The “Weeks Ahead” trailer for “The Last of Us” offers a sneak peek at Joel, Ellie, and Tess being stalked by the infected, aka Clickers, in a tense scene that brings to mind the “Raptors in the Kitchen” sequence from “Jurassic Park,” in addition to passing by partly collapsed skyscrapers and other crumbling, haunting remnants of human society. There’s also a glimpse of Storm Reid (“Euphoria”) as Riley, Ellie’s best friend at the military boarding school she attended when she was younger, as part of what’s clearly a flashback to Ellie’s past and the dark events that led to her current state. Melanie Lynskey (“Yellowjackets”) likewise shows up as Kathleen, the leader of a revolution in Kansas City and a seemingly original character created for the HBO show (via Polygon), as does Gabriel Luna as Joel’s brother Tommy, who was MIA when Joel and the gang set out on their trek.
Perhaps most intriguing of all is the early look we get at Nick Offerman (“Parks and Recreation”) and Murray Bartlett (“The White Lotus”) as Bill and Frank, the mysterious survivalists who were mentioned but left unseen in the first episode, having worked out a code for communicating with Joel using Billboard hits from past decades. In her review of the show’s first season, /Film’s Valerie Ettenhofer heralded the standalone episode centered on Bill and Frank as a “crushingly beautiful” story that re-imagines a subplot from the original video game as “a pure embodiment of the game’s most poignant themes.” Who else is ready to get hurt again?
New episodes of “The Last of Us” air Sundays on HBO.