Craig Mazin, showrunner and writer for HBO's The Last of Us, has made himself crystal clear regarding whether he and the show's creative team will pull a Game of Thrones and go beyond the story he's adapting.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Mazin said "I am not going to go past the game. I’ll just say that flat out."
"I’m basically setting a decade of my rapidly dwindling life on fire to tell this story," he continued.
"The show is so hard to make. It has to have an end. So I’m not going to go past. Who knows me, there might be a Dunk and Egg The Last of Us show that happens that somebody does. But for me, the only question is: Is it going to be one more season or will it require two more? If this can happen all in one more season, great. If we feel like it makes sense to break it into two, then we will do that."
After the first season of the TV series adaptation of Naughty Dog's beloved franchise covered the entirety of the first game, there have been a lot of questions regarding how quickly The Last of Us Part II's story would be covered.
Mazin and co-showrunner Neil Druckmann have previously commented about how the show will tell Part II's story over the course of multiple seasons, potentially even needing a total of four seasons to get the job done.
Whether it'll be four seasons or three will become clear as season two premieres, and we start to have a clearer picture of how the show is being paced out. If we're off to the races with Ellie chasing after Abby by the end of the first episode, then things might be moving fast enough to make it three.
In the same interview, Mazin also addressed criticism around Bella Ramsey potentially not being able to portray the darker side of Ellie that players saw in The Last of Us Part II. While Mazin admitted to understanding the trepidation viewers have, he reiterates that Ramsey's physique is not why she was chosen for the role.
"I understand the difficulty that some people have where they say, “She looked like she was 14 in season one. She still looks roughly the same to us, even though now she’s 19.” Ellie in the game looks much older. Some people do change quite dramatically and some people don’t. I’m not interested in the physical aspect — although I’ve been looking at Bella’s face for years while editing, and I can see that she’s certainly grown. I’m interested in the emotional maturity, and the change in personality."
