The Last of Us Season 2 is fast approaching and many fans are wondering how the series will tackle the story of Naughty Dog's much larger second game.
The first season of HBO's adaptation covered the story of the first The Last of Us game. Season 2 will adapt The Last of Us: Part II, but, given its longer story, the narrative will be spread over multiple seasons of the HBO show.
That leaves one major question going into new episodes of The Last of Us: how much of the game does the series plan to cover in its second season?
The Last of Us S2 Second Trailer Hints at The Game's Timeline
Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Last of Us: Part 2.
Thanks to a new trailer for The Last of Us Season 2 that was released by Sony at CES it's possible to get an idea of how far into the game's narrative the new season will get.
One major difference that the second The Last of Us game introduced was two intertwining narratives from the perspectives of two main characters, Ellie and Abby. These narratives largely take place over three consecutive days in Seattle, Washington.
Some of the shots in the teaser including Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Dina (Isabela Merced) occur during the Jackson prologue of the game, which will undoubtedly be covered in Season 2 given its position at the beginning of the timeline.
There are also scenes of the characters in Seattle that take place on Day 1 and Day 2 of Ellie's share of the timeline.
One scene that occurs later in the game's timeline shows Ellie holding a gun while bathed in a red light. If The Last of Us Season 2 closely replicates the game as the first season did, this shot is likely from a scene between Nora and Ellie in Lakehill Seattle Hospital which occurs at the end of Day 2 in Ellie's timeline.
This seems to indicate that The Last of Us Season 2 will get to the end of at least the second day of Ellie's time in Seattle, potentially leaving Day 3 and the epilogue for future seasons of The Last of Us.
Will The Last of Us Season 2 Be in Chronological Order?
One major challenge The Last of Us Season 2 has will be dividing the timelines between Ellie and Abby. In the game, players spend three days playing as Ellie, before rewinding time to spend the same three days playing as Abby.
There are some challenges with taking this approach to TV as a split narrative would mean that Season 2 would be heavily focused on Ellie, only for Ramsey's character to then be largely absent in Season 3.
Trailers so far seem to indicate that the show will instead take more of a chronological approach to The Last of Us Part II's story and split the narrative evenly between Ellie and Abby.
This latest trailer only reiterates that, as it includes a scene of Abby walking the halls of Saint Mary's Hospital. This is a common motif throughout Abby's side of the story as it represents her past traumas.
Another intriguing scene from the trailer shows a hook scythe that belongs to the dangerous enemy faction from the game known as Seraphites (aka Scars).
Both Ellie and Abby come across the Seraphites during the game so it is unclear exactly which sequence this shot is attached to.
The most likely scene occurs late on Day 1 of Abby's timeline, in which she is captured by Seraphites in the woods and forced to stand on a tree stump before they attempt to hang her. In the background of this shot, there appears to be someone standing on a tree stump, which could be Abby in this scenario.
Judging by the scenes shown in this latest trailer, it seems likely that The Last of Us Season 2 will cover the Jackson prologue, as well as Day 1 and Day 2 of Ellie's timeline, plus at least Abby's first day in Seattle.
Of course, there's also the chance that HBO could be omitting certain scenes from its trailers to leave an element of surprise for the audience, meaning it may get much further into the second game's story than has been shown.
The Last of Us Season 2 will debut on Max sometime in April.
