The Last of Us (TV series)

• 1. Introduction

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  The Last of Us, an HBO drama about a world undone by a fungal infection, premiered on the 15th of January 2023. That first night, 4.7 million viewers watched it across linear television and HBO Max.

  Joel, played by Pedro Pascal, is a hardened survivor who is tasked with smuggling a teenage girl out of a quarantine zone and across the United States. The girl is Ellie, played by Bella Ramsey. She is immune to the Cordyceps infection and may be the key to a vaccine.

  Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann created the series, and it grew out of a video game from the studio Naughty Dog. Why did an earlier plan for a film version fall apart while a series succeeded? What did the writers change, and what did they refuse to change? And how did a show built on prosthetic monsters and quiet character scenes reach an audience of tens of millions?

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• 2. From Game to Series

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  In 2014, a film adaptation of Naughty Dog's 2013 game The Last of Us was announced. Neil Druckmann, the game's creative director and writer, was set to write it. By 2016 the project had slipped into development hell, and by 2019 the rights had been relinquished. That was the year Druckmann met Craig Mazin, and the two agreed that the story needed the length and pacing of a television series.

  HBO announced in March 2020 that the series was in planning. Mazin and Druckmann would write it and serve as executive producers, alongside Carolyn Strauss and Evan Wells. It became the first show from PlayStation Productions, announced as a joint production with Sony Pictures Television and Naughty Dog. HBO greenlit the series in November, adding executive producers Asad Qizilbash and Carter Swan and the production company Word Games. The Mighty Mint joined in January 2021, and executive producer Rose Lam in February. Greg Spence and Cecil O'Connor produced the first season, whose planned ten episodes dropped to nine during production.

  On the 27th of January 2023, less than two weeks after the premiere, HBO renewed the series for a second season. The first season adapts the first game and its downloadable expansion, The Last of Us: Left Behind, from 2014. The second covers the first half of the sequel, The Last of Us Part II, from 2020. The second half of that sequel is set to span up to two more seasons.

  HBO renewed the series for a third season on the 9th of April 2025, ahead of the second season's premiere. Halley Gross, who co-wrote Part II with Druckmann, had joined the second season as a writer and co-executive producer. In July 2025, Druckmann and Gross stepped away from their creative duties to work on other projects. Mazin remained as sole showrunner and will direct the third-season premiere, with Vincenzo Natali, David Petrarca, Andrew Bernstein, and Hiromi Kamata among the other directors. The third season is set to be longer and "significantly larger".

  A fourth season was expected, but by July 2025 Mazin had not decided, and HBO's Casey Bloys indicated that the third would likely be the last.

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• 3. Casting the Survivors

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  Casting for the first season took place over Zoom because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Casting director Victoria Thomas wanted to honor the game without being confined by it. On the 10th of February 2021, Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey were cast as Joel and Ellie. The producers needed actors who could each embody a character and also sell the bond between them. Both had appeared on Game of Thrones, yet they had not met before filming began. They found instant chemistry, and it deepened as production went on.

  Mazin has said he is more interested in an actor's "souls" than in how closely they resemble the game versions. He and Thomas courted high-profile guest stars, and Thomas noted that many of them "don't usually do one-episode guest spots". The guest roster included Nick Offerman as Bill, Murray Bartlett as Frank, Melanie Lynskey as Kathleen, Storm Reid as Riley, and Nico Parker as Joel's 14-year-old daughter, Sarah.

  Troy Baker, who played Joel in the games, appears as James, an aide to the preacher David. Ashley Johnson, who played Ellie in the games, plays Ellie's mother, Anna. Jeffrey Pierce, who portrayed Tommy in the games, plays the rebel Perry. Merle Dandridge reprises Marlene, and Jeffrey Wright returns as Isaac Dixon. Jason Ritter even had a first-season cameo as a clicker before returning in the third season as the soldier Hanley.

  In May 2023, casting for the second season was put on hold by the Writers Guild of America strike. Actors had been auditioning with scenes from The Last of Us Part II because no scripts existed. Casting director Mary Vernieu brought Mazin and Druckmann lists that included many actors they did not know. Several roles were filled without auditions or tests, because Mazin had "faith" that each actor suited the part and would work well with their co-stars.

  Abby came first. Kaitlyn Dever's casting was announced in January 2024, alongside Young Mazino and Isabela Merced. Catherine O'Hara followed in February and Jeffrey Wright in May. The second-season finale shifted the series to Abby's perspective, and Dever knew when she took the role that Abby would loom larger later. Danny Ramirez left in December 2025 because of scheduling conflicts, and Jorge Lendeborg Jr. replaced him as Manny in February 2026.

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• 4. Rewriting the Outbreak

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  Mazin wrote every first-season episode except the seventh, which Druckmann wrote, and the two co-wrote the premiere and the finale.

  The writers did not want to make "a zombie show". They treated the infected as a vessel that pressures characters into decisions and exposes who they really are. Druckmann wanted the adaptation to "keep the soul" of the games, especially the relationships between characters. He was open to changes, but he wanted strong reasons and a clear view of how each one would affect later events.

  The game places its outbreak in 2013 and its main story in 2033. The series moved those years to 2003 and 2023, because the writers found it more interesting for events to run alongside the broadcast. They also added the outbreak's origins to ground the story, noting that audiences understood viral pandemics better after COVID-19. One example is a 1968 talk show where the epidemiologist Dr. Neuman, played by John Hannah, warns about fungi. Another is Ratna Pertiwi, a mycology professor played by Christine Hakim, who advises the Indonesian government to bomb Jakarta.

  Spores spread the infection in the games. The first season replaced them with tendrils that form a single unified network, an idea inspired by mycelium. Spores returned in the second season, though only to a limited extent.

  Mazin compared adapting the game to adapting a novel, with identical emotional beats arriving through different events. Material cut from the games was added to the series, and some action-heavy sequences became character drama at HBO's encouragement. The series also created characters of its own, such as Tony Dalton's Javier Miller, the father of Joel and Tommy, and Hettienne Park's Elise Park.

  The second season had a full writers' room, where Mazin and Druckmann were joined by Gross and Bo Shim. Mazin wrote the first five episodes and co-wrote the last two with Druckmann and Gross. The third season's room opened in late February 2025, with Ryan James, who worked on the games, and Alexandra Cheng among the writers.

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• 5. Filming at Scale

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  Principal photography began in Calgary, Alberta, on the 12th of July 2021. The first season shot for 218 days, at around 18 to 19 days per episode. A four-day shoot in Downtown Edmonton in October cost C$372,000. Filming also took place in High River, Fort Macleod, Canmore, Okotoks, Waterton Lakes, and Olds. It concluded on the 11th of June 2022, followed by additional photography in Kansas City that October. Ksenia Sereda is the lead director of photography.

  Alberta had never hosted a television production this large, and it was possibly the largest in Canadian history. It generated C$182 million for the province and created 1,490 jobs. According to the artists union IATSE 212, it led to a 30% increase in union membership and employment. The first season's budget topped C$100 million, more than $10 million per episode. That exceeded the budget of each of Game of Thrones' first five seasons and made the series one of the most expensive on television.

  The second season moved to British Columbia under the working title Mega Sword, using around 60 to 70 locations. Strikes by writers and actors delayed the start, and production began on the 12th of February 2024 in Kamloops, Mission, Fort Langley, and Langley. It returned to Calgary in March, then worked in Britannia Beach, Nanaimo, Chinatown, Gastown, and elsewhere. Filming concluded on the 23rd of August, with more photography in Downtown Vancouver in September 2024 and January 2025.

  The third season began filming on the 2nd of March 2026 under the working title Calm Current. A large outdoor set in Maple Ridge, with weathered structures, boats, and blue screens, was built in March. Crews filmed Dever and Kratter on Gastown rooftops, a scene with a military convoy, and sequences inside the former Hudson's Bay department store. Production is set to conclude on the 27th of November.

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• 6. Building the Infected

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  Barrie and Sarah Gower, who had worked with Mazin on Chernobyl, created the prosthetics for the infected. Mazin wanted the clickers to resemble their in-game design through prosthetics, because he felt visual effects would have lessened their impact. The choreographer Terry Notary wanted the creatures to imitate one another's movements, much like schools of fish. Misty Lee and Phillip Kovats, who had voiced clickers in the games, returned to voice them for the series.

  Sixteen visual effects teams worked on the series under supervisor Alex Wang. The first season had over 3,000 visual effects shots, with most episodes holding around 250. DNEG's 650-person team spent 18 months on 535 of those shots, mainly environmental work. The artists took field trips to gather resources and regularly consulted the video games. For the infected, they consulted Naughty Dog's concept artists and used timelapse videos of Cordyceps growth as animation references. The design studio Elastic created a title sequence meant to show the fungus's "unrelenting nature".

  Five art directors and hundreds of technicians built the first season's world. Production designer John Paino assembled an image collage that included a photograph of reassembled chairs. Mazin considered it the show's mandate: "the built world is unbuilt and rebuilt". Don Macaulay replaced Paino as art director for the second season.

  Costume designer Cynthia Ann Summers found the series harder than fantasy or period work, because the costumes had to serve the story without standing out. Ann Foley, who replaced her for the second and third seasons, agreed and worked directly with the actors for input and feedback.

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• 7. Music and Borrowed Songs

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  Gustavo Santaolalla, who scored the games, wrote the series' opening theme. Mazin and Druckmann considered his music part of the franchise's "DNA". Santaolalla treated the series as "an expansion" of the games. He kept the two tied together and did not try to revise earlier work, which he considered authentic.

  David Fleming shared the scoring duties. Santaolalla handled the character-driven music and Fleming the action-driven music, and they collaborated on blending the two. To match Santaolalla, Fleming kept his score minimalistic and chose instruments that paired well. Soundtrack albums were released for each season.

  Linda Ronstadt's song "Long, Long Time" gives its name to an episode and echoes Bill and Frank's relationship through its themes of unfulfilled love and healing over time. "Please Hold to My Hand" references lyrics from Hank Williams's "Alone and Forsaken". "Future Days" is named after a Pearl Jam song that appears in both the games and the series. "Through the Valley" takes its name from Shawn James's song, and Ashley Johnson's cover of it plays in the episode.

  Druckmann saw music as part of the narrative, with characters performing or listening to songs to build the world or their relationships. Several songs saw stream increases after the series used them, and many went on to chart.

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• 8. Audience and Acclaim

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  The second episode drew 5.7 million viewers on its first night, a 22% rise from the week before. That was the largest second-week audience growth for an original HBO drama in the network's history. The first six episodes averaged 30.4 million viewers by the 12th of March, the highest figure for an HBO series since the eighth season of Game of Thrones. The premiere's total rose to almost 40 million within two months. In the United Kingdom, the ninth episode drew over three million viewers and became Sky's most-viewed finale for an American debut series. By May the series averaged almost 32 million viewers per episode, making it HBO's most-watched debut season. The games also saw higher sales.

  The first teaser trailer in September 2022 received over 17 million views in less than 24 hours. It reached over 57 million organic views in 72 hours, the most-watched promotional video in HBO's history. HBO's marketing leaned on "breadcrumb content", small teases meant to keep fans engaged.

  The second season premiered on the 13th of April 2025, and its first night drew 5.3 million viewers, a 13% increase on the first-season premiere. Its finale drew 3.7 million, a 55% drop that HBO attributed to Memorial Day weekend. By May the season averaged almost 37 million global viewers per episode. The series brought in more than four million new players to the games and raised franchise engagement by around 150%.

  On Rotten Tomatoes, the first season holds a 96% approval rating from 489 reviews, and a Metacritic score of 84. GameSpot's Mark Delaney called it "the beginning of a new era" for video game adaptations. Critics overwhelmingly named the third episode the season's best, and Empire's John Nugent called it "one of the finest hours of television in recent memory". Reviewers praised Pascal and Ramsey's chemistry and singled out guests including Offerman, Bartlett, Lynskey, and Parker.

  The second season has a 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 270 reviews. Many critics considered the sixth episode the standout. Some felt the shortage of scenes with Joel and Ellie left the season weaker than the first, and others found the narrative unsatisfyingly incomplete. Merced and Dever drew some of the warmest praise.

  The Last of Us is the first live-action video game adaptation to receive major awards consideration. The first season earned 24 Primetime Emmy nominations and a leading eight wins at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards, including for Offerman and Reid. Pascal won Best Actor at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, and the series won a Peabody Award for Entertainment. The Ruderman Family Foundation gave it a Seal of Authentic Representation for Keivonn Montreal Woodard's role as Sam. The second season earned 17 Primetime Emmy nominations, and Merced and Wright won at the Astra TV Awards. The series has won nine Primetime Emmy Awards in all.

  The third season is expected in 2027. It is set to follow Abby and to introduce Michelle Mao and Kyriana Kratter as Yara and Lev, siblings in the Seattle-based Seraphites.

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