Some Disappointing News About ‘The Last Of Us’ Season 3’s Release Date

I know many viewers of The Last of Us season 2 finale were a bit confused when they suddenly realized that episode 7 was in fact the finale, rather than the show making it to a traditional 8-episode season, or 9 episodes like season 1.

Unfortunately, there’s more bad news, as that cliffhanger ending is not going to be resolved any time soon. No seasons were shot back to back, and this is going to now lurch into a traditionally massive gap between seasons, like we unfortunately see with so many big shows nowadays. And it’s especially bad for The Last of Us for a few reasons.

Right now we have zero idea when The Last of Us season 3 will even start filming after the 2025 finale here. The likely answer is not until 2026. Even the show’s lead actor, Bella Ramsey, barely understands the scope of their role in season 3. From Variety:

“I haven’t seen any scripts, but yes, I do expect that,” they said. “I think that I’m going to be there, but not a whole bunch. We’ve had conversations about that. I sort of have a rough idea of what it’s going to be, but I can’t tell you.”

Again, if you haven’t even given your head a script yet (though Ramsey will not be leading season 3, that will be Kaitlyn Dever’s Abby), that is not very promising for a timely filming and release schedule for season 3. So our best estimate has to be the gap between seasons 1 and 2.

• The Last of Us season 1 was released in January of 2023.
• The Last of Us season 2 was released in April of 2025.

That’s a 28-month gap between seasons, two years and four months. Just ridiculous. And if we’re doing delayed filming resulting in a similar gap? 28 months from the April 2025 release is August 2027.

This will also return not even to immediately resolve the cliffhanger where Abby seemingly shoots Ellie, as most of that season is going to be Abby’s story occurring at the same time as Ellie’s story this past season. And are we going to wait another 28 months for another seven episodes? Probably. Especially given that now Craig Mazin is saying they have to do a fourth season.

Guess what 28 months after August 2027 is? December 2029. About seven years to finish adapting two video games. Absurd.

This is the world we live in now, but because of the way The Last of Us decided to structure its Abby and Ellie stories, similar to the game but an idea that works poorly onscreen, this is going to feel even worse.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.