The Last of Us premiered to critical acclaim last January but more importantly, garnered numerous views that set new HBO records. Two episodes in, HBO greenlit it for a second season.
Craig Mazin, who is one of the show’s creators, recently sat down for an interview with Deadline to talk about its impressive outing at the Emmys where it scored 24 nominations. During the conversation, Mazin revealed that work had begun on the second season but they had to stop because the WGA strike began.
He said, “We got pretty far actually, we were doing great. Neil and I had been sitting and talking with Halley Gross, who also worked on the second game as a writer, and Bo Shim, the new writer that was in our little tiny room with us.”
Mazin confirmed that the team has mapped out the new season. Even better, he revealed he had written the first episode of the new season before the strike began. Unfortunately, he can’t pen any other episode until the strike ends.
To fill in the time, the writer and producer does something he called brain-writing. In his words, “Now I’m just walking around kind of brain-writing, I guess, which I don’t think is scabbing.”
He continued, “I take walks and I think through the scenes because when the bell rings and this is over because the companies have finally come to their senses, I’m going to have to basically shoot myself out of a cannon because we really want to try and get this show on the air when it’s supposed to be on the air.”
The Last of Us is a massive project that requires a lot of time and resources. To put things in perspective, the first season began filming in July 2021 and took 200 days to complete. With the second season expected to take as long, fans were told to expect a premiere sometime in 2025.
However, the WGA strike, as well as the SAG-AFTRA strike threaten to throw a wrench into these plans. Mazin sounded hopeful that the show can still make its original premiere date, though.
He revealed that, because of the need for ideal weather situations, they had to push production back on the series, which is reflected in its current release date.
Because of this, the ongoing strikes don’t affect production just yet. However, he admitted that if the strikes go on and an agreement is not reached between the actors and writers on one hand and the studios on the other hand, they will have to delay production and this will naturally affect everybody involved in the project, especially the audience.
Given that the double strike has ground Hollywood to a halt, we certainly share Mazin’s enthusiasm. If the studios don’t reach an agreement with workers and actors soon, we, the audiences, will soon have nothing new to watch, whether in theaters, on networks, or streaming platforms.
