The first trailer for The Last of Us season 2 goes hard on action, zombies, and sad Joel being very, very sad

The first official teaser for HBO's The Last of Us season 2 is here, giving us a melancholy look at life years after the events of the first season.

I won't spoil anything for you: If you're already familiar with The Last of Us Part 2 then you'll have a pretty good idea of what's coming, and if not, Wikipedia can help if you just can't wait to find out. Suffice it to say that life in the wake of the Cordyceps pandemic has returned to a kind of normalcy, or at least stability, although just like the real world, some days are better than others. And those less-better days, boy, they are really not good.

Joel is clearly struggling ( you know what you did ) and his relationship with Ellie is equally strained—that's drama, baby—but the trailer also pointedly features plenty of rampaging zombies, gunfire, implied torture, and kinetic bad news all around. I have to guess the goal is to address up-front the common complaint that the first season, while narratively brilliant, was a little lacking in the action department.

It also seems our guess that Catherine O'Hara's "undisclosed role" being that of a therapist of some sort was correct: The timer at the start of the trailer is a dead giveaway that this isn't just idle chit-chat over a couple of room-temperature Lone Stars.

It's worth noting for the record that familiarity with The Last of Us Part 2 does not guarantee spot-on insights into The Last of Us season 2. Showrunner Craig Mazin said in 2023 that HBO's take on the game will be different where and when it needs to be, sometimes "radically" so—although I very much doubt that will have much impact on, y'know, the whole Joel business . (No spoilers! I'm just saying.)

A previously released teaser (which has since been taken down) said The Last of Us season 2 would be out sometime in 2024-25, but the first part of that number is now off the table. A precise release date hasn't been announced, but today's trailer confirmed that it won't be out until sometime in 2025.