Neil Druckmann says The Last of Us season 2 will incorporate "pretty brutal" deleted material from The Last of Us 2: "I'm very excited for people to see it"

Pedro Pascal as Joel in HBO's The Last of Us
(Image credit: HBO)

The Last of Us season 2 will feature material that was originally planned for The Last of Us 2 video game but was deleted before the sequel's release.

Talking to Entertainment Weekly, The Last of Us creator and the TV series' showrunner Neil Druckmann revealed there's some "pretty brutal" cut content from The Last of Us 2 that's been adapted for the second season of the hit HBO show. "I'm very excited for people to see it," he said, without getting into any specifics.

This is, quite frankly, concerning. Naughty Dog's The Last of Us 2 proved controversial in part because of its brutality. With HBO gearing up for The Last of Us season 2's premiere in April, I won't get into spoiler territory, but for anyone who hasn't played the game, trust me when I say it is hard to watch. I shudder to think of what was cut from the game - and why it was cut - that we're about to see play out in live-action.

Broadly speaking, anyone who's played The Last of Us 2 has a general idea of what to expect from the second season, seeing as how the first season of the show is a faithful adaptation of the first game. That said, Druckmann and his TV show co-showrunner Craig Mazin have previously confirmed that it'll take more than two seasons of TV to completely cover the events of the second game, and at one point Mazin suggested the series will last four seasons. Point is, don't expect a nice clean bow on the next season's finale.

I'm really hopeful that The Last of Us season 2 flips a key part of the game's story – and I think the new trailer just confirmed it.

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Jordan Gerblick

After scoring a degree in English from ASU, I worked as a copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. Now, as GamesRadar's west coast Staff Writer, I'm responsible for managing the site's western regional executive branch, AKA my apartment, and writing about whatever horror game I'm too afraid to finish.

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