths, and even the structure of the season itself. For those who got into The Last of Us through the show, season 2 will be a brand-new day, looking and feeling like the show they loved while following a totally different take on it.

But those who are coming from the game, already a little world weary and battle ridden from the release cycle, can take comfort in the specifics I can offer you — namely, that The Last of Us season 2 is a much-needed expansion on the story of The Last of Us Part 2, with a particularly strong characterization for the core players of the season. 

Picking up where the first season left off in 2023, The Last of Us show follows the arc of the games, with Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) in Jackson, Wyoming. When we find them, things are a bit strained. Joining The Last of Us this season is Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), who’s got a personal connection to the Fireflies of Salt Lake City that Joel wasted at the end of season 1. Showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann bring her into the fold faster and more elaborately than The Last of Us Part 2 did, better anchoring the core of its sophomore thrust. We get more insight into Abby as a character, which better grounds the way she plays off our established heroes. 

As you might expect from a season that’s slowing down a single 25-ish-hour game into at least two seasons of TV, The Last of Us sprawls a bit. But it uses that sprawl in ways that feel like the strongest parts of season 1, particularly in its early episodes. While the games are locked into their format, with the bulk of your playtime being focused on action and doing things, HBO’s The Last of Us gets to devote that time to being invested in character work.

Season 1 did this too, but it often felt a little shortchanged; the original game built so much of Joel and Ellie’s relationship through the hours you spent listening to their banter on your adventures. The Last of Us season 1 had to fit all that wandering (more or less) into a few episodes as it shrank the game down to 10 hours of TV. The Last of Us Part 2 is more directly a character study about the mirror these characters provide for one another, and rendering their internal battles on screen provides more avenues to try out new things. 

In that way, a lot of season 2 feels like how Mazin took liberties with the source material in the season 1 episode “Long, Long Time.” Like that Frank/Bill episode, season 2 stretches the story wider than just the main narrative of the game. There are new characters (with Catherine O’Hara bringing a standout scene to the show, as you’d expect her to), and new focuses, like letting Dina (Isabela Merced) be more of a player in the events of the season. Given that this is a franchise that constantly turns over the why of it all — why we do the things we do, why we love the people we love, why we go to such lengths to protect them, and why it even matters at all — that sense of a wider world goes a long way.

Joel’s, Ellie’s, and Abby’s stories are all in relation to each other, however fitfully or unhappily they meld together. This is The Last of Us, after all; everyone here is going to get pushed to their limits. That The Last of Us can find something new to say in the post-apocalyptic wasteland is encouraging; Mazin has clearly taken notes from what people like about the first season and provided more room for those moments. It might be the end of the world as we know it, but at least we know it better.

The Last of Us season 2 premieres on HBO and Max on April 13 at 9 p.m. EDT/6 p.m. PDT. New episodes drop every Sunday.