10 things to know before watching The Last of Us Season 2

In 2003, society collapsed after the rapid-spreading Cordyceps Brain Infection (CBI) global pandemic took hold. To date, there is only one person who’s proven immune to the contagion: Ellie Williams (Game of Thrones star Bella Ramsey). 

In The Last of Us Season 1, rebel group the Fireflies hired smuggler Joel Warren (Pedro Pascal, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent) to escort then-14-year-old Ellie across the post-apocalyptic wastelands of the modern US, all the way to the Fireflies’ CBI research team, who were hoping to study Eillie’s immunity to engineer a vaccine for CBI. It was humanity’s last hope against the growing horror of an infection that turned people into ravening, zombie-like hordes under the control of the fungus spreading through their brains and bodies. 

To absolutely nobody’s surprise, this did not go according to plan. Now as The Last of Us Season 2 begins, Joel and Ellie have spent the past five years living in the sanctuary city of Jackson, Wyoming, under the leadership of Joel’s brother, Tommy (Gabriel Luna). But a reckoning is coming, not just for Joel, but for all the humans who’ve become monsters to one another in the name of love and survival.

To help you to catch up in more detail as The Last of Us Season 2 begins, we’ve picked out ten story elements that will help you to slip behind the fence in Jackson with Joel and Ellie. 

Binge The Last of Us Season 1 now. Stream new episodes of The Last of Us Season 2 each Monday on Showmax. 

1: Joel and Ellie’s bond

Joel nearly ended his own life when soldiers murdered his daughter, Sarah, at the start of the CBI pandemic. But in the course of his road trip with Ellie, he got to be a father again as he protected, taught, talked to and guided her through the wasteland, saved her life, and learned about who she was as a person. 

Their bond became the heart of the first season. So by Episode 9, when Joel and Ellie were finally reunited with the Fireflies again in Salt Lake City, and Ellie was taken for a “brain operation” to help make the cure, there was no way he was letting her go without a fight. 

The Fireflies hadn’t actually told Ellie that she’d never wake up from the “surgery”, instead asking Marlene (Merle Dandridge), the Firefly leader who’d raised Ellie, for her permission to take Ellie’s life. When Joel found out, he massacred the surgical team, the Fireflies in the hospital, and Marlene, before escaping with a still-unconscious Ellie. 

After Ellie woke up, Joel told her that the Fireflies had decided to abandon their plans to engineer a vaccine, because they’d previously failed to do so using other immune people. Ellie asked him to swear he was telling the truth, but there seemed to be a seed of doubt in them both, which is going to be an issue in Season 2. 

“Whatever positive relationship they’ve had is now clearly strained,” warns executive producer Craig Mazin. “Joel is trying to figure out why, which in and of itself implies that this is not something that’s been going on for five years. You can see that inside Joel, there is this suspicion that somehow, it is this flaw that he introduced into their relationship; this lie that maybe is starting to be the problem.” 

2: Ellie’s immunity secret 

Ellie’s immunity seems to stem from the fact that her mother, Anna, gave birth to her while newly infected with CBI. Marlene, who was present at Ellie’s birth and aware of her immunity, is now dead. As The Last of Us Season 2 begins, only a handful of people who are aware of Ellie’s immunity are still alive. Ellie herself is aware, since she got bitten with her best friend (in a flashback during Season 1), and she removed the bite mark the Infected gave her on her arm by destroying it with a chemical burn, then tattooing over the scar. Joel, Tommy, and Tommy’s wife, Maria (True Blood star Rutina Wesley), are all aware of her immunity. And aside from them, the only people who might still know about it are the (possible) survivors of Joel’s Firefly massacre at the Salt Lake City hospital. 

PS: While Ellie’s blood doesn’t cure the infection, she also cannot transmit her unique variation of CBI. FEDRA detection devices will pick up her infected status, but sniffer dogs can’t detect the fungus in her body, and the Infected themselves do not recognise her as one of them, so they will attack her like they would any other human. 

3: Jackson City, Wyoming

This fenced-in city is a rare sanctuary of sanity and community amidst humanity’s descent into violent gangs and cults. People aren’t just clinging to survival here, they’re rebuilding. Tommy and Maria lead the elected council, the local economy runs on a barter system, children are educated, and people find purpose in helping one another. Now an adult, Ellie has made friends in Jackson including:

Jesse (Beef star Young Mazino): Ellie’s trainer, a serious and dutiful young man.

Dina (Isabela Merced, Madame Web): Ellie’s patrol partner as they scout the area for Infected. The two enjoy a warm and playful friendship.

Gail (Catherine O’Hara, Schitt’s Creek’s Moira Rose and Delia in the original Beetlejuice): The Jackson survivors’ much-needed therapist.

PS: The Jackson set, built by production designer Don Macaulay and his team, was the size of several city blocks and included the full interiors of most of the buildings we see on screen.

4: FEDRA: The Federal Disaster Response Agency

FEDRA and the US military controlled the Quarantine Zones (QZs) across the United States following the outbreak of CBI. Under their harsh quarantine, anyone showing signs of illness was swiftly slaughtered. The constant executions, banishments, disempowerment and vulnerability to the military’s disdain for citizens’ rights was a breeding ground for rebellion. As the military cracked down on “terrorism” (ie attacks on the highly armed military itself) by shooting unarmed protestors in Washington, resistance grew and more citizens started seeing the rebel group the Wolves as their protectors. 

5: WLF aka The Wolves

A new addition to the story in The Last of Us Season 2, the Washington Liberation Front (WLF) led by Isaac Dixon (Westworld star Jeffrey Wright, who also voiced Isaac Dixon in the Last of Us original computer game) is a paramilitary group that is out to overthrow FEDRA for control of the Seattle QZ garrison. But once they overwhelm the military, the Wolves will demand people’s loyalty to themselves and start restricting citizens’ movements across the QZ. They’ll put down rebellions with violence, steal supplies, and forcibly evict and relocate people, before settling the survivors at SoundView Stadium safe haven and rebuilding civilization while attempting to clear infected areas. 

Their logo is a grey wolf head on an upside-down yellow triangle with a black border. And they’re set to take on the Seraphites for control of the rest of the area around Seattle. 

6: Seraphites/Scars

With their origins in the roving gangs that sprang up outside the QZs, Season 2 newcomers the Seraphites, led by the mysterious Prophet, are a fanatical cult that sees CBI as a godly punishment for humanity taking over the world. To their minds, the Cordyceps fungus is a purifier that will restore the balance of nature. They have adopted rituals in which they expose themselves and others to the possibility of infection in the name of faith. To them, it’s a new god to worship. The Seraphites stand in direct opposition to the WLF, bombing supply chains, and personnel. In retaliation, the Wolves have murdered Seraphites on sight, and they torture and interrogate members of the cult.

PS: The Seraphites are just one cult. In The Last of Us Season 1 Episode 8, Joel and Ellie ran foul of a “preacher” and cult leader named David, who fed his band of raiders human flesh and tried to rape Ellie. 

7: The Fireflies

Like the Wolves, The Fireflies arose as freedom fighters and rebels in response to the military tyranny of FEDRA’s QZs, where survivors were treated like prisoners, facing harsh punishments and scant resources. Unlike the more militaristic Wolves, though, the idealistic Fireflies believe that humanity can rise again, and that science can find a cure for CBI. But in their search, they started conducting cruel experiments on the Infected and the living. 

In The Last of Us Season 2, we meet one of the few surviving Fireflies, Abby Anderson (Kaitlyn Dever, Coastal Elites), who has a dangerous connection to the Salt Lake City hospital massacre.

8: Bandits, raiders and gangs

As well as organised rebels and cults, the land between civilized outposts is filled with gangs who are prepared to steal, kill, butcher and rape anyone who comes within their reach. During Season 1, Joel and Ellie barely escaped their attacks in Kansas City and Colorado. They represent humanity’s chaotic, selfish response to disaster – and the end point for groups who believe that “survival of the fittest” just means that the strongest and most violent should take whatever they want. 

9: The theme of the season

Executive producer Craig Mazin is back working with the game creators behind The Last of Us, Neill Druckmann and Halley Gross, who controlled the game storyline for The Last of Us 2. Looking at Ellie’s story this season, Craig hints, “Season 1 was so much about love; how it can be weaponized, how it can corrupt and lead to horrible acts. In Season 2, we start to see how groups that are united by love can begin to identify as ‘us’ and see everybody else as ‘them.’ Tribalism is a love among a few. For Jackson, their tribe is the community. It’s everything inside the wall. Or as Joel says, ‘What’s inside the wall? People. What’s outside? Monsters’.”

“With these kinds of identifications, the risk is: By protecting the people we love and maintaining loyalty to that community, and that prosocial nature that humans have, we begin to ‘other’ and dehumanize everybody else … If you have another community behind a wall, and they are hurt by somebody, well that somebody is a monster to them.” 

Halley adds, “There’s the question: Is it better to be alone in a world this dangerous, this hostile? Or is the love that can absolutely devastate you worth its potential to elevate you?” 

10: The Infected

While there’s a lot of struggle between the human factions of survivors, it’s all overshadowed by the constant threat of attack from the Infected. The world is filled with these monsters; humans transformed by infection from bites, or spores released from corpses. Trailers for The Last of Us Season 2 show a massive horde of Infected attacking the fences surrounding the Jackson community. And in The Last of Us Season 2, we’ll be looking out for new stages and mutations, which promise some sneaky surprises for the survivors.

Stages of infection 

Infected: people who’ve been bitted or breathed in spores or been bitten, but show no outward change. They may already start showing changed mood , sluggishness, or a lack of coordination, along with sweating and hands clenching from rapid muscle spasms.

Runners: When the second stage happens depends on how close to the brain a person is bitten, which determines how long it takes the Cordyceps fungus to take root in the brain and affect behaviour. It can be as little as five minutes for a head, neck or face bite, or as much as 24 hours for a leg or foot bite. They now behave like fast zombies, just running at anyone who doesn’t seem infected, with their jaws gnashing. They attack in hordes and seem to have some sort of hive mind communication. Physically, at close range, you’ll see hair loss, skin discolouration, and bloodshot eyes.

Stalkers: the Infected who have fungal growth starting to cover their heads. This stage sets in from two weeks to one year. Fungal growth distorts their features and bodies. They’re called stalkers because they retreat to dark areas and stalk their prey rather than running straight for them at high speed. These infected use echolocation like Clickers, but they still have the ability to see who they’re charging at. Some Stalkers attach themselves to walls to allow their fungal mat to spread, but are able to break free to attack any passers-by.

Clickers: After around one year the fungal growth forms over the entire head like a fleshy crown, splitting the skull open. These Infected are so distorted by fungal infection that they have to use sound to echolocate. All that’s left of the face is the mouth, so they can bite people. While the body looks to be falling apart, at this stage they have superhuman strength.

Bloaters: After two years, the Infected are now slow and blind, with the fungal growths covering the entire body as a sort of bloated, hardened body armour. At this stage they’re vulnerable to fire. In the trailer for Season 2, we see Tommy take on a “Bloater” armed only with a flamethrower.

Shamblers: In waterlogged areas you might find these Bloater-like infected, who’re able to tackle prey and ooze burning, acidic spores all over them. When they die, the bloats on their bodies explode, releasing more spores into the air. This is a new state of Infected that we’re hoping to see in Season 2.

The Rat King: In the world of the game, this monster was found in a Seattle hospital after over 20 years of infection. It seems to be formed when several Infected combine to create a gigantic, super-strong entity that is resistant to fire and weaponry. When attacked, it is able to release some of its Infected components, who are then able to spread out its attack. Like the Shamblers, this is a new type of Infected that we’re hoping crops up in Season 2.

Infected animals? So far we haven’t seen the CBI infection take root in animals aside from humans. Season 1, for example, gave us a magical encounter with a perfectly healthy giraffe roaming the ruins. But we suspect that the art team are more than eager to take on the challenge!

Binge The Last of Us Season 1 now. Stream new episodes of The Last of Us Season 2 each Monday on Showmax.