“Some of us just can’t be saved.” Whether you caught that line on “The Last of Us” Season 2, Episode 3 — or said it to yourself at some point during the 2024 U.S.presidential election — showrunner Craig Mazin isn’t drawing all the parallels you think. Asked about the impact real news can have on a narrative TV audience, Mazin told IndieWire, “Well, it’s hard to tell sometimes.”
“I think we overestimate how much people apply what’s happening in the world around them to their experience watching a television show or going to see a movie,” he said. “It feels like a natural thing to imagine that they’re making those allegorical connections, but the truth is I’m not sure we’re making them that much and I’m not sure they’re watching them in that way that much.”
He continued, “People often do connect to these things on their own terms. What I do know is that when times are hard, our business has always provided people joy, an ‘escape.’ People call it ‘an escape.’ I don’t think it’s an escape. I think it’s a reminder of all those feelings that we feel, even if it makes us cry or if it makes us laugh. It gives us a chance to feel things safely in a place where there aren’t permanent consequences, but we can kind of connect with each other and have a joint experience. That’s what culture does. That’s what art has always done, so I’m hopeful that that’s how people come to this season.”
A legendary title in the video game world, “The Last of Us Part II” won hundreds of Game of the Year accolades after hitting consoles in June 2020. Simultaneously, the COVID-19 lockdown helped fuel several controversies around Naughty Dog’s bold sequel — including the decision to kill off a beloved character (Mazin unpacked that bombshell for IndieWire separately) and giving hero Ellie (played by Bella Ramsey for HBO) a queer love interest (Isabela Merced).
Speaking with IndieWire before “The Last of Us” Season 2 premiered on April 13, Mazin defended his love of the source material. He also explained how thoroughly imagined characters can make an apocalypse feel more epic. Even adapting historical events for “Chernobyl,” HBO’s Emmy-winning miniseries from 2019 about the infamous Ukrainian nuclear disaster, Mazin said his instinct “was to drill into the real, human relationships.”
“It’s not the event ultimately that draws us dramatically towards it,” he said. “What draws us is in is witnessing people and how they relate to each other in ways that are universally resonant with who we are.”
Seemingly alluding to American politics (but, hey, maybe not!), Mazin continued, “None of us are living in a mushroom apocalypse — not yet. Feels like we’re teetering, but we’re not there yet. But we connect with the story of Joel and Ellie because we understand their story isn’t about a mushroom apocalypse. Their story is about fatherhood. It’s about childhood. It’s about love and loyalty. It is about the links we go to keep the people we love safe and the ways in which we damage them by trying to keep them safe.”
He concluded, “These are themes that we all deal with as children, as parents, as friends, as partners, all of us, and this season goes a little bit deeper down the path of what that means when you start to think of yourself and the people you love as ‘us,’ which naturally starts to create a boundary beyond which is ”them.’ Well over there on ‘them’? They’re ‘us’ and we’re ‘them.’ And now, when we are in opposition, how do we get out of this and how do we resolve things?”
“The Last of Us” Season 2 airs new episodes on Sunday nights at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and Max.
