The second season of The Last of Us hasn’t even arrived but, however its looming presence is already making a splash.
The present’s most recent trailer for Season 2, which was launched throughout a SXSW panel, has garnered over 158 million views throughout platforms in simply three days, in line with numbers provided by Warner Brothers Discovery. The streamer claimed it is a file for HBO and Max unique programming, and that this trailer has outperformed earlier promos for the present by “at the very least 160%”
You can’t cease this.#TheLastOfUs returns April 13 on Max. pic.twitter.com/DH8UzAugIV
— Max (@StreamOnMax) March 8, 2025
The present appears to solely be rising in reputation as followers new and previous alike wait patiently for Season 2’s arrival. The Season 1 episodes are averaging “round 32 million cross-platform viewers” domestically, which is a large bounce from the numbers of, say, Season 1’s finale. It racked up a powerful 8.2 million same-day viewers throughout platforms when it aired in March 2023, in line with Deadline. Clearly, people are excitedly preparing for the following leg of the story with somewhat rewatch, however this big bounce in numbers says quite a bit about simply how huge this sequence truly is. It’s positively some of the profitable for HBO lately, however the anticipation and love towards the present is simple with numbers like these.
The Last of Us will make a five-year time bounce for Season 2, and comply with Joel and Ellie as they’re “drawn into battle with one another and a world much more harmful and unpredictable than the one they left behind.” Stars Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey, Gabriel Luna, and Rutina Wesley are set to return, with heavy hitters like Kaitlyn Dever, Isabella Merced, Catherine O’Hara, and Jeffrey Wright becoming a member of the solid alongside them this season.
At the SXSW panel, showrunners Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin confirmed “spores are again” following their omission from Season 1. The trailer teased the introduction of spores after they had been unnoticed of Season 1; we see Ellie, performed by Bella Ramsey, view an contaminated whose breath releases the spores.
Druckmann stated there’s “an escalation of numbers and forms of contaminated, but additionally, as you see within the trailer, an escalation of the vector of how this factor spreads” in The Last of Us Season 2, including: “Season 1, we had this new factor that wasn’t within the recreation of those tendrils that unfold, and that was one kind. And then one shot you see on this trailer, there are issues within the air.”
Mazin later confirmed “spores are again,” earlier than Druckmann added: “The motive [we’re doing it now], I imply, we actually needed to determine it out, and once more, every part must be drama. There needed to be a dramatic motive of introducing it now. And there’s.”
Season 2 of The Last of Us premieres April 13, 2025 on HBO and HBO Max.
Lex Briscuso is a movie and tv critic and a contract leisure author for IGN. You can comply with her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
