Last night at CES 2025, Sony and HBO announced that The Last of Us’ second season will premiere on Max in April. The seven-episode season will cover only part of The Last of Us Part II’s story, as HBO plans to split the events of the 2020 sequel across multiple seasons. Based on this trailer, it seems like the live-action adaptation might be playing a little loose with the structure of the game, or maybe this one-minute video is pulling from scenes we might not see until season three. Right now we can only speculate, so that’s what we’re here to do. Here are a few things we noticed in The Last of Us season two’s third trailer. The Last of Us Part II spoilers ahead!
2 / 7
The very first scene in the trailer shows Kaitlyn Dever as Abby. To anyone who hasn’t played the games and doesn’t know who Abby is, she’s the co-protagonist of The Last of Us Part II, though developer Naughty Dog kept her mostly a secret until the game launched in 2020. We see Abby walking down a dark hallway with a loaded pistol in hand. We get a brief glimpse of her Firefly tags hanging around her neck as a siren blares through the halls.
If you did play The Last of Us Part II, you know this is Abby looking for her father in the aftermath of Joel’s escape, in the same hospital where Joel went on a killing spree at the end of season one. HBO’s marketing doesn’t seem to be playing coy with Abby’s Firefly ties like Naughty Dog did in The Last of Us Part II, so we’ll see if it actually tries to maintain the game’s twists and turns.
3 / 7
There’s not a lot of plot to glean from the action montage that follows this scene of Abby. We see more of the infected attack on the Jackson stronghold that is new to the show, what appears to be a Seraphite cultist picking up a sickle that I’m sure they’ll use for cutting grass and not people, a quick shot of Jeffrey Wright reprising his role as WLF leader Isaac, a Seraphite member set on fire, and an infected person crawling toward someone like they’re stalking prey. But that’s less exciting than…
4 / 7
We see two clips of Bella Ramsey returning as protagonist Ellie and Isabela Merced as Dina, her ride-or-die girlfriend and best friend in Jackson. Because of events, Dina accompanies Ellie on her revenge quest to Seattle, and we see the pair running from, presumably, infected in the city. However, we also see the two slow dancing and looking lovingly into each other’s eyes. Fans will know this scene as taking place at a dance in Jackson and as one of the first moments Naughty Dog released to the public way back in 2018. Chronologically, this happens just before the bulk of The Last of Us Part II but isn’t shown to the player until near the end. The sequel is flashback-heavy, and this sequence is one of the last ones the player sees after Ellie returns home from Seattle where most of the game takes place, so if this scene is going to be in season two, it’s another implication that the show is tweaking the sequence of events. The first season was a pretty faithful retelling of the original game’s story (with a few exceptions), so I expected the second season to follow suit. Across all three trailers, there haven’t been that many scenes that don’t seem lifted straight from The Last of Us Part II’s events beyond Joel’s apparent therapy sessions, but it seems like it might be playing with the structure a bit.
5 / 7
A lot of this trailer is re-used footage from the last two. We again see Joel crying in therapy, Ellie screaming out on what looks like a hospital bed, and the Infected attacking Jackson. Given that I was just giving the show shit for seemingly spoiling Abby’s identity in a trailer, I can commend the restraint. As for the flashes of new footage, there’s a moment that looks like it might be the scene in which Ellie tracks Nora, one of Abby’s friends played by Intergalactic star Tati Gabrielle in the show, into an infected nest. We don’t see the WLF medic, but the scene is distinct for its use of stark red lighting and its focus on Ellie as she approaches. We can see Ellie pointing a gun at someone on the ground in front of her with this distinct lighting and framing.
6 / 7
The final shot shows a flare being thrown into an otherwise dark area. As the light flickers, it reveals that The Last of Us’ second season will premiere on Max in April. HBO didn’t get any more specific than that, but the first season’s episodes premiered on Sundays, so we’ll see if the second season’s do as well.
For more on The Last of Us, check out Kotaku’s review of the first season.
7 / 7