Warning: This article contains major spoilers for The Last of Us season 2.
Things are going to get bigger, sadder, and — somehow — even darker in The Last of Us season 2. That won’t come as much of a surprise to those who have played 2020’s The Last of Us Part II. The infamously divisive game shocked players four years ago with its unexpected twists and relentless violence. Now, based on its recent trailer, it looks like The Last of Us season 2 is going to stick fairly closely to the bleak path laid by its parent game.
The trailer is overflowing with images and scenes that will look very familiar to Part II players, as well as glimpses of new characters like Jesse (Young Mazino), Dina (Alien: Romulus star Isabela Merced), Isaac (Jeffrey Wright), and — most noteworthy of all — Abby (Kaitlyn Dever). As one observant fan recently noted, the teaser also features one extremely easy-to-miss callback to The Last of Us Part II.
The reference in question isn’t an image or a prop but a sound. It is specifically the shrill whine that abruptly cuts off the trailer’s melancholic Pearl Jam song and overtakes its second half. The exact same ringing tone is employed to great effect in The Last of Us Part II‘s darkest and most infamous scene when (again, spoiler alert!) Abby kills Joel with one last merciless swing of a golf club. Players hear the club strike Joel’s head, and then the high-pitched whine overtakes everything in the scene — except the strangled sobs of Ashley Johnson’s Ellie.
Last of Us fans have been speculating for years now about how the HBO series will handle the unwieldy, fractured, and oppressively dour story of its franchise’s second game. At the center of those conversations has always been Joel’s death. How early in the season will he die? Will his new scenes unfold in chronological order? Or in a staggered flashback form like they do in The Last of Us Part II? Neither this Easter egg nor The Last of Us season 2’s trailer answers those questions.
That said, the inclusion of such a specific sound makes it clear, in case the trailer’s many recognizable Part II scenes didn’t, that fans should expect to experience the same kind of jarring heartbreak that the 2020 game offers when the HBO series returns. The fact that the aforementioned whine starts in the trailer during a shot of — presumably — the fateful first meeting between Pedro Pascal’s Joel and Dever’s Abby only makes its reprisal here feel all the more intentional and pointed.
The Last of Us season 2 is set to premiere on HBO sometime in 2025.