It’s been a long wait for The Last of Us season 2, but when the HBO series finally returns in 2025, it will have fewer episodes than the first season. Series creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann told Deadline that the second season will consist of seven episodes, two less than the first season.

“The story material that we got from Part II of the game is way more than the story material that was in the first game, so part of what we had to do from the start was figure out how to tell that story across seasons,” Mazin said. “When you do that, you look for natural breakpoints, and as we laid it out, this season, the national breakpoint felt like it came after seven episodes.“

Some fans had wondered if The Last of Us season 2 would be the end of the series, but it doesn’t sound like it. In fact, Mazin and Druckmann have teased a “significantly larger” third season that could even lead to a fourth season.

Mazin continued: “We don’t think that we’re going to be able to tell the story even within two seasons [2 and 3] because we’re taking our time and go down interesting pathways which we did a little bit in Season 1 too. We feel like it’s almost assuredly going to be the case that — as long as people keep watching and we can keep making more television — Season 3 will be significantly larger. And indeed, the story may require Season 4.” The show hasn’t been renewed for a third (or fourth) season yet, but if the second season is as successful as the first, it’s a safe bet it will be.

Although there has been talk of a third installment of The Last of Us video game franchise, Mazin said they won’t be moving beyond the source material of the first two games. “As a fan, I’m thrilled that there might be a third Last of Us game. As the co-creator of this television show, there’s no world where I would want our show to go beyond the source material that people have in the world,” Mazin said. “Our show as people know it on HBO is going to cover the material from the second game and then quite a bit of material that is relevant to that story but, as I said, wanders down interesting new paths, unseen stories that were told within the context of that games material.”

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