Warning! Spoilers for The Last of Us Season 2 follow.
The Last of Us Season 2 has been and gone, and though most of us who played the second game knew what was coming, it seems many viewers did not — and showrunner Craig Mazin says he’s still getting bewildered fans asking: “Why did you kill Pedro Pascal?”
“[Game creator and fellow showrunner Neil Druckmann] did a thing. Everyone lost their sh*t, and then I had to do that same thing, because he did the thing. I loved doing the thing, I thought it was great,” Mazin said of Joel’s death, at a Variety panel.
“The big complaint that I’ve gotten is, ‘Why did you kill Pedro Pascal?’ And I keep explaining, we didn’t kill him! He’s a man, he’s alive. He’s fine. And he’s in literally everything else. So I don’t know what the problem is!”
“People had very strong reactions to whatever controversial story decision we made,” added Druckmann.
As for fan hopes generally for Season 2, Mazin said that although “the second season comes with so many expectations” and the team “did learn a lot of lessons […] you’re not allowed to make those mistakes anymore, which is tragic.”
“You do feel pressure to somehow fulfill what people want but also surprise them,” he said. “You’re now a topic of discussion, whereas before you were just new and surprising. I mean, the bar for video game adaptations was pretty low. We had that going for us in Season 1 — now we kind of f***ed ourselves.”
HBO has hailed the success of The Last of Us Season 2, saying an “influx” of viewers had raised the series’ global audience to over 90 million since Season 1 ended, but insisted the Season 2 finale suffered low viewing levels because of the Memorial Day holiday weekend.
And last month, showrunner Craig Mazin indicated a fourth season is pretty much essential for the series. In an interview, Mazin agreed that in order to wrap up The Last of Us’ story from the two Naughty Dog-developed video games in Season 3 would mean Season 3 itself “would take forever.” So, while there’s a “decent chance” Season 3 will be longer than Season 2, at the end of the day, “there’s no way to complete this narrative in a third season.”
Mazin and Neil Druckmann also recently let us in on a little secret: they don’t yet know “how much, or rather how little” some of our favorite characters will be around.
The team behind the HBO series stopped by IGN Live over the weekend to break down some of the most pivotal moments of the game to TV show adaptation and expand on what it took to create scenes like Joel’s death, the horde attack, the planetarium, and more.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
