The Last of Us - Season 2

Stembolt · 2025-02-19T23:43:54+00:00

Season 2 - April 13, 2025 Official synopsis, Season 2 will begin with a time jump: “After five years of peace following the events of the first season, Joel and Ellie’s collective past catches up to them, drawing them into conflict with each other and a world even more dangerous and unpredictable than the one they left behind.” Joel and Ellie will be back in Jackson, Wyo., living in the compound where they spent time with Tommy and Maria in Season 1. Season 2 will be seven episodes, down from Season 1’s count of nine. The seven Season 2 episodes, Mazin told EW.com in February, “are high-calorie, dense episodes. If you consider action and drama and scope to be the things that create an epic nature, each one of these episodes packs quite a wallop.

g121

Just finished binge watching Season2 .. the show’s OK but boy feels like one heck of a lot of needless filler going nowhere .. at this point, I’m not on the edge of my seat waiting for Season3.

Yes, episode S02E02 was over-the-top but the series as a whole is trending to one big ‘meh’.

Andyross

g121 ~~There is no S3.~~ ~~This leads into the Rogue One movie.~~
(Ignore the above)

Astyanax

Rook

I stopped.

Rook

Andyross Wrong show? It sounds like you’re talking about Andor season 2. 😛

g121

Actually the last 3 SciFi series I’ve watched have been disappointing .. based on their premise, I should have been fully engaged.

The Last of Us - finished season2 but just way too much filler, meandering content .. questionable if I’ll watch further.
Fallout - finished season1 but I just didn’t care about the characters .. won’t watch further.
Silo - made it to season2 episode7 & just stopped .. too slow & like ‘The Last of Us’ feels like way too much filler .. won’t watch further.

Rook

g121 I agree about Silo. It just seemed to drag on until the final episode.

I thought the other two shows were great.
I already know what’s going to happen in The Last Of Us, but I still watch to see how they adapt the game for the show. Some of the changes make the show better than the source material.

Andyross

Rook Sorry. Getting threads all mixed up.

Rook

Rock_cake I heard that line in the final episode of the season and was pretty happy about it. 🐎

Adalicia

ElQuintron

Yeah, the pacing did feel off for a lot of the season and I think they’re having a difficult time determining what is and what isn’t truly important to the story they’re trying to tell and adapt. Yes, Part II was longer than Part I (18 hours versus like…28 hours) but I don’t think splitting it was the right move to make because it makes what we have got feel disjointed meandering.

Like there are moments in Season 2 where I think they’re doing stuff nearly perfectly (and unsurprisingly a lot of them were very true to the source material being adapted) but they are few and far between. I didn’t hate my time with this season but I don’t feel like it is as strong as the first. But I did feel the same way about the games themselves. I do think Part II is very good, but I am more attached to and subjectively think that the Part I is the better game. I do think that having both parts is important to actually conveying overarching message the games do though. The first is about overcoming grief, letting your guard down and allowing yourself to actually care about something again, and what someone is capable of doing to protect what they perceive as their world. The second is the consequence of the first, and that ultimately violence causes violence, revenge begets revenge. It is cyclical and the villains are the good guys when it is their own story. How do you break that cycle of violence and loss? Can you?

Hopefully Season 3 is better.

Rook

Adalicia I agree and disagree.

When comparing the games, I thought Part 2 was a great game, and much better than the first in all aspects except the story. I felt like the story in Part 1 was simpler and more impactful. The revenge-based story in Part 2 was good, but didn’t grab me the way the story in Part 1 did. I preferred the journey the characters take in Part 1.
You said it better:

Adalicia The first is about overcoming grief, letting your guard down and allowing yourself to actually care about something again, and what someone is capable of doing to protect what they perceive as their world.

Adalicia The second is the consequence of the first, and that ultimately violence causes violence, revenge begets revenge. It is cyclical and the villains are the good guys when it is their own story. How do you break that cycle of violence and loss? Can you?

I like that they split the story the same way the game did. It’s hard for me to imagine telling it any other way. I can’t wait to see how they adapt Abby’s story for season 3.
And I think they made some improvements for the show, like the way they handled Mel and Owen at the Aquarium. Mel, bleeding out on the floor and trying to get Ellie to save her baby was a scene I’ll not soon forget.

Also, I can’t complain about Shimmer’s 🐎 fate in the show.

ugly95

I finished the second season of The Last of Us.

I might be misremembering the first season, but I feel like this season was a lot worse. I haven’t played the games, but from what I’ve heard that tracks with the games as well.

First, there’s the time jump at the start. So, after a year plus since the first season where I’ve forgotten a lot of details, now the characters are in different situations and ages. So it felt like there was some catching up to do, but the season also moves pretty quickly.

Ellie is much less likeable this season. The first season she was kind of a naive, excited kid that liked stupid jokes. Now she’s all brooding, angsty and serious. I think in episode 6, the flashback episode she ends up being more likeable than the rest of the season.

The new character Dina, was decent, I guess.

The revenge plot was just a lot less enjoyable. The first season, you felt like the show was leading up to something. This one was just about revenge, which doesn’t really feel like it expands the world at all. Even if the revenge takes place, it’s not much of a story.

It started out okay. The big shock I already knew about, but was still well done. I think everything was alright until pretty much episode 5 and 7. Once they’re deep in Seattle.

At first it’s interesting, they introduce a couple potential human threats. I think the zombies were underused this season, especially with the introduction of the smart ones.

The problem with episode 5 is that things start to feel rushed and make less sense.

Most of my complaints are in the spoiler:

The two girls are attacked in the warehouse, and Jesse shows up out of nowhere to save the day. The last minute rescue is overdone in TV. And I don’t think there was any foreshadowing that they were being followed. So he basically finds them in a giant empty city at exactly the right moment. They sort of hand-waved at an explanation at how easy it was to track them.

Then they run into the forest with the Scars. But they all easily escape these seasoned forest-dwellers.

Ellie sneaks into a hospital. She sets off an alarm chasing the one girl. Gets into the infected basement. The episode ends. And then in episode 7 she’s safely back at the theatre. What happened to all the people chasing her? Did they just assume she died because she went down. It felt like one of those stealth video games where you kill a bunch of guards, and after a few minutes of the guards chasing you they say something like “It must have just been the wind” and go back on their programmed patrols.

Episode 7 was the weak point. Ellie attempts to make a ridiculous decision to try and save the Scar kid. Her and Jesse have no issue wandering through the city in daylight. Then she’s able to get to the dock.

The boat scene was probably the worst sequence. She washes ashore, gets taken and hung, and then by pure luck something explodes and they leave her behind. And she’s back on mission. Maybe that will pay off next season, but it just felt like a waste of 10 minutes.

Then she meets the two Wolfs and doesn’t really want to kill them. It just seemed all so inconsistent. She wanted revenge, but didn’t want to actually kill anybody. I guess maybe the idea was supposed to be that she was freaked out by torturing the first girl. But somehow it didn’t come across that way.

Then there’s the cliff-hanger. Which was fine, I guess. But you know the only main character left isn’t going to die. And then switching back to Abby on Day 1 in Seattle wasn’t really something that is enticing for next season.

I’m being a bit negative. I enjoyed watching it. And I’ll watch next season. Just the end of this season was disappointing.

Rook

ugly95 It was a 5 year time jump from the end of last season to the start of season 2. Ellie is supposed to be around 19 in season 2 (except for the flashback scenes).

ugly95 The revenge plot was just a lot less enjoyable.

I thought the same thing. But I still enjoyed the season.

~~(I’ll get to the spoiler stuff in a bit.)~~

ugly95 Ellie sneaks into a hospital….

This goes back to the beginning of the episode in the scene with Park (one of my favorite scenes that they created for the show).
Park tells the story of how they sent soldiers down to the basement levels and discovered the Cordyceps was airborne, and the basement levels were loaded with spores. So anyone not immune who was down there would be infected. Ellie was immune, but they didn’t know that, so they assumed she would die down there. That’s why when Hanrahan is going to the meeting with Park, she stops to look at how they sealed up the entrances to the basement levels. One of the soldiers Ellie sees spreading the spores was Park’s son.

ugly95 Maybe that will pay off next season, but it just felt like a waste of 10 minutes.

It will. Right before Ellie gets in her boat we see a lot of WLF loaded up on boats.

ugly95 She wanted revenge, but didn’t want to actually kill anybody.

Abby was the target. Ellie was using the people that were with Abby (when she killed Joel) to try and find Abby. They were generally resistant and ended up dead.

If they follow the game, most (or all?) of the second season will be what Abby was doing in Seattle while Ellie, Dina, Tommy, and Jesse were trying to find her.

I hope that clears some stuff up.

urbanriot

ugly95

I feel like this season was a lot worse

It was, everything from the pacing to the stylizing to the characters’ behavior to the dialogue. It lacks a consistency and feels like its all over the place. Some scenes were too slow, some events were too fast, and a lot of scenes just weren’t necessary, it just wasn’t as cohesive as the first season.

One explanation could be why some episodes of The Mandalorian similarly felt disjointed - every episode had a different director and only three of those seven directed episodes last season.

They took great pains to adapt a number of scenes from the game which turned out great but they also inserted new ‘emotional’ scenes that made the show worse.

Ellie is much less likeable this season

Agreed. Her ‘teenage rebellion’ was one thing but even her one on one experiences with other characters are annoying too. I’m not sure if it was intentional or not but overall the TV iteration of her is not how she came across to me in the game.

I enjoyed watching it

I semi-enjoyed it but it definitely lowered itself on my list of shows I watch, last season it was at the top of my list but this season it’s something I watch when there’s nothing else to watch. I feel like they could have removed ¼ of the content and replaced it with something more enjoyable.

g121

urbanriot .. and replaced it with something more enjoyable.

I replaced it with “Reacher” : )) .. I enjoyed this season of Reacher many times more than I enjoyed this season of “The Last of Us” (but admittedly S02E02 was an insane ride).

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