Back in July, Neil Druckmann, the creator of The Last of Us video games and co-creator of the HBO series, revealed that he will be exiting the show ahead of its third season.
Druckmann was heavily involved with the first two seasons of the survival horror drama series as a showrunner, writer and executive producer alongside co-creator Craig Mazin, but decided to end his involvement in order to dedicate “complete focus” to Naughty Dog and the developer's future video game projects (whether one of those projects will turn out to be a third The Last of Us game remains to be seen).
“I’ve made the difficult decision to step away from my creative involvement in The Last of Us on HBO,” Druckmann said in a statement at the time. “With work completed on Season 2 and before any meaningful work starts on Season 3, now is the right time for me to transition my complete focus to Naughty Dog and its future projects, including writing and directing our exciting next game, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, along with my responsibilities as Studio Head and Head of Creative.”
“Co-creating the show has been a career highlight. It’s been an honor to work alongside Craig Mazin to executive produce, direct and write on the last two seasons,” he added.
Many believed that there must be more to Druckmann's exit than his statements suggested, but if this is the case, he's still not prepared to spill the details.
During a new interview with Variety, Druckmann broke his silence on his departure.
“Our goals for the show — I had multiple goals, some of them were selfish. I wanted to elevate The Last of Us beyond the people that have played the game. I felt like that story could find a bigger audience for people that will never play video games. I wanted to elevate Naughty Dog, and PlayStation has been a home for me for 21 years now, and it’s given me all the support to tell these wonderful stories, and I wanted to elevate video games. It was such a crazy goal, but I wanted someone to watch this show and have no idea it was based on the video game, and then be like, ‘Wait, that’s based on a video game?'”
Again, Druckmann may simply be unwilling to disclose any more... or, he's being completely transparent here and simply found himself overwhelmed with the workload!
"It was quite challenging to be as involved as a co-showrunner on Season 1 and Season 2, while running a studio and working and directing and writing a game," he went on. "I really appreciated at Naughty Dog how many people stepped up while I was gone working on Season 2. Specifically, I spent quite a bit of effort on Episode 206 — prepping it, writing it, directing it. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to do that again. So I felt it around that period when we’re wrapping up all the press and really about to get started with earnest in Season 3, that was a good time to reassess everything."