Just weeks away from the premiere of The Last of Us Season 2 (April 13 at 9:00 p.m. ET in on Crave in Canada), returning stars Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey and Gabriel Luna are joined by new cast members, including Kaitlyn Dever and Catherine O'Hara, for the continuation of this post-apocalyptic story. Filmed in Canada, with the trailer viewed more than 158 million times globally within the first week of its release alone, this is easily one of the most highly anticipated TV returns of the year.
"It's a little bit scary," Ramsey said during a press conference about the show's return, after a successful first season. "When Season 1 came out, obviously it was this huge thing. I think I'm just so aware of Season 2 coming out and ... everybody looking at it, and looking at me, and it's quite scary, but it's exciting."
Season 2 of The Last of Us begins five years after the Season 1 finale, when Joel (Pascal) kills a number of Fireflies to flee the hospital with Ellie (Ramsey), saving her life. But he keeps that truth a secret from her.
Now Joel and Ellie begin the new season having grown apart.
"Ellie was 14 and now is 19, and ... that's the formative years," Ramsey said. "So that ... definitely informed it."
"But there's obviously deeper reasons for that, for their little rift. And I didn't enjoy feeling estranged from Pedro within a scene. It wasn't a nice feeling when the cameras were rolling."
"On a practical level, ... my first day on set, I feel like it was a beautiful setup by Craig [Mazin]and Neil [Druckmann], that the first thing that I got to shoot was just [Bella] and I, and in kind of an intimate setting," Pascal added. "And there's incredibly painful distance between the two of them in the playing of the scene, but we still got to be on set and f**k around and laugh, and stuff like that."
"My mindset was grateful to being back, and yet, at the same time, this experience, more than any other I've had, it's hard for me to separate what the characters are going through and how it makes me feel, in a way that isn't very healthy. And so I kind of feel their pain, and I suppose I was in an unhealthy mindset."
'We just haven't f**ked up in casting'
In terms of adding new characters to the story, the show's co-creator, executive producer, writer and director, Craig Mazin, was pretty clear about the advantage of having the new additions.
"We just haven't f**ked up in casting," he said. "Every single one of these guys, I can't wait for you to see what they do and how they interact with each other."
Mazin highlighted Dever's work as a particularly highlight for the season, playing Abby.
"Kaitlyn did things that I'm not sure [she] even should have done. I don't know how [she] did them," he said. "Kaitlyn just would never say no and it was amazing. And when you see how physically tremendous her performance is, ... it's insane. I'm just very grateful."
Dever is actually a longtime fan of the game, saying that it was a "bonding moment" with her dad to play together.
"I just admired this story so much," she said.
'A safe space to see human relationships under crisis'
In terms of watching a show like The Last of Us, Pascal identified that there's a cathartic experience that happens when you watch a story like this that is set in a post-apocalyptic world, but threaded with elements of interesting social commentary and evaluation of humanity.
"All of my development is based on books I've read, movies I've seen, and television that I've watched, and so it's very much going to reflect the human experience," Pascal said. "And under such extreme circumstances, I think that there's a very healthy and sometimes sick pleasure in that kind of catharsis, and a safe space to see human relationships under crisis and in pain. And intelligently draw a political allegory, societal allegory, and base it off of the world that we're living in."
"The first season we made a story about a pandemic, fearing that maybe there's a fatigue," Luna added. "But I think the experience that everyone had just gave them an entry point to what we were doing."
"And I think the second game, as Neil wrote it, and the way that Craig [wrote] the second season, it's about conflicts, and where do they start, and who started it. ... And right now, all over the world, we're dealing with these conflicts."
