HBO Boss All But Confirms The Last of Us Show Will End With Season 3

The CEO of HBO says he “thinks” The Last of Us showrunner Craig Mazin has planned for the series to end on a third and final season.

HBO’s adaptation of Naughty Dog’s critically-acclaimed game franchise is coming to an end. At least, that’s what the Chairman and CEO of HBO and Max Content, Casey Bloys, all but admitted to Deadline during the streamer’s Emmys afterparty on Monday.

Speaking with the outlet, Bloys stated that The Last of Us Season 3 will take place in 2027, though he didn’t have a specific date to share. He also wouldn’t directly confirm whether or not it would be the show’s last season, but said he “thinks” it’s been planned as the end of the series.

“I think [showrunner] Craig [Mazin] has planned it as the final season,” he told Deadline.

This isn’t a huge surprise; Bloys has been indicating as much for the last year, telling Deadline in January when asked if Season 3 will be the show’s last that “it certainly seems that way, but on decisions like that, we will defer to the showrunners. So you can ask them.”

However, in May 2025, Craig Mazin was singing a decidedly different tune, saying a fourth season was necessary to wrap everything up.

“There’s no way to complete this narrative in a third season,” he told Collider at the time. "Hopefully, we’ll earn our keep enough to come back and finish it in a fourth. That’s the most likely outcome."

Season 3 of TLOU was announced before Season 2 had ever started. The show’s first season was met with critical acclaim, with IGN’s Simon Cardy scoring the show a nine out of 10. Its second season, however, stumbled, with many viewers taking issue with Bella Ramsey’s portrayal of Ellie in the adult stage of her life. IGN scored Season 2 a seven out of 10, with Cardy saying it was “still good, but it’s also a sequel that struggles because it’s only half of the story.”

While it’s looking more likely than ever that the show might be coming to an end next year, Naughty Dog has made it clear that it isn’t done with its flagship zombie franchise, even though it stepped back in its involvement with HBO’s screen adaptation for its third season.

"It's important for us to note that as the creator of the games, Naughty Dog is still the steward of this IP and even though this might be the end of this adaptation," Naughty Dog boss Neil Druckmann said to the Washington Post earlier this month. “We're not done with The Last of Us. There's a couple projects in the works that, when the time is right, I'm very excited to talk about."

For now, the studio is focused on its next offering, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, which recently finished filming its performance capture in August — though its lack of an appearance at the September 2026 State of Play left some fans disappointed.