The Last Of Us Season 2 Will Delve Deeper Into The Infected's Hive Mind

Prior to the release of The Last of Us TV show, co-showrunner Craig Mazin hinted that the HBO adaptation would explore the interiority of the infected more, that viewers would feel a little more empathy towards the cordyceps-ravaged humans than players did in the Games.

While there was some glimpse of this in the first season, such as the inclusion of how the infected are able to sense where people are, using a kind of hive mind, there wasn't so much infected action, which did lead to some fan backlash. But in the next season, Mazin has said more will be shown.

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On HBO's The Last of Us podcast, co-showrunner Craig Mazin said that it'll be, "something that I think we will be exploring further in the next season".

"I think this time around, we were learning so much about how to create the Infected and how to televise them in a way that was exciting and didn't seem goofy or weird or artificial", he continued. "I think we figured out that. I think this next season, the interconnectivity of them, and the risk of stepping on the wrong thing, that stuff is going to be brough forward more for sure".

The show has made various changes from the Games, not least how the infection can spread. In the Games, spores can doom a person, but the show has made a key change highlighting Infected's tendrils, which is a perhaps more visceral and visual way of showing cordyceps' infectiousness, and its reach into the brain.

Episode two had Tess (played by the brilliant Anna Torv) telling Ellie, and the viewers, how the infected are linked. "The fungus also grows underground. Long fibres like wires, some of them stretching over a mile. You step on a patch of Cordyceps in one place, you can wake a dozen infected from somewhere else. Now they know where you are, now they come," she says to Ellie. "You're not immune from being ripped apart".

Hopefully, in season two, we'll get more time with the infected, clickers, and variants, because they seem like fun guys.

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