The upcoming second season of HBO’s hit adaptation of The Last Of Us will have fewer episodes than Season 1 did, according to a report from Deadline.
Season 2 is slated to hit the HBO’s streaming service sometime in 2025, and it has now been confirmed that unlike Season 1–which consisted of nine episodes–Season 2 will only have seven episodes.
“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,” showrunner Craig Mazin said. “When you do that, you look for natural breakpoints, and as we laid it out, this season, the national breakpoint felt like it came after seven episodes.”
“We just want to put people’s minds at ease that the idea that this season coming up is a little bit shorter than the first one is not because we’re taking less time to tell the stories, it’s because we want to take more time,” Mazin added. “The story that we’re telling is much bigger than the story of Season 1, there’s just a lot more going on, it’s a lot harder to produce but we want every episode to feel like its own blockbuster to be honest with you.”
But the interview did reveal some definitively good news for fans of the series. At least one of Season 2’s episodes is reportedly quite a bit longer than the others. Even more exciting, it looks like the series is likely to get a third (and possibly fourth) season.
“We don’t think that we’re going to be able to tell [the rest of] the story even within two seasons because we’re taking our time and go down interesting pathways which we did a little bit in Season 1, too,” said Mazin. “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.”
Mazin also commented on rumors that a third installment in The Last Of Us video game series could potentially be on the table at Naughty Dog, adding that, as excited as he is about the prospect of a third game, he wouldn’t want the television show’s plot to “go beyond the source material that people have in the world.”
“Our show as people know it on HBO is going to cover the material from the second game and then quite a bit of material that is relevant to that story but, as I said, wanders down interesting new paths, unseen stories that were told within the context of that games material,” Mazin said of the direction the series will take in the future.
Season 2 of The Last Of Us won’t arrive until sometime in 2025, though a specific release date has not yet been announced. For more information on the upcoming season, check out everything we know about The Last Of Us Season 2.