Showrunner Craig Mazin Says Season 2 Of HBO’s ‘The Last of Us’ Will Be “Different Radically” But Bella Ramsey Won’t Be Let Go

The Last of Us HBO series is getting a second season that is guaranteed to be different from the game and even more so from the first season. A considerable number of viewers who are fans of the game believe the show is a faithful adaptation, though flawed, while others took it to task for radical departures.

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The latter can look forward to more of the same change and liberties according to the showrunner Craig Mazin and TLOU creator Neil Druckmann. “[Season 2] will be different just as this season was different,” Mazin said at a press conference covered by IGN. “Sometimes it will be different radically, and sometimes it [won’t] be fairly different at all, but it’s going to be different.”

He continued, “It will be its own thing. It won’t be exactly like the game. It will be the show that Neil and I want to make, but we are making it with Bella.” Mazin is referring to the potential of Bella Ramsey, who plays Ellie, being recast due to the five-year time-jump between The Last of Us Part 1 and 2.

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That would justify someone new portraying Ellie if Season 2 sticks with the game’s premise or timeline, but Mazin and Druckmann must be figuring out a way around things. They fervidly and adamantly want to keep working with Ramsey and vice versa. “We are extremely lucky to have Bella and the stuff you saw throughout this entire season,” Druckmann said.

“The only way we would ever, ever consider recasting Bella is if she said, ‘I don’t want to work with you guys anymore.’ Even then, I’m not sure we would grant her that. We might still force her to come back to Season 2,” he added. 

Mazin then offered that Ramsey is now 19 so her age, matching Ellie’s in TLOU Pt. 2, isn’t problematic. “[Ramsey]’s 19 now, which – by the way – is the age of Ellie in The Last of Us Part 2,” Mazin said.

HBO just aired The Last of Us Season 1’s last episode and we aren’t likely to see the second season until 2024 or ‘25 so it’s reasonable to think, by then, Ramsey will look mature enough to continue in the co-lead beside Pedro Pascal.

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