The Last of Us has become the first big success of this 2023 in terms of series in itself. In the United States alone, the first episode of the series already has 22 million viewers, of which 4.7 accessed this content immediately after its release, a number that improved with the premiere of the second episode, which reached 5.7 million viewers after its premiere. Social media has been abuzz with news of HBO Max’s latest premiere, and while there are negative reviews to be found (with a special mention for those who didn’t think Bella Ramsey was pretty enough… yes, those people), generally the opinions are very positive.

This really didn’t surprise us, as we had a few sneak peeks over the past year, first in August and later in September, of what HBO was cooking up, and knowing what the release date would be, something January 15th that we expected in December made its mark on many people’s calendars: those who enjoyed PlayStation games, fans of post-apocalyptic and/or zombie content, and others, were putting in the small screen adaptation of the Naughty Dog franchise. And while it’s not common, they weren’t disappointed this time.

So when the third episode of the third season was not yet released, WarnerMedia has already confirmed a renewal for a second season of The Last of Us, as we can read in the official statement. In the said text, the company celebrates the excellent results achieved by the new series and reflects both the audience data that we have commented on before and the positive reviews, with at least 97% on Rotten Tomatoes and reviews published on Media such as Rolling Stone and Variety. WarnerMedia confirms that the premiere of The Last of Us on HBO Max was the second most successful in the history of the platform, behind House of the Dragon.

The Last of Us is one of those not-so-common cases where a film adaptation or video game series succeeds. Recent examples include Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, based on the CD Projekt Red title, or Arcane, inspired by the world of League of Legends. In the opposite direction, i.e. in adaptations that failed, the list is much longerhow do you know.