The Last of Us Showrunner Deems to Explore the “Interconnectivity” of the Infected Much More Deeply in the Upcoming Season

The first season of the Last of Us had a lot of groundwork to do while setting up the stage for Joel and Ellie’s story. The showrunners had to kill endlessly, without ‘exposition dumping’ on the audience. They also had to set up the primary antagonists of the show, the infected. 

HBO’s The Last of Us tells the story of an unlikely father-daughter duo that travels on a perilous journey, discovering the cause and consequences of violence while being familiar with each other’s inner psyche. Exploring the duo and the world around them, one of the poster aspects of the show, the mindless victims of the fungus, were not able to gain much of the spotlight. 

Upcoming seasons of the Last of Us will shed more light on the Infected

While the infected were present in almost every episode of the show, they never got to be the focus of the story, and neither did they get much exposition. It felt like, whenever the writers needed to make the character struggle or run for their lives, they spawned a horde of the undead infected. 

However, according to the co-producer and the writer of the show, Craig Mazin, the upcoming seasons won’t be the same. “Something that I think we will be exploring further in the next season. I think this first time around, we were learning so much about how to create the Infected and how to televise them in a way that was exciting and didn’t seem goofy or weird or artificial, I think we figured out that,” said Mazin.

“I think this next season, the interconnectivity of them, and the risk of stepping on the wrong thing, that stuff is going to be brought forward more for sure.” shared Craig. As the writers said, in the initial season there were instances where characters faced the “neural network” of the fungus, but it was only for a brief moment. 

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After establishing this ability of the fungi, it didn’t come up again for the entirety of the season. This left the audience scratching their heads. However, some familiar faces from the games also made their appearance in the series. Among them, the behemoth Bloater was the most iconic and terrifying. 

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