Neil Druckmann No Longer Stresses Over The Last of Us Spoilers Following Past Experiences That "Backfired"

When The Last of Us Part II debuted in 2020, it did so after a few major plot points were spoiled online well in advance. Now, with the show set to adapt that story when The Last of Us Season 2 premieres on HBO in a few weeks, there’s a risk a whole new audience will have their experience altered by the prevalence of spoilers online. But for showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, the latter of whom is now living through this predicament for a second time, spoilers aren’t a huge concern.

“I feel like the best way I could respect the audience is by not thinking about them too much when I’m working on whatever I’m writing. That way I could just make the best decision with as little outside influence as possible, and make the best internal decisions for the characters, for the story, for the medium,” Druckmann told GameSpot. “And you know, when it comes to like, what are we going to spoil or not spoil? You know, I fought tooth-and-nail when we made the game, and that all blew up in my face at the end, when we had those leaks that happened like months before the game came out. So I’ve learned to not put so much stock in that. But also, now I have a creative partner, HBO. I kind of follow their lead here as far as spoilers and what we should show and not show and just, you know, again, approach it as if we’re doing it for the first time, assuming the audience doesn’t know anything. They’re not Googling what happened in the game or not.”

Even with spoilers floating around for those who can’t resist looking for them, the second season, like the first season, changes some details in order to ensure the team is “making the best choices for this moment in time,” as a TV audience has different needs than a video game player.

“But also, again, my approach with the show is, I assume you know nothing,” he continued. “I assume you haven’t played the game. I guess there’s some assumption you’ve watched the first season, but even that, we’re not 100% sure, so HBO created this beautiful recap of Season 1.”

I asked the pair if the production team created any content meant as spoiler disinformation, like when creators for Lost or Game of Thrones would film scenes they had no plans to use just to fill the spoiler forums with disorienting noise–a practice that horrifies Mazin.

“The thing is, it’s really hard to make the show. We use every second of every day to make the stuff we want to make,” he said. “The thought of spending time shooting stuff we don’t want to make is sort of a horrifying prospect to me. And I think Neil’s right. The thing about spoiler stuff is it’s kind of overrated; the impact that it has is overrated. And you can look at that just empirically with The Last of Us Part II, which had the leaks. There was all this spoiler outrage, and then the games sold gazillions of copies and won every award you can win, and it was beautiful. It didn’t matter the spoiler. Like, I always use the example of Titanic, although, honestly, I could use Chernobyl, too. ‘Hey, here’s a spoiler. It blew up, right?’ [The] Titanic sinks, and we all still went to the theater to watch it because we don’t care about that. We care about the relationships.”

The Last of Us Season 2 premieres on HBO and Max beginning on April 13 and will run for seven episodes on a weekly release schedule. The season won’t cover all of The Last of Us Part II’s story, and a third season is planned, though not yet officially announced.