The Last Of Us Season 2 Fully Introduces A Terrifying Stage Of The Infected

As if the end of the world in "The Last of Us" wasn't enough of a nightmare, season 2, which has left critics united prior to its release, gets us up close and personal with an even more frightening variant of Infected that have a hankering to bite down on the last of humanity. Back in 2023, we encountered them briefly alongside Runners, Clickers, and the body-ripping Bloaters, but this season promises to provide even more intense encounters with one of the most feared stages of Infected — Stalkers.

In the lethal stages of infection, Stalkers were the second phase that brought their own very special kind of terror that differed from the rest. While Clickers are no joke and Bloaters are flat-out juggernauts, there's something perhaps even more terrifying about Stalkers because there's some degree of intelligence left with this breed of Infected. The only issue is that it's the worst possible kind, and something that the creator of "The Last of Us" universe recently alluded to.

In an interview with Empire, Neill Druckmann, who created the groundbreaking games that the show is adapted from, teased that the Stalkers are going to be something special in the second season. "You get to see a different evolution of this infection," says Druckmann. "It's kept certain parts of their brain alive, so they are smarter. They coordinate and hide and do things that we've never seen any other Infected do on this show." For fans of the games, it's a threat that will stir up some nightmarish memories of a danger that our heroes might struggle to take on this time around.

While Druckmann might hint at a new kind of Infected in the show, we've already brushed shoulders with them in the first season of "The Last of Us." Anna Torv's Tess suffered a kiss of death from a Stalker while Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) narrowly got away. Possessing the speed and vision of Runners but edging into the aggressive levels of Clickers (you'll see the cordyceps sprouting from their eyes), the Stalker phase of an Infected can arrive within a week or month of the parasite taking over a host. This go-between of two other stages also means that they have the last remains of the vision of the former while also beginning to wield the echo-location capability of the latter, thus creating a lethal method of attack that the other phases don't have.

Admittedly, Stalkers were present in "The Last of Us Part I," but it was in "The Last of Us Part II," on which the show's new season is based, that they got a hellish upgrade. In the 2020 game, Stalkers dodge, strafe, and, most terrifyingly of all, actually hide from their prey before they attack. This stealthy capability also made them difficult to spot, even with the game's listening mechanic that allowed players to get a sense of where enemies are positioned in a given location. Because these beasties didn't move, they were nearly impossible to spot and, therefore, even more of a tough enemy to take down. This heart-pounding skill is already proving to be terrifyingly effective in "The Last of Us" season 2, given that a Stalker was able to surprise and even bite Ellie in the abandoned grocery store. (Good thing no one witnessed the bite, otherwise the secret of her immunity would have been blown.) Between these creatures and Kaitlyn Dever's dangerous character Abby, Joel and Ellie are going to have their hands full.

New episodes of "The Last of Us" season 2 hit HBO and Max on Sunday nights.