We got a second trailer for HBO’s The Last of Us’ upcoming season, which airs in 2025, today. So far, season two looks like a pretty faithful adaptation of The Last of Us Part II. But even in the short, two-minute teaser, it seems like HBO is taking a few creative liberties with the source material. So we figured we’d go shot by shot and break down the trailer, the ways it’s adapting the events of Part II, and try and suss out some of the new scenes that weren’t included in the game. Open up your music streaming service of choice, put on Pearl Jam’s “Future Days,” and read on.
Joel is working on himself
As we saw in the first trailer, it looks like Joel is going to therapy in season two. Schitt’s Creek’s Catherine O’Hara is playing Joel’s therapist, and we see her get a bit snippy with Pedro Pascal’s “sad dad.” She puts on a timer and asks if he “wants to start, or what?” I imagine Joel is not too thrilled at the idea of going to a therapist, and might be coming into these sessions rather guarded, so O’Hara’s character is likely unhappy with his dismissive attitude.
This scene does appear to be a kind of stand-in for the opening of The Last of Us Part II in which Joel confesses to his brother Tommy that he murdered dozens of Firefly radicals who were planning to kill Ellie to create a vaccine for the cordyceps fungus ruining the world. Does doctor/patient confidentiality apply to something of that magnitude?
Ellie in Jackson
Next we see a shot of Ellie walking through the snowy streets of Jackson, Wyoming. Joel and Ellie returned to this settlement after the events of the season finale. The small town is led by Joel’s sister-in-law Maria and sustains a decent population with good quality of life for the post-apocalypse. We also get a shot of Joel’s mailbox with “Miller” on the side of it. It’s all very idyllic.
Joel gives the guitar to Ellie
Speaking of idyllic, Joel gifts Ellie an orange-brown sunburst acoustic guitar with a moth design on the fretboard. He did promise to teach her how to play, after all. The trailer plays Pearl Jam’s “Future Days” over the scene, but it’s unclear right now if that’s the song Joel will play for her when he gives her the guitar as he did in the game. The Last of Us show begins in 2003, rather than 2013 as the game did. So that song technically wouldn’t have been around then, as Pearl Jam released it in 2013. Ellie could learn a different song, or the show might just say “fuck it” and keep it in there anyway.
Ellie plays guitar for Dina
Whether she learns “Future Days” or something else, Ellie starts learning how to play guitar thanks to Joel. She learns to play it so well that she’s able to serenade her girlfriend Dina (Isabela Merced) as she kneels down beside her. In Part II, she plays an acoustic version of A-ha’s “Take On Me,” which sounds like an out-of-left-field pick, but it’s a very sweet moment between the two.
Wait, is that one of the last scenes from the game?
Just how much of The Last of Us Part II the show plans to adapt in season two is unclear right now, as the plan is to break the game into multiple seasons. Most of what we see in this trailer looks like scenes that would fit neatly in the first half, but there’s a moment that seems a bit out of place. The Last of Us Part II is structured around multiple flashbacks, and the final one is a conversation between Joel and Ellie on his back porch. There’s a scene in here that sure looks like the beginning of that one, in which Joel is playing his guitar and stops when he sees Ellie, though from a distance. If this scene is in season two, it could mean a lot for the thematic thrust of Part II’s story, but we’ll see if this is a fake out soon enough.
Jesse, the golden boy of Jackson
Next, we get our first look at Young Mazino as Jesse. We see him helping to build something in Jackson, which lines up with the good ol’ boy persona he has in the game— he’s known to help out and take responsibility for the people of the town. This scene didn’t appear in the game, however, so it looks like we’ll get more Jesse in the show.
Well, that’s an ominous shot of a switchblade
We don’t get context for this, but we do see what looks like Ellie washing her blood-stained switchblade in a sink. Ellie is likely going to do a lot of murder in this season, so I could not tell you whose blood that is.
It’s Tommy
Gabriel Luna’s Tommy is shown looking over the border wall protecting Jackson alongside several other armed civilians. We saw in the previous trailer that there would be an infected mob attacking the town at some point during season two, and this seems like that scene.
Sneaky stalkers
Speaking of infected, we see one crawling slowly behind Ellie in a dilapidated building. The stealthy behavior implies this is a Stalker, one of the earlier stages of infection in The Last of Us’ universe. We don’t get a good look at its face, but we can see some of the fungus growing from its head.
Abby
Kaitlyn Dever as Abby was briefly seen in the last trailer, but this is the best view we’ve gotten of the co-protagonist yet. We first see her kneeling over a makeshift grave then looking over her shoulder teary-eyed. Whose grave could that be? Why is she so sad? …Anyway, it’s unclear if she’ll be as ripped as she is in the game.
The infected horde
We once again see a Jackson civilian standing on top of the border wall, but this time he’s looking through some binoculars at a massive crowd of infected coming straight for the town. Based on the cuts between this scene and the one featuring Abby crawling under a fence trying to avoid a group of infected, it seems like the creatures Abby faces at the beginning of the game have been spun off into a much larger threat for the show. One that reaches the Jackson borders, as well as those traveling on the outskirts of the town.
Someone saves Abby from an infected
Abby gets pinned down by an infected here, but is saved by someone who puts a revolver right to that sucker’s head. This is immediately followed by a shot of people traveling on horseback through the Jackson winter. If you look hard enough, it looks like that might be Joel and Abby on one of those horses.
The Seraphites
Some of the scenes in this trailer don’t take place in Jackson, but could potentially be in Seattle. We get a good look at some of the Seraphites, a cult that lives in the Washington city where much of The Last of Us Part II takes place. The Sepharites are characterized in-game by the scars around their mouths and bulky trench coats, and they’ve got the same look in this trailer. We see a Seraphite man walking through a forest and Ellie looking at some of their graffiti in the city. It reads “FEEL HER LOVE,” referencing their prophet who was killed by the militaristic Washington Liberation Front. And now they’re still killing each other, because…
Isaac is still doing torture
Jeffrey Wright reprises his role as Isaac for the show and is briefly shown standing over a naked, bloodied Seraphite man. He was introduced in The Last of Us Part II by way of a grisly torture scene, which was notably not until the second half of the game when it shifts to Abby’s perspective. So it’s unclear if this is the show taking creative liberties with the game’s timeline or if this is a different scene entirely.
Big ol’ dramatic, violent montage
As the trailer wraps up, we get some rapid-fire action sequences like the aforementioned infected attack on Jackson, horseback chases, people getting set on fire, Ellie and Dina trying to escape infected on a broken down subway car, Ellie screaming out crying about something, and a nice shot of Tommy and Maria embracing to add something nice to the mix.
But wait, don’t forget that things were good once
The trailer ends with one last shot of Joel and Ellie having a lovely time together bonding over the guitar, just to remind you that there was some joy in this world before all this mess. Although, if you’ve seen the first season you know even this scene of father-daughter love is tinged with a bit of awkwardness and unspoken tension. But you’ll see how all that bubbles over in 2025 when season two premieres on Max.
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