First broadcast 13 April 2025.

The Last of Us, a HBO drama series based on the popular Playstation videogame, was one of my favourite shows of 2023. It was effectively a textbook example of how to adapt a videogame to television, retaining all of the key beats and moments that would work in the new medium while replacing the more exclusively game-based elements with smartly written and beautifully presented television. I have been remiss in watching its second season – already several months old – but am catching up for the new year.

The new season opens five years after viewers last saw Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsay). They are living in the fortified town of Jackson, Wyoming, alongside Joel’s brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna) and Ellie’s friends Dina (Isabela Merced) and Jesse (Young Mazino). The town is keeping the fungal menace that has decimated the USA safely at bay, as well as the various human coalitions and militias that might threaten its safety.

In its first year, The Last of Us was a fairly even mix of post-apocalyptic drama and body horror. Overlaid on those ingredients were a lot of conventions of the American western, and it is those western tropes that are foregrounded here. While the fungus-infected zombies are still a looming threat, the focus here is much more on frontier towns, roaming gunslingers on horseback, and other such traditions. It reframes the walking dead, for better or worse, as the Native Americans of 20th century film westerns: a violent “other” that must be overcome or tamed along with the landscape.

As one might expect, the five-year time jump enables the series to shift its character’s states and relationships. Key within these shifts is the broken relationship between Joel and Ellie: Season 1 concluded on an ambivalent, distrusting tone, and it is clear that events since have badly damaged their friendship. Given the number of flashbacks employed in its first year, it seems likely that the second will revisit key missing events as the season goes on.

The other thing the episode does is set-up. There are signs the fungus zombies are evolving into smarter, more dangerous forms. The fungus itself may have extended inside Jackson’s walls. Most concerning of all is Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), a young soldier who is searching for Joel after his climactic massacre of a Firefly militia base five years earlier.

Everything is well directed by Craig Mazin, the executive producer who also writes this episode. It is good to see Pascal and Ramsay again – the latter continues to deliver particularly good work here – as well as Catherine O’Hara as town counselor Gail, a new character introduced here.

It is a slightly unexpected, low-key kind of season premiere. Viewers expecting a large-scale action set piece or shocking development may be disappointed, since it is largely dominated by character interactions, reminders of the series status quo, and the aforementioned set-up. The ominous rumblings of what is to come dominates by the end, however, and suggests powerful blends of high drama and horror to come.