The Last Of Us Season 2 Will Try To Be A Little Less Canada, With All Due Respect To Canada

"The Last Of Us" co-creators have heard your cries about the show's obviously Canadian setting, and they're ready to course correct. /Film's Ben Pearson attended a virtual press event with Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann ahead of the show's first season finale, and when they weren't unpacking the first season or dropping hints about season 2, the pair was owning up to one of the show's only flaws: The fact that every part of its American setting looks like the Canadian wilderness.

"It was a hell of a production. It was massive," Mazin said in regards to the lengthy shoot that took place largely north of the border in areas including wind-swept Calgary. "I'm trying to stop saying it's massive to myself, because I know that next season is going to be more massive, and I don't want to freak out," Mazin admitted with a laugh. "But man, it wasn't easy. I will give us, honestly, a solid B+, but my goal is to do better next season now that we've learned some lessons."

And what might bump that B+ to an A, according to Mazin? Sets that look a little more like the American cities they're meant to stand in for. "Every now and then you get a little of, 'Oh, it's Canada' when we don't want it to be Canada," Mazin admitted. The most obvious location misstep, which was pointed out on Twitter so regularly that it became a meme, came in episode 3 when a shot featuring a mountain range was labeled "10 miles west of Boston." The episode was met largely with acclaim for its transformative saga of post-apocalyptic gay love, but some viewers couldn't get past the lack of realism in the show's setting.

"It's pretty cool when Stephen King points out how much Canada it is," game creator and TV show co-creator Neil Druckmann chimed in at the press event. It's true: the king of horror himself got in on the criticism, tweeting, "THE LAST OF US. Episode 3: Do you really want to tell me that's 10 miles west of Boston?" Still, as Druckmann indicates, it's exciting that "The Last Of Us" reached watercooler status to the point that even King was tweeting about its most-talked-about episode.

While season 2 of "The Last Of Us" will aim to look a little less Canadian, Mazin seems to harbor no hard feelings for the snowy northern expanse that gave the show its distinctive look. "That said: Awesome place to shoot," he concluded. "I loved it. I loved being there." 

Throughout the season, Mazin and Druckmann have spoken frankly about some of the shooting challenges associated with the sprawling production, including when a Calgary mall they'd planned to use in episode 7 turned out to be a lot punier than expected. Other crew members have also spoken about the unique challenges of the shoot, with cinematographer Eben Bolter telling /Film that the team had to design an all-new lighting rig in order to shoot episode 5's climax during periods of high winds in Calgary.

Canadian or not, "The Last of Us" season 2 will certainly have its on-set challenges. Like the first game, "The Last Of Us: Part II" takes place in more than one place, with plenty of action set in Wyoming and Washington state. There's no word yet on when the second season of "The Last Of Us" will hit HBO, but with filming yet to take place, fans may be waiting awhile to return to apocalypse-stricken Canad–er, America.