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The Last of Us season 2 is bringing new, smarter Infected from the games to scare the pants off of us
The Stalkers are smarter than your average infected and we'll finally get to see them in season 2 of The Last of Us.
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One of the few complaints about The Last of Us season one was that all the Infected felt very similar to each other. Outside of the Clickers and one brief shot of a Bloater, very few of the variety of enemies from the games were present in the show. That looks set to change in season two of The Last of Us as the showrunners tease a more intelligent variety of Infected.
In an interview in the latest issue of Empire Magazine, Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin confirmed that Joel and Ellie will have to contend with new and interesting enemies when they return to HBO this April. Fans of the game will be familiar with Stalkers, who are infected that have retained some of their cognitive functions. “Now you get to see a different evolution of this infection,” says Neil Druckmann. “It’s kept certain parts of their brain alive, so they are smarter. They coordinate and hide and do things we’ve never seen any other infected do on this show.”
While we know that The Last of Us showrunners aren’t looking to appease fans, they acknowledge that a bit of variety in the infected is something that the show needs. “While Neil and I are, I think, very good at not chasing critique, there are times when our instincts do happen to align with some of the requests we get,” Craig Mazin explained on why they’ve chosen to give people more of what they want in this instance. “All I’ll say is that for the people who want to see more of the infected… Buckle up!”
That is both encouraging and ominous, to be honest.
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