“The Last of Us” Season Two’s Premiere Date Coming Soon-Ish

With HBO’s fantastic eight-part miniseries The Penguin drawing to a close this past Sunday, we got a fresh update on when one of HBO’s other fantastic series returns, the Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey-led The Last of Us. We’ve known for a while HBO’s first big swing out of the gate in 2025 is the expansion of the world of Dune, recently reinvigorated by Denis Villeneuve’s two films in the upcoming series Dune: Prophecy, which arrives on November 17. As for The Last Us, we won’t have to wait too long—the killer zombie show returns in Spring of next year.

IGN reported that the release window news came directly from HBO and Max Content CEO and Chairman Casey Bloys during a 2025 programming slate presentation to journalists.

The last look we got at what was in store for us in season two of The Last of Us was in a trailer released on September 26. The date was not randomly selected. In the terrifying world of The Last of Us, September 26 was the day when the cordyceps virus outbreak first exploded in the original game by Naughty Dog.

The trailer revealed Pedro Pascal’s Joel Miller and newcomer Catherine O’Hara sitting for a therapy session. If anyone needed therapy in the demolished world of The Last of Us, it was Joel—the last time we saw him, he was seeing red in a brutal, vengeful bloodbath at the hospital where his charge, Ellie (Bella Ramsey), was moments away from being dissected to retrieve the precious antidote to the killer virus she is, for some reason, immune.

The season two trailer also revealed that Ellie has found what appears to be a new, safe home in the mountains, paid for in blood during Joel’s rampage to free her. While Joel and Bella look to be in a much better position than they were at any point during season one’s arduous journey across a devastated America, no one is ever truly safe in The Last of Us. The new trailer revealed one of the infected at one of the later, more monstrous stages of mutation, crawling toward a fresh kill.

The trailer is set to a haunting version of Pearl Jam’s “Future Days” and reveals that season two picks up five years after the first season’s events. If that means that Joel and Ellie have found relative stability and peace for five years, it will be that much more difficult to see it ripped away again. Given that this is a drama series, a thriller at heart, we know that season two will not be a profile of how two death-haunted survivors handle prosperity and comfort. HBO’s official description for season two reads, “Joel and Ellie’s collective past catches up to them, drawing them into conflict with each other and a world even more dangerous and unpredictable than they left behind.” Cheery times ahead.

Season two features several talented newcomers: Kaitlyn Dever as Abby, Isabela Merced as Dina, Young Mazino as Jesse, Ariela Barer as Mel, Tati Gabrielle as Nora, Spencer Lord as Owen, Danny Ramirez as Manny, and Jeffrey Wright as Isaac.

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Featured image: Pedro Pascal in “The Last of Us.” Photograph by Courtesy of HBO