Season 2 of HBO’s The Last of Us will only have seven episodes

One way or another, it’s already been almost a year and a half since the first season of The last of us arrived on HBO. Things are going well with the second season, and we’ve known for a while that it won’t air until 2025. We still don’t know exactly when to expect it (although given that they’re well into filming , a start (1 year isn’t out of the question), but we now know that season two will only be seven episodes long.

In a long interview with Deadline, showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann (director of the two The Last of Us games that Naughty Dog released for various PlayStation consoles) have confirmed the shorter season. “The narrative material we got from the second part of the game is much more than the narrative material from the first game, so part of what we had to do from the beginning was figure out how to tell this story over the seasons. ” Mazin said to Deadline. “When you do that, you look for natural stopping points, and as we explained, this season the national stopping point seemed to come after seven episodes.”

That said, Mazin said that season three will likely be “considerably longer” – we don’t know if that’s from a scope or airtime perspective, but it’s an interesting thing to stream being given that we are still at least six months away from broadcast. season two premiere. And Deadline also confirmed that season two will feature at least one extra-long episode, much like the 90-minute series premiere and the 70-plus minute Bill and Frank-focused episode in season one.

We’ve known for a while that Mazin and Druckmann were going to spread The Last of Us Part II over multiple seasons, but it even looks like the story could turn into a fourth season. “We think it’s almost assured that, as long as people continue to watch and we can continue to make more television, Season 3 will be considerably longer. And indeed, the story may require Season 4.” , Mazin said.

While the route of The Last of Us Part II was quite involved, with lots of flashbacks and multiple points of view, stretching it out over three seasons seems a bit much. But based on this interview, it seems like Mazin and Druckmann have figured out exactly where they want each season to start and end and what story it will cover. Of course, the series hasn’t yet been renewed for season three, so this all depends on continued success. Given that the first season was one of HBO’s biggest, this probably won’t be a problem.

Finally, Deadline has dropped some surprising information about a potential third game in the series – specifically, it’s still unclear if it will happen. Indeed, the publication indicates that “a new opus has not been recovered or put into development.” This is a very strong statement, even if it doesn’t come directly from an actual quote or attribution. If true, that means a third The Last of Us game could easily happen in over five years, if it ever happens.

Druckmann confirmed that the series will not go beyond what was depicted in the video games, unlike HBO. game Of Thrones infamous series going beyond the novels it was based on (not that they had much choice). “As a fan, I’m excited that there could be a third The last of us game,” Mazin said. “As the co-creator of this television show, there is no world where I would want our show to go beyond the sources that people have around the world.”

Let’s hope that Deadline just crossed the line for a potential third game – with Summer Games Fest just days away, there’s a lot of buzz around what Sony’s first-party studios, including Naughty Dog, might be considering announcing. The last concrete news we received surrounding the game series was that the planned multiplayer game set in the Last of Us universe had been canceled.