HBO
‘The Last of Us’ needs a fourth season to tell its entire story, according to one of its creators
Craig Mazin, the co-creator of ‘The Last of Us’ series, reveals that three seasons will not be enough to adapt the plot of the two games.
Although the second season of ‘The Last of Us’ has entered its final stretch with only one episode left, creators Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin are already thinking about the future of the series. Beyond the confirmed third season, Mazin recently revealed that three seasons may not be enough to realize his vision for the full narrative of this adaptation, which could be interpreted as a tacit confirmation that there will be a fourth season.
Craig Mazin (‘The Last of Us’): “There’s no way to complete this narrative in a third season”
In a recent interview with Collider, Craig Mazin, co-creator of ‘The Last of Us’, the adaptation of Naughty Dog’s popular franchise to TV series format, revealed the future plans that both he and Neil Druckmann have for this work. When the interviewer asked him that, given the many changes in the series, it is possible that the third season should be longer than the second to conclude the narrative of The Last of Us Part II, Mazin explained his reasoning.
“Yeah, and it would take forever. There are natural perforations in the narrative where you can go, ‘Okay, let’s tear it here.’ I think there’s a decent chance that Season 3 will be longer than Season 2, just because the manner of that narrative and the opportunities it affords us are a little different,” Mazin commented. “The thing about Joel’s death is that it’s so impactful. It’s such a narrative nuclear bomb that it’s hard to wander away from it. We can’t really take a break and move off to the side and do a Bill and Frank story. I’m not sure that will necessarily be true for Season 3. I think we’ll have a little more room there.”
“But certainly, there’s no way to complete this narrative in a third season. Hopefully, we’ll earn our keep enough to come back and finish it in a fourth. That’s the most likely outcome,” concluded the director and screenwriter. Although there is no official confirmation of a fourth season of ‘The Last of Us’, everything points to the fact that there will be one due to the difficulties of condensing the entire script of the second game in just two seasons.
The art of adapting ‘The Last of Us’ and the challenges of telling the same story in a different medium
The first season of the series successfully adapted the events of the video game The Last of Us (2013), where Joel Miller (Pedro Pascal) had to escort a teenage girl named Ellie (Bella Ramsey) through a desolate United States after a pandemic of the Cordyceps fungus, which infects humans and turns them into violent and irrational creatures. Instead, while the second season of ‘The Last of Us’ has begun adapting the events of the second part, Mazin says that it will take three seasons of the series - from season two through season four - to adapt The Last of Us Part II in its entirety.
Being an adaptation of a video game for television, several concessions and modifications have had to be made to the plot both to help viewers better understand the story, as well as to polish the original narrative. Neil Druckmann himself has revealed that some of these changes are something “almost mandatory” to preserve the narrative rhythm.
Broadly speaking, The Last of Us Part II is a revenge story. However, there are more relevant themes within its great narrative load, such as the loss of innocence or forgiveness. Additionally, it is also necessary to build a credible world and contextualize the universe in which the plot unfolds. For all these reasons, both Neil Druckmann -who, let’s remember, was the screenwriter and director of the video games- and Craig Mazin have deemed it necessary to make these modifications.
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