The Last Of Us Season 2 Lands Premiere Date: Everything We Know So Far

Cordyceps infection happens quickly. The arrival of The Last of Us' Season 2 unfolds a little more slowly.

But we finally have a return date! Season 2 of the HBO series will premiere on Sunday, April 13, at 9/8c, the premium cabler announced Wednesday.

Until the return of Joel, Ellie and those funky fungi, we thought we'll pull together everything we know so far about the hit HBO series' sophomore run.

The Season 1 closer came to an end after Pedro Pascal's Joel killed a hospital full of Firefly resistance fighters who intended to end the life of Ellie (Bella Ramsey) in order to figure out a cure for Cordyceps infection. When Ellie — who'd been anesthetized and therefore unaware of both Joel's actions and the danger to her — came to, Joel lied and said the experiment hadn't worked. Later, when she made him swear that he was telling the truth, he did so readily... even though he was doubling down on the lie. (Read a full recap, as well as Mazin's thoughts on his "confused" feelings about the ending and Ashley Johnson's memories of shooting that flashback to Ellie's birth.)

As Season 2 approaches, consider the information below to be your handy guide to all things The Last of Us. We'll go into the intricacies of the game versus its TV adaptation. We'll post photos/trailers/all the assets you could possibly want. And we'll update the list as new information becomes available, to make sure that you have the latest and best intel possible.

Per the official synopsis, Season 2 will begin with a time jump: "After five years of peace following the events of the first season, 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 the one they left behind." Joel and Ellie will be back in Jackson, Wyo., living in the compound where they spent time with Tommy and Maria in Season 1. Per EW.com, a character named Abby will show up looking to avenge her loved ones, and she'll be accompanied by a group that includes Owen, Mel, Nora and Manny.

(Important to note: The plot of Naughty Dog's The Last of Us Part II video game, on which Season 2 is based, unfolds in a sometimes non-linear fashion via time jumps and flashbacks.)

"It's great," HBO boss Casey Bloys told our sister site Deadline about the upcoming season. "It is bigger, gets into questions of retribution and revenge, it follows the video game but has big themes, big action."

See the first Season 2 photos here.

The show's creators say that the events of The Last of Us Part II (the game) will go beyond Season 2 of the HBO series.

"It's more than one season," executive producer Craig Mazin told GQ UK. While he and executive producer Neil Druckmann declined to say exactly how many seasons it would take to tell the Part II story, Mazin adds: "More than one is factually correct."

Abby, a major character in The Last of Us Part II, will be played by Kaitlyn Dever (Dopesick) in the HBO series. Laura Bailey voiced the role in the video game. When Abby first appears in the game, we don't know much about her except that she's a fierce member of a militia.

Per HBO's official description of the character, Abby is "a skilled soldier whose black-and-white view of the world is challenged as she seeks vengeance for those she loved." 

In a statement, show bosses Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann said: "Our casting process for Season 2 has been identical to Season 1: We look for world-class actors who embody the souls of the characters in the source material. Nothing matters more than talent, and we're thrilled to have an acclaimed performer like Kaitlyn join Pedro [Pascal], Bella [Ramsey] and the rest of our family."

Later, in an interview with EW.com, Druckmann elaborated on the physical differences between the video-game and show versions of Abby. "In the game, you have to play both [Ellie and Abby], and we need them to play differently. We needed Ellie to feel smaller and kind of maneuver around, and Abby was meant to play more like Joel in that she's almost like a brute in the way she can physically manhandle certain things," the EP said. "That doesn't play as big of a role in this version of the story because there's not as much violent action moment to moment. It's more about the drama. I'm not saying there's no action here. It's just, again, different priorities and how you approach it."

Aside from Kaitlyn Dever as Abby, HBO has also added BEEF breakout Young Mazino to the sophomore season as Jesse, described as "a pillar of his community who puts everyone else's needs before his own, sometimes at terrible cost." The series also has cast Isabela Merced (100 Things to Do Before High School) as Dina, "a free-wheeling spirit whose devotion to Ellie will be tested by the brutality of the world they inhabit." Schitt's Creek's Catherine O'Hara, meanwhile, is also circling an unspecified role in Season 2.

In early March, HBO made several new additions to the cast. Danny Ramirez (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) will play Manny, a loyal soldier — per the official character description — "whose sunny outlook belies the pain of old wounds and a fear that he will fail his friends when they need him most." Ariela Barer (Runaways) will play Mel, "a young doctor whose commitment to saving lives is challenged by the realities of war and tribalism." Tati Gabrielle (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, The 100) will play Nora, "a military medic struggling to come to terms with the sins of her past."

But who'll play Owen, someone who is very important to Dever's Abby?  That would be Spencer Lord (Heartland, Family Law), who'll play the "gentle soul trapped in a warrior's body, condemned to fight an enemy he refuses to hate."

In February 2024, TVLine confirmed that Schitt's Creek star Catherine O'Hara had signed on to play a mystery character in The Last of Us Season 2. And in May 2024, HBO announced that Westworld's Jeffrey Wright would play Isaac, "the quietly powerful leader of a large militia group who sought liberty but instead has become mired in an endless war against a surprisingly resourceful enemy." Wright also played the character in The Last of Us Part II video game.

"People have asked... whether we'll get a little bit of a backstory about Isaac?" Wright said in a late 2024 interview with TVLine. "We might.... It might not be pretty."

In addition, Druckmann told EW.com in February 2025, there's a "very, very cool casting" on the way and it will be in regards to "a pretty prominent character that is talked a lot about in the game, similar to what we did with Frank" in Season 1.

The Season 1 cast included Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey, Gabriel Luna, Anna Torv, Nico Parker, Murray Bartlett, Nick Offerman, Melanie Lynskey, Storm Reid, Merle Dandridge, Jeffrey Pierce, Lamar Johnson, Keivonn Woodard, Graham Greene, Elaine Miles, Ashley Johnson and Troy Baker.

Season 2 of The Last of Us will get underway on Sunday, April 13, at 9/8c.

Season 2 will consist of seven episodes, down from Season 1's count of nine.

But there's a silver lining in there: Although The Last of Us has yet to be formally renewed beyond Season 2, Mazin and Druckmann plan to spread out their adaptation of the Last of Us Part II video game across multiple TV seasons, and the hypothetical third season will be "significantly larger" than Season 2, per series co-creator CraigMazin.

"The story material that we got from Part Two of the game is way more than the story material that was in the first game, so part of what we had to do from the start was figure out how to tell that story across seasons," Mazin told our sister site Deadline in June 2024. "When you do that, you look for natural breakpoints, and as we laid it out, this season, the natural breakpoint felt like it came after seven episodes."

The seven Season 2 episodes, Mazin told EW.com in February, "are high-calorie, dense episodes. If you consider action and drama and scope to be the things that create an epic nature, each one of these episodes packs quite a wallop. You will not be bored."

There is, and it is a doozy: The teaser HBO released on September 26 — AKA The Last of Us Day AKA Joel's birthday — hints at a painful separation between Joel and Ellie in the sophomore season. It also gives us our first good look at Dever as Abby and Wright as Isaac. Press PLAY on the video above to watch.

The Last of Us' first season currently is streaming on Max. It also is available via Hulu (with a Max subscription), Apple TV, Vudu and Prime Video.

(If you sign up for a service through our links, TVLine may earn a commission.)