FOLLOWING the success of HBO’s The Last of Us first season in 2023, it was a no-brainer that the second season would be greenlit to adapt Sony and Naughty Dog’s controversial The Last of Us Part 2 video game and bring the story of Joel and Ellie full circle.
However, with the new season, it is now clear that the 2023 season’s success was nothing more than a fluke or an isolated lightning-in-a-bottle moment.
Adapting hefty source material such as The Last of Us Part 2 – with its complex characters, themes, nuance and controversial creative decisions – to television was always going to be an arduous task but one could argue that it would also be easy, as the groundwork has already been set.
Unfortunately, the second season of The Last of Us handles the source material as literal groundwork. In other words, the game and everything that transpires in it is treated as nothing more than a suggestion, which is how the show’s co-creator Craig Mazin has developed the season.
