The following contains spoilers for The Last of Us Season 2, Episode 1, «Future Days,» which premiered Sunday, April 13 on HBO.
The long-awaited The Last of Us Season 2 premiere takes place five years after the events of the Season 1 finale, at a relatively peaceful time for the residents of Jackson, Wyoming. Well, everyone except for Joel and Ellie, who — despite their months of bonding in the first season — have backtracked greatly in their relationship. It’s a big sign that Season 2 may have the same outcome as The Last of Us Part II, the video game the HBO show is based on, but take a different journey to get there.
Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann are back to write and produce the second season of The Last of Us. Mazin wrote and directed the Season 2 premiere, titled «Future Days,» which already featured a few major changes from the video game as a way to expand on characters’ arcs and adapt the story to television’s standard. In an interview with CBR, Mazin revealed why he not only writes, but directs the season premieres of The Last of Us, as well as the significance behind Dina and Joel’s close relationship, and Ellie’s third time getting bit by a new type of infected.
CBR: The Season 2 premiere [of The Last of Us] is a great start. It seems terrifying to write an entire season of a show, but is it also kind of terrifying to direct the premiere to set the tone for the season?
Craig Mazin: As terrified as I am, by the way — I don’t want to suggest that I’m not — I’d probably be a little bit more terrified if I weren’t directing the first one, because it does give me a chance to prep all of it. There are so many decisions that are going to echo out across an entire season. You get an opportunity as the director of the first episode to set a lot of that in place.
What it means is that I’m showing up and prepping for a much longer time than is typical for a director, because I have to prep everything for that season. It gives me just more of a sense of security that okay, the things that Neil and I are going for, we’re going to get accomplished and put down. We’re going to build Jackson. Right now, it’s this big old gravel lot, but look out, here we go. I actually love that part of it.
With the newer characters alone in this season — the WLF group, and Jesse and Dina coming in — there’s a greater focus on the younger generation of survivors, who were born and raised in the apocalypse. How has this shift in focus impacted the overall series’ story compared to the first season?
I love writing those characters because they don’t have all this baggage that Joel has or Tess and Marlene had. They don’t know any other world and their angst, their worries, their concerns are pure to them and their circumstances and their time. Ellie doesn’t understand that her relationship with Joel is loaded with all of what he experienced in losing his daughter. She’s aware that he lost his daughter. She’s aware of how important she is to him in that context. She wasn’t there [though]. We were. Joel was. She was not.
Now [Ellie] has the experience of growing relationships with people like Dina that are of their own time and place. I am increasingly aware as I get older and older that there’s something magical about people in their 20s and 30s. There’s something about that time that they really do make our culture, and it comes out of them and their fandom and their love for it is what makes it keep going. They get to experience that. It’s important for us to not just constantly hammer them over the head with, «Well, before iPhones…» They don’t need to hear that. I’m kind of on Ellie and Dina’s side. The kids are alright. Let them be in charge.
One of the biggest changes from the game to the TV show is establishing Joel and Dina’s relationship. What informed that change, and how does that affect their individual arcs this season?
Something that Neil and I talked about quite a bit was the idea that, in the game, Dina has a gameplay function — and her gameplay function is your sidekick. A little bit the way Ellie’s gameplay function was [being a] sidekick to Joel. You control Joel, Ellie moves around. Now you’re controlling Ellie, Dina moves around. As Isabela Merced said, occasionally Dina gets in your way and looks back at you when you shoot her and is like, «Seriously?» It happens all the time, but on our show, that’s not a thing.
In talking about Dina, we thought it was really important to connect her to Joel, because Joel means something to this community. And just as Ellie has resentments towards Joel that are born out of the nature of their relationship and how close it is, other people don’t. As you know, Joel has this kid [Ellie] who’s maybe not talking to him. That kid’s [Dina] fine with him. She’s even asking him cool questions like, «Oh, how do you do your job? How does a circuit breaker work?»
Dina cares a lot about Joel, and Dina recognizes that Joel is a pillar of this community because she doesn’t know what he did. That’s not part of her experience with him. Her experience of Joel is a peaceful man who helps build homes and makes this community run, and he’s gentle and kind. What that means is, as we go forward, anything that happens to Joel or Ellie or their relationship is going to impact Dina too. Her investment is not simply, «I’m here to kind of help you, Ellie. Do whatever it is that you want to do.»
Nailing the grander scale of the story is obviously very important for any TV show. But in The Last of Us Season 2, were there any little unique details that you really wanted to include for yourself as the cherry on top of the entire sundae?
Oh boy, there were a ton. Some of them are things that — as was the case in Season 1 — Neil told me, «Halley [Grossman] and I had thought about putting this in the game. We just didn’t have the time or the ability.» And I was like, «Ooh, I’m taking that.» Sometimes it is the little things that just make me smile. I mean, Greenplace Market’s fun. [Laughs.] Those are little fun things.
I can think of one example where we have a character that’s referenced in the second game. We never met him. We read about him, people talk about him, but he’s already dead and gone by the time we are playing, so he’s just not part of it. We integrate him [into the TV show] and do meet him eventually. We will meet him this season, and we will understand how he fits into this story and — more importantly — how his story directly impacts Joel and Ellie’s story, and how they end up feeling about each other.
Let’s take a wild guess that you’re talking about Eugene.
Good guess! Nailed it.
The Season 2 premiere includes Kat, whom players don’t meet in the game, but learn about through Ellie’s journal and Dina and Ellie’s conversation, and there’s also talk about Eugene. Is there a chance the TV show will utilize any more characters that people often read about in notes or through dialogue in the second game?
the show’s not done yet, right? We have more stories to tell. I like to call it «looking on the inside for things.» Because what happens is, as you’re developing a story, you think, «You know what would be great if something like this happened to help flesh or expand this story out?»
Well, you could invent somebody. But why don’t we look inside? Who’s part of the roster? Is there a way to integrate the people that are already part of this universe, even if we haven’t met them? I’m always on the lookout for those people. Stay tuned.
Also in the Season 2 premiere, Ellie gets bit again. You’d think at some point she’d be more careful with her life! But the last time she was bitten, it was in Season 1, Episode 2 to prove to Joel and Tess that she’s immune. What is the significance of her getting bit this time around and does it carry as much weight as it did in Season 1?
It does. There are a couple of things about [Ellie getting bit] that matter. The first is that Ellie encounters a kind of infected that she has not encountered before. None of them have. They’ve gotten kind of complacent about how they deal with the infected in our show. It’s been five years. They’re getting good at it. They’re no longer terrified of the sound of a clicker. That kind of mirrors the experience as a gamer. As you go through the story, you get good at it.
You remember the first time you encountered clickers in the first game? You were like, [scared] «Uh, okay.» In your 19th time with clickers in the subway station, you’re like, «Okay, I got that. I know the strategy.» So here’s somebody that breaks that rhythm for Ellie — and more importantly, she fails this test. If she were anyone else, she would be infected. The end of the story. That failure matters. That is going to ring forward and be very relevant as we go forward to her understanding that she’s not as good as she thinks she is.
The other aspect of it is that it underscores something about Ellie’s immunity that I remember talking with Neil a lot about, and that is that Ellie has kind of a superpower in this world. The question is, what is she going to do about it? She’s been hiding it this whole time at some point. Is this a truth she shares with other people? Obviously, for Ellie and for another character in particular in this story, the idea of secrets and letting people know who you really are has more dimensions than just whether or not you’re immune.
The Last of Us airs Sundays at 9:00 p.m. on HBO.
