“Let Us Cook”: Craig Mazin & Neil Druckmann Want You To Trust Them On The Last Of Us Season 2

The Last of Us’ success on HBO wasn’t a huge shock. The series was a live-action adaptation of one of the most acclaimed — and most cinematic — video games ever made, and Neil Druckmann, the game’s original writer and creative director, served as co-showrunner alongside Chernobyl’s Craig Mazin. With an all-star cast including Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey, and Melanie Lynskey, it seemed like a slam dunk.

But even though most of the series felt like a 1:1 adaptation of the original game, the new medium allowed space to veer from the path and explore elements that gameplay wouldn’t allow, like the flashback episode focusing on the love story between Bill and Frank. These variances were big hits with audiences, but not all fans of the game were thrilled to see something different.

When I asked Mazin and Druckmann if fan reaction to Season 1 affected their process for Season 2, before I could even finish the question, Mazin was already shaking his head. “Nope,” he says definitively.

“We love how much people love it. Even people who don’t like it, the extent of their passion is an indication of how much they love [the game,]” Mazin tells Inverse. “So we respect that passion — I share it because I’m a fan too — but we were obviously really gratified by how many people watched the show and really felt strongly about it.”

But any fan reaction, positive or negative, can’t enter into the creative process, Mazin stresses. “If you start to think about that too much and let that into your story-making process, you’re not going to be able to do the thing that they liked in the first place,” he says. “So we have to honor them, tip our hat, thank them, and then ask them to step aside for a moment and let us cook. And then we come back to them and hopefully we’ve done it again.”

Ahead of The Last of Us Season 2, Inverse spoke to Mazin and Druckmann about the re-introduction of spores, guest stars in Season 2, and where the series is ultimately going.

This interview has been edited for brevity and/or clarity.

What percentage of the season is adaptation from the game, and what percentage is supplementary?

Neil Druckmann: Geez, I don’t think we did the math on this. I think the fact that we don’t have that number speaks to our process. We’re not trying to hit some percentage like “Oh, it’s got to be at least 40% exactly like the game.” We look at the game and the certain narrative choices that Halley Gross and I made in the game, and then we interrogate every single one. Then we have new ideas, and we interrogate every single one of those ideas. The ones we pick we feel are the best version for this story in this medium.

“I think we have not seen the last of the spores.”

Season 1 introduced tendrils as a way of infection spreading, seemingly replacing the spores from the game. As we saw in the trailer, Season 2 is bringing back the spores. How do the two differ narratively? Will we still get some tendril moments in Season 2?

Craig Mazin: Listen, you are going to get some gorgeous tendrils right off the bat, some very disturbing tendrils. We love how beautiful they are, even if they are kind of threatening. That’s something we’ve always talked about is how Cordyceps, in its own way, is gorgeous to look at, and we try as best we can to honor that.

When it comes to spores, without giving anything away, it was important to us that when we introduce them, we introduce them in a way that feels narratively connected. It’s not just “Oh, and now a room full of spores.” There’s a reason there are spores there, and it impacts even a relationship. Then, of course, it plays an important role in the story at that moment. I think it’s fair to say that we have made spores kind of special, and we’ve created some circumstances where they might exist. Given how gorgeous they are and, as a player, how much I love them, I think we have not seen the last of the spores.

Season 1 had so many wonderful one-off episodes. How many of those episodes can we expect in Season 2? Are there any exciting ones that you can tease?

Druckmann: I will say, like Season 1, we look at characters that might afford us opportunities to expand the story. Craig had this brilliant idea of taking Frank, who you just hear about in the game and just see a body, and expand [it] into a beautiful romantic relationship. But our approach is never “What was successful in Season 1, and how do we replicate that?” We replicate the process, so that the process led us to the Bill and Frank episode.

This time, the process might lead us to different things, but one of the things we've already talked about is how Eugene plays a major pivotal role in the story. Likewise, there’s a new character — Eugene’s wife, Gail — who has afforded us different ways to explore Joel, Ellie, and Jackson as a community.

That’s our process, how we pick and choose these moments and see where they take us. And sometimes it’s a dead end, and we're like, “OK, well that wasn’t worth anything,” and sometimes it’s a really beautiful moment, like the stuff that we have with Eugene later in the season.

“We have a very specific destination in mind.”

You previously said that you saw this story extending past Season 3. Does that mean that the adaptation of The Last of Us Part II will take us to that point, or do you think you’ll get to that point and then add more?

Druckmann: We have a very specific destination in mind. When we were breaking this season, we were already breaking the story past Season 2, and we know the stops along the way that we have to make to get to that ending.

But then some of the most fun part for me is the exploration that I get to do with Craig. Where do we zig when we should have zagged? And [we] explore these deviations, these expansions of the world. But both of us have always felt from the beginning that there must be an ending in mind that we work towards. Otherwise, it just will start feeling meandering and aimless and we have no desire to do that.

In The Last of Us Part II, the point of view is balanced between Ellie and Abby. Is that something that will be reflected in the series?

Mazin: It’s essential. We’re talking about two young women who are driven in such a similar way and who have such a similar passion that makes them formidable. It makes them an incredible ally. They are capable of tremendous love and loyalty, but they both are also capable of terrible things for the same reason.

They both are dangerous, and you can’t help but feel when you play the game that in different circumstances, they could be best friends, they could be sisters, but that’s the point. We don’t get heroes, and we don’t get villains. We get people who love and are hurt and drive themselves forward from that. These two women are going to take very different paths to the point where they converge. And then when that happens, look out.

The Last of Us Season 2 premieres April 13 on HBO and Max.