Warning: SPOILERS for The Last of Us season 2.The filmmakers behind The Last of Us season 2 were faced with the Herculean task of adapting Naughty Dog’s incredibly ambitious and convention-bucking 2020 game for television. Co-created by Chernobyl’s Craig Mazin and original The Last of Us game director Neil Druckmann, The Last of Us season 2 smartly didn’t even try to fit the full scope of the game into its seven episodes. Instead, the series leaned into Ellie's half of the two-perspective narrative, bringing audiences such unforgettable elements as Joel's death and Ellie's budding relationship with Dina.

The Last of Us season 2 episode 2 in particular–the episode that forced audiences to say goodbye to Pedro Pascal's Joel–was a massive undertaking, and the filmmakers turned to New Zealand-based special effects shop Wētā to bring its biggest moments to life. On top of Joel's death, the episode featured Abby's desperate race across a frozen landscape with a horde of infected on her heels, recreating one of the most thrilling moments from the source material. Wētā put in immense work on that sequence, including its new-for-TV conclusion, in which a Bloater crashes through the gates of Jackson.

ScreenRant spoke with Visual Effects Supervisor Nick Epstein and Animation Supervisor Dennis Yoo about their work on The Last of Us season 2. Because visual effects duties were spread across multiple shops throughout the season, the conversation centered primarily on the second episode and Abby's run through the tundra as well as the infected horde’s assault on Jackson. Read on for a deep dive into how those sequences were made, the incredible attention to detail the special effects artists had, and what these artists hope to work on in The Last of Us season 3.

Why The Last Of Us Season 2 Was Harder Than The First

“There Was Nowhere To Hide”

The biggest infected-driven scene in The Last of Us season 1–or at least the biggest scene that Wētā worked on–was in episode 5, when a massive horde attacks a revolutionary movement led by Melanie Lynsky’s character Kathleen. That was an ambitious spectacle to realize–but The Last of Us season 2 episode 2 offered an even bigger challenge. “I think the big [change] was the fidelity,” said VFX supervisor Nick Epstein, “The shooting conditions just meant everything was going to be a lot clearer.”

“A lot of the really great hero work we did for season one took place at night,” Epstein continued, “Whereas this is broad daylight, diffuse lighting, [and] nowhere to hide. You saw what they were shooting, and you’re like, ‘Right. Our stuff needs to either stand up next to or replace that.’ So, the technical bar was a little higher than season 1.”

“In my mind, it was the number of crowds, and how much we could see that horde,” animation supervisor Dennis Yoo added, “I think that was the main difference.”

“[In] season one we had tons of infected, but we got away with murder having that lighting.”

“It was fire lighting,” Yoo continued, “And they’re just running through it, and flashing. Even their textures were tweaked for that particular lighting style … So when we brought them over to season 2, they actually didn’t stand up in that lighting … I think the main thing was, there was nowhere to hide in lighting.”

The Bloater Was Majorly Updated For Season 2

Now Anatomically Correct!

Both of Wētā’s big, infected-driven sequences have had a bloater as the centerpiece. In approaching the rare, dangerous infected type once more, the effects artists knew certain things had to change. “[That] was evident from doing that exercise of taking out the season one bloater and placing it in the Jackson environment,” Epstein said, “It’s like, ‘All right, aside from just making it look like he’s run through a snowy tundra, he needs some changes.’” Epstein also worked with Mazin and Druckmann on the look of the bloater, which had to be distinct from its season one counterpart.

“We went through a design process,” he shared, adding, “He needed to be bigger [and] more imposing than season one. They’re already being overrun by this thousand-strong horde, and it’s like, ‘Oh, s***. What else can we throw at them?’ Tommy knows the sound. He hears [it, and goes,] ‘Oh, s***. That’s a bloater.’ And I think people who are cued into the sound of a bloater know that. Then, you look out beyond the gate and see him running through [the snow.]”

“He needed to look imposing from the get-go. He needed to be bigger than he was for season one.”

To accomplish that, the VFX team looked at wrestlers–“powerful, rather than some chiseled, muscular, bodybuilder-type physique”–and added extra cordyceps fungus for detail. “Chicken of the woods was the actual name of those mushrooms,” Epstein added, “so, a lot of the details you see on his shoulders and his crown and so on–that was based on photogrammetry of real fungus.”

“Speaking of nowhere to hide,” Yoo added, “he couldn’t be a Ken doll, right? So we actually gave him some genitalia, which we were trying to figure out how to [do.]”

“‘I’m going to animate that thing?’”

Epstein jumped in: “Is it simulated? How many ts does it need to have? I do think we spent way too much time talking about that.” For anyone wondering where Wētā’s work is visible, Epstein said, “The intro shot where he is running towards camera, there's a nub there for sure. It's cold.”

So, what was Wētā’s secret to making sure this bloater could hold up under scrutiny? “More time,” Epstein said. He returned to the same texture painter who worked on the season 1 creature and asked the amount of texturing to be “about double,” plus added a number of more details. “We did things like scattering bits of ice crystals and snow on the surface,” he shared, “So some of the shots [where] we get really close to this thing–where he’s getting shot by Tommy, for example, we could have gone completely full-screen face, and it still would’ve held up.”

On the animation side of things, the same performer as season 1–Adam Basil–also returned to give movement to the creature. Even though Dennis Yoo and his team worked to “get him looking a lot heavier with key framing and giving that weight,” Basil’s performance held up. “Having that base was kind of interesting,” Yoo shared, “I think there was a comment from Craig, who was like, ‘Oh, yeah. That’s a bloater.’ So he knew it was the same performer.”

How The Infected Horde Was Made

“30 To 40” Practical Performers Turned Into Almost 1,000 Infected

The Last of Us season 2 episode 2 featured a massive horde of infected, but in Epstein’s words, it all began with “between 30 to 40 practical [performers]. These are stunt actors in prosthetics, which obviously grounded everything from the motion to just how the digital horde needed to be lit and composited, and so on. But our CG horde went up to almost a thousand in some of the widest shots, and that's a challenge in itself.”

“A good quote that we discovered when we were wrapping this thing up,” Epstein said, “was, ‘Every character here is a hero character,’” meaning that every character required its own special attention to detail. “Crowd work sometimes really suggests compromises in places because you have so many of them, and here, we didn’t have any. We built every single digital infected from scans of the stunt actors with their prosthetics on,” Epstein explained, “We augmented those and we had to come up with some pretty clever variation techniques.”

“Essentially, [for] every one of [that] thousand-strong horde, you could fly a camera right up to it, and it would still hold up next to the stunt actors.”

For Yoo, one of the biggest challenges was the fact that “[humans are] so good at reading patterns … you [could] start picking out some sort of mosaic if things are similar.” Wētā worked with 30 base models for movement animation which, when you’re working with a 1,000-person horde, is not many. “I get comments from Nick all the time,” Yoo shared, “Like, ‘Oh, no, you have two of the base models side by side.’” But, in Epstein’s words, with 1,000 infected, “It’s going to happen for sure.”

Wētā got around that by setting up a system with which, Epstein shared, “any infected could wear any piece of clothing and inherit any hair,” and also be augmented with different variations of cordyceps to create instant visual distinction. Thanks to this development “animation didn’t have to dress those characters,” meaning they could place them around the snowy landscape of Jackson without spending time worrying about their look.

“We also had a textural system that we exposed for lighting,” Epstein explained, where “the lighter could actually design patterns on the clothing … Craig would say, ‘Hey, I need a checked shirt on this infected here, and we actually had that and were like, ‘Yeah, cool, no worries.’”

“That was quite a cool achievement–to be in that spot where notes like that didn’t really phase us.”

Dennis Yoo went deep on ensuring the different infected moved with their own gaits, which posed a larger challenge than one might expect. “You start picking out, ‘Actually, these guys are all moving the same,’” he said. “You can actually start reading it even if it’s on a different character.”

Yoo tried to fix this by capturing more motion performances, which came with its own issues: “I couldn’t actually get the same performers, because everyone runs a certain way. I got the performers knowing that I needed more variation. I got them to start running differently.”

“The problem there is they’re overacting, and then they start looking like Monty Python.”

“I got called out with a lot of motion,” Yoo shared, “like, ‘Those guys run really silly.’ I’m like, ‘You’re right. That doesn’t look like a person.’” So, Yoo turned to new performers, and then had to make their motions fit on CG characters of different sizes. “That actually caused a lot of problems for us,” he said. “Having a six-foot-two infected and [a] four-foot-five infected–you throw that same motion [from one to the other] to get them running the same speed, and [one] looks like a cartoon character moving around.”

“Since they’re not the same size, we always had to backtrack and refit that motion onto that size character. That actually was a daunting process.”

Dennis Yoo & Nick Epstein Share Their Proudest Subtle Moments

“I’m Still Blown Away By A Lot Of What We Did”

If Dennis Yoo, Nick Epstein, and Wētā did their jobs right, viewers weren’t thinking about the immense amount of work that went into The Last of Us season 2. When asked what subtle details they were most proud of or excited about, Epstein began with “From my point of view, there were significant challenges throughout, and I’m still blown away by a lot of what we did.”

“The bit I feel I like the most,” he continued, “and I think that people won’t necessarily know until the behind-the-scenes stuff comes out, is, once they break through the gates and they’re running down Main Street, how much of that was digital … we’d always try to arrange the infected in a way that we could keep the stunt performers [together] and bunch them up so we’re not having to insert CG infected in amongst plate infected, but it just didn’t always work out.”

“I’m still like, ‘Oh, God. Okay, I know we authored that work, but it looks really incredible.’”

“In some of those,” Epstein shared, “it’s full screen and they’re all CG–the horde’s CG–and I haven’t really picked up on the fact that that was the case. So, I think that’s probably the bit I’m most proud of.”

“I have to agree,” Yoo said, “it’d be the shots where no one knew there was CG–they just think it’s full crowd.” He went on to explain one of the most difficult moments of the episode, which was “the chase scene where Abby … jumps on that ladder, and the shot [is looking] down, and the crowd’s there. That was one of the toughest things to figure out.” Yoo said there was a plate crowd around the ladder itself, “and then you had our crowd around them, but they have to interact and bounce off of each other.”

“We put them around the actual actors who had to move,” Yoo said, explaining that his team had to “match move the actors with CG so we knew exactly where they were from there.” To make the different elements feel of one crowd, he explained, “we actually had to [do a] ragdoll simulation on top and kind of jiggle them around like they're in a concert.” And the end result? “It's seamless,” Yoo said. “Nobody seems to notice that they're actually there.”

Wētā Team Share Their Season 3 Hopes

“I Would Go To Extreme Lengths To Work On That”

The Last of Us season 2 ended with a promise: next season will be all about Joel’s killer, Abby. Many who have played The Last of Us Part II, including Epstein and Yoo, know that exploring that storyline may actually make Abby a more sympathetic character than Ellie at this point in the story. “Abby’s part of the story was more interesting for me,” Epstein shared, “And I’m sort of team Abby … I found myself siding with Abby by the end of her story.”

“I think that’s how they designed [it,]” Yoo added, “You started hating her in the beginning. You don’t even want to play her.”

When asked what their biggest hopes were for what they might get to bring to life as part of Abby’s story, both Epstein and Yoo had quick and clear answers. “There’s a very obvious one, [where] I would go to extreme lengths to work on that, which is obviously the Rat King. I’ve already got all these thoughts–getting way ahead of myself–about how that could work out, and so on. So, obviously for me, that’d be the dream.”

Yoo would be thrilled to work on yet another new kind of infected. “Definitely the Rat King for me,” he said, “and those shamblers–I want to delve into that. They brought in the spores in season two, which we didn’t even touch on in season one. I guess they were kind of hemming and hawing [about] whether they were going to have actors with masks on.”

“This season they brought up the spores, so we’re definitely going to see the shamblers, right?”

The Last of Us season 2 is streaming in full on Max.