TV Talk: ‘Last of Us’ remains best of TV

“The Last of Us” returns for its second season (9 p.m. April 13, HBO, Max) and throws a lot of story and character development at viewers over its seven episodes. That’s mostly positive for people who appreciate the show’s grounded emphasis on the pseudo-father-daughter relationship between Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) in a post-apocalyptic, zombified 2029.

If there’s a criticism of this new season, it’s that there’s too much story to cover in just seven episodes.

Season two is set five years after the first season’s finale that saw Joel lie to Ellie about her rescue from a Salt Lake City medical facility — Ellie is immune to zombie bites and when Joel realized Ellie would have to die for doctors to create a cure, Joel killed all the doctors and told Ellie a cure was never possible. The new season deftly addresses the repercussions of Joel’s lie.

But the story expands beyond that quickly. There’s barely time to get used to Joel and Ellie living in the walled city of Jackson, Wyo., and meeting new characters like psychotherapist Gail (Catherine O’Hara, “Schitt’s Creek”) and possible new Ellie love interest Dina (Isabela Merced), before a new mission begins that introduces a new sect. There’s not a lot of time available to explore this group’s belief system or additional characters introduced along the way, although one can imagine spending more time with these newcomers in a third season that HBO has yet to confirm but is inevitable.

Some elements of season two will be familiar to those who played the second “Last of Us” video game, including the arrival of the Fireflies leader and Ellie adversary Abby (Kaitlyn Dever). But other significant twists and turns are new to the TV show.

“The Last of Us” is based on the video game Neil Druckmann dreamed up while a student at Carnegie Mellon University in 2004 and developed for HBO by Druckmann and TV veteran Craig Mazin (“Chernobyl”). The show excels as both an intimate character study — this year’s most affecting theme: how each generation of parents screws up but tries to incrementally improve on how they were parented — and an action-packed adventure. Several intense set pieces pit humanity against hordes of fast-moving infected that are effectively gnarly and only occasionally look like a guy in a rubber suit.

In a virtual press conference late last month, “Last of Us” stars Ramsey and Pascal addressed their characters’ rift that develops due to Joel’s lie.

“My first day on set, I feel like it was a beautiful set up by Craig and Neil that the first thing that I got to shoot was just (Bella) and I and in an intimate setting,” Pascal said. “And there’s an incredibly painful distance between the two of them in the playing of the scene, but we still got to be on set and … laugh and stuff like that. And that was incredibly comforting. That was like coming home. … My mindset was grateful (to be) back and yet at the same time, this experience, more than any other I’ve had, is hard for me to separate what the characters are going through and how it makes me feel in a way that isn’t very healthy. I feel their pain and I suppose I was in an unhealthy mindset.”

Gabriel Luna, who stars as Joel’s brother Tommy, said if the first season used the covid-19 pandemic as an entry point to the story, the second season is more about people not getting along. He said both seasons offer viewers catharsis from the real world.

“The second season is about conflicts and where do they start. And who started it?” Luna said. “Right now, all over the world, we’re dealing with these conflicts. People are stuck in the wheel of vengeance, and can it be broken? Will it be broken? That’s where we are, so catharsis is a big element to both, I think.”

The first season of “Last of Us” won critical acclaim generally but especially for a “bottle episode” — an episode usually set in one place, often featuring fewer series regular characters than usual in an attempt to save on production costs, though money wasn’t the likely impetus for “The Last of Us” — about a gay couple, Bill and Frank, that didn’t have much to do with the Joel and Ellie story. Mazin said he and Druckmann wanted to avoid doing “a very special episode of ‘The Last of Us’ season two.’”

“It just has to happen as it happens,” Mazin said. “But I will say that there is a gorgeous episode this season directed by Neil that is different than — it’s not Bill and Frank — but it is, in its own way its own thing because it needed to be. Just you wait.”