TLOU Creators Know One Thing For Certain About Season 2: There Will Be Blood

Warning: This article contains spoilers for "The Last of Us" Episode 9.

The final episode of "The Last of Us" Season 1 certainly captures the essence of the final mission from the game on which it is based. Titled "Look for the Light," the finale of the popular show follows Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) as they finally reach their destination, but a grim truth soon causes Joel to experience a change of heart. This new motivation sees Joel lay absolute waste to the Firefly base, and he leaves a trail of dead in his wake as he rescues Ellie. The reason for this massacre is that in order to create a vaccine against cordyceps, scientists will have to kill Ellie and extract pieces of her brain.

For those that have played the first game, this is an almost perfect mirror of digital events, and while appearing on the official "The Last of Us" podcast hosted by Troy Baker, series creators Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin were asked what's in store for the television series moving forward. Druckmann replied first by saying that they will repeat the same process that made the show successful and added, "We will look at what made that story special and what is the soul of that story. And that needs to remain intact. And then, the moment-to-moment beats and characters, they might stay the same, they might change. We will do what needs to happen to that story as it transfers from one medium to another."

Craig Mazin continued, "And we will also take advantage of the freedom we have in television that wasn't there in the game. Specifically, the advantage of changing perspective. So, we will use what we can use in a new medium to tell that story. And we will go through the same process of adaptation. It's us again, and there will be Pedro, and there will be Bella, and there will be blood." Considering the events of the past episode, that last statement probably rings the truest. Although there are many different survivor groups in the post-apocalyptic landscape of "The Last of Us," the two major factions are FEDRA and the Fireflies, and Joel certainly earned the ire of the latter group with his most recent actions.

The final moments of "The Last of Us" see Ellie confront Joel about his falsified story, and Joel essentially lies to her in order to protect her from the honest truth. The look she reluctantly gives him sets the pace for the seasons to come, and it will be interesting to see how Joel's actions will affect the story going forward.