This article contains spoilers for The Last of Us Season 2 Premiere, and features an interview with the show’s co-creator Craig Mazin.
The Last of Us is a franchise chock-full of zombies. Sorry, sorry, infected. Said infected come in all different shapes and sizes, and include anything suffering from the effects of the cordyceps virus. The virus comes in stages, with each stage having its own distinction. We start off with runners, then move on to stalkers, clickers (most common), bloaters, shamblers, and rat king. Of the stages, stalkers are the least used in The Last of Us game, but one makes a special appearance in The Last of Us Season 2 premiere. More importantly, The Last of Us HBO co-creator Craig Mazin shared with IGN that we’ll be seeing more of the terrifying creatures in the series.
IGN: So, we meet a stalker in Episode 1.
Mazin: Sure do.
IGN: They have such a minimal role in the game, but they’re such a terrifying thing to be able to bring into the show. Are they going to play a bigger role in the series than they do in the game?
Mazin: Feels like they should, doesn’t it?
IGN: It sure does.
Mazin: Yeah. Yeah. It feels like they should. I mean, if you meet a single infected that is that tricky, that smart… And by the way, this comes from my experience playing the game and being absolutely terrified by the stalker… I mean, the stalkers freaked me out so much, and I loved how they presented this new kind of challenge, which, I assume, came partly from the desire to expand gameplay.
But what it did was it also had this pretty serious emotional impact on me. So, as we travel from game to show, we go, well, let’s focus in, and let’s focus in on one of them. And if we are scared by one of them, well, do the math and see where this goes.
The Last of Us Stalkers Explained
I don’t want to do the math and see where it goes, Craig, I’m scared! Stalkers add an interesting level of complication to the not-zombie-but-definitely-zombies genre that is The Last of Us’ infected. They’re strategic, and I don’t like it. I want my undead slow and stupid, and I suspect I’m not alone. That said, if you haven’t played the games, here’s what you need to know about the second stage of the cordyceps virus, stalkers.
As the name suggests, stalkers main function is to, well, stalk. They hide and wait to ambush their victims, are much stealthier than the other stages of infection, and have limited fungal growth since they’re relatively early on in the infection’s life cycle.
The Season 2 premiere sees much of this behavior on full display, as Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Dina (Isabela Merced) go rogue from their recon group and investigate an abandoned shopping center. Stalkers are alerted by loud noises, which comes by way of Ellie falling through the rotting floor and her body slamming into the ground level of the store. We then see the stalker bob and weave in and out of view, almost like it’s playing a game with Ellie before managing to bite her side.
While Dina does manage to get a shot off before matters can get worse and Ellie can get more seriously hurt (of course Ellis is immune to the virus the stalker carries), we can definitely expect to see more of the creature(s) in the series than we did in the game.
