Put together for extra of these clicker sounds bouncing round your mind. After setting HBO viewership information, zombie apocalypse thriller The Final of Us is headed for a second season, bringing Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal again as emotionally traumatized psuedo-father-daughter duo Ellie and Joel. And now that the collection has a number of Emmy nominations beneath its belt, anticipate an excellent splashier season 2.
The HBO adaptation is the media large’s second largest debut, falling solely behind Recreation of Thrones prequel Home of the Dragon in viewership, and having skilled a 22 p.c viewers leap from its first episode to its second. (That’s the most important enhance for an HBO unique drama in historical past.) Suffice to say people have been and stay invested within the adaptation of the PlayStation collection, which itself has offered hundreds of thousands of copies throughout two video games.
Upon HBO’s greenlighting season 2, govt producer and present co-creator Craig Mazin launched the next assertion: “I’m so grateful to [co-creator and original game developer] Neil Druckmann and HBO for our partnership, and I’m much more grateful to the hundreds of thousands of people that have joined us on this journey. The viewers has given us the possibility to proceed, and as a fan of the characters and world Neil and Naughty Canine created, I couldn’t be extra able to dive again in.”
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All through its 9 episodes, season 1 remained largely devoted to the 2013 sport, even re-creating some scenes primarily picture for picture. However season 2 is extra of an enigma, given the supply materials upon which it’s based mostly: The Final of Us Half II, the sequel set a number of years after the occasions of Half I. After bringing the online game’s controversial (and, to be truthful, beloved) cliffhanger ending to the display screen within the season 1 finale, the showrunners are already leaping into the fray on season 2. Right here’s what we all know to date.
What is going to season 2 of The Final of Us be about?
Mazin has made his intentions clear: he needs to adapt Half II, and he needs to do it with Ramsey as Ellie. In an interview with ELLE.com in January, he mentioned, “To get to the top of the story within the time that we have to take to get to the correct finish can be superior. If I set to work on a set with Bella Ramsey day by day for the remainder of my life, I’d be thrilled.”
Ramsey can be desperate to return to the position, telling ELLE.com, “There’s no limits for me. They’ll do as many video games as they like, as many collection as they like, and I’ll be right here, flying again out to Canada.”
However what precisely which means for season 2 is as but unclear. Half II takes a multi-year time leap, introducing followers to Ellie on the age of 19. (She was 14 in Half I.) The story follows the now-adult Ellie as she hunts down a stranger referred to as Abby, following her and her faction throughout the nation to the ruined outskirts of Seattle. The sport is viscerally violent, much more so than Half I, although that’s not the one potential challenge impacting a sophomore season of the HBO collection. Maybe essentially the most speedy query offers with time. Would possibly season 2 discover the interval between Half I and II, and an eventual season 3 adapt Half II immediately? Or will the present dive immediately into Half II, styling Ramsey to look her personal age?
What we do know is that the subsequent season gained’t be capable of cowl everything of Half II. When requested how the second sport can be tailored for TV, Druckman coyly replied to GQ, “It’s a couple of season.” He didn’t share extra after that. “You’ve famous appropriately that we’ll not say what number of,” Mazin jokingly added. “However a couple of is factually appropriate.”
The Final of Us Half II
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The Final of Us Half II
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Season 2 “will probably be totally different” from Half II, Mazin instructed Leisure Weekly in a post-finale interview, “simply as this season was totally different [from the first game]. Generally it will likely be totally different radically, and typically it will likely be [barely] totally different in any respect. Nevertheless it’s going to be totally different and it will likely be its personal factor. It gained’t be precisely like the sport.”
Different questions abound, most of them within the spoiler territory (so I’ll maintain my speculating imprecise). Followers discovered a number of main plot developments in Half II tough to observe, and transferring these scenes to the display screen might show a specific problem for Mazin and Druckmann. There’s additionally a necessary perspective shift that takes place halfway by Half II, one which forces the participant’s empathy to realign with a special character. Replicating that very same impression in a live-action adaptation will probably be tough, although not inconceivable, to good.
Who will probably be within the solid? Will Bella Ramsey’s position as Ellie be recast?
On the Joyful Unhappy Confused podcast with Josh Horowitz in February, Ramsey appeared to verify that the present would take a time leap between seasons 1 and a pair of—and that she’d be part of the manufacturing. She shared that she is going to “be 20, in all probability” by the point season 2 begins manufacturing, “and I’ll be enjoying 19. So yeah, I will probably be nearer to my age.”
Within the post-finale interview with Leisure Weekly, Mazin batted away any concepts of recasting Ellie, and teased a extra mature search for Ramsey. “We all know what we’re gonna do by way of costume and make-up and hair, however extra importantly, we additionally know the spirit and soul of the actor,” he mentioned.
Ramsey and Pascal, then, appear assured to return to their roles, however the remainder of the solid bulletins stay utterly beneath wraps. (Even Merle Dandridge is open to the attention of returning to her position as Marlene in a possible flashback. She instructed ELLE.com, “You by no means know! That present is so non-linear!”) And some proficient stunt performers and extras will get the possibility to embody clickers as soon as once more: Mazin teased throughout a press convention that “it’s fairly doable that there will probably be much more contaminated later” in season 2. “And maybe totally different varieties.”
Within the meantime, keep away from looking for potential solid lists until you need to endure a lot of spoilers.
When will season 2 of The Final of Us come out?
Sadly, we do not know. The Final of Us season 1 took a few 12 months to movie, beginning in July 2021, after which took a further half a 12 months to debut on HBO. If Mazin and Druckmann comply with an identical sample in adapting Half II—and it might simply take for much longer, given the continued writers’ strike—the earliest season 2 would arrive is late 2024 or early 2025. However HBO has but to verify.
The one nugget of knowledge that is confirmed is the filming location: Season 2 will make the most of Vancouver in British Columbia as a house base, shifting west from season 1’s Calgary, Alberta. Followers of Half II will acknowledge that spot’s not removed from Seattle, the place a lot of Half II’s most necessary sequences happen. That’s nearly as good an indication as any out there now that Mazin and Druckmann are remaining devoted, as ever, to the video games.
This story will probably be up to date.
Tradition Author
Lauren Puckett-Pope is a workers tradition author at ELLE, the place she primarily covers movie, tv and books. She was beforehand an affiliate editor at ELLE.