ellie

The Last of Us

HBO

While we know that The Last of Us season 2 is planned to release in 2025, we now have fresh info that allows us to narrow that down quite a bit. Filming has now wrapped on The Last of Us season 2 as the series heads into post-production, letting us to estimate its release date based on season 1.

Season 1 of The Last of Us wrapped filming in July of 2022. It then released in January of 2023, six months later. So, it’s easy enough to use that metric to estimate that if filming just wrapped now, that puts it at the end of February 2025 for the release of the series, which would be just over two years since season 1, somewhat standard for streaming series these days, unfortunately. Say season 2 is bigger and better, maybe eight months of post-production this time, so April of 2025.

We know that season 2 of The Last of Us is meant to adapt just half of Part 2, the second game being much longer than the first. There are many theories about how they might take this concept on, maybe saving a big “moment” near the start and pushing it way back this time. Or maybe a split pair of seasons with an Ellie perspective and an Abby perspective. My guess is…neither of those will happen and it will be a fairly straightforward adaptation of the timeline with some sort of designated breakpoint in the middle. No shenanigans.

20th Century Studio's "Rosaline" Premiere - Arrivals

FilmMagic

Secrecy has been tight on set this time around. We have seen set shots mainly just of Dina and Ellie and a bit of Jesse. Importantly, who we have not seen except for a blurry glimpse in a trailer is Kaitlyn Dever’s Abby, though I suppose she almost has to be in future trailers as we get closer to launch.

There are of course extremely high expectations for season 2 of the show where season 1 was nominated for 24 Emmys with eight wins, albeit not in the major categories. No doubt season 2 wants that number with even more wins, though it’s a tall order, given a competitive field. Maybe less so with Succession over now, we’ll see.

As far as we know there are three planned season of The Last of Us as that would almost certainly take us to the end of the existing games. While it’s possible The Last of Us Part 3 may exist at some point, that seems unlikely to align for a third season, though it’s certainly possible HBO could return to the show years later if that was the case. They certainly would not film a season 4 with Part 3 game plotlines without releasing the actual game, obviously.

But yes, just six-ish months now until season 2. Buckle up.