“A few of us simply can’t be saved.” Whether or not you caught that line on “The Final of Us” Season 2, Episode 3 — or mentioned it to your self sooner or later throughout the 2024 U.S.presidential election — showrunner Craig Mazin isn’t drawing all of the parallels you suppose. Requested concerning the influence actual information can have on a story TV viewers, Mazin advised IndieWire, “Properly, it’s exhausting to inform generally.”
“I believe we overestimate how a lot folks apply what’s occurring on this planet round them to their expertise watching a tv present or going to see a film,” he mentioned. “It seems like a pure factor to think about that they’re making these allegorical connections, however the fact is I’m undecided we’re making them that a lot and I’m undecided they’re watching them in that means that a lot.”
He continued, “Folks typically do join to those issues on their very own phrases. What I do know is that when instances are exhausting, our enterprise has all the time offered folks pleasure, an ‘escape.’ Folks name it ‘an escape.’ I don’t suppose it’s an escape. I believe it’s a reminder of all these emotions that we really feel, even when it makes us cry or if it makes us snort. It provides us an opportunity to really feel issues safely in a spot the place there aren’t everlasting penalties, however we are able to type of join with one another and have a joint expertise. That’s what tradition does. That’s what artwork has all the time finished, so I’m hopeful that that’s how folks come to this season.”
A legendary title within the online game world, “The Final of Us Half II” gained a whole lot of Sport of the 12 months accolades after hitting consoles in June 2020. Concurrently, the COVID-19 lockdown helped gas a number of controversies round Naughty Canine’s daring sequel — together with the choice to kill off a beloved character (Mazin unpacked that bombshell for IndieWire individually) and giving hero Ellie (performed by Bella Ramsey for HBO) a queer love curiosity (Isabela Merced).
Talking with IndieWire earlier than “The Final of Us” Season 2 premiered on April 13, Mazin defended his love of the supply materials. He additionally defined how totally imagined characters could make an apocalypse really feel extra epic. Even adapting historic occasions for “Chernobyl,” HBO’s Emmy-winning miniseries from 2019 concerning the notorious Ukrainian nuclear catastrophe, Mazin mentioned his intuition “was to drill into the true, human relationships.”
“It’s not the occasion in the end that attracts us dramatically in direction of it,” he mentioned. “What attracts us is in is witnessing folks and the way they relate to one another in methods which can be universally resonant with who we’re.”
Seemingly alluding to American politics (however, hey, perhaps not!), Mazin continued, “None of us reside in a mushroom apocalypse — not but. Looks like we’re teetering, however we’re not there but. However we join with the story of Joel and Ellie as a result of we perceive their story isn’t a few mushroom apocalypse. Their story is about fatherhood. It’s about childhood. It’s about love and loyalty. It’s concerning the hyperlinks we go to maintain the folks we love protected and the methods through which we injury them by attempting to maintain them protected.”
He concluded, “These are themes that all of us cope with as youngsters, as dad and mom, as buddies, as companions, all of us, and this season goes just a little bit deeper down the trail of what which means while you begin to think about your self and the folks you’re keen on as ‘us,’ which naturally begins to create a boundary past which is ”them.’ Properly over there on ‘them’? They’re ‘us’ and we’re ‘them.’ And now, after we are in opposition, how will we get out of this and the way will we resolve issues?”
“The Final of Us” Season 2 airs new episodes on Sunday nights at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and Max.