HBO's latest trailer is a reminder that its upcoming thriller should be painfully raw

HBO's hit factory shows no signs of slowing down, and while you might be sinking into the mid-season intrigue of the latest The White Lotus, there's always a temptation to keep one eye on the horizon. The good news for you is that we're getting closer and closer to season two of The Last of Us, too.

The show just got a full trailer after months of build-up and teasers, along with confirmation that it'll start on 13 April, in almost exactly a month's time. We get quite a good look at some scenarios that anyone who's played the second game in the series will find very familiar, and some really amped-up action moments, too.

The Last of Us Season 2 | Official Trailer | Max - YouTube

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The trailer sketches out a quick version of how we'd expect to find Joel and Ellie when the show picks up, a few years after the way that the last season concluded. They've found refuge in a walled town, contributing to it as citizens, guards and scouts when needed, but the state of their relationship isn't super clear.

Either way, it looks like things won't stay in that town for the whole series – we get looks at Ellie exploring a whole bunch of other locations, including an arresting glimpse of some red flare-lit action in an abandoned subway station. That's not all, though, because there are plenty of scenes without her at all – including trenchcoat-clad, shaven-head people running through woods with torches.

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I've played the game that this season will be based on, along with millions of others, so I'm being deliberately vague – these factions and characters will become familiar to them over the course of what's likely to be a harrowing storyline to come. We know that the show won't tackle the whole of the second game in one season, too.

That's a super smart choice given the game alone lasts for hours longer than a season could, and I'd expect there to almost certainly be a huge cliffhanger at the end of this season, if it does indeed follow the cinematic structure that the game used. Either way it's likely to be a huge season of TV, the sort of stuff that all of the best streaming services will be green with envy about.