The second season of The Last of Us hasn’t even arrived yet, but its looming presence is already making a splash.
The show’s most recent trailer for Season 2, which was released during a SXSW panel, has garnered over 158 million views across platforms in just three days, according to numbers provided by Warner Brothers Discovery. The streamer claimed this is a record for HBO and Max original programming, and that this trailer has outperformed previous promos for the show by “at least 160%”
You can’t stop this.#TheLastOfUs returns April 13 on Max. pic.twitter.com/DH8UzAugIV
— Max (@StreamOnMax) March 8, 2025
The show seems to only be growing in popularity as fans new and old alike wait patiently for Season 2’s arrival. The Season 1 episodes are averaging “around 32 million cross-platform viewers” domestically, which is a huge jump from the numbers of, say, Season 1’s finale. It racked up an impressive 8.2 million same-day viewers across platforms when it aired in March 2023, according to Deadline. Clearly, folks are excitedly getting ready for the next leg of the story with a little rewatch, but this huge jump in numbers says a lot about just how big this series actually is. It’s definitely one of the most successful for HBO in recent years, but the anticipation and love toward the show is undeniable with numbers like these.
The Last of Us will make a five-year time jump for Season 2, and follow Joel and Ellie as they are “drawn into conflict with each other and a world even more dangerous and unpredictable than the one they left behind.” Stars Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey, Gabriel Luna, and Rutina Wesley are set to return, with heavy hitters like Kaitlyn Dever, Isabella Merced, Catherine O’Hara, and Jeffrey Wright joining the cast alongside them this season.
At the SXSW panel, showrunners Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin confirmed “spores are back” following their omission from Season 1. The trailer teased the introduction of spores after they were left out of Season 1; we see Ellie, played by Bella Ramsey, view an infected whose breath releases the spores.
Druckmann said there is “an escalation of numbers and types of infected, but also, as you see in the trailer, an escalation of the vector of how this thing spreads” in The Last of Us Season 2, adding: “Season 1, we had this new thing that wasn’t in the game of these tendrils that spread, and that was one form. And then one shot you see in this trailer, there are things in the air.”
Mazin later confirmed “spores are back,” before Druckmann added: “The reason [we’re doing it now], I mean, we really wanted to figure it out, and again, everything has to be drama. There had to be a dramatic reason of introducing it now. And there is.”
Season 2 of The Last of Us premieres April 13, 2025 on HBO and HBO Max.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
