The future of The Last of Us TV saga remains a mystery, sort of – the TV show is however getting a clearer picture. A third season of the Pedro Pascal-led show is officially on the cards, but the long run of it all is up for grabs.
Talking recently (after Kaitlyn Dever chipped in on Season 3 of The Last of Us) HBO CEO Casey Bloys weighed in on what the future holds for the show. While Bloys avoided giving a straight answer on the third season, you can tell he’s leaving the door open a crack for a possible conclusion to the story without a fourth season. He was fairly vague when speaking about this – saying that we’d have to ask the showrunners themselves for a straight answer, “They’re the ones who can tell us. Ask them!”
“That seems to be the case at the moment, but when it comes to decisions like that, we defer to our showrunners’ schedules. So you better ask them,” Bloys stated.
Right now, it seems like the third season is about to wrap up the story from The Last of Us Part II video game. There seems to be a stronger likelihood now that this season will be the last one – and this decision appears to be of no relation to whether Naughty Dog end up releasing a third game in the franchise.
And, if that wasn’t enough, the cast have shared a bittersweet milestone – that of saying goodbye to Catherine O’Hara as she wrapped up her role on the show ahead of the next season.
The Story Gap – What’s Left to Tell?
The second season focused on Ellie’s side of things (her three-day descent in to violence in Seattle, basically). If this is the end of the show with Season 3, then what are they going to cover off in the final season? Well, there are two fairly major storylines left in the game.
Abby’s Parallel Journey: In the game, you get to see the same three days from Seattle, but this time from Abby’s perspective. By doing this, it makes you feel a little bit more for the “bad guy” ( Abby is definitely in that category) and highlights the cost of Ellie’s actions
The Santa Barbara Epilogue – a kind of brutal confrontation that wraps up the story months after the Seattle stuff all went down.
Game vs. Live-Action Comparison
| Feature | The Video Game (Part II) | Live-Action Series (S2 & S3) |
| Perspective | Dramatic mid-game switch to Abby for 10+ hours. | Expected to give Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) a larger, simultaneous role in Season 3. |
| Pacing | A 25–30 hour journey that feels like two games in one. | Season 2 was only 7 episodes; Season 3 is rumored to be “significantly larger” to fit the ending. |
| The Ending | Ends with a lonely, bittersweet image of a guitar. | If Season 3 is the finale, it will likely follow this “definitive” end unless a Part III game is released. |
| Joel’s Presence | Mostly seen through poignant, non-linear flashbacks. | Pedro Pascal remains a “lead,” likely through expanded flashback scenes not seen in the game. |
What if the show ends with Season 3?
It either all comes together or it falls apart. If the show ends with Season 3, then they can either pull it off in style or they might just leave the entire “Abby” side of things feeling a bit rushed. In the game, you spend a decent amount of time getting to know her; on TV, if they only have a few episodes to get you to care about her by the time the finale comes around, it might not resonate as much.
The up side is that they can give fans closure. By ending at Season 3, the show can steer clear of getting stuck in a rut and make sure that the story stays true to the source material. But, without a The Last of Us Part III game to draw from, a fourth season would mean that HBO would have to come up with an entirely original story – something that Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin have said they really, really don’t want to do.
Source: Comicbookmovie
