The Last of Us showrunner confirms it'll take 4 seasons to wrap things up: "there's no way to complete this narrative in a 3rd season"

The Last of Us TV show
(Image credit: HBO)

In an interview with Collider, Craig Mazin, the showrunner behind The Last of Us TV adaptation, has confirmed that the show is more likely to wrap after four seasons. This isn't the first time we've heard this, as Mazin started referencing the "four season plan" back in 2023, but this is all the confirmation we need to know our time with The Last of Us won't be coming to a close any time soon.

After the bombshell of a beginning to the second season (which I won't spoil if you haven't watched it, but seriously you need to catch up) Mazin said "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 be necessarily true for season three. I think we'll have a little more room there. But certainly, there's no way to complete this narrative in a third season."

He continued: "Hopefully, we'll earn our keep enough to come back and finish in a fourth. That's the most likely outcome." But given the popularity of the show, I don't think earning their keep will be an issue. Especially since it was confirmed back in April that The Last of Us would return for a third season.

Mazin goes on to suggest that "there's a decent chance that season three will be longer than season two, just because of the manner of that narrative." But even with this factored in, there will still be the need for a fourth.

As long as I'm not left on a cliffhanger at the end of each episode, which The Last of Us really loves to do, I will happily sit through far more than two seasons, and I'm sure a lot of the current audience would do the same. There are too many questions left unanswered as it stands.

Kara Phillips
Evergreen Writer

Kara is an evergreen writer. Having spent four years as a games journalist guiding, reviewing, or generally waffling about the weird and wonderful, she’s more than happy to tell you all about which obscure indie games she’s managed to sink hours into this week. When she’s not raising a dodo army in Ark: Survival Evolved or taking huge losses in Tekken, you’ll find her helplessly trawling the internet for the next best birdwatching game because who wants to step outside and experience the real thing when you can so easily do it from the comfort of your living room. Right?

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