HBO’s The Last of Us renewed for Season 2
On Friday, HBO announced that its new live-action adaptation of Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us will be renewed for a second season. The show has already been breaking records after only two episodes being released to the public — beating out Game of Thrones in viewership for its premiere — so this news isn’t all that surprising.
So far, the HBO adaptation of The Last of Us has done well with viewers and has expanded the world the original game introduced fans to, but that hasn’t been an entirely smooth process. The way Tess’ character was handled, for example, has rankled for some. While her video game counterpart died in a fire fight with FEDRA agents to help Joel and Ellie escape, the show has her fall to a horde of infected after already being bitten. Her final scene involves a fairly gross forced kiss with a zombie, which presumably left a bad taste in her mouth and definitely did for many audience members.
That said, LGBTQ+ fans should still be looking forward to the first season’s third episode, which is set to expand on the gay couple Joel and Ellie encounter, Bill and his partner Frank. In the game version of The Last of Us, Ellie and Joel meet Bill after Frank has already died from suicide after he was infected. He killed himself in order to protect Bill, but that’s really all the insight into their relationship we get from the game. The third episode of the live-action show is set to flesh these two out in more detail, showing twenty years of their relationship and how exchanging letters caused this tragic romance to bloom. This episode is coming out soon, so viewers can look forward to that.
Should the show continue to expand on what’s been covered in the two The Last of Us games, it’s likely that we’ll eventually get to see characters from Part II, like Lev and Abby. That said, there haven’t been any casting announcements just yet.