Bleak house.
HBO’s award-winning drama “The Last of Us” returns for Season 2 on Sunday, April 13 (9 p.m. on HBO and Max). Ahead of Season 2’s premiere, it’s already been renewed for a third season.
Based on a video game of the same name, the show is set in a dystopian future where society has broken down, there are zombie-like creatures and gruff smuggler Joel (Pedro Pascal) has formed a pseudo father/daughter relationship with teen girl Ellie (Bella Ramsey).
“The relationship between Joel and Ellie … is present throughout everything, even when they’re not together on-screen. The things that happened with them ripple out, and echo forth across everything,” showrunner and co-creator Craig Mazin exclusively told The Post.
“You can really feel it, interestingly, I think, in Bella’s performance,” the Emmy-winning “Chernobyl” writer and producer went on. “Because there were times where I could tell, the missing was real. It’s not just, ‘I wanna be here with Joel right now.’ It’s also like, ‘I’d like to be here with Pedro right now.’ That kind of bond between them is so remarkable.”
Season 2 finds Joel more worn down and world-weary, as five years have passed since the events of Season 1. When the show picks up with Joel and the now 19-year-old Ellie, their relationship is strained and they no longer spend much time together.
“The good news was, I was like, ‘Hey, look, Pedro, if for any reason your back is hurting or you tweak your knee, that’s great! Use that!’” Mazin quipped.
He added that with Pascal, who isn’t a dad in real life, “We really talked a lot about what it’s like to be a parent. Especially when you have a kid who’s getting to be that age.”
“When we were making this season, my youngest was 19. And I’m like, ‘Okay, here I am with a 19-year-old daughter, and you feel these things and it’s hard.’ It’s every parent’s nature to want to hold on to the kid, and never let them go,” he continued. “But, you don’t want to smother them, and you begin to second guess everything. It’s a lot.”
He joked that “The Last of Us” is, “that, plus zombies.”
The first season had a standout episode (“Long Long Time”) about the love story between Frank (Murray Bartlett) and Bill (Nick Offerman, who won an Emmy for it).
When asked if Season 2 will have any similar episodes, Mazin told The Post, “In a way. We really tried to not go down the path of like, ‘Hey, that was a hit song, let’s do another one that sounds just like it!’ But – and it just happened to work organically like this – we do have an episode where we focus down quite a bit on a single relationship.”
But he added, “It’s different, I don’t want to imply that it’s Frank and Bill Part 2, it is not.”
Season 2 adds some new cast members, including Jeffrey Wright, Catherine O’Hara and Kaitlyn Dever. The latter plays Abby, a woman seeking revenge for her father’s death. Among fans of the source material, she’s controversial.
Mazin and co-creator Neil Druckmann were not “too worried” about trying to ensure that audiences would like her.
“It’s hard to tell how divisive a character actually is, because sometimes there are pretty vocal segments out there … But, when you look at the total numbers and the popularity of ‘The Last of Us Part II,’ the game was a massive hit and won every award possible, and people are deeply devoted to that character.”
“People will and won’t like things. That’s fine,” Mazin added. “Neil and I didn’t really want to do anything to address feedback as much as reinforce that character in this [TV] medium, which requires some different things.”
Season 2 has some plot points that fans of the game already know about. Or do they?
“Fans know what happened in the game. They don’t necessarily know the plot events of the show,” Mazin said, adding that Season 1 had some events that the show treated “very much the same” and some where it diverged from the source material.
He continued, “For me and for Neil, we’re not so concerned about people knowing something. Or, something coming to pass in the show that happened in the game, and people going, ‘Oh, well, yeah, I knew about that.’ Because we’re not really a mystery; this isn’t a whodunit. What this show is about are relationships.”
“And so the question is, ‘How are we going to experience any event that happens in the show through a relationship? What does it mean for these people going forward?’ Not just for this season. Assuming things go well, for some seasons to come.”
When asked how many seasons he envisions the show continuing for, he said, “We certainly know where it ends, and we know it does end. So this is not meant to be, ‘and now in the 12th season of ‘The Last of Us.’ That’s not happening. So, depending on how it lands, [there will be] one more season for sure … but perhaps one more, beyond that.”
