Why did The Last of Us Season 2 had poor rating than the previous one? Speculations Explored

It came as a surprise to most when HBO's The Last of Us Season 2 did not perform as well as the first season. When compared to the finale of the first season, which had 8.2 million people watching, the Season 2 finale only managed to garner 5.3 million viewers.

Apart from viewership, which lowered significantly from the Season 2 premiere to its finale, the Nielsen tracking also revealed that the average viewer count for Season 2 has also gone down 18 percent compared to the first five episodes of Season 1. There could be a variety of reasons that contributed to this decline in ratings for the HBO adaptation, from Pedro's death to Ellie or some creative decisions, but here are a few of these speculations explored.

Disclaimer: The views and thoughts expressed in the following piece are the author's personal opinion. Reader discretion is advised.

Why did The Last of Us Season 2 perform much poorer compared to Season 1

It could be said that the second season effect, where the second seasons tend to perform a little poorer than the debut season, was a reason why Season 2 performed poorly compared to Season 1, but the world and the bonds that The Last of Us Season 1 managed to build and explore throughout its nine episodes left most of its audience excitedly waiting for the second season. So, it doesn't make sense that the apocalyptic world built in the first season and the heartfelt bond between the grumpy father figure and the snarky, resilient girl would fail to entice viewers just for being the second season.

One could say that the gap between the release of the two seasons had a role to play in the poor performance, but that was the case for most of the industry after the SAG-AFTRA strikes in Hollywood, so it isn't as if viewers had some other content to steal the so-called The Last of Us thunder (viewership).

Then there is, of course, the most obvious reason, one that can be considered to have some effect on the viewership: Joel's murder. Witnessing Pedro Pascal (who is having his moment on the Internet right now) and Joel being killed in only the second episode of the second season was unexpected for a majority of the viewers, excluding the gaming community. He was the show's beloved co-lead, and watching him be murdered brutally so soon into the series had an adverse effect on the show.

Additionally, the other co-lead, Bella Ramsey, was also being heavily criticized online for her portrayal of Ellie. A very big chunk of the viewers and the fans were convinced that creative choices made regarding Ramsey's character, her dialogue, and her appearance compared to the video game's Ellie were not adding to but instead taking away from the apocalyptic version of the story. Once the story stopped being about Joel and Ellie and started to focus on Ellie and her quest for revenge against Abby, there was a void left behind in The Last of Us Season 2 that none of the characters seemed to be able to fill.

There is something to be said about the way that the show approached the storytelling as well, and the decisions that were made in regard to stepping away from the original source. It's true that the artistic choices need to be respected, but the audience (a whole lot of them, as the numbers seem to portray) just did not seem to enjoy The Last of Us Season 2.

Maybe it was the fact that the story by itself was a bit of a bummer this season, but the internet is generally not afraid of unfair losses or deaths, as long as they can connect with the story and the characters and their journeys (Tanya dying in The White Lotus Season 2 or Eddie in Stranger Things), which seemed to be missing this season.

There could be a lot of reasons that came together to result in low viewership for Season 2, and in no way can we guess exactly why it happened, but it says something if even a blockbuster such as The Last of Us fails to outperform its debut season.

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