The Last of Us stormed onto screens last year with a rare mix of prestige-drama emotion and genre spectacle, proving that a game adaptation could sit comfortably among television’s finest. Set in a United States crippled by a brain-altering fungal pandemic, the show followed weary smuggler Joel (Pedro Pascal) and immune teenager Ellie (Bella Ramsey) on a cross-country trek that ended with Joel’s morally catastrophic decision to save her life at humanity’s expense.
While its second is gorgeous, gripping, and well acted, its truncated scope and fixation on vengeance blunt the emotional power that made the first run unforgettable.
Five years after the Salt Lake City massacre, Joel and Ellie have tried to build a life behind the fortified fences of Jackson, Wyoming. Their fragile détente is strained by Joel’s secret—he lied about why the Fireflies abandoned a cure—and by Ellie’s ordinary-but-extraordinary passage into young adulthood. Meanwhile Abby, daughter of the surgeon Joel killed, scours the country for payback, and two rival militias close in on the mountain settlement. Tensions inside and outside Jackson ignite a chain of violence that forces Ellie onto her own path, shadowed by Joel’s example and haunted by questions of what justice really costs.
The good
The production values remain staggering: snow-caked streets, candle-lit cabins, and the show’s signature nightmare fungi give every frame a painterly bleakness. Directors Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann still know how to wring dread from a creaking floorboard or a distant clicker’s rasp. Performances are uniformly stellar. Pedro Pascal deepens Joel’s weary regret, and Bella Ramsey excels as a 19-year-old Ellie whose sarcasm now guards genuine fury and confusion. Newcomers bring welcome texture: Kaitlyn Dever’s Abby is a coiled spring of grief; Isabela Merced’s Dina supplies warmth and gentle humor; Jeffrey Wright radiates chilly authority as militia leader Isaac; and Catherine O’Hara steals scenes as a therapist whose professional façade cracks around old wounds. When the season leans into intimate moments—Joel’s halting therapy sessions, Ellie and Dina’s mixtape-trading banter, Abby’s whispered vows—the series feels as insightful as ever.
The bad
Trimming The Last of Us Part II to seven episodes leaves the narrative stretched and oddly rushed. Crucial new players, especially Abby and Isaac, get sketch-note introductions when they deserve full-color portraits. Thematically, the script circles the idea of revenge until it begins to feel like lecture: every confrontation ends with a variation on “hurt people hurt people,” yet the show seldom digs deeper than that slogan. Set-piece zombie battles, while technically impressive, occasionally resemble bonus levels inserted to pad run time. The absence of standalone detours—Season 1’s most affecting hours—makes the pacing feel uniform and, paradoxically, slower. And the finale arrives so abruptly that it registers less as a climax than a mid-season pause designed to justify a third installment.
The verdict
Season 2 is still head-and-shoulders above most genre television, thanks to top-tier craft and performances that breathe life into every blood-spattered corner. Yet its narrower focus and didactic approach to vengeance mean it never reaches the cathartic highs or devastating lows of the debut run. Fans craving more time in this ruined America will find plenty to admire; those hoping for the next leap forward may leave feeling, like Ellie herself, hungrier than before.
