HBO Is All in on The Last of Us Show With Massive Budget and Possibly 8 Seasons

HBO is a constant source of amazing content, but nothing as me as excited as The Last of Us does. With Pedro Pascal as Joel Miller, Bella Ramsey as Ellie, Gabriel Luna as Tommy Miller, and more, the show is pulling out all the stops to make this a great game-to-TV adaptation. Now it seems as if the show is going out of its way to fill the void that The Walking Dead is leaving behind with a rumored 8-season arc.

According to Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, he has reportedly been told by HBO that the series will spend upwards of $200-million per year on the project and that The Last of Us has the potential of running for as long as eight seasons. Personally, I love the idea of having a family and being nearly 40 years old and still watching Pedro Pascal as Joel Miller.

So is The Last of Us going to be HBO’s answer to the end of The Walking Dead? I hope so, mainly because I enjoy the source material for The Last of Us more than I do that of The Walking Dead. But the show is also coming from a game that many fans have become attached to. I myself watched a playthrough of it, and while I’m not that much of a gamer, I was enthralled by the story being told for both Joel and Ellie, and I think that character drive that made the game so popular is going to work incredibly well for the show.

But what does that mean for the game to television adaptation? Well, let’s get into it.

**Spoilers for The Last of Us: Part 1 and Part 2 lie ahead.**

Joel Miller is the protagonist of Part 1 of the game, and it’s a beautiful journey into his own acceptance of what happened in his past and how he can try to help the world he found himself in. There is so much content there in that first part that could easily make more than one season and, as Neil Druckmann—cowriter of the game and executive producer of the show—has already said, the show will differ from the game.

What we know because of The Last of Us: Part 2 is that Joel Miller’s death is a driving force for Ellie to come into her own and take charge. Granted, that’s in the beginning of the second part of the game, so that could easily happen way down the line, but that arc is something that I think could take place in a season six or seven, giving Ellie the final season to come to terms with Joel’s death. Also, this is all before we get Part 3.

Needless to say, there’s plenty of content for the show to get through eight seasons, and with a third part of the game coming out and the knowledge that this show will be different from what we saw in the game, there is an endless world of possibilities. I just hope the show stays true to the heart of the game and gives us these beautiful character arcs and drives home the humanity of Joel, Ellie, Tommy, and the rest of the crew that makes up The Last of Us.

The Last of Us is coming to HBO, probably in 2022, and I will happily sit down every week until 2030 to see what the post-apocalyptic future holds for Joel Miller and Ellie Williams.

(image: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images/Sony)

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