Executive producer Neil Druckmann explained why The Last of Us Season 2 contained only seven episodes, compared to nine in the first season. While Season 1 adapted the entire first game, showmakers decided to split the second game’s story across multiple seasons rather than cramming it into a single installment.
Here’s why The Last of Us Season 2 had 7 episodes instead of 9
HBO’s The Last of Us producer Druckmann revealed why Season 2 ends after just seven episodes instead of following the nine-episode format used in the first season. In a recent interview with Collider, he revealed that the writers realized very early on that Part 2 of the game’s narrative was “too big” to fit into one season.
Druckmann explained, “Pretty early on, maybe day one, we were like, ‘Oh, it’s too big to fit in one season.’ But we like working with an ending in mind. We need to know the destination,” He added that knowing the “destination” helped them to “make the correct creative choices.”
The acclaimed producer noted that the creative team needed to “ignore” the number of episodes or seasons as they prioritized breaking the story at the correct point. He stated, “We had to break the whole story, ignoring seasons or a number of episodes, all the way to the end. And then, we had to start working backwards and say, ‘Okay, what’s enough material for a season? And with that, where’s a good break point? Okay, we know that chunk, and we know what has to come after that chunk.’”
Only after working on “moment to moment” did the creative team decide on a seven-episode count, Druckmann disclosed. He added, “So, we know what has to happen after this season. We know all the major stops, and we know the final destination.”
The co-writer of The Last of Us, Halley Gross, also offered insights that the creative team had the flexibility to decide on episode counts. Gross said, “We don’t want to pad it out just because there’s some expectation of an episode count. We want to make every episode meaningful and make every episode impactful.”
