The Last of Us season 2 will only be 7 episodes long

When HBO revealed the directors for season 2 of The Last of Us, some of you might have noticed that there were seven people. This led to discussions about if any of them would get to direct several episodes. The answer is no.

Deadline had the honour of talking with co-creators, executive producers, showrunners and directors Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, and the duo confirms that The Last of Us season 2 will just have 7 episodes. This will probably shock many of you, as The Last of Us: Part II, the game the second season will be based on, is much larger than the original that got 9 episodes. The good news is that it sounds like HBO, Mazin and Druckmann have lowered the episode count to basically make people beg for more seasons:

"The story material that we got from Part II of the game is way more than the story material that was in the first game, so part of what we had to do from the start was figure out how to tell that story across seasons. When you do that, you look for natural breakpoints, and as we laid it out, this season, the natural breakpoint felt like it came after seven episodes," Mazin told Deadline, reiterating his wish to make at least 3 seasons of the show. In fact, he seems very eager to make 4 these days:

"We don't think that we're going to be able to tell the story even within two seasons [2 and 3] because we're taking our time and go down interesting pathways which we did a little bit in Season 1 too. We feel like it's almost assuredly going to be the case that — as long as people keep watching and we can keep making more television — Season 3 will be significantly larger. And indeed, the story may require Season 4 (...) One thing is absolutely for sure, I don't see how we could tell the story that remains after Season 2 is complete in one more season."

So the show will continue to tell stories not included in the games. Not especially surprising with the success of the first season's Bill and Frank episode and that Jeffrey Wright's Isaac seemingly will get more screen time in the TV show than the game. The good news is that we're told at least one of the episodes in season 2 will be "quite big" in length. Let's hope this makes the pacing even better and that enough people keep watching to make HBO give the greenlight to both a third and fourth season at the same time when season 2 premieres on Max in the first half of 2025.