The creator of the show did not present it as a series of zombies but as a deeper and more sentimental project…
Who says The Last of Us says zombies, but not only. In its first season, the series proved to be much more than a horror series featuring the living dead and that was its creator’s intention, as revealed by Francesca Orsi, director of the programming and development of drama series at HBO.
Interviewed by Deadline (via ComingSoon), she indeed recalled her reaction when Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin first introduced them to The Last of Us project. She revealed that he didn’t initially cast it as a zombie series but instead focused on exploring family and the relationship between Joel and Ellie.
Craig didn’t start with that. While there’s a big fun factor to the zombie nature of the show and its story, it really focused on that kind of love story, that relationship between Pedro Pascal’s character and the Bella Ramsay’s character, Joel and Ellie, and the exploration of family and the ways in which Ellie becomes a surrogate daughter for Joel after the tragic death of her biological daughter: that’s what I think most resonated with us affected. And it was the intense, deeper exploration of love and family he was looking for that won us all over.
We can say that the show has indeed followed this direction, betting on affect as much as on horror – as proven by the famous episode 3 with Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett), which particularly moved the fans.
The pre-production of season 2 of The Last of Us has been affected by the ongoing writers’ strike in Hollywood, with recent auditions for the cast of this new season having been temporarily halted. It’s not yet known if this will also delay HBO’s envisioned release date for the highly anticipated season 2 of the hit horror drama. The rumor speaks of a return in 2025 only: we will therefore have to be patient.
In the meantime, The Last of Us Season 1 is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.