The Last of Us: Why the infected played in season 2

The creator, Craig Mazin, decrypts for us the first episode he himself made. And he says more about the terrifying creatures that will populate the rest of the series.

After three years of absence, The Last of Us is back! The event series of Hbo draws its season 2 (on Max In France), still as captivating, because it has managed to evolve and not remain rooted in the successes of its first chapter. Like infected, these zombie creatures that haunt post-apocalyptic America from The Last of Us. The Creator, Craig Mazinexplains everything to us.

First: there were few infected in season 1. But in season 2, they are more numerous and they have changed! How did you think about this evolution?
Craig Mazin : I have always loved the infected! As a gamer, it has always been exciting to get around them. In season 1, we groped to represent them on the screen. Our main objective is that they do not look silly, improbable, so that we can always have in mind that they were people before! People who have become sick and infected. And in season 2, we see that the infected have changed. They have evolved. Men evolve, progress, and nature too! This means that infected also behave differently now, they form a more direct threat and will take a more important place than in season 1, even if their presence is never free on a scriptural level. And the other point will be to show how many they are, there, outside … The infected are a bit like the weather: we know that bad weather will arrive at one time or another. We just don’t know when or in what amount. But when it falls …

You have made episode 1 of this season 2 yourself, as you had made the first episode of the first season. Do you want to direct the opening of each chapter?
Directing the first episode allows me to prepare the way for the whole season to come, in a way. There are a whole lot of decisions that must be made and which will have consequences for the future: what should the city of Jackson look like? What casting? How are they going to speak? How are they going to move? A whole bunch of small details, up to the movements of the camera, which allow me to define the tone of the season for the directors who will follow. It’s a bit chaotic, because I find myself carrying a lot of caps, and it’s not easy to multiply like that. As soon as I finished filming, I went on with the preparation of episode 2 with the next director, while refining some scripts … It’s a little crazy!

Have you changed your way of approaching the adaptation of games?
No, not really. Because I’m a fan of the game, at the base, I know what it is to be plunged into the universe of The Last of Us. And then, you have to think of those who know nothing about the game. It is crucial that the series is also aimed at people who are not gamers. Given the audience of the series around the world, it is very likely that most viewers did not play the title on Playstation. Suddenly, the most creepy is to manage to do as well. Even to push the cursors.

In episode 1, there is a lot of a question of welcoming refugees to Jackson, Wyoming, the way we treat those who fight to survive outside the walls of a flourishing city. Is there a parallel with today’s America and its relationship to immigrants?
Our series is not so much a political comment on the modern world. It is more an analysis of human behavior, as it can lead to what happens to the world today. In episode 1, the city of Wyoming asks the question of whether it is able to welcome more refugees. And Joel remembers that he too was a refugee before. This is a bit of the history of America, even if we wrote this before Donald Trump’s return to the White House. The history of America is a melting pot, several cultures that have come together, aggregated. The essential in this episode 1, for Joel, is to go back quite far in his origins to realize that he and all the others were refugees, at the start. But it is a complicated subject. There is no obvious answer. You have to know how to reach out, while ensuring that it will work with existing culture …

Season 2 of The Last of Us, in 7 episodes, begins this Monday, April 14, 2025 on MAX.